Wednesday, August 12, 2026
The Texas State Capitol in Austin. Photo: Larry D. Moore / CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

James Talarico Accused Ken Paxton of Voter Fraud. His Own Voter Registration Is Raising...

ProPublica and The Texas Tribune’s review of the Democratic Senate candidate’s residency records found that he may have voted in up to five elections using an address where he no longer lived.
Plastic pellets, known as nurdles, scattered through sand and beach wrack. Photo: Estevoaei / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Help Diane Wilson’s Texas clean water triumphs go national: this protest model fits all

A shrimp-boat captain with a high school education won a $50 million settlement against Formosa Plastics. The blueprint she built is being packaged for anyone else facing a polluter.
The Thurgood Marshall United States Courthouse in Manhattan, where the Epstein and Maxwell cases were heard. Photo: Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome to Dawn’s Barbecue: the Epstein files in a time of war

A meditation, part essay and part poem, on what the files show about power, impunity and the ease with which the harm of innocents is absorbed.
About three in ten workers say they use AI at work at least weekly. Photo: Unsplash (CC0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Two-thirds of US workers expect AI to make their jobs worse, Ipsos survey finds

Use of the tools is concentrated among college graduates and six-figure earners. Six percent of workers said they expect workers to be the main beneficiaries.
An EPA Superfund cleanup sign at the Clearview Landfill in Philadelphia. Omaha is home to the country's largest residential Superfund site. Photo: Jhbadger / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The EPA Heralds Its Omaha Cleanup as a Success. But We Found Many Yards...

The agency spent hundreds of millions on lead remediation in Omaha, Nebraska, home of the nation’s largest residential Superfund site. New soil tests by the Flatwater Free Press and ProPublica show that many yards still have harmful levels of lead.
A grey U.S. Navy guided missile destroyer under way on open water

Fact-check finds U.S. strikes killed about 115 people before Venezuela raid

PolitiFact says the administration has offered no evidence of drugs aboard the targeted vessels, while analysts and rights groups question the strikes' legality.
Portrait of Nicolás Maduro in a dark suit and striped tie

Trump announces capture of Maduro after U.S. military strikes on Venezuela, prompting congressional war...

As the captured Venezuelan leader was flown to New York to face federal charges, Senate Democrats moved to check what they called an unauthorized march toward another open-ended war.
The west front of the United States Capitol building

Congress leaves Washington without a healthcare deal as subsidy deadlines and FY2026 funding fight...

Lawmakers head into the new year with enhanced ACA tax credits already lapsed and a Jan. 30 government funding deadline still unresolved.
The headquarters of CalSTRS, the California teachers' pension fund at the center of The Lever's reporting. Photo: Coolcaesar / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Watchdog reporting examines a pension officer’s fossil fuel trades and a fire truck monopoly

The Lever's latest investigations trace a California retirement chief's oil and gas stock trading and a spreading set of antitrust suits over who builds America's fire engines.

ProPublica journalists strike over AI policy, exposing labor fault lines inside investigative media

The NewsGuild says two years of bargaining stalled over job security and artificial intelligence, and the union has taken its case to federal labor regulators.