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The First Major Overhaul of Public Lands Grazing Regulations in a Generation Looks to Cut Out Public Involvement

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Cattle graze in Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in southern Arizona. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches , a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. The federal government is rewriting its rules governing ranching on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep and other livestock grazing on 155 million acres in the West, an area twice the size of New Mexico. Public lands grazing is overseen by a nearly century-old system that heavily subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans while doing little to address its harms to the environment, ProPublica and High Country News found last year. Even though rangeland management experts say overgrazing has degraded public lands, the new rules being drafted by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management — the first overhaul since 1995 — would instead expand the prac...
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Amid Mounting War Casualties, Pete Hegseth “Defunded and Impeded” Efforts to Protect Civilians, Lawmakers Say

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives a statement ahead of a NATO Defence Ministers meeting in Brussels in June. Omar Havana/Getty Images ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Ten Democratic lawmakers told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a letter Sunday that his gutting of a program focused on protecting civilians is a leadership failure that imperils service members and erodes the military’s moral standing. Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the joint letter echoed concerns raised by a recent Defense Department inspector general report that described civilian protection efforts as largely “inactive.” Lawmakers also cited reporting by ProPublica and other news outlets in pushing to preserve the framework known as civilian harm mitigation and response, or CHMR. “The Trump administration — potentially in violation of federal law — has defunded and impeded ...
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These Immigrant Kids Were Once Protected. Under Trump, Their Deportations Have Tripled.

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Elder Chavez crossed the border as an unaccompanied minor in 2022. Now 18, he sits in Louisiana’s Winn Correctional Center facing deportation after a traffic violation. Emily Scherer for ProPublica. Source images: Courtesy of the Chavez family, JMS2/Flickr, mikepick/Flickr, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. For the first few weeks after he arrived at the immigration detention center in Winnfield, Louisiana, 18-year-old Elder Chavez was wide awake most nights, listening to the creaky sounds of the bunk beds and to voices of dozens of men, also sleepless, around him. He suffered terrible headaches and would finally doze off around 4 a.m. — just when guards would begin to summon the detainees for breakfast. Then he’d sleep for most of the rest of the day. He had developed the schedule of an owl. And he thought to himself that the dark circles that had appeared under his eyes made him look like one. He’d landed at the Winn Correctional Center after Alabama sta...
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Left in the Dust: How a Billionaire-Owned Concrete Plant Took Over a Detroit Community

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A view of the Kronos concrete mixing plant from the front porch of longtime resident Christina Kary. Her family built the first homes on her block, and she is determined to stay in the neighborhood. Brittany Greeson for ProPublica The abandoned house next door meant a lot to Christina Kary. For years, she tended to it, planting purple flowers, removing weeds and picking up trash. She attached locks to the doors to prevent trespassers from entering.  She had considered buying the property, located on the Cadillac Heights block where her family built the first houses in the early 1900s. Several years ago, she learned that the small home with a front porch was owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority, which manages the city’s vacant properties. Kary, 86, said she told a land bank inspector she wanted to purchase it but didn’t follow up, thinking she would eventually hear back. Then, one morning in 2024, she heard a commotion as heavy equipment squeezed through the all...
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