Monday, August 24, 2026
The Bears Ears National Monument landscape in southeastern Utah. Photo by Mike McGlew - Mcglewm / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Mining executives bought stock in their own firm days before Trump shrank Bears Ears

House Democrats have opened an investigation for insider trading.
The west front of the U.S. Capitol. The Protected Time Off Act, pending in Congress, would guarantee full-time workers two weeks of paid annual leave. Photo: Architect of the Capitol (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

US workers average 10 paid vacation days a year, and 33 million get none

Twenty-five OECD countries require employers to provide at least 20 days. The US legal minimum is zero, and 57 percent of the lowest-paid tenth of workers get no vacation at all.
The E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse in Washington, home of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where Judge Amit Mehta issued the order. Photo: AgnosticPreachersKid (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Judge dismisses the last January 6 case, writing that absolving the Oath Keepers is...

The Justice Department told the court a retrial would harass eight men whose sentences Trump had already commuted. Two Oath Keepers who pleaded guilty and cooperated keep their convictions.
The entrance to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where Elvis Brooks was imprisoned for 42 years. Photo: kccornell from Lafayette, LA / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

He’s Eligible for Up to $480,000 After Being Wrongly Imprisoned for 42 Years. The...

Elvis Brooks’ case was an egregious example of a wrongful conviction, civil rights attorneys said. But Louisiana’s attorney general maintains that Brooks and other exonerees are guilty — and therefore don’t qualify for any money from the state.
An ICE Special Response Team performs crowd control outside Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, on June 10, 2026. Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

“An ICE Murder”: Gabriela Soto Says She Miscarried While Husband Was Detained in Solitary

In the wake of a third ICE death at the Delaney Hall ICE jail in Newark, New Jersey, we speak with Gabriela Soto, whose husband Martín was one of the leaders of the May hunger strike at the immigration jail. Martín was transferred to Elizabeth Detention Center, New Jersey’s other ICE facility, during the hunger strike at Delaney. Gabriela is calling for the closure of both facilities. “At first, I was fighting for my husband, but then I started to meet all of these people who are just innocent, and they are the people that make this country great,” says Soto, who blames her recent miscarriage on the stress of her husband being detained. “I am still grieving,” she says. “To me, this is an ICE murder, too.” This comes as Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a Salvadoran immigrant, died Saturday after being held for six weeks at Delaney Hall. He is the third immigrant to die at the ICE jail, which has been open since May 2025. Lopez-Cornejo’s mother, Maria Cornejo, says her son took medicine to manage diabetes, seizures and his blood pressure, but had not received his medications regularly since being detained. ICE said in a statement that Lopez-Conejo experienced a “medical emergency” on Saturday and was transported to University Hospital in Newark, but Maria Cornejo says her son died at Delaney Hall. More than 70 people inside the ICE jail have filed lawsuits alleging medical neglect. That neglect was one of the factors that led to the hunger strike. “Individuals are not receiving the kind of healthcare that they in fact need, particularly for chronic health conditions, for pregnancies, for cancers,” says Analilia Mejía, Democratic congressmember from New Jersey. “Being undocumented should not be a death sentence.”
Todd Blanche, sworn in as deputy attorney general in 2025, has led the Justice Department in an acting capacity since April. Photo: Ryan M. Biller, U.S. Department of Justice (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Senate panel to vote on Blanche for attorney general after he shuts down $1.776...

Two Republican senators who had blocked the nomination demanded the fund be killed in writing. A second order narrows the tax settlement that created it.
The US Department of Justice headquarters in Washington. Photo: Baseball Watcher / CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

“Department of Injustice”: Norm Eisen on Todd Blanche AG Nom, Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case

Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general cleared a major hurdle this week after two Republican senators who had raised concerns agreed to back him.
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.
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.
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.