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. ...
New York became the first state in the nation to set up a workers’ compensation system in the wake of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. The program covers medical bills and cash for recovery time for countless injured workers. But in recent years, the program’s benefits have quietly shrunk by over a third, according to a new investigation by ...
Thousands of children in the throes of mental health crises are turned over to foster care each year by parents who can’t access – or afford – the treatment they need, according to a first-ever database of such “relinquishments” created by The Imprint, with support from the Fund. More than 20 years ago, a report for Congress identified this problem, ...
Miami-based Armor Correctional Health Services has a long history of complaints of providing subpar care to inmates – and has even been convicted of felony abuse over the death of an inmate. Even though Florida law bars companies with such convictions from doing business with the state, the state has continued to contract with Armor companies, according to reporting by ...
When the FBI investigated the Cook County Sherriff’s Office for a ghost-payrolling scheme in 2022, agents uncovered evidence that a high-ranking official had been involved in misconduct years earlier – and was not disciplined, but promoted. The FBI found that the official had been robbed at gunpoint outside of an illegal gambling den and fired his county-issued gun at the ...