A Bloomberg Law analysis of federal civil rights lawsuits from 2017 to 2024 found at least 54 pregnant women or their families have alleged severe mistreatment or medical neglect in jails. And it keeps happening. news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/...

Pregnant women who are jailed, often for petty crimes, are miscarrying or giving birth in excruciating pain and into cell toilets or on filthy jail floors, according to an investigation from @bloomberglaw.com and NBC News.

Accountability matters.

I had an idea yesterday about making a word search that, when solved, would be a data visualization. So, I coded it up... and it worked! This shows abundance of three bird species in Brooklyn Bridge Park over a year. It feels like there are some fun possibilities here. 📊🪶

Investigative Reporters and Editors joins with numerous newsrooms and journalism organizations in condemning the Pentagon's new restrictions on reporters. Read our full statement: www.ire.org/statement-on...

The idea that AI isn't being used right now in House offices is ... quaint.

NEW: An investigation by ProPublica and @texastribune.org found more than 60 instances of nepotism, self-dealing and conflicts of interest among 27 private schools that likely would have violated state laws had the schools been public. By Lexi Churchill and @emsimani.bsky.social

I've updated my database of more than 530k political fundraising emails, now through Aug. 5. Check them out here: political-emails.datasette.cloud/data/emails

NEW – a summer take on DHS approps: A lobbying push is underway to ensure foreign guest workers can be hired to staff the rides and games that are a staple of summer carnivals and avoid potentially bankrupting the industry. Read: www.bgov.com/news/T07FP9G... @bgov.com

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the state of democracy in the US keeps her up at night, building on her dissents lamenting the Trump administration’s attempts to expand presidential authority and the decisions by fellow colleagues so far backing that effort.

TODAY: ~Half a million grad students would lose access to thousands of dollars in student loans if the reconciliation bill before Congress becomes law. See how much these future doctors and lawyers would lose on average by your school or state here: @bgov.com news.bloomberglaw.com/social-justi...

The GAO report on which this is based was published in 2021. The (at least) 70 citizens were deported between 2015 and 2020. We don't know how many citizens have been deported this year, but the key point in that GAO report is that neither does ICE.

My audio debut (embedded in this article) is worth a listen. Cheryl Thompson wasn't aware the state Senate had passed a law in part inspired by her horrible experience at a hospital after a man sexually assaulted her last year.

A federal program to protect US cities against extreme heat has just evaporated

A dark but incredibly useful giveaway at the #CollaborativeJournalism Conference is a temporary tattoo with the @rcfp.org hotline number to wear at protests

The looming May 20 sale brings back into focus the needs and criticism for New York and other cash-strapped cities and states that sell off such tax debts to private collectors.

making a spreadsheet with no actual values in it, just colors that mean something to me that i'm not gonna write down

NEW: When NYC agreed to restart its property tax and water debt sale, officials pledged to enact reforms to limit the disproportionate impact on poor and non-white New Yorkers. But days before the sale, are the reforms working? Maybe not... @bloombergtax.com news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-tax-re...

Exciting news! We were just named a 2025 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Explanatory Reporting alongside The Center for Public Integrity and @revealnews.org for our “40 Acres and a Lie” investigation into how formerly enslaved people were given land—only to have it taken back: 40acresandalie.com

We are so proud to have been named a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting today alongside our partners at the Center for Public Integrity and @motherjones.com. Read the whole project and listen to our three-part podcast series, 40 Acres and a Lie: 40acresandalie.com

We’re Pulitzer finalists, it’s true!

Mike Miner was a giant of Chicago journalism, the heart and soul of the Reader, the conscience of the city's vibrant media scene. His work was incisive, rigorous, and funny. He was a kind and gracious mentor to those of us lucky enough to know him. He will be missed www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...

“What stood out in all these conversations is how investigative reporting demands creativity and persistence. When the trail goes cold, how do you keep digging? That's the kind of thinking we hope to inspire.” www.ire.org/new-student-...

I am so proud of my colleagues at @thebaltimorebanner.com who just won a frigging @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social . www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/lo...

If there’s one thing I’ve taken away from reporting on the current DOGE collection of govt data, it is that the people who’ve previously spent their careers carefully handling this information believe there is almost no limit to how it could be abused (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

hello, it is i, an expert in the thing i only just read about five minutes ago

Lot of chatter going on about today's unusually hostile Supreme Court arguments involving attorney Lisa Blatt. I wrote about Blatt's casual candor and direct argument style last year when she became the first woman to hit 50 arguments at the court.

Indulged my love of congressional history with this story about new Republican Reps. Tom Barrett (Mich) & Nick Begich (Alaska), respectively the great-grandson & grandson of late former House Democrats. What they've learned about congressional ancestors they never knew: news.bgov.com/bloomberg-go...

President Donald Trump is demanding significant changes to the process by which probationary workers are evaluated before gaining full federal employment status and job protections.

I'm working on a version of my data journalism class focused on religion, an important and sensitive topic. One of the first rules: we're not going to be literally counting individual members of a religion. theintercept.com/2025/04/23/t...

I’ve been reporting on the National Firefighting Registry for Cancer for two years. I was devastated by its shutdown, but am proud of the reporting I’ve done on it. Please listen. www.boisestatepublicradio.org/show/idaho-m...

THIS FRIDAY: IRE is hosting a webinar on investigating businesses and nonprofits. We’ll teach you how to dig deeper, where to look for records and data, and how to push past roadblocks and red tape to tell important stories. www.ire.org/event/free-w... 🗓️ Friday, April 25 ⏰ 1 - 2 p.m. ET

This investigation is wild. Most generous way to read it is: at best, Doug Ford was duped out of hundreds of millions by an Austrian conman who swiped another company's name and logo in order to falsely claim he operated six spas across the world. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/w...

The Trump administration is defying court orders and there isn’t much the Supreme Court can do to stop it.

my job is 10 percent analysis and 90 percent putting data back in the form the government keeps it but won’t give to me

i talk about this with data all the time: if you don’t understand the data fully, you’re likely to find things that you don’t understand. talking to experts can clear these kinds of things up. but you should do that *before* you publicize what you found.

For the last 50 years, IRE has been educating and empowering investigative journalists worldwide. Join us and you’ll learn from some of the best watchdog reporters working today! www.ire.org/join-ire/

IRE’s Utah workshop is coming up NEXT WEEK! We’ll have journalists from around the region teaching you how to improve your watchdog reporting. Registration includes a one-year IRE membership renewal — a $25-$75 value. www.ire.org/event/german...

Public health departments are laying off staff and cancelling vaccine clinics after the Trump administration prematurely pulled billions of dollars in funding rollcall.com/2025/04/04/a...

RIP 😔 www.cjr.org/news/center-...

IRE is offering a new member benefit for our 50th anniversary and spring member drive! Join or renew your membership by April 28 to receive a 50% discounted subscription to DeleteMe. The service works to remove personal data online and ensure digital safety. www.ire.org/discount-on-...

Police spokesperson Donna Rossi said there are “many possible contributing factors” to the jump in the number of gun points, “one of which would be the improvement of reporting.” So .... you used to do this and just not report it? Seems cool. www.azcentral.com/story/news/l...

This sort of reminds me of something I recently shared again: A couple times, I’ve had sources text me and say “this is off the record…” and then they keep typing and I say STOP. Because you are about to create *the record* 🫠

IRE members, let’s talk journalist safety tomorrow. www.ire.org/event/free-w...

Been continuing my LLM extraction efforts focusing on political fundraising emails, and yesterday tested out command-a, an 111b parameter model from Cohere (cohere.com/blog/command-a) Was expecting very good results. Got OK results: it extracted committee names from 766 of the 1,000 emails. Weird!

I learned recently that it’s not uncommon for a local court to have a “knife bush.” That is, a bush outside where people temporarily stash their pocket knives so they could get through security.

Gift link. Make sure you’re sitting down when you read this one.

In 25 years of covering national security, I’ve never seen a story like this: Senior Trump officials discussed planning for the U.S. attack on Yemen in a Signal group--and inadvertently added the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...