Welcome to the NICE Agency.
I hope you brought burritos purchased from your local immigrant-run taco joint.
Hello! At the same time we’re completely inundated with HAPPENINGS, we’re also completely inundated with propaganda, misinformation, advertisements, paywalls, and AI slop. So here’s what’s gonna happen from my end. FACTS. Just daily compilations of straight-up fuckin’ news and resources from the most credible, least biased, non-paywalled, AI-free sources I can find. Every single day of this dystopian hellscape and beyond.
Today is the 20th of January here in US Eastern Time, so my initial posts will be playing catch-up for what feels like the first three years of 2026 rather than its first three weeks. I started this ambitious venture in 2025 in a Discord server I run, so I’ve already compiled the essays, article and citation links, screenshots, and photos to post there. Give me a week or so to share this month’s info here as posts organized by date, region, and topic, and once I’m caught up to the present, there will be a new post each day with the previous day’s world news.
WHY??? Because paying attention is resistance. Staying aware of what’s going on when there are forces trying to keep us in the dark or distracted is resistance. Improving reading comprehension and critical thinking skills while Big Brother tries to create an uneducated and ignorant proletariat is resistance. Archiving accurate information for future generations while those in power are actively working to suppress and re-write the truth is resistance. Being prepared for the absolute worst by learning from our neighbors in other cities and states and countries who are already experiencing it so we can organize and mobilize and protect one another is resistance!
I have so appreciated the independent journalists, the professors, the researchers, the historians, the scientists, the librarians, the teachers, and the life-long learners who have worked around the clock combatting the constant barrage of lies, inaccuracies, contradictory half-truths, cherry-picked data, and political doublespeak to give us some semblance of a factual reality, especially over the past year. My goal is to put carefully vetted news stories and first-hand accounts together in one place that is accessible to anyone anywhere for free. This is not only to make it simpler and less time-consuming for everyone to, at the very least, skim over headlines and have a general idea of the state of the world, but also to protect our mental health and our sanity from the overwhelm of ad-saturated social media spaces, corporate-and-state-controlled media outlets, hostile debate, and triggering discourse.
Staying informed is vital, but doing so without totally losing our minds or living in a constant state of fear and anxiety feels impossible. Your Friendly Neighborhood NICE Agent is here to make it a little bit easier.
I find some of the best, most reliable, and FREE coverage of global events and factual data at the Associated Press, NPR, Al Jazeera, Euronews, UN News, PBS News, The Independent, The Guardian, and ProPublica. Some sources—Politico for example—don’t require payment, but they do require you to create a free account with your email to continue reading. When shit’s going down in smaller communities, I try to find local news articles and first-hand accounts. If I find an important headline on a paywalled site, I cross-reference it with other outlets to find the information you can see for free. If I share screen shots of social media posts or infographics, I make sure they cite credible sources and often include links to those citations.
For sources I’m unfamiliar with, I check the Ad Fontes Media Interactive Media Bias Chart to see where each source ranks on reliability and political bias. If an outlet isn’t within a few points of the top center of the chart, I don’t share it. I also frequently browse Ground News for stories that may only have been covered by one end of the political spectrum to ensure news isn’t being overlooked or under-reported.
Heather Cox Richardson is a political historian and one of the best sources for straightforward evidence-based and cited facts about current events in the US. I will often share her daily "Letters from an American" here, which are always free to read via her Substack or Facebook page. I will typically often include links to several of her citations that aren’t paywalled.
The Alt National Park Service is a grassroots resistance coalition that began during the first Trump presidency in 2017. Last year, when the regime took over and started trying to enforce new regulations, dismantle the EPA and national parks, and eliminate thousands of federal employees, the vast majority of US park rangers were just like "Yeah, nope, our allegiance is to the forest," and they've been continuing to defy orders and leak inside information about what's happening at the federal level ever since. The coalition is now made up of hundreds of thousands of federal employees or ex-employees from from all sectors as well as many other advocates and organizers across the entire United States. It's been one of my favorite things to watch, and they're worth following for updates as they do exactly what I'm trying to do here in this space—simply and succinctly share information in real time. A lot of the posts here will be screenshots from their Facebook page.
Some other essays, opinion pieces, and informative posts I often reference come from Qasim Rashid, So Informed, Now This Impact, and the ACLU. Again, I will always fact-check their sources and include citations.
Some other great sources, if you’re willing to pay for them, are the BBC, Reuters, and BNO News. But if you’re able to pay a subscription, consider instead donating to NPR or PBS, buying some merch from AltNPS, or subscribing to my Substack here for $5 a month so we will be able to continue doing this important work!
I try my best to only share links to articles that are NOT paywalled, however, there are some sites that may be free at first but paywalled after accessing a certain number of articles. Sometimes you may see paywalled articles for that reason, especially if they are sources/citations to others’ posts.
Lastly, I AM AN IMPERFECT HUMAN, and there is only one of me running this Substack as well as the Facebook and Instagram pages. I’m sifting through the madness, reading essays and articles, fact-checking sources, and trying to post across multiple platforms every single day. As of now, completely unpaid. All this in addition to directing an international nonprofit creative collective, also unpaid, and all of my regular full-time freelance writing, editing, & design work, tutoring, and leading workshops. I certainly can’t promise I won’t occasionally miss things, share something that ends up being incorrect, or get behind on posting. But YOU, dear reader, with your brains in your head and your feet in your shoes, can help! Comment on posts here or on FB, or DM me when a source seems to be missing, when a link isn’t working, when new information comes up that contradicts previous news, when you’re seeing frequent paywalls, when you catch something AI-generated, when something is happening in your local area that the media isn’t covering, et cetera. I will, as promptly as I can, revise posts by correcting info, removing unverifiable data, updating links and sources, and adding stories that may have been overlooked or suppressed.
Thank you so much for your commitment to staying informed, sharing the news, speaking out, and helping to grow this community of resistance and revolution! Look out for each other, make good trouble, and DO THE WORK, Y’ALL! Much more to come!