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As Helene Survivors Wait for State Help, Some Victims of Earlier Hurricanes Are Still Out of Their Homes

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In the 459 days that Willa Mae James spent living in a Fairfield Inn in Eastern North Carolina, her footsteps wore down paths in the carpet: from the door to the desk, from the bed to the wooden armchair by the window, her favorite place to read the Bible. The 69-year-old retired dietitian had been sent there in July 2024 by North Carolina’s rebuilding program after Hurricane Florence ravaged her home and many others in 2018. The state had promised to help thousands of people like her rebuild or repair. But it had taken the program years to begin work. James spent nearly six years living in her damaged house in Lumberton, where floodwaters had turned the floorboards to pulp, causing her floors to sink and nearly cave in. Of the more than 10,000 families who applied, 3,100 were still waiting for construction five years after the storm. Thousands of others had withdrawn or been dropped by the program. As of November, more than 300 families were still waiting to return home. And James ...
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Under GOP Pressure, Federal Agency Pulls Climate Change Chapter From Official Manual for U.S. Judges

Under pressure from Republican state attorneys general, the agency that advises the U.S. Supreme Court and federal judges on scientific and technical matters has withdrawn the entirety of its content on climate change from a new judicial reference manual. The move by the Federal Judicial Center leaves judges without any official support on how to weigh evidence about basic weather and climate changes just as numerous climate cases make their way through state and federal courts, including two on the docket of the U.S. Supreme Court for the current term. The center was created as an education agency and is chaired by Chief Justice John Roberts. By law, it is charged with overseeing court policies and researching technical and scientific issues that come before the court. The Supreme Court press office did not respond to a request for comment. On Dec. 31, 2025, the center released the first update in 15 years of its 1,682-page peer-reviewed guide, called the “ Reference Manual on Sci...
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Firefighters Wore Gear Containing “Forever Chemicals.” The Forest Service Knew and Stayed Silent for Years.

Officials at the U.S. Forest Service knew gear worn by wildland firefighters contained potentially dangerous “forever chemicals” years before the agency publicly acknowledged the issue, according to internal correspondence obtained by ProPublica. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS, have been linked to negative health impacts, including certain cancers and delayed development in children. For years, PFAS chemicals were commonly used to treat the heavy gear worn by municipal firefighters to help it repel water and oil. Federal agencies have said little about whether the compounds were also found in the lighter heat-resistant clothing worn by wildland firefighters. In February 2024, when ProPublica was reporting on the dangers of wildland firefighting — including the risk of cancer — the news organization asked both the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior if federal wildland firefighting gear contained PFAS. Both agencies gave nearly identical answers...
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Immigrants Who Say Their Detention Is Illegal Have Filed More Than 18,000 Cases. It’s a Historic High.

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The Trump administration’s push for mass deportations has resulted in more than 18,000 challenges in federal court from immigrants claiming their detention is illegal, more than were filed under the last three administrations combined — including President Donald Trump’s first term. So far this year, immigrants are filing on average more than 200 of these cases, known as habeas petitions, daily across the country, with California and Texas accounting for about 40% of new cases, a ProPublica analysis of federal court filings found. To keep tabs on this historic rise, ProPublica is publishing a habeas case tracker . “I don’t recall a time that anything like this has ever happened,” said Daniel Caudillo, director of the Immigration Law Clinic at Texas Tech University School of Law and a recently departed immigration judge. More Immigrants Than Ever Are Challenging Detention An analysis of habeas cases since 2009 shows that immigrants have filed more challenges to their detention in ...
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The Conservative Researcher Being Linked to the FBI’s Seizure of Election Records in Georgia

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A conservative researcher whose theories have often been rejected by Georgia election overseers and who once pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of voyeurism is emerging as a central figure in the investigation that culminated in the FBI’s shocking seizure of 2020 election records from Fulton County, Georgia, in late January. The researcher, Kevin Moncla, has tried repeatedly to prove that the 2020 vote in Fulton County was tainted by fraud. Although many of his claims have been discredited or debunked, they’ve continued to be cited by President Donald Trump and those connected to Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election and publicly pressed his administration to reinvestigate it. Last week, Moncla told ProPublica he’d been interviewed twice by “investigators, attorneys of various offices, who work on behalf of the U.S. government” regarding his claims that proof of fraud could be found in Fulton County’s 2020 voting records. He said he provide...
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Grant Guidelines for Libraries and Museums Take “Chilling” Political Turn Under Trump

A library in rural Alaska needed help providing free Wi-Fi and getting kids to read. A children’s museum in Washington wanted to expand its Little Science Lab. And a World War I museum in Missouri had a raft of historic documents it needed to digitize. They received funding from a little-known federal agency before the Trump administration unsuccessfully tried to dismantle it last year. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for its 2026 grant cycle. But this time, it has unusually specific criteria. In cover letters accompanying the applications, the institute said it “particularly welcomes” projects that align with President Donald Trump’s vision for America. These would include those that foster an appreciation for the country “through uplifting and positive narratives,” the agency writes, citing an executive order that attacks the Smithsonian Institution for its “divisive, race-centered ideology.” (Trump has said the museum focused too muc...
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The Clear Labels Act Would Change What You Know About Your Prescription Medication

Senators introduced legislation on Thursday that would require prescription drug labels to identify where the medication was made, adding momentum to a yearslong campaign to bring more transparency to the often elusive generic drug industry. At a hearing last week, members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging criticized manufacturers for routinely concealing the locations of their drugmaking plants as well as the suppliers that provide key ingredients. ProPublica described this lack of transparency — and how it was enabled by the Food and Drug Administration — in a series of stories that found the agency had quietly allowed troubled foreign drugmakers to continue selling generic medication to unsuspecting Americans. The Clear Labels Act , introduced by committee chair Rick Scott, R-Fla., and ranking member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., is meant to help patients, doctors and pharmacists know more about the drugs they use and prescribe. Current labels often list only a distributor o...
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