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Vouchers Promise Students With Disabilities a Path to Private School. Parents Say That’s Not the Reality.

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Twelve-year-old Amelia Johnson was born with a rare genetic anomaly and is nonverbal. Amelia’s mother was able to get a private school voucher specifically for children with disabilities — but couldn’t find a private school that would accommodate Amelia. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica It’s after 6 p.m. by the time Angela Johnson hurries home from work. Her 12-year-old daughter, Amelia, is at their house outside of Pensacola, Florida, with a nurse trained to care for medically fragile children. Amelia, who was born with a rare genetic anomaly, has endured many surgeries and requires a brain shunt and a feeding tube. The nurse starts caring for Amelia as soon as a bus from the public school drops her off. Johnson loves much about the school. But as a physical therapist, she also recognizes its limitations. The district’s physical and occupational therapists have to travel from school to school. The classroom teacher can become overburdened. For all of Amelia’s life, Johnson h...
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EPA to Loosen Methane Rules, Boosting Pollution From Oil and Gas Wells

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A Hilcorp well site in New Mexico in August 2025   Courtesy of Earthworks The Trump administration is poised to loosen environmental restrictions on oil and gas wells that produce very little energy but release vast amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to drastically weaken requirements for leak inspections and equipment upgrades at more than 700,000 low-producing “stripper wells,” according to a draft rule being reviewed by the White House and seen by ProPublica. These wells — which tend to be old, poorly maintained and thus prone to leaking — produce just 6% of the country’s oil and natural gas but are responsible for roughly half the sector’s methane pollution, studies show. The EPA acknowledged similar figures in the draft. But it said that the cost of complying with existing regulations would force the lowest-producing wells to shut down and that this was “unreasonable” — even though it would e...
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25 Years After 9/11, Questions About the FBI’s Pursuit of Saudi Suspects in the Case Have Only Grown

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A man stands in the rubble after the collapse of the first World Trade Center tower on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City. Doug Kanter/AFP via Getty Images Within a few days of the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, FBI agents identified an important possible suspect: a middle-aged Saudi graduate student who provided crucial help to two of the al-Qaida hijackers as they settled in San Diego early the year before. The Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, had since moved to England, and he was arrested there at the FBI’s request. A police search of his home and office yielded a trove of evidence that quickly deepened investigators’ suspicions about Bayoumi and his dealings with the terrorists. But what happened to much of that evidence after it was delivered to the FBI remains a mystery. Bayoumi was questioned and released by British police and later returned to Saudi Arabia. For years thereafter, the FBI would insist he wasn’t really a suspect at all — t...
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