Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest
In the early 1900s some of the wealthiest Americans claimed their fortunes would never last through the generations. A century of tax avoidance later, the dynasties are going strong.
Sirous Asgari was shuttled across the country by ICE in mid-March, then held in a Louisiana prison with dozens of other men. All along, he pleaded to be released.
Even as the Trump administration discouraged the public from flying, Sirous Asgari was shuttled from Louisiana to Texas, New Jersey and back on chartered flights full of migrants. He still hasn’t been deported.
This week’s headlines on primary voting problems, the fight over vote by mail, and new legislation.
This week’s headlines on election funding, lawsuits, and the president’s latest comments on voting.
White supremacists are building international networks to spread their violent ideology. Efforts at transatlantic counterterrorism cooperation hit an obstacle: the politics of the Trump Administration.
In 2020, every state’s voting process has changed in response to the coronavirus. Regardless of whether you plan to vote in person or by mail, there are many things to consider. Here are some of the most important.
Here’s ProPublica’s running list of Joe Biden’s picks to run the federal government.
This week’s headlines on making a voting plan, the mail ballot supply chain and election litigation.
State-run veterans homes, which have suffered enormously in the pandemic, fall between the regulatory cracks. The VA disclaims responsibility for them, and its inspections have overlooked issues later identified by other investigators.
More people than ever became eligible for unemployment benefits after Congress included part-time and gig workers, but the data shows that hasn’t solved a huge racial disparity. Here’s why.
At ICE detention camps across the country, unrest is growing as detainees warn that dirty conditions and a disturbing lack of soap and other supplies could allow coronavirus to run rampant.
A state report on Cuomo’s decision to order nursing homes to take in COVID positive patients in the early days of the pandemic fails to deal with the central question: did such admissions lead to more infection and death, and if so how significantly.
Dozens of New York nursing homes didn’t see their first COVID-19 case until sick patients were sent there, many under Andrew Cuomo’s state policy. To date, 6% of the state’s nursing home population, or roughly 6,500 residents, have died.
The Trump administration told hospitals to stop reporting data to the CDC, and report it to HHS instead. Vice President Mike Pence said the information would continue to be released publicly. It hasn’t worked out as promised.
This week’s headlines on congressional scrutiny of USPS, expanding mail voting, and mail ballot drop boxes.
Ethics reforms championed by then-Gov. Bobby Jindal in 2008 have created loopholes that have greatly limited the power of the state’s Ethics Board to police lawmakers.
Maybe you requested a mail ballot but changed your mind and want to vote in person. This is what you can do in every state if you’ve reconsidered how you want to cast your vote.
We don’t know how many COVID-19 patients are hospitalized across the country, because only some states are publishing data. Journalists can join our effort to gather this data from every state.
Particulate matter kills people. That was true before the pandemic, and new research has tied it to coronavirus deaths. But the EPA is ignoring scientists who say stricter particulate matter limits could prevent tens of thousands of early deaths.
Louisiana still hasn’t finished investigating 540 oil spills after Hurricane Katrina. The state is likely leaving millions of dollars in remediation fines on the table — money that environmental groups say they need as storms get stronger.
This week’s headlines on the latest lawsuits, cybersecurity issues, and vote by mail.
Louisiana’s Department of Environmental Quality has been accused of protecting the chemical industry it regulates. The agency is facing cutbacks as new plants are slated for communities that already have some of the country’s most toxic air.
In the late 1980s, Louisiana’s governor made environmental protection a priority. He only lasted one term. Now, the state’s Department of Environmental Quality has a reputation for going easy on industry.
Pharmacists told ProPublica that they are seeing unusual and fraudulent prescribing activity as doctors stockpile unproven coronavirus drugs endorsed by President Donald Trump.
En 2020, el proceso de votación de cada estado ha cambiado en respuesta al coronavirus. Independientemente de si planea votar en persona o por correo, hay muchas cosas a tener en cuenta. A continuación, detallamos algunas de las más importantes.
The Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups warn, with little evidence, that voting by mail fosters fraud. But some Republican secretaries of state reject those concerns and see no alternative to absentee voting if the pandemic persists.
This week's headlines on vote by mail surges, new election litigation, and mail ballot deadline problems.
Louisiana attracts chemical companies with one of the country’s most generous tax exemptions. The idea is to bring jobs to the state. Instead, construction often happens offsite, and automation has cut down on the jobs that remain.
This week’s headlines on Trump’s escalating attacks on vote by mail, the latest in election lawsuits, coronavirus impacts on in-person voting and more.
Celebrity prisoners like Paul Manafort have been granted home detention, but a secret Bureau of Prisons policy has kept all but 1.8% of federal inmates behind bars.
The event, “Fighting the Polluter’s Paradise: Taking Back Louisiana’s Air,” was based on a recent series from ProPublica and The Times-Picayune and The Advocate.
This week’s headlines on what went wrong during recent primaries, voter registration issues and the latest lawsuits.
Louisiana officials will knock on every door within 2.5 kilometers of the only plant in the country that emits chloroprene, which the EPA calls a likely carcinogen. An analysis said the airborne cancer risk near the plant was the highest in the nation.
The state’s voter rolls have grown by nearly 2 million since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, but polling locations have been cut by almost 10%, with Metro Atlanta hit particularly hard.
The proposed rules reducing emissions across the country would not apply to many of Louisiana’s chemical plants. These facilities release tons of dangerous, cancer-causing chemicals like ethylene oxide, and more plants are on the way.
Decades ago, Mark Schleifstein and his colleagues exposed environmental threats coming out of industrial plants all along the Louisiana section of the Mississippi River. A lot of those plants never went away, and even more are moving in.
Funded in part by his wealthy family and aided by a personal connection at the Illinois Gaming Board, Andrew Rubenstein’s Accel Entertainment now owns a third of the state’s video gambling machines, making it the biggest video gambling operator in the nation.
In St. James Parish, Louisiana, a Taiwanese industrial giant seems likely to be granted a permit to build a billion-dollar plastics plant. Its proposed emissions could triple levels of cancer-causing chemicals in one of the most toxic areas of the U.S.
Air quality has improved for decades across the U.S., but Louisiana is backsliding. Our analysis found that a crush of new industrial plants will increase concentrations of cancer-causing chemicals in predominantly black and poor communities.
Attention: Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Mississippi and Pennsylvania. Accel Entertainment became the largest video gambling operator in Illinois. Now it has its eyes on you.
Tal vez solicitó una boleta de votación por correo, pero cambió de opinión y ahora quiere ir personalmente a las urnas. A continuación, explicamos lo que se puede hacer en cada estado si ha cambiado de parecer sobre cómo desea emitir su voto.
FEMA has helped pay for the burials of victims of past disasters. But months into the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has sat on similar requests. Families of COVID-19 victims have been forced to turn to religious centers and GoFundMe.
In New Orleans, hospitals sent patients infected with the coronavirus into hospice facilities or back to their families to die at home, in some cases discontinuing treatment even as relatives begged them to keep trying.
Renowned inventor Walter Hutchins has voted in every presidential election since 1952. This year, as many states stopped sending teams to help seniors vote, his nursing home was on coronavirus lockdown and his streak was in jeopardy.
It is FEMA’s job to warn homeowners about major flood risks, but its approach is notoriously limited. In Cook County alone, researchers found about six times as many properties in danger as FEMA estimated. Look up your address with a new tool.
While the social media giant says it opposes voter suppression, the data shows a stark picture: Nearly half of all top-performing posts that mentioned voting by mail were false or misleading.
Reliable statistics on deaths and near-deaths from abuse and neglect can help shape better policies to protect children. A new report shows the breadth of government failures to collect and report this information.
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