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Jin Ke Wang for ProPublica The leading scientist urging policymakers not to criminalize kratom, a substance that has left a trail of death and addiction around the world, has routinely failed to disclose longstanding financial ties to the industry’s most powerful lobbying group, ProPublica has found. University of Florida professor Christopher McCurdy has accepted travel reimbursements, donations to his university’s foundation and funding for an annual symposium on research into the leaf’s medicinal potential from the American Kratom Association — none of which has been disclosed in his conflict of interest statements or on the papers he publishes. The fight to keep kratom legal across the country has taken on increased urgency as more potent kratom derivatives have appeared on store shelves and evidence has mounted of the leaf’s risks to users’ health. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 5,200 people in the United States died from drug overdose...

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica. Photo via Instagram. A Texas volleyball coach who was the subject of an investigation last month by ProPublica and The Washington Post is now facing a federal child exploitation probe, according to an agent for Homeland Security Investigations, the main investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security. The ProPublica and Post story detailed how Ryan Richardson continued to coach teenage girls for years at his gym in Pharr, Texas, amid allegations of misconduct, even after he was suspended in early 2025 and subsequently ruled “permanently ineligible” this February by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an oversight group. On its public disciplinary list , SafeSport said it found that Richardson had an intimate relationship with a minor, committed sexual misconduct involving a minor, and engaged in physical misconduct and bullying.  Juan J. Flores Jr., a supervisor in a Homeland Security Investigations unit that...