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Toxic Ground: How Oil Field Pollution Is Threatening Oklahoma

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Collage by Mauricio Rodriguez Pons/ProPublica. Source images: Katie Campbell/ProPublica. Kara Meredith can tell you the exact day her life turned upside down: Aug. 23, 2025. She was at her home in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, caring for her 5-week-old son, when one of her daughters ran to tell her there was water all over the bathroom floor. Her husband, Mitch Meredith, wasn’t worried — until he saw the dark liquid bubbling up around the base of the bathtub. Mitch and his relatives worked all night trying to contain it. It was near dawn when his uncle said, “This is oil.” Read more Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help. The United States is the largest oil and gas producer in the world. All of that drilling produces hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic wastewater each year. For decades, energy companies have disposed of that briny fluid by shooting it back underground using high-p...
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After the Trump DOJ Halted Police Reform, This City Stepped In. Then Officers Shot and Killed Katelyn Hall.

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Community leaders and civil rights advocates say that one year into Louisville, Kentucky's attempts at police reform, the efforts have yielded mixed results. Jon Cherry for ProPublica Last May, as President Donald Trump settled into his second term, the Justice Department walked away from federal efforts to reform troubled police departments across the country. Officials announced their decision to not only drop lawsuits against two cities for unconstitutional policing but also retract findings of abuse in a half dozen other places. Some of those jurisdictions celebrated the news. But not Louisville, Kentucky, a blue city in a red state whose elected leaders used the occasion to make their own announcement. After the federal withdrawal, Mayor Craig Greenberg said Louisville would be “moving ahead rapidly” with reforms to its police department, which had been found to have a pattern of unconstitutional policing. In fact, the city would be adopting a version of ...
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“No One Is Watching”: How Trump Reversed Biden’s Crackdown on Gun Trafficking

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Collage by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: Bloomberg/Getty Images, Firearm Transaction Record Form via U.S. Department of Justice and Alec MacGillis/ProPublica. Marianna Mitchem grew up in the Denver suburbs, where she played high school soccer. One day in April 1999, her team faced off against a nearby rival, Columbine High. The next day, two teenagers went on a shooting rampage at Columbine, killing more than a dozen people. The massacre left an imprint on Mitchem. After graduating from Providence College, she joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Fearing for my friends and watching what was happening — you don’t forget things like that,” she told me. “I wanted to make a difference.” She started in the ATF’s Denver office as an industry operations investigator, the bureau’s term for inspectors who ensure that firearms dealers are conducting the required background checks on buyers and maintaining sales records. When the bureau foun...
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Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need.

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Brian Smith teaches students at the school in Sleetmute, Alaska, in 2024, which has suffered from a leaky roof and structural problems as a result. One lawmaker has labeled the school “the poster child” for what’s wrong with the state’s public school infrastructure. Emily Schwing/KYUK Alaska would more than triple the funding it devotes to school construction and maintenance projects next year under a budget approved this month by the state Legislature. The funding, which awaits Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, follows reporting by KYUK, ProPublica and NPR last year that documented a severe health and safety crisis inside the buildings used daily for public education. The bill would allocate more than $148 million toward construction and maintenance in the 2027 fiscal year, up from $40 million in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30. The new budget line is an effort to help with millions in backlogged major maintenance needs for schools around the state. Years of lacking ...
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