When Andrea Montañez visited her Orlando-area cardiologist two years ago to treat her abnormally fast heart rate, the receptionists and nurses often misgendered her. This story also appeared in USA TODAY For a couple of years following her transition, Montañez’s insurance information still listed her deadname and identified her as male. Despite informing the office […]
The decades-long fight in a community treated as a dumping ground
Protecting people’s health from environmental hazards, Maricela Mares-Alatorre and her family found out the hard way, is a never-ending fight. She was in high school in the late 1980s when her parents, both farmworkers, organized to help prevent the construction of a toxic waste incinerator in the landfill near Kettleman City, a tiny agricultural community […]
Homeless-student investigation honored in data journalism contest
A collaborative Center for Public Integrity investigation into the patchwork safety net for homeless students has been recognized with a special citation in the Investigative Reporters & Editors’ Philip Meyer Journalism Award. The contest honors “the best uses of social science research methods in journalism,” often sophisticated and groundbreaking data analyses. “Unhoused and Undercounted,” in […]
More states are pushing for race and ethnicity data equity
Middle Eastern and North African people in Nevada who are often misclassified as white or undercounted by state service providers will have a choice to self-identify for the first time under a new sub-category that more accurately represents them. As of Jan. 1, a new state law requires that all government agencies in Nevada collecting […]
Public Integrity wins January Sidney Award for debt collection investigation
A Center for Public Integrity investigation into states’ harsh and often counterproductive collections tactics for unpaid income tax has won the January Sidney Award. The prize is awarded by the Sidney Hillman Foundation to an “outstanding piece of journalism that appeared in the prior month.” Among the findings: at least nine states can suspend or […]
Resolutions for a free and fair 2024 election
It’s a big election year with an imposing backdrop: swirling misinformation, changing laws around voting and deep concerns about the health of American democracy. On top of a monumental presidential election, U.S. voters will select 11 governors, 34 U.S. Senators and 82 state supreme court justices, decide dozens of statewide ballot measures and choose literally […]
Attacks on tenure leave college professors eyeing the exits
This story also appeared in USA TODAY Subscribe on Google | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon College professors once regarded Wisconsin as one of the safest places to work, with the right to be tenured baked into state law. Then, in 2015, the state removed that right and sent dozens of instructors running toward the exits. Karma Chávez was among those […]
How distrust in government leads to civic disengagement
Professor Manuel Teodoro did not set out to write a book about civic engagement and democracy. He was just curious about some roadside water kiosks. In “The Profits of Distrust,” Teodoro and his co-authors, Samantha Zuhlke and David Switzer, explore the relationship between civic engagement and the sale of bottled water or from a kiosk. […]
Behind on state income taxes? Here’s what you need to know.
What happens if you don’t have the money to pay your state income tax bill? As the Center for Public Integrity has investigated the impact of state taxes on economic inequality, we kept hearing how states’ collection practices weighed on lower-income residents. But states typically put fewer specifics on their websites than the IRS does […]
State tax collectors push struggling people deeper into hardship
This story also appeared in USA TODAY In rural Abita Springs, Louisiana, it’s nearly impossible to get anywhere by foot. Driving is a means of survival. Jacques LeBourgeois, 66, understands this better than most. He lost his driver’s license because of a tax debt to the state. “I get a letter in the mail, saying, […]
How (and why) the GOP and a popular film are misleading you about migrant kids
Subscribe on Google | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon At the start of 2023, the U.S. economy showed signs of recovery from a pandemic that had killed millions of Americans. President Joe Biden had successfully pushed key parts of his agenda through Congress during his first two years in office, including a celebrated $1.2 trillion package that aimed to rebuild the […]
Proposed law aims to lock in protections for homeless students
Months after a Center for Public Integrity investigation showed that Pennsylvania school districts locked children out of class while investigating their families’ claims of homelessness, a bill winding through the state legislature would make the practice illegal. In November, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives unanimously passed legislation that would reverse a state law allowing schools […]
Not just the Supreme Court: Ethics troubles plague state high courts, too
This story also appeared in USA TODAY Subscribe on Google | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Since 2015, a North Carolina Supreme Court justice has heard at least six cases involving the massive utility Duke Energy, a company in which he and his wife had a direct financial stake. In each of the cases, Paul Newby — chief justice since 2021 […]
Gaps in social services are leaving homeless youth with ‘no good choices’
This story also appeared in Teen Vogue Subscribe on Google | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon For months, he woke to the sound of cars. Sometimes the incessant roaring kept him up at night, but sleeping under an overpass was better than sleeping under nothing, so 19-year-old Israel Cook learned to manage. “No human should be living under conditions like that,” […]
The South is ‘the epicenter’ of a new HIV crisis. Medicaid expansion could help.
HIV is surging in the South, which the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has designated “the epicenter” of an emerging crisis particularly affecting seven states spanning from Texas to North Carolina. As last month’s gubernatorial election approached in Mississippi — which has the sixth-highest rate of HIV diagnoses in the nation — community […]
District cites ‘educational larceny’ in aggressive audits of student housing
This story is republished in partnership with The Midwest Newsroom and St. Louis Public Radio. In March, a frustrated parent wrote an email to the Hazelwood School District. Her daughter had been kicked out of Jamestown Elementary School after the district conducted an investigation into where the family lived. In the email, the mother complained […]
Millions of low-paid workers will benefit from this obscure new policy
It’s been a record year for labor strikes. Hollywood actors recently ended their historic, 118-day walkout. Thousands of auto workers in Detroit are returning to factories after more than 46 days on the picket lines. Their labor unions secured major gains during contract negotiations at a time when companies are struggling to find job candidates. […]
Environmental impact targeted in new push against ‘Cop City’
Opponents of the developing Atlanta Public Safety Training Center have adopted a new strategy to stop the so-called “Cop City” from being built. Activists filed a complaint with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of External Civil Rights Compliance last week, arguing that the 85-acre site in unincorporated southern DeKalb County is damaging the ecosystem in […]
How illustrations for a podcast about Black farmers came to life
The Center for Public Integrity’s third season of The Heist podcast, about the government’s long history undermining Black farmers, has powerful illustrations for each episode. Artist Amanda Howell Whitehurst created them. A painter and illustrator whose work often explores the “beauty, confidence, and strength” of Black women, she sat down with Public Integrity to provide […]
Black financial institutions face new threat following Supreme Court ruling
The Supreme Court’s decision this summer to strike down affirmative action in higher education has had a chilling effect on racial equity efforts in the public and private sectors. Long considered a tool to correct systemic discrimination, affirmative action programs everywhere are at risk, advocates worry. Now, conservative activists are trying to block programs that […]
What backlash to landmark voting law tells us about debate today
Ronald Reagan praised the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as “vital.” Bill Clinton deemed it a “triumph.” George W. Bush said the law “broke the segregationist lock on the ballot box.” When the U.S. Senate reauthorized the law most recently, in 2006, it passed by a vote of 98 to 0. And even Chief Justice […]
New USDA data shows declining loan delinquency rates
The share of federal agricultural loans with overdue payments is falling for farmers across racial and ethnic groups, though whether that’s a temporary improvement remains to be seen. This story also appeared in Reckon A Center for Public Integrity analysis of a sliver of data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows the delinquency rate […]
The fight for debt relief and legacy (transcript)
More than $400,000. Nearly half a million. That’s what Nate Bradford Jr. owed the USDA in 2010. He’d done his best to keep up on his loan payments — working the night shift at an off-farm job, spending his weekends and vacations trying to make his ranch profitable, investing his 401k into his business. And […]
Another state refuses to cooperate with EPA on environmental justice
In the latest example of state pushback to civil-rights enforcement by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a Texas agency has pulled out of negotiations to resolve complaints alleging its decisions on pollution are racially discriminatory. EPA, which disclosed the development on its online docket Thursday with a letter dated Wednesday, said it would continue investigating […]
See which states are expanding — or restricting — voting rights
While restoration of the federal Voting Rights Act languishes in a split Congress, an already deep divide in Americans’ access to voting has widened over the past year. In part, that’s because blue states aren’t waiting. According to an analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, more […]
EPA promised to address environmental racism. Then states pushed back.
This story also appeared in Mother Jones FLINT, Mich. — Civil rights law offers a tool for communities of color trying to stop unequal exposure to pollution. Over and over, people here have tried to make it work. From 1992 to 2015, residents and community groups filed a series of federal complaints asking the U.S. […]
Facing environmental discrimination? Read this before complaining to EPA
Is your neighborhood choked with pollution or facing other environmental woes that you think are discriminatory? You can write to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to request an intervention. But it’s easy to get tripped up. That’s what the Center for Public Integrity found as part of a new investigation of EPA’s handling of complaints […]
Why you should report on environmental justice — and how to get started
You don’t need to report on the environment to investigate environmental justice. The issue intersects with many other topics: politics, planning and zoning, budgets, business, community advocacy, road building, energy and more. And it cuts to the heart of equal opportunity. Does everyone in your region get to breathe clean air, drink clean water and […]
Can USDA’s efforts on equity help Black farmers overcome ‘toxic debt’?
It was nearly a quarter century ago when thousands of Black farmers filed a class action discrimination lawsuit with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to receive financial compensation. More than 15,000 got $50,000 lump sum payments, and a small number were approved for larger payments. Some had hoped that it would finally help them get […]
The forever fight (transcript)
You know how, when someone is talking about something they really love, their passion comes through in their voice? How you can see in their eyes, their gestures, how important this thing is to them? That’s what it’s like to talk to Eddie Slaughter about farming. Eddie Slaughter: You know, it’s something about if you […]