Center for Public Integrity

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 ...
Center for Public Integrity

Law helps vulnerable heirs’ property owners — but only if they can afford it

The Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act was supposed to be a strong dose of medicine for the ills of heirs’ property — jointly owned land with multiple heirs not documented in wills or deedbooks, ...
Center for Public Integrity

Colonias on the border struggle with decades-old water issues

This report is part of a project on drinking water contamination in the United States produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. YUMA, Ariz. – Nestor Alaniz didn’t get a permit to build a well in ...
Center for Public Integrity

Osama Bin Laden: How the U.S. helped midwife a terrorist

LAHORE, Pakistan — In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the US ...
Center for Public Integrity

Common solvent keeps killing workers, consumers

Rita Welch looks at photos of her son, Johnathan. He died on the job at 18 while stripping furniture with methylene chloride. (Joe Dodd/AP Images for the Center for Public Integrity) Reading Time: 25 ...
Center for Public Integrity

DEI attacks pose threats to medical training, care

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 ...
Center for Public Integrity

Misconduct and punishment

Unlike any private attorney, the local prosecutor—be he district attorney, county attorney, or criminal district attorney—is an elected official whose office is constitutionally mandated and protected ...
Center for Public Integrity

Crumbling pipes, tainted water plague black communities

This report is part of a project on drinking water contamination in the United States produced by the Carnegie-Knight News21 program. CAMPTI, La. – Deep in the winding mass of crumbling back streets ...
Center for Public Integrity

Black Americans still are victims of hate crimes more than any other group

JASPER, Texas — Former Texas prosecutor Guy James Gray keeps a 20-year-old CD in his desk that documents with graphic photos one of the most vicious hate crimes in history – the day James Byrd Jr. was ...
Center for Public Integrity

Black lung surges back in coal country

PRESTONSBURG, Ky. — Ray Marcum bears the marks of a bygone era of coal mining. At 83, his voice is raspy, his eastern Kentucky accent thick and his forearms leathery. A black pouch of Stoker’s 24C ...
Center for Public Integrity

Spreading vaccine fears. And cashing in.

Heather Simpson never thought to question vaccines. Her parents vaccinated her when she was a child, and she got tetanus and flu shots as an adult. This story also appeared in HuffPost But when she ...
Center for Public Integrity

Only three states score higher than D+ in State Integrity Investigation; 11 flunk

November 23, 2015, 11:00 a.m.: This story has been updated. In November 2014, Arkansas voters approved a ballot measure that, among other reforms, barred the state’s elected officials from accepting ...