Reading Time: 2 minutes Lead poisoning is often treated as if it’s a problem of the past. But its harmful legacy lingers today, particularly in the soil of urban centers across the United States.  This story also appeared in Grist One in every two American children under the age of 6 tested between late 2018 and early 2020 had detectable levels of lead in their blood. Studies show soil exposure is a major reason.  The lead pumped out of exhaust pipes and industrial smokestacks decades ago can still be found in soil. Lead paint used extensively throughout the first half of the 20th ce ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Listen to the Toxic Labor investigation. Read the transcript of the audio. Brothers Santos and Mariano have been chasing jobs after hurricanes for nearly two decades. And the grueling work of cleaning and rebuilding after natural disasters has taken a toll on their bodies. The brothers have been hospitalized following work accidents. One accident left Santos temporarily blind and another put Mariano in a coma for days after he fell off a roof without a safety harness, they said. Both recovered. But alongside the immediate hazards they face are ones that quietly cause lo ..read more

Reading Time: 26 minutes Listen to the Toxic Labor investigation. MARÍA HINOJOSA: WHEN POWERFUL HURRICANES, WILDFIRES OR FLOODS DESTROY COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE UNITED STATES; SCORES OF WORKERS EMERGE FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY READY TO CLEAN AND REBUILD. AND, DEAR LISTENER, YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW THIS, BUT IT IS IN FACT LATINO IMMIGRANTS WHO ARE THE ONES MORE THAN LIKELY TO PERFORM THE HARDEST CLEANING TASKS AFTER NATURAL DISASTERS.  IN THE PROCESS, THOUGH, THEY ARE ALSO UNKNOWINGLY EXPOSED TO HARMFUL TOXINS… TOXINS THAT CAN MAKE THEM SICK … YEARS AFTER FINISHING THE JOB. MX1 OUT MX2 IN TAPE INTE ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Academic freedom in higher education is facing increased scrutiny at colleges and universities nationwide. It’s a story about campuses big and small, public and private, liberal and conservative, with few, if any, geographic boundaries. “When it comes to higher education, I don’t know if there are any safe places,” Karma Chavez, the chair of the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas, Austin, told the Center for Public Integrity for a story on tenure attacks. Lawmakers in the South and Midwest are targeting those tenure protection ..read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes I started reporting on missing migrant children four years ago, almost by accident. I was trekking up a steep muddy road in the northern highlands of Guatemala, looking for the mother of a 16-year-old who drowned in the Rio Grande, when a man outside a small chapel greeted my fixer and me. The man waved and asked if we needed help. We stopped for a minute to catch our breath. Half panting, I shared with the stranger that I was investigating a story for the Center for Public Integrity about migrants who died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The man, a local pastor, looke ..read more

Reading Time: 6 minutes I’ve spent the past few years stewarding collaborative projects between the Center for Public Integrity and local newsrooms. These partnerships have expanded the depth of our reporting and strengthened our ability to reach audiences — and, we hope, offered equal value to our partners.  But that’s not a simple matter, or a safe assumption if you don’t put in the work. As our mission shifted to focus on investigating inequality, we made a pointed effort to diversify our collaborative network. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time grappling with the question of how ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes I just wanted to get the latest version of Missouri’s voter registration database cleaned up to load into The Accountability Project, a database of 1.9 billion public records. Working on TAP is a part of my job here at the Center for Public Integrity as a data reporter for local initiatives. While I was preparing the voter registration data, I did the general quality checks that any journalist exploring data would do.  That’s when I ran into some issues. Several, I discovered, were common with voter registration data: People move and die all the time, and keeping t ..read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes Lisa Yanick Litwiller, a former Center for Public Integrity director of audience whose humor, compassion, leadership and talent contributed to award-winning projects that focused on inequality, died of cancer Monday surrounded by her family at home in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan.  She was 46.  Yanick Litwiller came to Public Integrity in 2021, building an audience team that was central to the organization’s mission to report stories that confront inequality. She built an innovative partnership model that paired Public Integrity journalists with reporters from newsr ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Early this year, Elmer Perez began his Monday shift at 9 a.m., welding inside a ship at Thoma-Sea Marine Constructors in Houma, Louisiana.  Hours after Perez skipped lunch, his coworkers went looking for the undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. They found him unconscious inside the small space he was working in. The workers removed his body and performed CPR, according to public documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity and the account of a worker who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.  Perez, 20, was pronounced dead before 3 p.m ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes A Center for Public Integrity investigation that revealed an under-the-radar effort pushing state high courts rightward — with far-reaching consequences — is a finalist for a Toner Prize honoring excellence in political reporting. “High Courts, High Stakes” is one of six projects recognized in the journalism contest’s national category. Other finalists include ProPublica’s investigative reporting on the U.S. Supreme Court, an NPR investigation into a far-right campaign targeting a voter-roll partnership, and stories from The New York Times and The Washington Post. Neve ..read more