In New York City, staff members and current and former prisoners at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center testified on Tuesday that the heat at the federal detention facility started to fail as early as mid-January. The hearing came following reports that quickly spread over social media during the weekend that over 1,600 prisoners were being held without heat, hot meals or electricity, including during last week’s polar vortex. After the hearing, Judge Analisa Torres visited the MDC herself to inspect conditions at the jail. You can go to democracynow.org for our two reports at MDC [Part 1, Part 2].