At least 67 schoolteachers in California have kept their teaching licenses after school districts determined that they engaged in sexual misconduct with students over the last several years, according to reporting by Holly McDede and Mollie Simon for KQED and ProPublica, with support from the Fund. At least 14 of those teachers were hired by other schools. Weeks after the ...
In a continued series of reports, Public Domain uncovered conflicts of interest at the U.S. Interior Department, with a focus on Karen Budd-Falen, a longtime ranching advocate who is now a top deputy to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. With support from the Fund, reporting by Jimmy Tobias and Chris D’Angelo exposed numerous scandals involving Budd-Falen, including a multi-million-dollar water rights ...
Coroners across Pennsylvania block public access to autopsy reports, hindering research about jail deaths, according to an investigation by Jonah Walters for The Conversation US with support from the Fund. Walters partnered with Terence Keel, a professor, to request autopsy reports in jail death cases from 41 Pennsylvania coroners. Only three complied with state law and provided records. The pair ...
As part of a larger series about the future of hemp in North Carolina, The Assembly investigated hemp products sold in the state. With support from the Fund, a team of reporters purchased 21 intoxicating hemp products from retailers across the state and subjected them to independent testing. They found that 13 had unsafe levels of bacteria and other substances, ...
People convicted of animal abuse in Kentucky often spend little or no time in prison for their crimes, R.G. Dunlop found in an investigation for Northern Kentucky Tribune. With support from the Fund, Dunlop reviewed more than 50 federal and state criminal cases involving animal abuse and neglect in Kentucky and found that of 30 cases resolved since 2020, 13 ...
A powerful class of synthetic opioids known as nitazenes – which can be up to 40 times more potent than fentanyl and 500 times stronger than heroin – is emerging in the U.S., according to a new investigation. With support from the Fund, Jonathan Moens combed through dozens of criminal court cases, filed national, state, and county-level records requests and ...
Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is a closely-watched bellwether in state and national elections – a swing county in a swing state. With support from the Fund, the Bucks County Beacon dug into the county’s voting systems for an ongoing series of stories that look at how the county ensures that elections are secure and accessible. ...
In the heart of rural Washington logging country, a county commissioner is pushing a plan to use the threat of wildfires to funnel timber revenue from a national forest into the county’s struggling budget. With support from the Fund, Columbia Insights uncovered the plan to expand fuel breaks, strips of land where trees and other vegetation are removed or thinned ...
With support from the Fund, the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism examined thousands of conversations on Truth Social to trace how conservatives are amplifying President Trump’s misinformation about Africa, at the same time that the Trump Administration is cutting U.S. assistance to the continent. CCIJ used the disinformation tracking platform Junkipedia, a project by the Algorithmic Transparency Institute, part of ...
With support from the Fund, The New Humanitarian is publishing an ongoing series, the Deterrence Effect, documenting how U.S. immigration policy is helping spread humanitarian suffering and human-rights abuses in Latin America. The newest piece in the series zeroes in on Mario Torres, who left Venezuela in 2018 at the age of 18 and tried to move to the U.S. ...