United States
Sofia Barnett is a Choctaw journalist and Brown University graduate based in Minneapolis. She reports for the Minnesota Star Tribune’s News & Politics desk, where she covers all things local news — from Native child welfare and immigration rights to police accountability and public safety.
A native Texan, Sofia returned home last summer to intern for The Dallas Morning News, where she covered reproductive health, Indigenous affairs and education on the local government team and contributed to the breaking news desk. She previously reported for The Boston Globe, covering higher education and student activism in Rhode Island.
Sofia’s freelance work appears in WIRED, Teen Vogue and The Daily Beast, where she writes about technology, culture and power. At Brown, she reported and edited for The Brown Daily Herald, Brown Political Review and The College Hill Independent. She has also held internships at The Providence Journal and The New York Post.
She is a member of the New York Times Corps class of 2025 and a proud alum of the Princeton Summer Journalism Program.
When Harper Moyski’s preschool teacher first asked her name, she hardly looked up from her coloring before replying: “Badass.” It was the kind of spark her family said defined her — a flash of humor and confidence that they, and hundreds of mourners at the Lake Harriet Band Shell on Sunday, remembered as her special light.
Ryan Palattao woke up Wednesday with a knot in his stomach. The 13-year-old couldn’t explain it — just a gnawing gut feeling that something bad was coming. Still, he got dressed for his third day of seventh grade, ate a quick breakfast, and rolled in his wheelchair into Annunciation Catholic School, where his class was headed to morning Mass. Seven minutes into the service, the sanctuary’s stillness was shattered.
Laura DuSchane had just walked her 3-year-old son, Rory, across the street to Annunciation Catholic School for his third day of preschool on what should have been an ordinary Wednesday. Back in her south Minneapolis home, DuSchane, who is eight months pregnant, had settled onto the couch when the sound tore through the quiet. A rapid, relentless popping — gunfire, unmistakable.
The fear that swept through Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday has not lifted. On Friday, Minneapolis officials stood before cameras to reassure parents: the city has rehearsed this nightmare, and their training saved lives. Mayor Jacob Frey said the city’s response was the product of hard lessons.
More than two million girls around the world endure genital mutilation before their fifth birthday each year, and most women here in the West African nation of Sierra Leone have been cut. We often think of human rights abuses as wartime atrocities or what governments do to dissidents, but sometimes they involve what family members do to the people they love.
In Makeni, Sierra Leone, girls walk home from school with notebooks tucked under their arms and dust clinging to their socks. Their uniforms are clean but faded. Their routes are long. I met girls who walk five miles through washed-out roads to reach a classroom. Their futures depend on a fragile calculation — not just of effort, but of what they’re willing to trade to keep learning.
Before every auction, Sean Blanchet sends a spreadsheet to Washington, D.C., where it lands in the inbox of the Association on American Indian Affairs. There, researchers comb through the list of Native American items up for sale at his St. Paul auction house — tribal masks, feathered war bonnets, ceremonial objects — and flag anything with spiritual or tribal significance. And when they do, Blanchet doesn’t haggle. He pulls it from the Revere Auctions catalog and sends it home.
Four decades ago, Minnesota created some of the strongest protections in the country to stop the practice of separating Native children from their communities when they are placed in foster care. But in practice, families and advocates across the state say those protections erode quickly when resources are stretched thin, services are miles away, or county workers don’t follow the steps the laws require.
In a room filled with grief and rage, Indigenous women leaders called on Minneapolis officials to declare a state of emergency, saying the city is failing to protect them from trafficking, violence and drug-related homicides. Native women make up less than 1% of Minnesota’s population — but between 2010-2019, 10% of Minnesota’s missing women were Native.
Immigrant-rights organizers and community leaders gathered Monday to condemn what they called a disturbing trend: plainclothes federal agents detaining immigrants immediately after their hearings at Minnesota’s immigration court — often without warning and in front of their families.
The Minneapolis police officer who killed Amir Locke during a no-knock raid at a downtown Minneapolis apartment three years ago is now a sergeant leading the department’s training in the use of force. Sgt. Mark Hanneman’s appointment has sparked criticism from civil rights advocates, who say it’s a betrayal of public trust and a continuation of the institutional failures that led to Locke’s death.
A degree in computer science used to promise a cozy career in tech. Now, students’ ambitions are shaped by AI, in fields that blend computing with analysis, interpretation, and data.
A federal appeals court has rejected Minneapolis police officer Mark Hanneman’s attempt to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by the parents of Amir Locke, the 22-year-old Black man he fatally shot during a no-knock SWAT raid in 2022. In a ruling issued this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit dismissed Hanneman’s appeal for dismissal on the basis of qualified immunity — a legal defense that protects officers from civil lawsuits unless they violate clearly established...
Since the start of the AI boom, teachers have been tasked with figuring out if LLMs are helpful tools or a cheat code. This is how they’re bringing AI to their curricula.
The sound came first: a chorus of wooden sticks clattering together in the air, followed by a sharp yell that cut across the gym. A leather ball arced skyward, and a scramble of young players rushed in, colliding, tumbling and springing back up. When someone went down, a hand reached out to help them up. This wasn’t just a game. It was baaga’adowewin — the Ojibwe word for lacrosse — the Creator’s Game.
One of the abandoned notebooks, pictured in the federal complaint charging Vance Boelter with the murder of Melissa and Mark Hortman, and the attempted murder of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, features two pages lined with various “people search” sites. The online search engines aggregate personal data such as home addresses, phone numbers and relatives, all available to browse for free or for a small fee.
Kevin Reitmeier was barely 14 years old when he left this world doing what he loved most. On the morning of July 1, he and four friends woke up from a sleepover and decided to take his moped out for a ride. The boys took turns, with Kevin steering each one around the neighborhood in wide, looping spins. He’d drop one off, then pick up the next. But on his fourth ride that morning, Kevin didn’t make it back.
President Trump’s first 100 days back in the White House have been indelibly marked by a crusade against higher education, freezing billions in federal funding to the nation’s oldest institutions, and encroaching on the central academic principle of free inquiry.
Over 200 people gathered on the lawn of the State House Monday night to support Dr. Rasha Alawieh, an assistant professor at Brown University who was detained at Logan Airport by US Customs and Border Protection on Thursday.
Many Native Americans in North Texas don’t feel their voices are being heard ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Others don’t trust the government to have their best interests in mind. The over-arching concern for Native Americans is sovereignty, but a lack of engagement within their community and from politicians worries some. And with the expansion of SpaceX in South Texas and the political makeup of the Supreme Court, the nation’s first people have a lot at stake.
The Afiya Center, an HIV prevention and reproductive justice organization, held its 11th annual free testing event on June 29, the Saturday closest to National HIV Testing Day. Held in South Dallas, the event aims to bring resources into a community where few can be found, organizers said. The HIV crisis, both in Texas and nationally, disproportionately impacts Black people, according to data from the CDC.
Texas is the second to worst state in the country to be a woman with health issues, according to new findings from the Commonwealth Fund, a research foundation dedicated to improving health care. In the race to the bottom, the Lone Star state is behind only Mississippi, according to scorecards released by the foundation Thursday. Mississippi has the highest infant mortality rate in the country.
Hundreds of student protesters are calling on the University divest from companies that support Israel and drop charges against the 41 students who were arrested after a pro-Palestine sit-in in December.
Amid tensions about free speech on university campuses and the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, anonymous social media app Sidechat has become a hotbed of vile rhetoric.
Students and professors can't decide whether the AI chatbot is a research tool-or a cheating engine.
On Monday, the university president said some students would be invited to present their case for divestment to a subset of the school’s governering body. In exchange, the students must clear the encampment.
Organizer Arman Deendar called the outcome of the negotiations “a historic win" for divestment advocacy.
Brown University has temporarily suspended its Students for Justice in Palestine chapter for disorderly conduct after a rally protesting the governing board’s decision not to divest the school’s endowment from certain companies that support Israel.
Last spring, as pro-Palestinian encampments sprung up on campuses around the country and university presidents mulled over whether to call in police to break them up, Brown University student protestors struck a deal with administrators: If they took down their tents, Brown’s board would vote on divestment from certain companies that do business in Israel this fall. Now it’s time for Brown to make good on its end of the bargain.
Hundreds of students held a campus protest on Friday to express their opposition to the university’s decision to reject divestment.
A key piece of evidence a widow - whose husband played NCAA football for the Army - hopes will be a game-changer is a little-known letter from 50 years ago.
The Five Mile neighborhood located in southern Dallas was long overlooked with little resources and even lacked sewage and water lines from the city, leaving residents paying for their own sanitation and water services elsewhere. Now, it is being revitalized as the neighborhood is freckled with pristine houses and empty lots prepped for future construction.
"I asked the NYPD, 'Are you going to come clean it?' And they told me 'no, that's not our job,'" a Lower East Side merchant said.
Cracked tree branches and debris littered the streets Thursday morning as many North Texas residents entered their third day without power in the aftermath of Tuesday’s severe storms. High winds and heavy rains ravaged the Dallas-Fort Worth area that downed power lines and left more than 600,000 Oncor customers without electricity.
Conspiracies like Pizzagate are all over the social media platform. Here's why they've found an audience there.
Janina Lewandowska failed "to fully and accurately account" for all of Dolores Morrissey's assets, the attorney general said in May.
First Baptist Dallas church in downtown Dallas was the site of a major fire on Friday. First responders were called to the church’s secondary chapel on San Jacinto Street and were confronted with “heavy smoke and fire conditions involving the structure,” said fire Capt. Robert Borse. Here’s what to know about First Baptist Dallas and its long history.
Texans opposed to what they called “pornographic” books read graphic excerpts depicting sexual activity to the State Board of Education on Friday to illustrate what they called the “pervasively vulgar” content of some books that can be found in school libraries.
I sat down with assistant director of the Tomaquag Museum, Silvermoon LaRose, to talk about Rhode Island's Indigenous history and the importance of keeping it alive.
For Providence's LGBTQ+ small businesses, Pride isn’t just a month – it’s a year-round commitment. The Providence Journal spoke with the owners of three businesses in Providence – Heartleaf Books on Atwells Avenue, Small Format PVD on Wickenden Street and Botanical Bar on Cromwell Street – about what it means to be a queer business in Providence. Here's what they said.
On April 14, the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management addressed concerns from community members regarding multiple reports of fish kills in the Providence and Seekonk rivers on their Instagram.
President Joe Biden on Sunday announced his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election. His decision comes more than three weeks after his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump. It makes Biden the first sitting U.S. president since Lyndon B. Johnson to not seek reelection. Here’s a look at Biden’s 54-year political career.
A first-generation, low-income student at Brown discusses the social pressures of being surrounded by extreme wealth and privilege.
As higher education grapples with an increase in school shootings, student journalists are the ones closest to the story. The Herald spoke with student journalists from UNC, Michigan State and UVA about their experiences covering gun violence at home and how they navigated unspeakable devastation as both reporters and people.
Soaring innovation in Texas has spawned a biotech boom that has made Dallas a hotbed for medical research, with numerous inventions emerging from its research universities. Texas universities play a crucial role in the state’s economy and medical research, with the University of Texas system taking the lead. Their innovations, in turn, lead to growth in the state’s life sciences sector.
The Brown Muslim Students' Association hopes to have access to the same amount of resources as other religious groups on campus, including a larger meeting place.
Fulya Pinar spoke about her research on social movements and displacement in Turkey and the Middle East during a talk at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
On Monday, Feb. 6, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake devastated Turkey and Syria. More than 7,000 people have been reported dead, with thousands more left injured. Thousands of buildings have collapsed, leaving countless residents trapped under rubble and debris. Brown community members reflected on the loss and destruction.
Married university professors solved the centuries-old interpolation problem in a mathematical proof.
Students alleged a lack of "fundamental instruction" and inequitable treatment of women and students of color in ENGN 0040.
Faculty reflect on experiences with misogyny, harassment and bonding with other women.
George Morgan, an accomplished professor emerita in the University's applied mathematics department and pioneer of Brown's renowned Open Curriculum, died Feb. 4 at the age of 98.
RISD students hope to use the tree, more than 200 years old, to make a bench that will rest near the new tree planted in the same spot.
According to the report, women faculty are underrepresented across all ranks and disciplines at the University, treated inconsistently with Brown's Code of Conduct and, on average, paid less than men.
In this op-ed, Sofia Barnett calls on Ivy League schools to better support the mental health of their students.
Being a first-generation, low-income student has been an eye-opening experience-not least in finding out how many of my FGLI peers are actually children of privilege.
BeReal and other new photo sharing social media apps are trying to cater to young people's appetite for realness. They're having the opposite effect.
Associate Provost for Enrollment Logan Powell explained that while the University expects the Supreme Court to rule that race can no longer be a factor in applicant selection, the administration is hopeful that the Supreme Court's ruling will still allow colleges to recruit and conduct their yield processes while considering racial identity.
During his time at Brown, Jones earned a reputation as a gentle, selfless and innovative professor who spearheaded access to mental health care for students and staff.
The program prioritizes recruiting first-generation and low-income students who have demonstrated academic excellence, said FLP director Rosie De La Garza. First-generation and low-income students face unique obstacles both in applying to and attending colleges, often navigating financial and social barriers with fewer resources and less structured support, Salazar said.
TikTok's latest trend involves clips of Hollywood movies playing next to videos of baking or metal compression. It's making social media overstimulation even worse.
During a global pandemic, the fear of missing out was replaced by something else: dread over not experiencing what could have been.
Some students across North Texas will have an easier time transferring college credits between four local schools that came together to make the process friction-free. Dallas College, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman’s University and the University of North Texas at Dallas on Thursday announced the partnership and an online tool that connects the schools through a centralized portal — the Transfer Hub — that offers students guidance on switching schools and other information.
On Thursday night, Justin Bolsen '26 emerged victorious from Jeopardy! High School Reunion Tournament, winning the $100,000 grand prize and a spot in the tournament of champions this fall.
The Clinton Restaurant announced via Facebook its last day in Whitestone will be June 25, ending three generations of ownership under the Babich family.
On Oct. 4, Jacob Gelman '25 left the Duke University School of Law admissions information session with the same confusion he had brought with him. After an hour of listening to admissions officers detail the school's application cycle, requirements, strategies and more, Gelman still did not find the answer to his most pressing question: Will taking classes Satisfactory/No Credit penalize him in the law school admissions process?
In 1972, the University's Urban Studies Program was born out of faculty volunteerism and a steadfast commitment to the principles of interdisciplinary exploration unique to Brown. Fifty years later, the program is celebrating half a century of community engagement, scholarship and development.
Hurricane Lee is expected to bring heavy rain through New England as the Category 2 storm expands in size, potentially sparking flash flood warnings and shelter-in-place recommendations. The third major hurricane of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, Lee formed on Sept.