by Corey G. Johnson ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. From the movie theater to the shopping mall, inside a church and a synagogue, through the grocery aisle and into the classroom, gun violence has invaded every corner of American life. It is a social epidemic no vaccine can stem, a crisis with no apparent end. Visual evidence of the carnage spills with numbing frequency onto TV shows and floods the internet. Each new shooting brings the lists of loved ones lost, the galleries of their smi ..read more

by Ian MacDougall and Sergio Hernandez Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, raising concerns about the future of other rights rooted in Supreme Court rulings. Although most rights are secured by statutes and regulations, others are guarantees extrapolated by the court from the often abstract language of the Constitution. Some of these are recent rights, like the right to carry a handgun in public. But many are longstanding, like the right to be read a Miranda warning by police before being interrogated, and ..read more

by Ken Ward Jr., Mountain State Spotlight This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Mountain State Spotlight. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. Federal authorities sued West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s business empire on Wednesday, seeking $7.6 million in unpaid environmental fines and overdue fees. The move adds to Justice’s growing legal and debt problems and comes just a month into his campaign for the U.S. Senate. Justice Department lawyers filed the suit to collect fines assessed by the Interior ..read more

by Ian MacDougall and Sergio Hernandez Last summer, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion established 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, raising concerns about the future of other rights rooted in Supreme Court rulings. Although most rights are secured by statutes and regulations, others are guarantees extrapolated by the court from the often abstract language of the Constitution. Some of these are recent rights, like the right to carry a handgun in public. But many are longstanding, like the right to be read a Miranda warning by police before being interrogated, and ..read more

by Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Anchorage Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. Two years ago, in May 2021, the Anchorage Assembly gave $1.6 million to a little-known charity that said it would help people find homes and addiction treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the time, local governments across the country were awash in money from a federal program known as the American Rescue Plan Act, or ARPA. Anchorage city leaders had $50 mil ..read more

by Topher Sanders, Dan Schwartz and Ruth Baron ProPublica has been reporting on railroad safety for more than a year. We recently published investigations on the safety issues posed by longer trains and blocked railroad crossings. Now, we’re investigating the challenges that confront railroad employees who are injured on the job, railroaders who report a safety concern and the pressure on managers to reduce reports of unsafe conditions and injury numbers. We’ve heard from many railroad employees that being injured or reporting a safety concern can be fraught with consequences. We’re taking tho ..read more

by Richard A. Webster, Verite This article was produced for Verite by Richard A. Webster, who was a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. The Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in Louisiana may have violated the civil rights of a 16-year-old autistic boy when deputies pinned him to the pavement, handcuffed and shackled, as officers sat on his back for more than nine minutes, according to a “statement of interest” filed this month by the Department of Justice as part of a civil rights lawsuit against JPS ..read more

by Hannah Dreyfus ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. A bill signed into law this week in Colorado prohibits family courts from ordering children to participate in reunification programs that isolate them from a trusted caregiver. Many of these programs purport to offer treatments for parental alienation, a psychological disorder that has been rejected by mainstream scientific circles but continues to influence custody decisions ..read more

by Charles Ornstein, ProPublica, Photography by Caleb Alvarado Leer en español. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Spanish-speaking dairy farm workers in Wisconsin, many of them undocumented immigrants, are not regular readers of our website. Most have never heard of ProPublica, let alone formed a trusting relationship with us. Some have low levels of literacy and poor internet connections because the farms they work on are remo ..read more

by Megan O’Matz, photography by Lianne Milton, special to ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. When the clerk at VJ’s Food Mart confronted Corey Stingley, the 16-year-old handed over his backpack. Inside were six hidden bottles of Smirnoff Ice, worth $12, and the clerk began pulling them out one by one. Stingley watched, then pivoted and quickly moved toward the door, empty-handed. But there would be no escape for the u ..read more