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On the Ground in the Final Days Before Trump’s Midterm Debacle

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President Donald Trump exits the stage after speaking at a campaign rally in Chillicothe, Ohio, on Oct. 28. Mark Schiefelbein/Associated Press Jacob Hawk leaned over the plastic fencing to get Vivek Ramaswamy’s attention as the Republican candidate for Ohio governor moved down the line shaking hands at the Ohio University branch campus in Chillicothe, six days before the midterm elections. Hawk held onto Ramaswamy’s hand and started trying to tell him everything he was dealing with, everything he wanted the Republican candidates gathered there to help him with. Hawk, 39, told him that he was a self-employed landscaper who was having a hard time with the high cost of fuel. He told him that he was raising three young kids from two different moms, mostly on his own. He told him of his worries for his 9-year-old son, who was autistic and underweight and suffered from a two-year delay in brain development. Ramaswamy, a biotech billionaire, nodded and offered some token reassu...
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Trump Official Who Wants Data Centers on Public Lands Has Tens of Millions Invested in AI Industry

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Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, seen speaking at a pro-coal event at the White House in June, has helped lead the administration’s push for data centers in what he labels the “AI arms race.” Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images The Trump administration has likened the need to build out the nation’s artificial intelligence infrastructure to the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort that produced the world’s first atomic bomb. The White House’s point person on the effort, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has spoken of the “AI arms race” with China as an existential issue for the nation. “AI is manufacturing intelligence, and, if we don’t manufacture more intelligence than our adversaries, it affects every job, every company and every industry,” he said during his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2025. But advancing the administration’s AI objectives also could benefit Burgum’s own finances. Much of his wealth is held in Arthur Ventures, an investment firm he co-found...
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Trump’s State Department Is Giving $1 Million to Controversial Group to Study Crimes Against White South Africans

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A South African farmer addresses a group of white South Africans during a demonstration supporting Trump in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria in 2025. Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images After slashing funding for programs that documented atrocities and protected human rights abroad, President Donald Trump’s State Department is now granting one of its first new human rights awards to a controversial South African organization that promotes the disputed notion that white farmers are a violently targeted, persecuted group, according to multiple sources knowledgeable about the funding.  The group expected to receive the nearly $1 million award, AfriForum, is a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of Afrikaners, a subset of South Africa’s white population. The organization says its members, who have a “ God-given calling ,” fight for Afrikaner interests and self-governance. The money will be used to “ document hateful rhetoric and violent acts ” against Afrikaners and other...
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SafeSport Will Now Alert Schools, Clubs if Coaches Sanctioned for Abuse Continue to Work With Kids

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Photo illustration by ProPublica. Photos by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica. The U.S. Center for SafeSport is taking steps to stop coaches banned over allegations of sexual abuse from working with children, part of an initiative that the organization said it is launching because of reporting by ProPublica and The Washington Post about gaps in the child protection system in youth sports. Charged by Congress with investigating allegations of sexual abuse in sports, SafeSport has the power to suspend or permanently bar coaches from contact with athletes and place their names on a public disciplinary list . But the center has authority only over the country’s national sports governing bodies, which are overseen by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee. Elementary and high schools, colleges and many independent youth sports leagues are not required to follow SafeSport’s bans, though some opt to do so. Parents and other caregivers only know if a coach has been sanctioned if t...
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Do You Live Near Lake Champlain? Help Seven Days and ProPublica Investigate Algae Blooms.

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People enjoying the water at North Beach on Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. The beach occasionally gets closed because of algae blooms. Caleb Kenna for ProPublica Despite being an iconic part of Vermont’s landscape and a large source of the state’s drinking water, Lake Champlain has been polluted for decades. Phosphorus runoff from farm fields, rural roads, parking lots, stormwater drains and wastewater treatment plants flows into the lake, fueling algae blooms that frequently choke its bays and shorelines. Vermont is halfway through a 20-year effort to clean up the lake. In 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency established new, stricter requirements for reducing phosphorus runoff that the state must meet by 2036. But more than a decade in, after spending nearly a billion dollars, the state is lagging behind. Water quality has not improved dramatically, and in some parts of the lake, it is getting worse. This past summer algae blooms shut down swimming at pub...
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We Can’t Predict What Will Happen on Election Day. But We’ll Be Here to Cover It.

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Early voting for the midterms in New York last month Ryan Murphy/AFP via Getty Images This has been a midterm election cycle unlike any other. Wealthy donors spent staggering sums . Both parties moved to redraw congressional district lines . President Donald Trump and his allies relentlessly questioned whether the results could be trusted even before a single ballot was counted. At Trump’s direction, the Justice Department filed a lawsuit that said the federal government would contest any outcome in which Sen. Dan Sullivan, the Republican incumbent in Alaska, was not victorious. Newsrooms, including ours, have tried to plan how we will cover an election in which the losing side refuses to accept the will of the voters. Was the Alaska lawsuit a single data point or a harbinger? As we prepare to write about Nov. 3 and beyond, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to game out what might happen in the future — not our strong suit. The record shows that ...
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I Was There to Document the Aftermath of Deadly Flooding. Then, It Started Raining.

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A flash flood along the Rio Ruidoso on July 30, 2025 Three summers ago, over Father’s Day weekend, my family and I went camping in the Lincoln National Forest, just a few hours drive north of our home in El Paso, Texas. It’s a beautiful area that’s long served as a getaway for the region, with skiing in the winter, and golf and hiking in the summer. My daughter played under the trees, and I rode my bike down mountain trails that, I noticed, seemed concerningly dry.  The next evening, after we left to drive home, two fires started in forests surrounding the town of Ruidoso, New Mexico, around 25 miles away from where we’d been. I watched horrifying videos online of fire lapping the mountains behind the village’s strip malls and parking lots. The fires were eventually suppressed by a combination of human effort and the late summer monsoon season. But when the downpour of rain hit the burnt landscape around Ruidoso, it created another problem: Recurring floods then ripped t...
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