Marni Fechter

Author of Royal Entertainment. Former party planner and social worker, music lover, Oberlin grad, human.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

The heartbreaking story of two young sisters who protested in Iran and were reportedly sexually assaulted in detention.

Twin sisters Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were just 20 years old. One dreamed of opening her own equestrian club. The other worked in a shoe shop.

Today, one is facing execution. The other has been sentenced to 25 years in prison.

The sisters, from Isfahan, were arrested in the middle of the night. Security forces broke into their home, tied their hands and feet, put bags over their heads, and took them away.

For four months, no one knew where they were.

Their mother spent night after night searching outside courthouses, prisons, and hospitals, desperate to find her daughters. When she finally saw them in Dowlatabad Prison, both had bruised and swollen faces. Parts of their hair had fallen out or had reportedly been ripped out.

Taraneh said that while held in solitary confinement, she could hear her sister screaming and crying as she was tortured. Interrogators repeatedly struck Taraneh’s previously operated knee and threatened to sexually assault her sister if she refused to sign forced confessions.

According to Taraneh, a prison medical official told her: “You’re going to die anyway. What difference does it make whether you die with a broken leg or a healthy one?”

A complaint alleging sexual assault during detention was formally filed. Yet the court did not hold even a single hearing to investigate the allegation. Instead, the two sisters and other defendants in the case were handed death sentences and decades-long prison terms.

Confessions extracted under torture. Lawyers given just ten minutes to review an 8,000-page case file. A judge who insulted the defendants more than 20 times during the proceedings.

Two young irani women had dreams and that is why they joined the January uprising to demand Freedom. Now one faces the gallows and the other could spend the best years of her life behind bars.

Be their voice.

#TaranehRahimi #RominaRahimi

[Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 @chefjoseandres]

So proud of my team in @WCKitchen #ChefForNepal …let’s do it!!!

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

Mrs. Tetiana plays the piano in the ruins of her destroyed home

Ukraine, August 30, 2026

📹: Iryna Shev/Facebook

[Marni Fechter @MarniFechter]

@tim_cook Tim, thank you for supporting @Kennedy_HRC for so many years. You and @KerryKennedyRFK are both stepping down as incredible leaders - hoping you will attend the Ripple of Hope gala this year! 🙏🙏🙏

[The Iranian @JustAnIranianIr]

Khomeini’s system raped virgin girls the night before execution so they wouldn’t go to heaven as virgins.

That is on the record.

Today more women sit on death row in the same prisons.

They cannot speak. You can.

Say their names:
Saghar gholami
Diana Taherabadi
Niloufar Esfahani
Leila Abolhassani,
Taraneh Rahimi,
Arghavan Fallahi,
Kamelia Nazari
Najmeh Amini

Don’t let them disappear into those basements.

[Marni Fechter @MarniFechter]

@BriannaWu Looking gorgeous! and the lashes are 🔥🔥🔥!

[נועה מגיד | Noa magid @NoaMagid]

This is Leila Abolhasani, 43, a hairdresser and mother of two teenage daughters, who was arrested during the January protests for filming a fire.

The Islamic regime sentenced her to death.

Her life can still be saved.

[Marni Fechter @MarniFechter]

@VerminusM

[Gwen✨ @Gwenherself]

🚨 Death sentence confirmed for 20-year-old Matin Mohammadi.
His case has been sent for execution.
A young life is on the line. Please don’t stay silent.
Speak up. Share.
Be his voice.
#متین_محمدی

[Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 @chefjoseandres]

On my way from Spain via Poland to meet @WCKitchen team in @MFA_Ukraine this is the moment Ukraine needs our support…..as I’m near the border, and I update Air Alert Ukrainian app, alarms don’t stop coming….missile after missile every night! @NATO @Europarl_EN @EU_Commission must do more! Can do more. Should do more!

[Peyman Haghighi @Peyman223]

من #کاوه_رفوشه هستم. به خانواده‌ام اعلام کرده‌اند که مرا فردا، سه‌شنبه، اعدام می‌کنند. صدایم باشید!

[Chris K. @chriskh]

You could move to New York City.

Walk out your door at 2am for a bacon egg and cheese and not think twice about it. Get on a subway that takes you from a mosque to a synagogue to a cathedral to a noodle shop that's been slinging the same bowl since 1987, all in twelve blocks. Watch strangers from four different continents argue about a parking spot in a language that is somehow entirely made of hand gestures.

Sit in a park designed 170 years ago by geniuses who wanted you, specifically, to have somewhere green to sit. Catch a Tuesday night set from a musician who's about to be enormous, in a room that fits eighty people. Walk past a building where somebody invented something, or wrote something, or changed something, roughly every four minutes, whether you notice or not.

Realize your commute is also a people-watching seminar, a smell-based cultural exchange program, and free comedy.

Order the good pizza at 1am standing up, off a paper plate, next to a guy in a tux and a guy who clearly just got off a double shift, both getting the same slice with the same reverence.

Pay too much for too little space and get, in exchange, eleven million other people's worth of energy pointed directly at your life every single day.

Move to Iowa. Get the four bedrooms, the garage, the yard. Never again have a 3am conversation with a stranger that changes how you think about something. Never walk into a museum on a random Wednesday because it's just there. Never get that specific electric feeling of being one tiny gear in the greatest machine humans have ever built.

But hey. At least parking's easy.

[Masih Alinejad @AlinejadMasih]

Mehdi Roshani، a young Kurdish man from Malekshahi who went to the streets demanding basic rights and was tortured so severely is about to be hanged.

A witness who saw him in prison said:

"If you saw his body, you would be horrified. There was not a single uninjured spot. It was covered with marks of electric shocks and whips."

He was arrested on January 21. Transferred to Tehran. Held in total isolation for months. Tortured for forced confessions. Released on bail, then re-arrested two weeks later.

Now the Islamic Republic wants to execute him, using those confessions as "evidence." But he didn’t confess also his body was destroyed.

His family is too poor to afford a smartphone in order to fight for his life.

[נועה מגיד | Noa magid @NoaMagid]

This is Diana Taherabadi.

SHE IS ONLY 16.

The Islamic regime intends to execute her.

Her life can still be saved.

[נועה מגיד | Noa magid @NoaMagid]

This is Diana Taherabadi.

She is only 16.

The Islamic regime intends to execute her.

Her life can still be saved.

[Olga Patlyuk 🇺🇦 @OlgaPatl]

“Why are you posting instead of going to a shelter?”

I read that comment, and I want to answer it.

The air raid siren started shortly after 1 a.m. My two children were already asleep. Unless you’ve had to wake sleeping children in the middle of the night because of incoming missiles, it’s hard to imagine what that feels like.

I live in an apartment building. There is no proper bomb shelter nearby. The only option is the basement of our building. But when missiles are already in the air, running outside can be just as dangerous. Shrapnel can strike at any moment.

And let’s be honest: the basement of a regular apartment building is not guaranteed protection from a missile strike. It may help protect against drone debris or fragments, but not against a direct missile hit.

There is no subway in Vinnytsia where we can take shelter. We use what we have: hallways, basements, and the “two-wall rule.” That’s all many of us have to protect our children.

So yes, I stay behind two walls. At that moment, it’s the best I can do to keep my children safe.

And one more thing.

Why do I post while missiles are flying?

Because silence doesn’t save lives.

I write because I want the world to see and understand what Ukrainian families are living through every single day. These are not just headlines or statistics. This is our reality.

I write with the hope that our stories will reach people who make decisions. That Ukraine will receive more air defense systems. That our skies will become safer. That fewer children will wake up to explosions.

We are not asking for pity.

We are asking to be heard.

Because while you’re reading these words, Ukrainian parents are once again holding their children close as explosions echo outside.

[World Central Kitchen @WCKitchen]

Kyiv woke to one of the largest ballistic missile attacks since the start of the full-scale war in Ukraine. Dozens of missiles were launched toward the capital in less than an hour, causing damage across multiple districts and prompting emergency response efforts throughout the city. As first responders and rescue teams rushed to impacted sites, WCK established meal sites across Kyiv—serving hot meals, sandwiches, snacks, water, and coffee to emergency workers and people affected by the attack. #ChefsForUkraine

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

Democrats have a choice to make.

It’s very clear the fringe of our party is going to try to tap into the world’s oldest hate, antisemitism, and make being anti-Israel a central part of being a Democrat.

And it’s going to work to some degree. I don’t get it, but a lot of people hate Jews. So the temptation is going to be to look the other way and not police our fringe, because they’re going to be speaking moralistic terms, and they’re going to be bringing in new voters.

It’s an obvious point, but this is exactly what Trump did with MAGA. The Republican establishment lost their party. We will lose ours.

So this is the choice. Fight this battle now or the Democratic Party dies. I never thought the vehicle for Jew hate would be my own party, but it very clearly is.

[Elica Le Bon الیکا‌ ل بن @elicalebon]

The world said the people of Iran must rise up to free themselves.

They did. 30k (at minimum) were slaughtered.

That’s what the regime did at its most fragile.

What will it do to them when it’s $300 billion dollars richer, stronger, and more powerful?

That will be the end. There will never be a chance for revolution again.

And if Iranians can’t free themselves from the regime, the entire world remains under its eternal threat.

Don’t think that this doesn’t impact us all.

“As above, so below.”

[Lyndsey Fifield @lyndseyfifield]

Anyone who has ever extracted themselves from a relationship with a narcissistic abuser knows it isn’t clean or easy.

I cringe remembering how many times I tried to play the “cool girl” or fawn in response to what was clearly abusive, coercively controlling behavior by Graham.

I also know how dangerous it is to become the target of a narcissist — so even long after our relationship ended I continued to be upbeat any time he reached out, though I would also immediately shut down any attempts on his part to initiate flirting or romanticizing of the past.

Yes, the day I saw him announce he was running I wanted to make sure people knew he had a Nazi tattoo — and I was terrified he would find out it was me.

But of course he knew it was me.

What’s ironic is I absolutely never would have shared my story if he hadn’t been relentlessly attacking my character behind the scenes for months once the tattoo story came out.

I tried to signal that I wasn’t the source and stayed completely silent about him on social media even as most of my friends posted regularly about what a bad person he is.

But then in early April the New York Times came to me. I asked how they got my number. I said I was not interested in sharing my story. They said but wait—there are other women. Women terrified to tell their stories, too, and you need to band together. WE will help you. We will protect you. Men can’t keep getting away with this.

Hours before their first call to me I saw Eric Swalwell’s name plate get removed from his office door in Cannon. It felt like fate.

I welcomed the two journalists into my home days later, nervous and overwhelmed. Justin Fairfax had just murdered his wife and himself the previous day and even conservative pundits were conjecturing that “if only those women hadn’t accused him of abuse, this never would have happened…”

But I told them my story. I let them take pictures of my diary pages. I sent them screenshots of messages and gave them phone numbers and contacts. It was excruciating. I was surprised by what details I remembered, and as I poured through old messages I was horrified by how much I had forgotten.

I explained very clearly that, like many women abused by their partners, I had not told anyone about his violence at the time—I had covered for and defended it. I accepted his earnest apologies. They said that’s fine because the diary entries and my on the record story was enough.

They connected me to two of the other victims so we wouldn’t feel so alone. I insisted to each of them that I trusted the NYT journalists and that we were doing the right thing despite their (sadly very accurate) sense that something was wrong.

One of the victims and I realized our relationships with Graham overlapped completely - he had been cheating on both of us the entire time we were together.

I should note here that my life is just… beautiful. These are the best years of my life. Raising two young girls in a safe, beautiful neighborhood where I work from home and shuffle my children from dance classes and soccer to church events — I am blessed far beyond what I deserve with wonderful friends and family and the most loving, brilliant husband in the world. Why would I blow my life up like this? Why would I risk the psychotic doxxing from violent leftist activists?

Because while I have been terrified to come forward I decided this was the “hard right thing” to do. The guilt of staying silent has nagged me.

Most therapists recommend a “gray rock” approach to extracting yourself from narcissistic abuse — it works really well, but it is a gift to the abuser, allowing them to persist in their delusion that they’ve done nothing wrong.

I couldn’t stay silent as he continued to lie and lie and lie. I want my daughters to boldly speak out if they’re ever abused as I was.