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Hugo Holland’s aggressive legal tactics made him one of Louisiana’s most renowned prosecutors and helped turn Caddo Parish, a majority Black community in the northwest corner of the state, into one of the nation’s leaders in death penalty convictions. His nearly 40-year career, though, has been marked by controversies. In at least two death penalty cases, Louisiana judges found that Holland withheld evidence. In a third, he secured the conviction of a Black 16-year-old, comparing the boy to a dog and telling the jury to “get rid of it”; prosecutors later admitted that Holland and his team had failed to turn over evidence. Defense attorneys have also accused him of racism, pointing, for example, to a capital murder case several years ago in which Holland emailed one of them to say he was going to spend Veterans Day in his pickup truck looking for “a Black guy or a Mex-can.” Holland called it a joke . Holland, 62, is now running for judge in the First Judicial District Court in Caddo...

The owner of a nursing home can significantly impact the quality of care that home’s residents receive, research has shown . One owner’s influence can be widespread: Nearly one-fifth of people or companies who report an ownership interest in a nursing home have a financial stake in five or more homes, according to data from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Nearly 100 owners have direct or indirect ownership in 50 or more homes. One such owner, Benjamin Landa, was nominated by President Donald Trump in October to be ambassador to Hungary. ProPublica reported Monday that Pinnacle Multicare Nursing and Rehabilitation Center , which Landa co-owns, is suing the Trump administration following a Department of Health and Human Services audit that estimated more than $30 million in Medicare overpayments had been made to the facility. An attorney for Landa denied wrongdoing in a statement, saying the issues identified in the audit occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic when nurs...

The number of parents and children booked into the country’s only immigrant family detention center, in Dilley, Texas, plummeted in February by more than 75% compared with a month earlier, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained by ProPublica. Between April 2025, when President Donald Trump started sending families there, and January of this year, the  number of people sent into detention with their families averaged around 600 per month. In February, those so-called books-ins fell to 133. As of mid-March, they dropped again to just 54. This week there were only around 100 people in family detention at Dilley, compared with an average daily population in January of over 900, the data shows. Current and former ICE officials and lawyers with clients in Dilley said they were unable to explain the reason for the sharp decline. However, they said the shift followed weeks of mounting public pressure generated in part by the widespread publication of letters writ...

Last summer, a group of officials from the Department of Energy gathered at the Idaho National Laboratory, a sprawling 890-square-mile complex in the eastern desert of Idaho where the U.S. government built its first rudimentary nuclear power plant in 1951 and continues to test cutting-edge technology. On the agenda that day: the future of nuclear energy in the Trump era. The meeting was convened by 31-year-old lawyer Seth Cohen. Just five years out of law school, Cohen brought no significant experience in nuclear law or policy; he had just entered government through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency team. As Cohen led the group through a technical conversation about licensing nuclear reactor designs, he repeatedly downplayed health and safety concerns. When staff brought up the topic of radiation exposure from nuclear test sites, Cohen broke in. “They are testing in Utah. … I don’t know, like 70 people live there,” he said. “But … there’s lots of babies,” one staffer ...

It’s difficult to put yourself in the place of Cherise Doyley, a pregnant mother of three who found herself facing a judge while in labor at the University of Florida Health hospital in downtown Jacksonville. She had arrived at the facility with a plan for her birth. She wanted to try for a vaginal delivery, but she understood from years of experience as a professional birthing doula that things don’t always go as planned. She arrived overnight at the hospital after her water broke. Doctors told her they were concerned about the risk of uterine rupture, a potentially deadly complication for her and her baby. She understood the risk to be less than 2% and repeatedly told doctors she wouldn’t consent to a cesarean without trying to have a vaginal delivery first. The doctors appeared to relent, leaving her to labor for several more hours.  Then a nursing supervisor wheeled a tablet up to her bed and informed her she was in court. The reason? Failing to agree to a C-section.  ...