For a half-hour documentary on KUNM, the NPR member station in Albuquerque, Kent Patterson and Mercedes Mejia dug into environmental and public-health concerns of Southern New Mexico communities that straddle the Mexican border. For decades, residents have struggled with environmental issues that came to the fore again in 2023, when toxic levels of arsenic were recorded in discolored water. The ...
Georgia is one of the world’s fastest growing markets for new data centers to support the AI boom, and developers are pushing local officials to approve massive construction projects outside of normal processes and over residents’ objections, Edward Donnelly found in an ongoing investigation supported by the Fund. Through public records and on-the-ground reporting, Donnelly tracked how developers hired lobbyists ...
Hundreds of thousands of children nationwide are struggling with long Covid, which many doctors and school refuse to recognize, Eli Cahan reported for Rolling Stone. With a seed grant from the Fund, Cahan spoke with dozens of families over the last two years to examine the impact of long Covid on children. He found “a slow-moving spiral: first their health, ...
Luke Mullins documented alarming conditions inside Psychiatric Institute of Washington (PIW), which is a key part Washington, D.C.’s mental health safety net. For an investigation in the Washingtonian with support from the Fund, Mullins drew from lawsuits, regulatory documents obtained through FIOA, and interviews with former patients and staff members. He found a violently charged environment that was linked to ...
For stories published by ProPublica, with support from the Fund, Eli Cahan found that dozens of psychiatric hospitals have turned away patients in crisis, in violation of federal law, but have rarely faced consequences from federal oversight authorities. Cahan identified more than 90 psychiatric hospitals across the country that have turned away patients in crisis over the 15 years – ...
With support from the Fund, Rebecca John obtained documents revealing that, as early as 1974, the plastics industry knew its products could not be recycled. For DeSmog, John assessed the relevance of the documents for current treaty negotiations in which fossil fuel-producing nations and companies that help make plastic have lobbied against limits on plastic production. John also examined the ...
Using thousands of police disciplinary records from across New York State gathered with support from the Fund, Sammy Sussman examined a pattern of police officers who were disciplined, but not criminally charged, after they drank and drove. The investigation for New York Focus and The New York Times, where Sussman is a Local Investigations Fellow, focused on the lack of ...
With support from the Fund, Liset Cruz dug into the practice of hospitals transferring undocumented patients back to their home countries for treatment, sometimes without patients’ consent. People who are uninsured, undocumented and have serious or chronic health conditions are most commonly subjected to these “medical deportations,” Cruz reported, and experts say the practice is likely to become more common ...
Grantee Robert McClure documented how a Seattle ordinance led to a surge in tree removals, and he spotlighted analyses by the city showing trouble ahead for a key mechanism to replace felled trees. With support from the Fund, McClure’s reporting in InvestigateWest – distributed nationally by the Associated Press – showed that the city’s plans would not offset the tree ...
With support from the Fund, Aspen Journalism (a local nonprofit news outlet in Colorado) published a three-part series on how public lands in America were acquired, exploited, privatized and protected. The series examined federal budget cuts affecting the White River National Forest, the largest national forest in Colorado and most visited in the nation – looking, in particular, at the ...