1/ Did you know that for the past 2.5 years @ProPublica's @DocumentHate project has been working with newsrooms all over the country to document hate crimes? Let's take a look at what's been reported on just this week 👇🏽👇🏽👇🏽
1/ On yesterday’s @lastweektonight about USAID, John Oliver cited several of our investigations.
First up was our reporting about how DOGE operatives had arbitrarily cut aid programs, in some cases by literally clicking through a spreadsheet: propub.li/4bbPEXl
2/ Oliver later referred to our reporting about former USAID lead Peter Marocco.
Officials told us they saw Marocco’s gutting of the agency as a campaign of retribution against those who opposed his foreign policy agenda in the first Trump administration: propub.li/3N8HZBm
3/ Finally, Oliver brought up our reporting on how cuts to aid caused an American-made hunger crisis.
At one refugee camp, mothers had to choose which of their kids to feed & pregnant women were so desperate for calories that some resorted to eating mud: propub.li/40iWl59
1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.
Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵
2/ “I miss my school and my friends I feel bad since when I came here to this Place, because I have been here too long.”
From 9-year-old Susej F, detained for 50+ days
3/ “I have never been separated from my siblings and its honestly sad because they are little and they need their mom and sister.”
From 14-year-old Ariana V.V, whose U.S.-citizen siblings are 2 and 5 years old. Detained for 45+ days
1/ Ciji Graham was the mother of 2-year-old SJ, a sister to 9 younger siblings, a beloved friend.
She's also the 7th case we’ve found of a pregnant woman in a state restricting abortion who died after being unable to access standard care.
This is her story.
2/ On Nov. 14, 2023, Ciji had a heart rate of 192 bpm.
She was having another episode of atrial fibrillation, a rapid, irregular heartbeat that put her at risk of heart failure or stroke. But this time, her usual treatment was just out of reach. propublica.org/article/north-…
3/ In the past, doctors had always been able to shock her heart back into rhythm.
After Ciji’s pregnancy test came back positive, however, her doctor sent her home without offering the procedure.
THREAD: It was supposed to be a routine surgery. So when the doctor stepped out, Sandra Parker wasn’t sure she heard right.
Her husband’s heart couldn’t have stopped for more than 5 or 6 minutes, the doctor was saying.
“That’s not a lot of time,” Mrs. Parker thought. “Is it?”
2/ Few people trusted Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital like Anthony Parker.
For much of the time he and his wife had lived in Albany, GA, he’d served on the board of directors, one of the few African Americans invited to do so.
Anthony, the hospital said, was “Phoebe Family.”
3/ Now, as Anthony lay in the hospital room, Mrs. Parker was trying to remind herself he was in good hands.
1/ We recently investigated what happened with a devastating wave of bird flu earlier this year, as egg prices hit record highs.
It's a story that illuminates the ways the U.S. is failing to control what could become the next pandemic. 🧵
2/ The U.S. Department of Agriculture typically attributes bird flu outbreaks to cases where farmers have not done enough to protect flocks from contamination by wild birds.
3/ We were able to trace the outbreak using genomic data sampled from the farms with infected poultry.
The data told another story: hens in one egg farm got infected, and then the contagion spread, lighting up one of the most poultry-dense areas of the country within weeks.
1/ It should be forgiven. It should be forgotten. If she spoke of it again, the sins would be hers, she was told.
But she could never forget. And neither could the other girls.
This is the story of how her church enabled a child abuser for years 👇
2/ Clint Massie’s behavior was an open secret in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church community of Duluth, Minnesota. Church leaders even sent him to a sex offender specialist.