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Amy Miller, a lawyer for the advocacy group Disability Rights Nebraska, puts away voter registration material at the organization’s office in Lincoln. Allison Hess for ProPublica Without Amy Miller, some elderly and disabled people wouldn’t be able to vote. The attorney for Disability Rights Nebraska travels the state, investigating the quality of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. As she reminds the residents how they can report abuse or neglect, she also offers voter registration forms. Last month, she helped a veteran with a traumatic brain injury fill out change-of-address paperwork so he could vote in the upcoming midterm elections. “He 100% knew who he wanted to vote for,” Miller said, but he struggled to write with a pen. Congress funds her organization’s efforts to ensure that even people who might not have access to the internet or transportation have the opportunity to participate in elections. Now a White House proposal threatens that work. ...

A poster showing a sample mail-in ballot is displayed as U.S. Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter speaks during a press conference at the Department of Justice on Sept. 22 in Washington, D.C. Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images Earlier this month, the Supreme Court blocked an executive order from President Donald Trump restricting voting by mail in ways that could have thrown the upcoming midterms into chaos. But the White House originally had far more disruptive plans, ProPublica has learned.  According to several people knowledgeable about the discussions, the administration initially floated an idea that would have virtually shut down mail voting: requiring all ballots to be delivered exclusively through certified mail. The proposal — which would have required voters to be home and sign for delivery of their ballots — was ultimately abandoned, after vehement Postal Service objections that it would have been impossible to execute.  Even after the idea f...

K.K. Bautista, left, and her adoptive mother hold their respective children outside a camper at the Hyder Mountain Road mobile home park, where homes previously washed away. Bautista moved there because it was the only place she could afford after Helene destroyed her previous home. Jesse Barber for ProPublica and The Assembly This past weekend marked the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Helene, which claimed more than 250 lives — 108 in North Carolina — and left hundreds of thousands of people without power for days to weeks. In Asheville, the largest city in the western part of the state, the storm left residents without drinking water for 53 days. Part of what made the storm so devastating to the region when it hit, 400 miles inland from where it made landfall, is that the Appalachian Mountains’ typically porous soils were already saturated by recent rainfall. The rainwater hit bedrock and raced down steep mountain slopes like water on a slide. It overran the banks of no...