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by McKenzie Funk ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Connecticut’s attorney general has sent his second warning in a month to the low-cost carrier Avelo Airlines, telling the startup it has jeopardized tax breaks and other local support by agreeing to conduct deportation flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Democrats in the Connecticut legislature, meanwhile, are working to expand the state’s sanctuary law to penalize companies like Avelo for working with federal immigration authorities. The backlash comes after Texas-based Avelo signed an agreement early this month to dedicate three of its 20 planes to carrying out deportation flights as part of the charter network known as ICE Air. It also follows a report by ProPublica, which Connecticut Attorney General William Tong cited in an April 8 letter to Avelo, revealing flight attendants’ unease over the treatment an...

by Jeff Ernsthausen , Mica Rosenberg and Avi Asher-Schapiro ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. In an unusual move, the administration of President Donald Trump has canceled a $3.8 billion contract to build an immigrant detention camp in Fort Bliss, Texas, just days after issuing it. That doesn’t mean the job won’t go forward. Sources told ProPublica the administration still intends to move ahead with the plan to build a tent detention camp at Fort Bliss. A site visit for interested contractors took place on Wednesday. The job promises to be highly sought after as Trump officials plan to pour billions of dollars into building detention facilities as part of the president’s push to deport more immigrants. Why the contract was posted and then canceled is unclear. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement awarded the contract on April 10 to Deployed Resources, a privately held com...

by Abrahm Lustgarten ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Over the past two months, the Trump administration has taken steps to eliminate regulations addressing climate change, pull back funding for climate programs and cancel methods used to evaluate how climate change is affecting American society and its economy. Now it is directly undermining the science and research of climate change itself, in ways that some of the nation’s most distinguished scientists say will have dangerous consequences. Proposed cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the agency whose weather and climate research touches almost every facet of American life, are targeting a 57-year-old partnership between Princeton University and the U.S. government that produces what many consider the world’s most advanced climate modeling and forecasting systems. NOAA’s work extends deep into the hea...

by Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. The attacks on Judge John Barberis in the fall of 2016 appeared on his personal Facebook page. They impugned his ethics, criticized a recent ruling and branded him as a “politician” with the “LOWEST rating for a judge in Illinois.” Barberis, a state court judge in an Illinois county across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, was presiding over a nasty legal battle for control over the Eagle Forum, the vaunted grassroots group founded by Phyllis Schlafly, matriarch of the anti-feminist movement. The case pitted Schlafly’s youngest daughter against three of her sons, almost like a Midwest version of the HBO program “Succession” (without the obscenities). At the heart of the dispute — and the lead defendant in the case — was Ed Martin, a lawyer by training and a political operative by trade. In Missouri, where he...

by Mark Olalde ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches , a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. A top official in the Department of Labor this week informed all staff members that they could face criminal charges if they speak to journalists, former employees or others about agency business. A memo sent Monday by Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s chief of staff, Jihun Han, and obtained by ProPublica, states that “individuals who disclose confidential information or engage in unauthorized communications with the media may face serious legal consequences.” Among the ramifications, the memo states, are “potential criminal penalties, depending on the nature of the information and the applicable laws,” and “immediate disciplinary actions, up to and including termination.” The guidance document went on to say that “any unauthorized communication with the medi...

by Sebastian Rotella ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. China’s vast security apparatus shrouds itself in shadows, but the outside world has caught periodic glimpses of it behind the faded gray walls of Shijiazhuang prison in the northern province of Hebei. Chinese media reports have shown inmates hunched over sewing machines in a garment workshop in the sprawling facility. Business leaders and Chinese Communist Party dignitaries have praised the penitentiary for exemplifying President Xi Jinping’s views on the rule of law. But the prison has an alarming secret, U.S. congressional investigators disclosed last year. They revealed evidence showing that it is a Chinese government outpost in the trafficking pipeline that inundates the United States with fentanyl. For at least eight years, the prison owned a chemical company called Yafeng, the hub of a group of Chinese firms and web...