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In a Newly Drawn District, Black Voters May Get a Representative Who Spent Years Undermining Their Interests
Brent Taylor is the front-runner for one of Memphis’ U.S. congressional districts, recently redrawn from majority Black to majority white. As state senator, he repeatedly used his power to supersede local officials — and the will of the city’s voters.
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Featured Stories
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How Trump’s FBI Purge Saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn From a Bribery Investigation
An FBI anti-corruption team launched an investigation into whether South Carolina’s most powerful members of Congress were involved in a bribery scheme, ProPublica found. After Trump gutted the FBI and DOJ, the investigation went dark.
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He Tried to Set Limits on His State’s School Vouchers. Billionaires Helped Bankroll a Campaign to Unseat Him.
A high-ranking Republican had wanted only to curb the unchecked growth of West Virginia’s voucher program, not destroy it. In the ensuing backlash, three PACs — affiliated with the Koch family and Jeffrey Yass — helped defeat him at election time.
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We’re Reporters, Not Teachers. We Were Able to Start Private Schools Anyway.
Our reporting has shown how easily people — some with questionable backgrounds — have founded their own private schools in barns, strip malls and other places. That led us to an experiment: If the hurdles to open a school are so low, could we do it?
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Reporters
Mario Ariza, Max Blau, Doug Bock Clark, Jennifer Berry Hawes, Aliyya Swaby and Amy Yurkanin
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More Stories
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Two Years After Hurricane Helene, People Are Still Allowed to Live in Harm’s Way
The aftermath of Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and the floods in Texas’ Hill Country expose weaknesses in federal and state policies that allow people to live in dangerous areas where homes could be swept away.
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Across the Country, Youth Prisons Are Closing. This State Is Building More.
Tennessee officials say they need more high-security facilities for kids who commit crimes. Experts say this approach flies in the face of crime data and research that shows youth prisons are not rehabilitative.
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Tennessee Lawmakers Demand Answers on Safety in State Youth Prisons
Lawmakers cited a recent WPLN and ProPublica investigation that found that juvenile justice facilities run by Tennessee businessman Jason Crews repeatedly failed to report abuse and other serious incidents to the state as required.
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Vouchers Promise Students With Disabilities a Path to Private School. Parents Say That’s Not the Reality.
To give voucher programs a toehold in state legislatures, politicians touted how students with disabilities would gain access to private education. But those students’ families often have the hardest time finding schools that will accept them.
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This State Is Spending More on Lethal Injections. A Law Tries to Keep the Details Secret.
As Georgia plans for its first execution in two years, a trove of records provides us with new information — and raises new questions — about the state’s lethal injection process.
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Hurricane Helene Killed His Wife and Destroyed His Mobile Home. New Tenants Are Now Renting the Same Flood-Prone Land.
Residents of a riverfront trailer park in the Appalachian Mountains have lost homes and loved ones in multiple storms. A policy gap puts mobile home residents in harm’s way again and again.
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He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?
23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola prison — and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free.
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These Local Jails Were Supposed to Detain Immigrants for Only 72 Hours. One Woman Was Held for a Total of 26 Days.
Rebookings of immigrants into local jails are an effort to circumvent federal rules and regulations, legal experts say. Our nationwide analysis shows that in the past year, two Florida jails had unusually high numbers of rebookings.
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His Research on Pregnant Opioid Users Was Widely Celebrated. Auditors and Experts Found Major Flaws.
Dr. Craig Towers was hailed as a hero for his research on detoxing pregnant opioid users. After he published a study that found naltrexone could help patients stay off drugs, addiction specialists started asking if his work was too good to be true.
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“They’re Putting Kids’ Lives at Risk”: How Abuse in a Tennessee Businessman’s Juvenile Prisons Remained Under Wraps
Tennessee’s highest-security youth prisons are operated by a single private company. Former staff say they felt pressure to hide abuse and other serious incidents from the state and to handle medical emergencies without calling 911.
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He’s Eligible for Up to $480,000 After Being Wrongly Imprisoned for 42 Years. The State Says No.
Elvis Brooks’ case was an egregious example of a wrongful conviction, civil rights attorneys said. But Louisiana’s attorney general maintains that Brooks and other exonerees are guilty — and therefore don’t qualify for any money from the state.
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Andy Beshear Set Out to Make Drug Treatment Widely Available in Kentucky. Fraud and Abuse Followed.
In 2020 as Kentucky faced a spike of deadly overdoses, Gov. Andy Beshear set out to help more people access drug treatment by loosening Medicaid spending controls. But as the costs piled up, so did the warnings that the system was being abused.
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How Videos Helped Me Uncover Abuse at an Arkansas Private School
Mary “Tracy” Morrison ordered students to scrub floors and urged them to attack a classmate. Few records exist of incidents at The Delta Institute for the Developing Brain, a private school with little transparency. I pieced together what happened.
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How the Government’s Obligation to Keep Foreign Workers Safe Collided With Its Efforts to Keep Farms Afloat
Farmers want the Trump administration to overhaul the H-2A visa program to make it more favorable to their businesses. But cutting red tape could cut labor protections, too.
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My Maddening Quest to Find Out if Blueberries Come From Farms Where Workers Were Harmed
Max Blau spent a year reporting on abuses of farmworkers. It left him wondering: Is the produce he buys at the grocery store part of the problem?
