A federal judge in the District Court of Columbia will shortly decide if the US president, Donald Trump, is allowed to dictate the terms of service of the Associated Press (AP), the US wire agency that proudly proclaims it is read by 4 billion people every day. In a (typically for this administration) knee-jerk decision on February 11, White House officials informed AP that its journalists would be barred from entering restricted areas such as the Oval Office and Air Force One until it stops using the geographic term “Gulf of Mexico” – in contravention of an executive order renaming it the “Gulf of…
Author: Sarah Mitchell
American journalist Danny Fenster, who was recently sentenced to 11 years of hard labor after spending nearly six months in jail in military-ruled Myanmar, was freed and on his way home Monday, a former U.S. diplomat who helped negotiate the release said. Fenster, the managing editor of the online magazine Frontier Myanmar, was convicted Friday of spreading false or inflammatory information, contacting illegal organizations and violating visa regulations. His sentence was the harshest yet among the seven journalists known to have been convicted since the military ousted the elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in February. “This…
A U.S. journalist has been detained in Russia, her employer said, the second such case since the war in Ukraine started. Alsu Kurmasheva, a dual Russian-American reporter with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), was detained in the southwest Russian city of Kazan on Wednesday while awaiting the return of her passports, her employer said in a statement released on Thursday. RFE/RL said Kurmasheva, who is based in Prague, has been charged with failure to register as a foreign agent, a designation Russia requires of any organizations or individuals that it perceives as receiving foreign funding. It has been used to target journalists and people who…
Anas Alkharboutli was fatally injured in a missile attack just four days before the president fled to Russia. His colleagues and friends explain why his life was more exceptional than his death Anas Alkharboutli was fatally injured in a missile attack just four days before the president fled to Russia. His colleagues and friends explain why his life was more exceptional than his death Alkharboutli and Kadour were among a group of journalists who had teamed up to cover the lightning assault of the rebels at the end of November 2024. The advance would eventually bring an end – after 13 years of civil…
Washington DC is still digesting a serious security breach at the heart of the Trump administration. It’s the story of how a journalist – the Atlantic magazine’s Jeffrey Goldberg – was added to a Signal platform messaging group which apparently included Vice-President JD Vance and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth, in addition to National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. The topic being discussed was attacking the Iran-backed Houthi group in Yemen. Goldberg said he had seen classified military plans for the strikes, including weapons packages, targets and timing, two hours before the bombs struck. What are the main revelations in a nutshell? Vance questions…
by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. A behind-the-scenes legal effort to force Congress to call a convention to amend the Constitution could end up helping President Donald Trump in his push to expand presidential power. While the convention effort is focused on the national debt, legal experts say it could open the door to other changes, such as limiting who can be a U.S. citizen, allowing the president to overrule Congress’…
by Christopher Bing, Avi Asher-Schapiro and Annie Waldman ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. When President Donald Trump announced his marquee government cost-cutting initiative, he left no doubt about whom he intended to run it: Elon Musk. Still, questions about the scope of Musk’s authority have hounded the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency ever since. As DOGE began to order massive budget cuts and layoffs, and those affected by the moves began to raise questions in the press and in court about their…
by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica and FRONTLINE, and James Bandler, ProPublica This story contains references to homophobia, antisemitism and racism, as well as mass shootings and other violence. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. On Jan. 19, 2024, the sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida, released a 27-page manifesto left behind by Ryan Palmeter, a 21-year old white man who had murdered three Black people at a Dollar General store before turning the gun on himself. The Florida Times-Union, a prominent local news outlet, said it would…
by ProPublica Trailer for “Before a Breath” ProPublica’s feature documentary “Before A Breath,” directed by Nadia Sussman, will have its YouTube premiere on Thursday, March 20, at 8 p.m. Eastern. “Before a Breath” is a tender, infuriating and ultimately hopeful story of three mothers who have lost children to stillbirth and are now striving to make pregnancy safer. The film explores an experience shared by thousands of families in the U.S., where more than 20,000 stillbirths occur each year. At least a quarter of those losses are probably preventable. After the stillbirth of her daughter, Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya goes to…
by Eli Hager ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Since the arrival of a team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, Social Security is in a far more precarious place than has been widely understood, according to Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration. “I don’t want the system to collapse,” Dudek said in a closed-door meeting last week, according to a recording obtained by ProPublica. He also said that it “would be catastrophic for the people in our country”…