As discussions about reparations for Black Americans gain some ground, the first state with a task force on the issue is hearing that it needs to think bigger. African Americans in California have been telling the state’s reparations task force that a one-time payout would mean little if they don’t have equal access to education, […]
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Posted inInside Public Integrity
The Heist: The Wealth Vortex nominated for Ambie Award
We follow Iowa entrepreneur ReShonda Young as she seeks to confront the enormous wealth gap between Black and white Americans by doing something that no one in the country has managed in decades: open a new Black-owned bank.
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Ashley Clarke recognized among ‘25 Under 35’ journalism leaders
Center for Public Integrity Audience Engagement Editor Ashley Clarke has been named to Editor and Publisher magazine’s “25 Under 35” list celebrating leaders in the journalism industry. Clarke, 25, was honored among reporters, editors, audience development, fundraising and finance professionals working in local and national news organizations and journalism industry nonprofits across the country. The […]
Posted inUnequal Burden
How will a divided government affect taxes?
The 118th Congress that convened this month marked the end of one-party control of the federal government. The Democrat-controlled Senate and Republican-majority House will determine the landscape of tax policy for the next two years, with any action or inaction rippling for generations to come. In one of its first votes of the session, the […]
Posted inNatural Resources
Study finds disparities in states’ distribution of federal funds for water systems
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by President Biden last November, is pouring billions of dollars into an upgrade of the country’s aging water infrastructure. But a new study has found that white communities have been favored in distribution of the funds, something that’s controlled by individual states. The majority of the $55 billion allocated to […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
A reproductive justice pioneer on what the abortion debate misses
Loretta J. Ross is a human rights advocate and founding member of the organization SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective. Since its founding in 1997, the group has become a leading voice for the concept of reproductive justice as an alternative framework to pro-choice and anti-abortion arguments. The three tenets of the concept are: […]
Posted inLabor
Sheriff opens rape investigation after CPI-Scripps News reporting
Female truck drivers reacted with a mix of outrage, sadness and frustration after Public Integrity and Scripps News published an investigation showing an alarming pattern of sexual violence in the trucking industry and the failure of companies to address it. One former truck driver said she was raped by her trainer more than 10 years […]
Posted inEducation
Schooling educators on homeless student rights
Breezy Napier dropped out of high school in ninth grade. He was homeless — and, on many days, hopeless, struggling to get to school from the local shelter and to focus in class when he did. “I did love going to school, but at the same time, it’s kind of hard to juggle school, plus […]
Posted inFinance
How financial barriers stifle formerly incarcerated people
PHILADELPHIA — In the second year of J. Jondhi Harrell’s 20-year sentence, he began to contemplate what would alter a person’s life for good. Financial literacy, employment, mentorship and community support were essential, he recalled thinking. “If you can’t feed yourself, if you can’t manage your money, you can’t build a solid foundation for the […]
Posted inLive Events
Discussion: How four decades of tax cuts fueled inequality
Wealth inequality in the U.S. has widened to historic levels, exacerbating a range of societal problems. A new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity points to one of the main culprits: Our nation’s tax code. Over the last 40 years, Congress has cut the income tax rate five times for the wealthiest people. Corporations […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
I set out to tell his story. Then he found out he was ill.
As the second winter of the COVID-19 pandemic approached, I journeyed to Blue Gap, Arizona, to at last meet the man whose steady, calm voice on the other end of the phone line had been a constant for me since the start of the global health crisis. I first connected with Earl Tulley in early […]
Posted inDemocracy
What voter turnout shows, and hides, about elections
The voter turnout in 2020 was a stunning 67%, according to one source. Another had it at 94%. A third fixed 2020 voter turnout at 63%. All three are correct — because they do the math differently. They’re comparing actual voters with the number of eligible voters, registered voters and Americans of voting age, respectively. […]
Posted inInequality
Programs to end homelessness fall short for Black veterans
SAN DIEGO — William Keith has experienced homelessness on and off here for the last 20 years. His latest struggle came at the start of the pandemic. Keith had a federal housing voucher that guaranteed his rent to landlords. But as a Black man, the 66-year-old veteran said, it felt much harder to find housing […]
Posted inElections
Anti-immigrant rhetoric spiked in this election. Here’s why it’s dangerous.
It was 100 years ago that Alexander Terrell, a former Confederate officer and Texas representative, claimed that “Mexicans are induced on election day to swim across the Rio Grande and are voted before their hair is dry.” The Terrell Election Law of 1903, fueled by false claims that non-citizens from Mexico were voting in Texas […]
Posted inNatural Resources
Drilling down on water access as drought becomes the ‘new normal’
Crystal Tulley-Cordova’s job is addressing one of the most pressing needs of the Navajo Nation: access to clean water. Water is a calling that Tulley-Cordova, 39 and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, was drawn to from an early age. She and her family experienced the struggles of accessing safe drinking water, traveling long […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Public Integrity honors founder Charles Lewis with renaming of fellowship
At a ceremony honoring the career of Center for Public Integrity founder Charles “Chuck” Lewis earlier this month, CEO Paul Cheung announced that Public Integrity was renaming its graduate fellowship to the Charles Lewis American University Fellowship at the Center for Public Integrity. The joint fellowship with American University, currently held by graduate student Ileana […]
Posted inLive Events
Join us: Building a diverse future for investigative news
Update: The recording of the discussion has been posted above. Join the Center for Public Integrity Nov. 2, 2022, at 6:30 pm EDT for a virtual fireside chat featuring Public Integrity Editor Mc Nelly Torres. Nicole Dungca, a Washington Post investigative reporter and incoming president of Asian American Journalists Association, will moderate the chat. Dungca and […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Janelle O’Dea joins Public Integrity as data reporter for local collaborations
Janelle O’Dea is joining the Center for Public Integrity in a newly created data reporter position focused on local news collaborations and capacity-building. Strengthening the data capabilities of local news organizations, especially in underserved and underrepresented communities is a core tenet to Public Integrity’s mission to confront inequality in the U.S. She joins Public Integrity […]
Posted inLabor
Can you tackle systemic racism without confronting race?
It’s not a question of simple semantics. Words exercise power and consequences. In the governmental jargon that can turn rhetoric into reality, two words — “disadvantaged” and “underserved” — help to explain why one act of Congress failed to provide long sought financial assistance to Black farmers, but another may succeed. The American Rescue Plan […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
Stop the victim narrative, and other tips for covering working-class women
While reporters talk with sources every day, it’s rare that conversation is about the practice of journalism itself. In September, the Center for Public Integrity and Tara Health Foundation hosted conversations about how to make news coverage of working-class women more community centered. Community leaders shared feedback on the harm they’ve seen perpetuated by journalism, […]
Posted inPublic Health
How racism and inequality created COVID-19’s ‘Viral Underclass’
We share the planet with over 380 trillion viruses right now. Some of these powerful pathogens can kill us and even bring the world to a halt — as the novel coronavirus did in 2020. Viruses teach us how “undeniably connected we are and how important it is to care for one another,” according to […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
Will more police solve the nation’s school violence problem?
Columbine High in 1999. Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. Stoneman Douglas High in 2018. For more than 20 years, some of the nation’s deadliest mass shootings triggered a stock response from the federal government: more funding for law enforcement presence in schools. Across Democratic and Republican administrations, hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted […]
Posted inLabor
Low-paid workers are unionizing. Corporations are spending a ton to stop them.
Thousands of workers across the country have been busy gathering signatures from their co-workers in the past year. Candy makers at a Hershey’s factory in Virginia. Cooks at a Chipotle restaurant in Michigan. Six employees at a Dollar General store in Connecticut. Their goal: form a labor union to force their bosses to negotiate better […]
Posted inHarm's Way
Join us for a live discussion: Harm’s Way
UPDATE: Watch the replay of the panel discussion below. Join us for a live conversation Monday, Oct. 3, at 10 am EDT with the journalists behind Harm’s Way, a project focusing on the impact of climate-driven disasters in vulnerable communities. This investigation explored how prepared the U.S. government is to help relocate communities from heavily […]
Posted inPublic Health
Getting the lead out — at long last
The country began phasing lead out of gasoline for cars in the mid-1970s, and yet the toxic metal is still in aviation fuel for small aircraft — spewing over neighborhoods with children especially vulnerable to its irreversible impacts. That’s finally poised to change. Following decades of pressure from environmental-justice advocates, the Federal Aviation Administration has […]
Posted inWho Counts?
Voters in jail face ‘de facto disenfranchisement’
Each election cycle, thousands of eligible voters are effectively disenfranchised because they sit in a jail cell. Americans detained before trials are allowed to vote, a status affirmed by a 1974 Supreme Court case. As a matter of law, pretrial detainees are presumed innocent and retain the voting rights they had before being charged with […]
Posted inWatchdog newsletter
What slavery and racism have to do with American gun ownership
Gun politics in the U.S. are inextricably linked to race. Two recent studies have found more evidence that for many white Americans who advocate for gun rights, it isn’t simply about owning and using a tool, but even more about identity and power. One of the research papers found that the larger the percentage of […]
Posted inInside Public Integrity
‘Sí se puede’: Mc Nelly Torres wins 2022 Gwen Ifill Award
The International Women’s Media Foundation today announced Mc Nelly Torres as the recipient of its annual Gwen Ifill Award. Torres, an editor at Center for Public Integrity and board member of the National Association for Hispanic Journalists, is being recognized for her career-long dedication to building diversity, equity and inclusion in the news media. “Mc […]
Posted inEducation
Teacher shortage pushes schools to 4-day schedule
MINERAL WELLS, Texas — As Amber Gary dropped her children off for the first day of school she wondered what to do with them every Friday for the rest of the year, when school would close. Her two daughters attend schools in Mineral Wells Independent School District, a rural school district west of Fort Worth […]
Posted inHarm's Way
When climate change makes home unsafe
Standing on a bridge between downtown Freeport and its east side, I could see why floods in this Illinois city aren’t equal-opportunity disasters. On the downtown side of the Pecatonica River, the bank was reinforced with a stone wall. The east bank was lower yet had no protection. The east side was for years the […]
