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The Real Story Behind the Midnight Immigration Raid on a Chicago Apartment Building

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For months, the Trump administration has justified its dramatic midnight raid on a Chicago apartment complex by saying that it had intelligence that the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had taken over the building. But officials have provided no evidence to back up the claim. Now, new documents confirm in the government’s own words that what prompted the raid was more pedestrian: allegations that immigrants were squatting in the complex. And the landlord had given federal officials, who were already targeting immigrants in Chicago, the blessing to search the building. Arrest records for two of the 37 immigrants detained that September night, included in a motion filed Tuesday that’s tied to an ongoing federal consent decree, provide the clearest picture yet of what led to the controversial and aggressive operation, in which agents descended from a Blackhawk helicopter, broke down doors and zip-tied U.S. citizens and immigrants. The records reveal that agents entered and search...
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A Mississippi Synagogue Was Attacked in 1967 and 2026. The Antisemitic Rhetoric Looked the Same Then and Now.

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In July of 1968, Samuel Bowers sat down in his office with fingers poised over his typewriter keys, thoughts filled with fury. As founder and imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, he cut a charismatic figure, though one with a militant Christian faith and a hate-filled mind. Just a day earlier, police had killed one of his most trusted assassins and severely injured another.  Bowers had spent the past few years masterminding bombings at Mississippi’s Black churches and, more recently, synagogues as well. His two foot soldiers now riddled with bullets had bombed the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson on a foggy night nine months earlier and were en route to bomb a Jewish leader’s home when police gunned them down. At the typewriter, Bowers pounded out a five-page missive to Thomas Tucker, a local police officer who shot one of the Klan members but had earlier faced suspicions of being a Klan sympathizer himself, journalist Jack Nelson wrote in his 1993 book “...
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Idaho Seeks to Improve Its Troubled Coroner System and Lagging Child Autopsy Rates

Idaho is taking steps to bolster its antiquated coroner system following stories by ProPublica that documented how lawmakers have repeatedly failed to fix problems that harm grieving families. An advisory panel created last year at the request of Gov. Brad Little is developing legislation to require autopsies in a variety of circumstances, including the unexplained death of a child. It would help coroners pay for those autopsies as long as they get a national certification that proves they can meet certain standards. The legislation would mimic a similar setup in neighboring Washington. An increase in fees on Idaho death certificates would finance the autopsy reimbursements. A ProPublica review of hundreds of death records in 2024 found that some coroners failed to meet national standards when investigating child and infant deaths, and a state oversight report found Idaho ranked last in the U.S. for autopsies when children or infants died unexpectedly. The state Office of Performanc...
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Mass. Governor Proposes Eliminating Statute of Limitations for Rape When DNA Evidence Exists

Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey wants to eliminate the 15-year deadline to prosecute rape in cases where there’s a DNA match. Current Massachusetts law bars rape prosecutions in older cases, even when DNA testing has identified a suspect. An investigation last year by WBUR and ProPublica found that nearly all other states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. Many of those 47 states extended their deadlines in recent decades as DNA technology helped solve old cases and as evidence mounted that police had failed to fully investigate rapes. The WBUR-ProPublica investigation followed the story of Louise, a woman who had been raped and stabbed after accepting a ride in 2005 from a man who said he recognized her from college, a police report said. Although DNA testing would later connect a man accused of multiple assaults to her case, prosecutors had to drop charges in her attack under Massachusetts’ statute. (WBUR does not identify victims o...
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FAA Warns Airlines About Safety Risks From Rocket Launches, Urges “Extreme Caution”

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The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a sharp warning that rocket launches could “significantly reduce safety” for airplanes, urging pilots to prepare for the possibility that “catastrophic failures” could create dangerous debris fields. The official notice , known as a safety alert for operators, was dated Jan. 8, the same day that ProPublica published an investigation showing how pilots scrambled to avoid debris after two SpaceX Starship megarockets exploded over busy airspace last year. The alert was an acknowledgment that travelers were at risk on those days, when the FAA hastily activated no-fly zones to help air traffic controllers steer planes away from falling rocket parts. In the last two decades, the agency has issued about 245 such safety alerts to the aviation community about issues ranging from runway threats to mechanical problems, but last month’s warning is the first to address the danger to airplanes when rockets launch or reenter Earth’s atmosphere, accord...
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She Was a Key Voice of the 1990s Labor Movement in Nike’s Indonesia Factories. Today She Relies on Donations From Abroad.

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Once a month, American labor activist Jim Keady logs into Remitly, an app for transferring money abroad, at his New Jersey home and sends $100 to a former Nike factory worker in Indonesia. Cicih Sukaesih helped bring the world’s attention to the lives of the young women in poor countries who made sneakers in the 1990s, first by organizing a strike and later by marching onto Nike’s bucolic corporate campus in Oregon to demand a meeting with co-founder Phil Knight. Her story — at a time of police and military harassment of labor organizers abroad — caught the attention of The New York Times and other news organizations. It also helped inform a generation of workers about their rights. “She helped to birth, I would argue, the Indonesian trade union movement within Nike’s supplier factories,” Keady said. Cicih during a visit to the United States to campaign for improvements in the labor practices of Nike suppliers. Muhammad Fadli for ProPublica But media attention and accolades don...
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