By Abrahm Lustgarten | – ( Propublica) – Climate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life. By late this […]
Undisclosed: Billionaire Harlan Crow bought House from Clarence Thomas where Justice’s Mother Lives
By Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski ( ProPublica ) – In 2014, one of Texas billionaire Harlan Crow’s companies purchased a string of properties on a quiet residential street in Savannah, Georgia. It wasn’t a marquee acquisition for the real estate magnate, just an old single-story home and two vacant lots down the […]
Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire
By Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski ( ProPublica) – In late June 2019, right after the U.S. Supreme Court released its final opinion of the term, Justice Clarence Thomas boarded a large private jet headed to Indonesia. He and his wife were going on vacation: nine days of island-hopping in a volcanic archipelago […]
Inside the “Private and Confidential” Conservative Group That Promises to “Crush Liberal Dominance”
by Andy Kroll and Andrea Bernstein, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented Co-published with Documented ( ProPublica ) – A few months ago, Leonard Leo laid out his next audacious project. Ever since the longtime Federalist Society leader helped create a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, and then received more than a billion dollars from […]
A Water War Is Brewing Over the Dwindling Colorado River
By Abrahm Lustgarten | – (ProPublica) – On a crisp day this fall I drove southeast from Grand Junction, Colorado, into the Uncompahgre Valley, a rich basin of row crops and hayfields. A snow line hung like a bowl cut around the upper cliffs of the Grand Mesa, while in the valley some farmers were […]
America’s Night Raids in Afghanistan: An Ongoing Nightmare
By Lynzy Billing. Video by Mauricio Rodríguez Pons | – Prologue March 2019 • Rodat District, Nangarhar Province This story contains graphic descriptions and images of war casualties. ( ProPublica ) – On a December night in 2018, Mahzala was jolted awake by a shuddering wave of noise that rattled her family’s small mud house. […]
How Ron DeSantis Blew Up Black-Held Congressional Districts and May Have Broken Florida Law
By Joshua Kaplan | – ( ProPublica ) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was incensed. Late last year, the state’s Republican legislature had drawn congressional maps that largely kept districts intact, leaving the GOP with only a modest electoral advantage. DeSantis threw out the legislature’s work and redrew Florida’s congressional districts, making them far more […]
Churches Are Breaking the Law by Endorsing in Elections, Experts Say. The IRS Looks the Other Way
By Jeremy Schwartz and Jessica Priest | – Co-published with The Texas Tribune ( ProPublica) – Six days before a local runoff election last year in Frisco, a prosperous and growing suburb of Dallas, Brandon Burden paced the stage of KingdomLife Church. The pastor told congregants that demonic spirits were operating through members of the […]
The U.S. Never Banned Asbestos. These Workers Are Paying the Price
By Kathleen McGrory and Neil Bedi, photography by Rich-Joseph Facun, graphics by Haisam Hussein | – Co-published with NPR News ( ProPublica ) – Henry Saenz remembers when he first learned what even the tiniest bit of asbestos could do to his body. He was working at a chemical plant where employees used the mineral […]