ProPublica
type: channel
description: Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest
date: 2026-02-04T01:07:10Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Mass. Governor Proposes Eliminating Statute of Limitations for Rape When DNA Evidence Exists
items: FAA Warns Airlines About Safety Risks From Rocket Launches, Urges “Extreme Caution”
items: Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting
items: What We Saw in Minneapolis
items: Nike Says Its Factory Workers Make Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. In Indonesia, Workers Say, “It’s Not True.”
items: She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad.
items: Two School Districts Sue, Claiming Alaska Is Failing Its Constitutional Obligation to Fund Public Education
items: Six Senators Accuse Deputy Attorney General of “Glaring” Crypto Conflict, Cite ProPublica Investigation
items: Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country
items: We Tested Vapes in Colorado for Signs of Hemp. This Is What We Found.

Mass. Governor Proposes Eliminating Statute of Limitations for Rape When DNA Evidence Exists
type: item
creator: Willoughby Mariano
date: 2026-02-03T15:45:00Z
description: The post Mass. Governor Proposes Eliminating Statute of Limitations for Rape When DNA Evidence Exists appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wants to eliminate the 15-year deadline to prosecute rape in cases where there’s a DNA match. Current Massachusetts law bars rape prosecutions in older cases, even when DNA testing has identified a suspect. An investigation last year by WBUR and ProPublica found that nearly all other states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. Many of those 47 states extended their deadlines in recent decades as DNA technology helped solve old cases and as evidence mounted that police had failed to fully investigate rapes. The WBUR-ProPublica investigation followed the story of Louise, a woman who had been raped and stabbed after accepting a ride in 2005 from a man who said he recognized her from college, a police report said. Although DNA testing would later connect a man accused of multiple assaults to her case, prosecutors had to drop charges in her attack under Massachusetts’ statute. (WBUR does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission. We agreed to identify Louise by her middle name.) Healey’s proposal would eliminate the statute of limitations for rape cases when DNA evidence exists. “With technological advances, new evidence is being collected and tested every day, and we need to make sure our judicial system keeps pace,” Healey said in a written statement on Saturday. “I hope this proposal will help survivors who have had to wait far too long for justice, while also improving our ability to hold offenders accountable.” The new language is part of Healey’s budget proposal for the 2027 fiscal year. The provision must pass both chambers of the Legislature. It would take effect for cases in which the statute of limitations has not yet expired and future sexual assaults, but it would not affect older cases. Legislators have tried to pass similar proposals every session since 2011, WBUR found, but those efforts have failed in part because defense attorneys have opposed changes, sayi…

FAA Warns Airlines About Safety Risks From Rocket Launches, Urges “Extreme Caution”
type: item
creator: Heather Vogell
date: 2026-02-02T10:00:00Z
description: The post FAA Warns Airlines About Safety Risks From Rocket Launches, Urges “Extreme Caution” appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a sharp warning that rocket launches could “significantly reduce safety” for airplanes, urging pilots to prepare for the possibility that “catastrophic failures” could create dangerous debris fields. The official notice, known as a safety alert for operators, was dated Jan. 8, the same day that ProPublica published an investigation showing how pilots scrambled to avoid debris after two SpaceX Starship megarockets exploded over busy airspace last year. The alert was an acknowledgment that travelers were at risk on those days, when the FAA hastily activated no-fly zones to help air traffic controllers steer planes away from falling rocket parts. In the last two decades, the agency has issued about 245 such safety alerts to the aviation community about issues ranging from runway threats to mechanical problems, but last month’s warning is the first to address the danger to airplanes when rockets launch or reenter Earth’s atmosphere, according to the FAA’s website. SpaceX and other companies have ramped up launches in recent years. Starship, a version of which is supposed to one day land on the moon, has followed a flight path that soars over well-trafficked commercial airways in the Caribbean. The FAA previously told ProPublica that it “limits the number of aircraft exposed to the hazards, making the likelihood of a catastrophic event extremely improbable.” It also said it takes steps to keep pilots informed and planes safe during launches, such as creating the emergency no-fly zones, known as debris response areas. The January alert also pointed to those procedures. “Past events have shown that when a mishap does occur, debris has fallen within or near the DRA, and pilots should exercise extreme caution near these areas,” the notice said. But it warned that debris can fall in places where the FAA doesn’t enact no-fly zones, such as international airspace over oceans without radar coverage, saying pilots need to have “addit…

Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting
type: item
creator: J. David McSwane
date: 2026-02-01T21:10:00Z
description: The post Two CBP Agents Identified in Alex Pretti Shooting appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez. The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations. Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city. CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good. Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have called for a transparent investigation into the killing of Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care unit nurse working at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital. “We must have a transparent, independent investigation into the Minnesota shooting, and those responsible—no matter their title—must be held accountable,” Republican Sen. John Curtis of Utah wrote on X on Monday. The agency sent a notice to some members of Congress on Tuesday acknowledging that two agents fired Glock pistols during the altercation that le…

What We Saw in Minneapolis
type: item
creator: Cengiz Yar
date: 2026-01-31T10:00:00Z
description: The post What We Saw in Minneapolis appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Over the past month, the Trump administration has deployed thousands of federal immigration agents to the Minneapolis area. On Saturday, Jan. 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse for the Department of Veterans Affairs. Pretti was the third person shot by federal agents in the area in January. The Department of Homeland Security initially said an agent fired “defensive shots” after Pretti approached officers with a weapon, but video of the incident appears to contradict that claim. DHS said this week that two officers involved were placed on leave. In a press conference on Thursday, border czar Tom Homan said the administration is working on making the operation “safer, more efficient, by the book.” He said that agents will focus on “targeted, strategic enforcement operations” with a “prioritization on public safety threats.” Our photojournalists Cengiz Yar and Peter DiCampo were on the ground in Minneapolis, covering what they saw in the days before and after Pretti’s death. Read their accounts below. Cengiz Yar I arrived in Minneapolis last week to report on the crackdown and how local residents were reacting. I had packed my medical kit, full face respirator, helmet and a couple tourniquets, essentials for my reporting bag when I make trips to dangerous and potentially violent areas. I also brought layers upon layers of warm clothing, as temperatures were expected to drop to 20 below in the coming days. I knew the ICE raids and the community’s response had been intense across the region, but I wasn’t fully prepared for what I’d end up seeing playing out in the streets. In my few days in Minnesota, I’ve been witness to countless scenes that remind me of moments I’ve seen during previous trips covering conflicts around the world. I watched heavily armored federal units roll through quiet neighborhoods. In a grocery store parking lot, angry residents screamed at agents, demanding they leave the city. Masked and armed gove…

Nike Says Its Factory Workers Make Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. In Indonesia, Workers Say, “It’s Not True.”
type: item
creator: Matthew Kish
date: 2026-01-30T10:30:00Z
description: The post Nike Says Its Factory Workers Make Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. In Indonesia, Workers Say, “It’s Not True.” appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Through boom times and, more recently, slumping sales, Nike Inc. has stuck by a key claim about its overseas suppliers: They pay the average factory worker about twice the local minimum wage. It’s a claim company co-founder Phil Knight first made in the 1990s, when the company faced accusations of sweatshop conditions in the overseas factories hired to make Nike’s apparel. And it’s one the sneaker giant has reasserted since 2021. But the experiences of workers in Indonesia, Nike’s second-largest production hub, illustrate how misleading the claim can be for vast portions of its supply chain. When a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive visited the country and interviewed roughly 100 workers from more than 10 factories that supply Nike, none said they made anywhere near twice the minimum wage. “Bullshit,” a union official said, in English, while sitting on a makeshift couch on the porch of his office near Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. (Like most workers currently employed by Nike suppliers, the official did not wish to be named because of fears of retaliation, including fines and termination.) One worker from a factory in West Java asked a reporter where on the company’s website Nike makes the wage claim. “No, no, no,” he said, through a translator. “It’s not true.” “Nike is not paying double the minimum wage,” said a union official in Central Java, a lower-wage area where Nike’s contract factories have been expanding. “The fact is the opposite. Nike is seeking cheaper workers.” <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" height="703" width="527" src="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Worker-apartments-3-SG-tone-2-redaction_preview_maxWidth_3000_maxHeight_3000_ppi_72_embedColorProfile_true_quality_95.jpg?w=527" alt="A covered alleyway with a peeling floor, green walls and a sagging ceiling. Clothing hangs from horizontal poles, flip-flops are scattered on the ground and parked motorbikes sit against the walls." class="wp-image-65657" srcset="https://w…

She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad.
type: item
creator: Matthew Kish
date: 2026-01-30T10:25:00Z
description: The post She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Once a month, American labor activist Jim Keady logs into Remitly, an app for transferring money abroad, at his New Jersey home and sends $100 to a former Nike factory worker in Indonesia. Cicih Sukaesih helped bring the world’s attention to the lives of the young women in poor countries who made sneakers in the 1990s, first by organizing a strike and later by marching onto Nike’s bucolic corporate campus in Oregon to demand a meeting with co-founder Phil Knight. Her story — at a time of police and military harassment of labor organizers abroad — caught the attention of The New York Times and other news organizations. It also helped inform a generation of workers about their rights. “She helped to birth, I would argue, the Indonesian trade union movement within Nike’s supplier factories,” Keady said. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" height="602" width="752" src="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20251213-Fadli-Nike-Indonesia-Advocate-049_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000_f167d8.jpg?w=752" alt="A faded and creased photograph showing a smiling, young Cicih standing between two smiling taller people wearing shirts with the Nike logo crossed out and the words “Don’t Do It.” Behind them is a march with people walking and holding banners and signs." class="wp-image-65403" srcset="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20251213-Fadli-Nike-Indonesia-Advocate-049_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000_f167d8.jpg 3000w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20251213-Fadli-Nike-Indonesia-Advocate-049_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000_f167d8.jpg?resize=300,240 300w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20251213-Fadli-Nike-Indonesia-Advocate-049_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000_f167d8.jpg?resize=768,614 768w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20251213-Fadli-Nike-Indonesia-Advocate-049_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000_f167d8.jpg?resize=1024,819 1024w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/20251213-Fad…

Two School Districts Sue, Claiming Alaska Is Failing Its Constitutional Obligation to Fund Public Education
type: item
creator: Emily Schwing
date: 2026-01-30T10:00:00Z
description: The post Two School Districts Sue, Claiming Alaska Is Failing Its Constitutional Obligation to Fund Public Education appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Two Alaska school districts filed a lawsuit on Jan. 20 in Anchorage Superior Court against the state, its governor and its education commissioner over what they say is a long-running failure to adequately fund public education. In the complaint, the Kuspuk School District and the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District argue “the state is failing to meet its constitutional obligation” to provide Alaska students “a sound basic education and meaningful opportunity for proficiency” in vital subjects, and to fund schools and school districts sufficiently to do that. The plaintiffs are seeking to force the state to fulfill its constitutional obligation and requesting a court-ordered study to determine what it costs to educate students. “Alaska, we don’t believe, has ever done an adequacy study to really understand what it would take to allow Alaska students a fair opportunity to learn the skills they need to participate and contribute to society,” said Matt Singer, a trial attorney representing the plaintiffs. “If you don’t know what something is going to cost, then you can’t have a conversation with the Legislature about how to fund it.” The lawsuit points to the effects of chronic underfunding: low proficiency test scores; reductions in teaching staff; and the elimination of fine arts as well as career technical and vocational education programs. It also cites dangerous conditions inside school buildings. Over the last year, KYUK, NPR and ProPublica have spotlighted poor health and safety conditions inside many rural school buildings across Alaska. The reporting showed how the state has largely ignored hundreds of requests from rural school districts to fix deteriorating buildings and that some of the worst conditions exist at state-owned schools. Kuspuk Superintendent Madeline Aguillard said that since Gov. Mike Dunleavy took office in 2018, he had put little money toward education. “That’s almost a decade of just starting at nothing, and when you have to claw yo…

Six Senators Accuse Deputy Attorney General of “Glaring” Crypto Conflict, Cite ProPublica Investigation
type: item
creator: Corey G. Johnson
date: 2026-01-29T21:30:00Z
description: The post Six Senators Accuse Deputy Attorney General of “Glaring” Crypto Conflict, Cite ProPublica Investigation appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Six senators accused Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche this week of having a conflict of interest when he shut down investigations into crypto companies, dealers and exchanges and eliminated an enforcement team dedicated to looking for crypto-related fraud and money-laundering schemes. A letter written by Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin and Mazie Hirono and signed by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse, Christopher Coons and Richard Blumenthal cited a ProPublica investigation that revealed Blanche owned at least $159,000 worth of crypto-related assets when he ordered an end to the work. Durbin, Hirono, Whitehouse, Coons and Blumenthal serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the Justice Department. The same senators previously sent a letter to Blanche raising concerns that his actions would help President Donald Trump’s financial interests in cryptocurrency. In their letter sent on Wednesday, they said Blanche’s actions appeared to violate the federal conflict of interest law. “Last year, we asked for the rationale behind your puzzling decision to scale back the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) cryptocurrency enforcement efforts and urged you to reconsider. We write now in light of recent reporting that you held substantial amounts of cryptocurrency at the time you made this decision,” the senators wrote. “At the very least, you had a glaring conflict of interest and should have recused yourself.” Blanche, the second-highest-ranking official at the Justice Department, signed an ethics agreement in February promising to dump his cryptocurrency within 90 days of his confirmation and not to participate in any matter that could have a “direct and predictable effect on my financial interests in the virtual currency” until his bitcoin and other crypto-related products were sold. But on April 7, before he divested, he issued a memo titled “Ending Regulation by Prosecution” that halted investigations launched under President Joe Biden. In the memo, Blanch…

Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country
type: item
creator: Christopher Osher
date: 2026-01-29T10:30:00Z
description: The post Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: The owner of a marijuana testing lab called a top regulator in Colorado on his cellphone in April 2024 with an urgent situation. “We’ve got something that’s kind of a big deal,” he remembers saying. During a routine test of a manufacturer’s products, Bona Fides Laboratory in Denver had found a toxic chemical in a popular brand of marijuana vapes sold at dispensaries in Colorado. The chemical, methylene chloride, is prohibited by Colorado’s marijuana regulators and for most uses by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency because it can cause liver and lung cancer and damage the nervous, immune and reproductive systems. The owner felt he had a duty to call immediately rather than just submit a report through the state’s online system. As state regulators investigated, they discovered a second problem: The product wasn’t derived from marijuana at all. It came from hemp, a close cousin of marijuana that is much cheaper to produce and that Colorado had banned companies from using to make intoxicating products for sale in the state. Congress had legalized hemp in 2018 for other uses, such as clothing and rope, and because people believe its high levels of the nonintoxicating compound CBD can help them with seizures, pain and sleep. Hemp has extremely low levels of THC, the psychoactive compound found in marijuana that gets people high. And federal lawmakers thought allowing it would support farmers and rural jobs without the risks posed by marijuana. But hemp manufacturers quickly figured out how to convert CBD into THC through a process that involves toxic solvents, creating products that sometimes contain harmful chemicals and that can be more potent than products made from marijuana. Colorado was one of the first states to ban intoxicating hemp products made by chemical processing, initially with regulatory advisories and then with legislation in 2023. In doing so, lawmakers and Gov. Jared Polis boasted that Colorado — which had created the first regulated recreationa…

We Tested Vapes in Colorado for Signs of Hemp. This Is What We Found.
type: item
creator: Christopher Osher
date: 2026-01-29T10:25:00Z
description: The post We Tested Vapes in Colorado for Signs of Hemp. This Is What We Found. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Leaders in the Colorado marijuana industry have complained in recent years that intoxicating products derived from hemp are endangering consumers and creating unfair competition, threatening to upend the first regulated recreational marijuana market in the United States. While labs have developed the technology to distinguish between hemp and marijuana, the state has been slow to implement a random testing program to check the quality of products on dispensary shelves. In the absence of official testing, The Denver Gazette and ProPublica set out to test whether the claims of widespread hemp substitution were accurate, purchasing 14 vapes at dispensaries across the Denver area. Read More Smoke and Mirrors: How Intoxicating Hemp Seeped Into the First Recreational Marijuana Market in the Country Hemp naturally has high levels of the nonintoxicating compound CBD but only trace amounts of THC, the chemical in marijuana that gets people high. But some manufacturers have been caught by Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division converting CBD from hemp into THC using solvents — a process banned in the state. Labs can detect indicators of this process by looking for versions of THC known as delta-8 and delta-10, which often emerge when CBD from hemp is chemically converted to THC. They can also identify residues of solvents that are typically used in that process but not in marijuana production. Three of the news organizations’ samples had levels of delta-8 or delta-10 THC between 1.1% and 3.3%, which experts said was significant because they rarely show up at those levels naturally. “Anything beyond trace amounts is suspicious,” said Monica Pittiglio, the analytical director for Colorado Chromatography Labs, which has done research into hemp-derived THC. “Anything over 1% is insane,” she noted after reviewing the news outlets’ test results. Experts consulted by the news organizations, however, weren’t unanimous that the results amounted to conclusive evidence of hemp-derive…