Civil Beat revealed that the FBI recorded an unnamed Hawaii lawmaker receiving $35,000 from a man who was apparently trying to buy favors from local politicians – but the nonprofit news outlet also revealed that the Department of Justice has still not filed charges in the case, three years after recording the encounter. Civil Beat sued the FBI to obtain ...
Sierra Crane Murdoch dug into the case of Mika Westwolf, a young Native woman who died after being hit by a car in Montana in 2023. The Fund provided Murdoch with a grant to investigate the case for a forthcoming book. With her reporting from the book, Murdoch told Westwolf’s story for a full episode of “This American Life” that ...
“Poisoning the Well,” a new book by Sharon Udasin and Rachel Frazin, traces the history of PFAS, a set of toxic substances known as “forever chemicals” that are used in a wide range of everyday products. With support from the Fund, the journalists obtained records from polluters and zeroed in on four highly contaminated towns to show the extent of ...
Grantees uncover toxic supply chain in dozens of U.S. cities, zeroing in on impact in El Paso, Texas
Dozens of warehouses across the country store medical devices sterilized with ethylene oxide, a toxic chemical – and the facilities are often near homes and schools, where people are unaware of the hazards – according to a new investigation co-published by Grist and El Paso Matters. With support from the Fund, Naveena Sadasivam and Lylla Younes staked out warehouses in ...
For a cover story in the new issue of the Texas Observer, co-published in The Nation, Candice Bernd dug into the Bitcoin mining boom in Texas – documenting its impact on communities, public health and the environment. Her reporting shows that Texas is the national epicenter of Bitcoin mining, with an estimated 40 crypto mines in the state that together ...
For a new story in MIT Technology Review, Gregory Barber used land records to identify large-scale eucalyptus plantations in southwestern Brazil financed by U.S. tech firms seeking to earn carbon removal credits. With support from the Fund, Barber traveled to Mato Grosso do Sul, in Brazil’s Cerrado biome, where he examined the arguments of tech companies and conservation organizations that ...
Air and noise pollution from the Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles is harming local residents’ health, according to extensive reporting by a trio of University of Southern California journalism students published in Capital & Main. With support from the Fund, Chris Bibona, Shane Dimapanat and Vani Sanganeria spent more than a year interviewing residents in the neighborhoods around the ...
New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations, with support from the Fund, dug into conviction integrity units across New York State that were created to re-examine criminal convictions that District Attorneys’ offices may have gotten wrong. The team’s reporting found that these units have fallen short of their promise. Nearly half of them have yet to support a single exoneration. ...
Georgia’s child welfare agency, tasked with protecting children from mistreatment, contracted with a company to drug test parents and produce results that were crucial to decisions on custody. With support from the Fund, Jake Shore with The Current GA found that the state’s Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) learned that the company’s laboratory was under federal investigation for ...
Schools have faced an onslaught of cyberattacks since the pandemic disrupted education five years ago, but officials have kept these attacks secret and repeatedly given false information to students, parents and staff, according to an investigation by The 74, co-published in Wired. With support from the Fund, The 74 built a database of more than 300 school cyberattack incidents. The ...