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Watch: We Uncovered Bribery Allegations Involving Susan Collins

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In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers , including Sen. Susan Collins. The agency was examining interactions between Collins and a top donor: Martin Kao, CEO of defense contractor Navatek. According to Kao, in 2019, the head of the pro-Collins super PAC met with him and other Navatek execs and asked for a $500,000 donation. Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. For the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery. To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Kao sent an initial $150,000 to the super PAC using a shell company, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer. The head of the super PAC knew Kao was behind the donation. “Very smart,” he replied in an email viewed by ProPublica. Weeks later, Kao told his team Collins committed to getting th...
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It’s Easy to Start a Private School. Take Our Quiz to Find Out Where You Can Open Yours.

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Ever imagine yourself as a private school operator? It’s not such a wild idea. Hundreds of new private schools have popped up all over the country in recent years, responding to a surge of public money for students to pay tuition. A team of ProPublica journalists has spent this year documenting how the American education landscape is shifting with an increased push for school privatization . Our reporting has identified big differences in how states regulate who can run a school, what they must teach and where they can hold class. While some require new private school operators to prove they’re on the up-and-up, others invite anyone with a dream and a heartbeat to get into the business. ProPublica even founded a couple this year. So why not you? Take our quiz on ProPublica’s website to find out which states might welcome you to open one with ease, no experience required. The post It’s Easy to Start a Private School. Take Our Quiz to Find Out Where You Can Open Your...
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Her Agency Distributes Billions for Housing Projects. Her Husband’s Company Helped Develop Some of Them.

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Andrea Bell, director of Oregon Housing and Community Services, at a groundbreaking ceremony in 2025 Oregon Housing and Community Services As head of Oregon’s housing finance agency, Andrea Bell oversees a lot of taxpayer money.  Oregon Housing and Community Services has handed developers more than $1.4 billion in state funding to build rent-restricted apartments over the last five years — and even more counting federal tax credits the agency allocates. Bell’s husband, Joshua Crites, works as a director for the consulting firm JH Brawner , which helps local housing authorities develop subsidized apartment projects that receive a lot of money from Bell’s agency. The company lists offices in Oregon, Washington and Arizona and says it has played a role in creating 20,000 low-income housing units that cost $3 billion to develop. JH Brawner’s Oregon work includes consulting on two housing authority projects that applied for or were awarded tens of millions of dollars ...
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Texas’ Education Board Raised Questions About an AI Learning Tool. The State Then Helped Pilot It in Public Schools.

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Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath Bob Daemmrich for The Texas Tribune A little-known effort to bring an artificial intelligence tool into Texas public schools began about a year ago, with the help of the state’s top education official, Mike Morath.  In September 2025, Morath responded to an email from associates of a private school chain called Alpha School who wanted to talk about using their AI program to educate kids in Texas classrooms.  “I’d love to schedule a follow-up discussion,” Morath replied.   The online platform wasn’t new to Morath, the state’s education commissioner. Just three months earlier, he had supported Alpha leaders’ bid to open a charter school in Texas that would use the same technology. Then the Texas State Board of Education, which has the final say on such charter decisions, voted it down 10 to 3. Board members cited concerns about the company’s use of AI to teach and students’ screen time, as well as lingering qu...
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Four Kids in One Faith-Healing Family Died. Authorities Could Do Nothing.

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Nearly identical headstones mark the burial of brothers from Owyhee County, Idaho, who died in 2022, 2024 and 2025. Each died before his first birthday. Their graves are in the same cemetery as Emma Joyce and her three siblings, whose parents, like those of the brothers memorialized here, belong to a faith-healing sect. Sarah Miller for ProPublica. Last names on headstones redacted by ProPublica to protect children’s identities. Emma Joyce was sick and vomiting for days until she stopped breathing in her parents’ arms, in a small gray farmhouse in rural Idaho. It was August 2009, and she was 3 years old. The following summer, Emma Joyce’s little sister got sick. Ava Joan wouldn’t eat or drink anything but a few grapes and some Sprite in a sippy cup. She was breathing hard and fast. And when she vomited, it came out black, the hallmark of internal bleeding. She died in her mother’s arms in July 2010 from a complication of untreated diabetes. Less than two years later, the...
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A Girl Nearly Died After Drinking Raw Milk. The State Did Little to Punish the Unlicensed Farmer Who Sold It.

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Courtesy of Emily Marris Sitting in a pediatric intensive care unit last year, watching a ventilator keep her 17-month-old daughter alive, Emily Marris scoured the contents of her phone for evidence to give to California health and food safety investigators.  She had bought raw goat milk from a farm recommended to her in a Facebook group run by her chiropractor. Marris had hoped the milk, unprocessed and natural, would help with her daughter Brooklyn’s constipation. But doctors now suspected the unpasteurized milk, which hadn’t been heated to kill off pathogens, was the source of the toddler’s severe E. coli infection.  To the regulators who’d reached out to Marris, the case was a top priority. The farm appeared to be defying state law to sell unregulated raw milk to unsuspecting families; soon, another child, a 6-year-old girl who’d drunk milk from the same farm, would wind up in the same San Diego hospital, with the same potentially fatal illness, needing bl...
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