Unews

This week, ProPublica published a story I wrote based in part on interviews with parents and children being held at the nation’s only operating detention center for immigrant families in Dilley, Texas. I had asked some of the parents to see if their children would be willing to write to me about their experiences inside. More than three dozen did. One of those letters came from 9-year-old Maria Antonia Guerra Montoya from Colombia. Her letter was written on a piece of notebook paper. She decorated it with rainbows and hearts. And she drew a portrait of herself and her mom wearing their detention uniforms and government-issued ID badges. I had initially met Maria a few weeks earlier, when I managed to get inside the Dilley Immigration Processing Center. It’s just south of San Antonio. Maria Antonia, her mother and more than 3,500 people, half of them minors, had cycled through there since the Trump administration reopened it early last year. I went in mid-January, before the facilit...

The Missouri prosecutor overseeing an investigation into the 2020 vote in Fulton County, Georgia, has taken part in meetings since last fall with lawyers tasked by President Donald Trump to reinvestigate his loss to Joe Biden.  Thomas Albus, whom Trump appointed last year as U.S. attorney for Missouri’s Eastern District, has had multiple meetings set up with top administration lawyers to discuss election integrity.  At those meetings was Ed Martin, a Justice Department lawyer who until recently led a group investigating what the president has described as the department’s “weaponization” against him and his allies, according to a source familiar with the meetings who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.  White House lawyer Kurt Olsen, who has been tasked with reinvestigating the 2020 election, also was directed to join at least one of the meetings, according to the source. Both Martin and Olsen worked on behalf of Trump to try to overturn the 2020...

It’s taken more than 2,000 days of construction, $6.4 billion Canadian dollars and seemingly endless studies and permits to build the Gordie Howe International Bridge. Stretching 1.5 miles between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, the towering cable-stayed span will offer an alternative to the privately owned Ambassador Bridge at one of the busiest land borders in North America, providing a boost to international traffic and trade. And it wasn’t so long ago that President Donald Trump cheered it on.  Shortly after a meeting in 2017, the man who styled himself as “the builder president” issued a joint statement with Canada’s then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau celebrating their shared focus on infrastructure. “In particular,” they said, “we look forward to the expeditious completion of the Gordie Howe International Bridge, which will serve as a vital economic link between our two countries.” A list of 50 priority projects for emergency and national security, developed as Trump embar...

In the summer of 2022, months after Tammy Boarman and her husband, Chris, moved into their newly built “forever home” 30 miles from Oklahoma City, the plants in their yard began to turn yellow. The shrubs wilted, though Tammy watered them often. And the couple began to notice a salty taste in their drinking water. The water came from a private well, drilled the year before, and they hoped that the bad taste would fade with time and with the help of a water softener. But the problem grew worse. Their ice maker expelled large clumps of wet salt, which, when rubbed, dissolved into an oily, foul-smelling substance. The couple knew that some oil and gas extraction took place nearby. Down dirt roads and behind stands of oak trees in their neighborhood, pump jacks nodded up and down, pulling up oil. This is a common sight in Oklahoma. Several studies estimate that about half the state’s residents live within a mile of oil and gas wells. By the following summer, Tammy and Chris Boarman had...

Colorado marijuana manufacturers would no longer be allowed to choose which product samples they send for mandatory lab testing under a new regulatory proposal discussed at a policy forum on Friday. Instead, the state’s Marijuana Enforcement Division may require independent labs or outside vendors to collect product samples for the testing that’s required before companies can sell their products to ensure they’re free of contaminants. The change would address a long-standing complaint from some marijuana manufacturers that bad actors are cheating the system. They say some companies are selecting samples that can pass tests while sending products to dispensaries that might be contaminated with chemical solvents, fungus or pesticides. A Denver Gazette and ProPublica investigation last month showed that the system for testing marijuana products relies on an honor code that’s open to manipulation. In 2024 alone, Colorado officials found two dozen cases in which companies had violated ...

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 ...