-
Hurricane Helene Killed His Wife and Destroyed His Mobile Home. New Tenants Are Now Renting the Same Flood-Prone Land.
Residents of a riverfront trailer park in the Appalachian Mountains have lost homes and loved ones in multiple storms. A policy gap puts mobile home residents in harm’s way again and again.
Reporting From the South
Our South hub, based in Atlanta, covers North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida. The region plays a pivotal role in national issues including political representation, racial equity and environmental justice.
Sign Up for Dispatches
A weekly newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing in America and journalism from our newsroom.
Featured Stories
-
He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?
23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola prison — and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free.
-
These Local Jails Were Supposed to Detain Immigrants for Only 72 Hours. One Woman Was Held for a Total of 26 Days.
Rebookings of immigrants into local jails are an effort to circumvent federal rules and regulations, legal experts say. Our nationwide analysis shows that in the past year, two Florida jails had unusually high numbers of rebookings.
-
His Research on Pregnant Opioid Users Was Widely Celebrated. Auditors and Experts Found Major Flaws.
Dr. Craig Towers was hailed as a hero for his research on detoxing pregnant opioid users. After he published a study that found naltrexone could help patients stay off drugs, addiction specialists started asking if his work was too good to be true.
News Staff
South Editor
Mara Shalhoup
Reporters
Mario Ariza, Max Blau, Doug Bock Clark, Jennifer Berry Hawes, Aliyya Swaby and Amy Yurkanin
Local Reporting Network Partners
ProPublica is supporting local and regional newsrooms as they work on important investigative projects affecting their communities. Some of our past and present partners in the region:
MLK50: Justice Through Journalism
Memphis, Tennessee
Mountain State Spotlight
West Virginia
Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal
Tupelo, Mississippi
Sun Herald
Biloxi, Mississippi
AL.com
Birmingham, Alabama
The Palm Beach Post
Palm Beach, Florida
Miami Herald
Miami, Florida
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Richmond, Virginia
More Stories
-
“They’re Putting Kids’ Lives at Risk”: How Abuse in a Tennessee Businessman’s Juvenile Prisons Remained Under Wraps
Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons are operated by a single private company. Former staff say they felt pressure to hide abuse and other serious incidents from the state and to handle medical emergencies without calling 911.
-
He’s Eligible for Up to $480,000 After Being Wrongly Imprisoned for 42 Years. The State Says No.
Elvis Brooks’ case was an egregious example of a wrongful conviction, civil rights attorneys said. But Louisiana’s attorney general maintains that Brooks and other exonerees are guilty — and therefore don’t qualify for any money from the state.
-
Andy Beshear Set Out to Make Drug Treatment Widely Available in Kentucky. Fraud and Abuse Followed.
In 2020 as Kentucky faced a spike of deadly overdoses, Gov. Andy Beshear set out to help more people access drug treatment by loosening Medicaid spending controls. But as the costs piled up, so did the warnings that the system was being abused.
-
How Videos Helped Me Uncover Abuse at an Arkansas Private School
Mary “Tracy” Morrison ordered students to scrub floors and urged them to attack a classmate. Few records exist of incidents at The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, a private school with little transparency. I pieced together what happened.
-
How the Government’s Obligation to Keep Foreign Workers Safe Collided With Its Efforts to Keep Farms Afloat
Farmers want the Trump administration to overhaul the H-2A visa program to make it more favorable to their businesses. But cutting red tape could cut labor protections, too.
-
My Maddening Quest to Find Out if Blueberries Come From Farms Where Workers Were Harmed
Max Blau spent a year reporting on abuses of farmworkers. It left him wondering: Is the produce he buys at the grocery store part of the problem?
-
FBI Has Looked at Using Questionable AI Tech to Review Signatures on Seized Mail-In Ballots
As part of President Trump’s continued push to discredit the results of the 2020 election, his administration has considered using AI technology to scrutinize tens of thousands of ballots seized in Fulton County, Georgia, ProPublica has learned.
-
This Private School Had Students Scrub Floors and Attack a Fellow Classmate. The State Still Funds It.
One of the few requirements for Arkansas private schools is that they have an American flag and a flagpole. But millions in state funds go to the largely unmonitored schools while complaints about safety and fraud have gone unanswered, parents say.
-
Florida Is Executing Prisoners at a Record Pace, Even as Most of the U.S. Abandons the Death Penalty
Early last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis began signing death warrants at a faster rate than ever before. What followed was the most intense period of executions the state has carried out in more than eight decades.
-
Louisiana Supreme Court Frees Death Row Prisoner, Calling Evidence Against Him “Scientifically Indefensible”
The decision affirms a lower court’s ruling nullifying Jimmie “Chris” Duncan’s 1998 first-degree murder conviction. Duncan was convicted based in part on forensic evidence that is now widely regarded as junk science.
-
Trump Administration Killed Criminal Investigation of GOP Senator’s Coal Companies
EPA and Justice Department officials were looking into potential criminal violations by the vast coal empire owned by Sen. Jim Justice. Then the Office of the Deputy Attorney General told them “pencils down.”
-
Founder of Kentucky Drug Rehab Center Indicted on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges
Tim Robinson, the former CEO of Addiction Recovery Care, which once operated more than 40 drug treatment facilities statewide, was charged with attempting to resell millions of dollars worth of tax credits.
-
North Carolina Democrats Propose Changes to Block GOP Power Transfers and Secrecy
The legislation, prompted in part by ProPublica’s reporting, aims to protect traditional powers of the state’s governor and reform oversight of its court system.
-
These Republican Lawmakers Challenged Abortion Bans. Then They Faced Backlash.
At least four of them lost reelection bids after anti-abortion groups and key party allies backed their challengers instead. Two others — a state representative from North Dakota and a state senator from Tennessee — face contested primaries.
-
After the Trump DOJ Halted Police Reform, This City Stepped In. Then Officers Shot and Killed Katelyn Hall.
Some cities celebrated when the Trump administration ended federal oversight of several police departments, but Louisville, Kentucky's mayor said the city would be “moving ahead rapidly” with reforms. One year in, activists say the plan is lacking.





























