Podcast: The Facts Behind the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Case
by Minhee Cho Abigail Fisher, the 23-year-old plaintiff in the affirmative action case currently before the Supreme Court, has been portrayed as the textbook example of reverse discrimination. She was...
View ArticleHow the Maker of TurboTax Fought Free, Simple Tax Filing
by Liz Day This story was co-produced with NPR. Imagine filing your income taxes in five minutes — and for free. You'd open up a pre-filled return, see what the government thinks you owe, make any...
View ArticleAnother Race Case for a Hostile Supreme Court
by Nikole Hannah-Jones March 26: This post has been corrected. Little doubt exists that the Supreme Court's most conservative justices want to do away with affirmative action and other race-conscious...
View ArticleCriminal Injustice: The Best Reporting on Wrongful Convictions (#MuckReads)
by Theodoric Meyer and Christie Thompson In 1991, an unemployed printer named David Ranta was convicted of killing a Hasidic rabbi in Brooklyn. Last week, Ranta was released from the maximum-security...
View ArticleFriend of the Court: How Anthony Lewis Influenced the Justices He Covered
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How Are You Filing Your Federal Income Taxes?
by Amanda Zamora Earlier this week, Liz Day reported how Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has led a fight to squash “return free” income tax filing, spending more than $11 million lobbying in part to...
View ArticleWestchester County Could Lose Millions for Fair Housing Failures
by Nikole Hannah-Jones After more than three years of clashing with the federal government, Westchester County may finally have to pay a price for its failures to comply with a residential...
View ArticleMore Than a Matter of Opinion: Ed Rendell’s Plea for Fracking Fails to...
by Justin Elliott Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell took to the New York Daily News op-ed page Wednesday with a message to local officials: stop worrying and learn to love fracking. As New York Gov....
View ArticleCourse Load: The Growing Burden of College Fees
by Marian Wang At the University of California Santa Cruz, where tuition runs to nearly $35,000 for non-residents, students every year pay more than 30 additional fees — including a small charge for...
View ArticleAmerica’s Most Outrageous Teacher Cheating Scandals
by Lois Beckett Update: This story has been updated to reflect recent developments in the Atlanta cheating scandal. Scandals involving cheating by teachers and schools to pump up ever-more-important...
View ArticlePodcast: Is Intuit Making It Harder to Do Your Taxes?
by Minhee Cho Last year, roughly 25 million Americans used Intuit's best-selling software, TurboTax, to file their federal tax returns, accounting for 35 percent of the company's $4.2 billion in...
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Discussion: How to Improve Accountability in Medicine?
by Blair Hickman In 1999, the Institute of Medicine released a report suggesting a strategy to combat death due to preventable medical errors and set a goal of cutting preventable errors in half over...
View ArticleA MuckReads Guide to North Korea
As tensions simmer over North Korea’s latest nuclear threats, we take a look at some of the best reading on Kim Jong Un, the prospects for a nuclear conflict and life in the DPRK. What did we miss?...
View ArticleWho Polices Prosecutors Who Abuse Their Authority? Usually Nobody
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Live Chat: Who Prosecutes the Prosecutors?
by Christie Thompson Today we published our investigation into New York's flawed system of attorney oversight, which routinely failed to identify, punish and deter prosecutors who abuse their...
View ArticleCan a Judge Really Block the SEC’s Settlement With Steven Cohen?
by Theodoric Meyer Judge Victor Marrero last week became the latest federal judge to question a time-honored tactic of federal regulators: negotiating settlements in which companies pay millions of...
View ArticleTerror Group Recruits From Pakistan’s ‘Best and Brightest’
by Sebastian Rotella Imagine a terrorist group that recruits tens of thousands of young men from the same neighborhoods and social networks as the Pakistani military. A group whose well-educated...
View ArticleLasting Damage: A Rogue Prosecutor’s Final Case
by Joaquin Sapien This is Part 2 of a series. Read Part 1. Among the thousands of prosecutors who have tried cases in the name of the people of New York City, Claude Stuart came to hold a handful of...
View ArticleHearts, Minds and Dollars: Condolence Payments in the Drone Strike Age
by Cora Currier The U.S. drone war remains cloaked in secrecy, and as a result, questions swirl around it. Who exactly can be targeted? When can a U.S. citizen be killed? Another, perhaps less...
View ArticleCapitol Offenses: Bribes, Wires, and Little Surprise
by Joe Sexton Here at ProPublica, we’re great believers in the idea that public revelation of scandal leads to reforms. Over the years, we’ve seen plenty of evidence that sunshine is a disinfectant,...
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