As Donald Trump faces dwindling options to pay off a massive fine imposed as a result of losing a fraud case in New York, financial experts say filing for bankruptcy would provide one clear way out of his financial jam.

But Trump is not considering that approach, partially out of concern that it could damage his campaign to recapture the White House, according to four people close to the former president. wapo.st/3TLvfAX Even though bankruptcy could alleviate Trump’s immediate cash crunch, it also carries risks for a candidate who has marketed himself as a winning businessman — and whose greatest appeal to voters, some advisers say, is his financial success. wapo.st/3TLvfAX

Four major nonprofits that rose to prominence during the coronavirus pandemic by capitalizing on the spread of medical misinformation collectively gained more than $118 million between 2020 and 2022, a Post analysis shows. wapo.st/49CX18x The money enabled the organizations to deepen their influence in statehouses, courtrooms and communities across the country.

Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., received $23.5 million in contributions, grants and other revenue in 2022 alone, allowing it to expand its state-based lobbying operations to cover half the country. wapo.st/49CX18x

Frozen embryos created through in vitro fertilization (IVF) are people, Alabama’s Supreme Court ruled last week, opening up a new front in the national debate over reproductive rights.

Here's what you need to know: wapo.st/3uQrJLX IVF, a treatment for many types of infertility, is an assisted reproductive technology that involves multiple steps. Patients self-administer hormone injections to stimulate egg production, and medical staff retrieve mature eggs from ovaries, place them in petri dishes and fertilize them with sperm.

The multiple fertilized eggs, or embryos, can be transferred to the uterus for an immediate attempt at pregnancy, or frozen for the future. wapo.st/3uQrJLX

Exclusive: Over the last five years, more than 2,000 people have wandered away from assisted-living and dementia-care units or been left unattended outside, according to an exhaustive search by The Washington Post.

Nearly 100 people died — though the exact number is unknowable because no one is counting. wapo.st/47iqF0R Patients with memory problems walk away from assisted-living facilities just about every day in America, a pattern of neglect by an industry that charges families an average of $6,000 a month for the explicit promise of safeguarding their loved ones. wapo.st/47iqF0R

On the stage of the Theatre Lab in downtown D.C., five women shared their stories of motherhood. But the monologues would go beyond labor pains, late-night feedings and raising boys.

Just as the mothers remembered how they brought each of their children into the world, they would tell an audience how their sons left.
One was 13, shot by a 12-year-old after a night of playing games at a Dave & Busters. The oldest was 29, shot 22 times. The youngest was 8, killed by a stray bullet while eating dinner and playing video games on one of his favorite nights, Taco Tuesday. wapo.st/3Gi4nRE

The full effects of the AR-15's catastrophic force in mass killings are rarely seen in public.

To assess the extent of the destruction, The Post examined thousands of photos and videos and identified parallels across 11 mass shootings between 2012 and 2023. The graphic pictures and personal accounts in this story may be disturbing.
This story includes never-before-released pictures that were taken by law enforcement after two shootings.

Those photos show the blood and destruction that remain from the scene of an AR-15 shooting. They do not show bodies or human remains. wapo.st/3G45LHk

AI image generators like Stable Diffusion and DALL-E amplify stereotypes in gender, race and beyond — despite efforts to detoxify the data fueling these results.

Grabbed from the internet, these troves can be toxic — rife with pornography, misogyny, violence and bigotry.
Stability AI, maker of the popular image generator Stable Diffusion XL, told The Post it had made a big investment in reducing bias in its latest model, which was released in July.

But these efforts haven’t stopped it from defaulting to cartoonish tropes. wapo.st/3FJpPi2

The man who killed five and wounded eight at a Louisville bank had been undergoing therapy and considered suicide — but faced no hurdles in purchasing a rifle days before the attack. Some survivors and victims’ families are planning to sue the gunmaker. wapo.st/45XxLa1 While few details have emerged publicly about what motivated Connor Sturgeon to kill, interviews with survivors, victims’ families and Sturgeon’s parents reveal frustration, sorrow and anger over how easy it had been for someone with apparent mental health problems to obtain a semiautomatic rifle built for mass violence.

One year after billionaire Elon Musk bought Twitter, now named X, for $44 billion to revive its business and make it less “woke,” the site’s business outlook appears dire, losing users, advertisers and revenue.

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The number of people actively tweeting has dropped by more than 30 percent, according to previously unreported data obtained by The Washington Post. wapo.st/3SjwvuO

Israel manages most of the electricity that powers Gaza. After closing its borders to the strip, it turned off the territory’s power lines in response to the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza.

The impact was almost immediate. wapo.st/3tPUVlB The Gaza Strip has plunged into darkness since Israel announced a “complete siege” of the enclave on Oct. 9.

Palestinians enduring the relentless bombings night after night are doing so in darkness. wapo.st/3tPUVlB

Decisions made in Washington, D.C. — choices heavily influenced by the food industry — have allowed Kraft Heinz’s signature  Lunchables to be served to students for the first time this school year.

Here’s why that matters. wapo.st/3rVkZuU
Ultra-processed meals contain additives for flavor, texture and shelf life.

But the company has altered two of its products to qualify to be served to nearly 30 million children under the rules of the federally subsidized National School Lunch Program. wapo.st/3rVkZuU

“It took me a while to understand what was happening, and then I was really scared.”

Before the turn of the century, there were only a handful of documented cases of pediatric fatty liver disease. Today, millions are affected, including an estimated 5 to 10 percent of all U.S. children  — making it about as common as asthma.
When doctors told Carmen Hurtado that her 8-year-old was sick with a condition known as fatty liver disease, her first reaction was not fear. It was confusion.

Other than putting on some weight the previous year, nothing appeared wrong with Dani. wapo.st/3RJwwI5

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party and its Hindu nationalist allies have perfected using social media to spread inflammatory, often false and bigoted material on an industrial scale, earning both envy and condemnation beyond India’s borders. washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/… In rare and extensive interviews, BJP staffers said the party quietly collaborates with content creators who run "third-party" or "troll" pages that create incendiary posts designed to go viral on WhatsApp and fire up the party's base. washingtonpost.com/world/2023/09/…

To live in Texas is to live surrounded by guns.

Each morning, people strap guns inside suits, boots, bras and bellyband holsters that render them invisible. They stash firearms in purses and tool boxes and even take guns to protests at the state Capitol. wapo.st/3tfaJxH Neighbors tuck guns into bedside tables, cars and trucks. They take guns fishing, to church, the park, the pool and the gym. The convention center even hosts gun shows where shoppers peruse AR-15’s and high-capacity magazines outlawed in other states.

Texans have purchased about 5.8 million firearms since 2020, more than any other state, according to a Washington Post estimate based on federal background checks.

The food, beverage and dietary supplement industries are paying dozens of registered dietitians that collectively have millions of social media followers to help sell products and deliver industry-friendly messages on Instagram and TikTok, according to an analysis by The Washington Post and The Examination (@examinationnews).
As the World Health Organization raised questions this summer about the risks of a popular artificial sweetener, a new hashtag began spreading on the social media accounts of health professionals: #safetyofaspartame.

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Exclusive: On the morning of his arrest, Grigor Sargsyan was still fixing matches.

Sargsyan was negotiating with professional tennis players, who he had assiduously recruited over years. He needed them to throw a game, a set or even just a point so he and a global network of associates could place bets on the outcomes.

He would recruit more than 180 professional tennis players across five continents to throw their matches so he could bet on the results.
As gambling on tennis exploded into a $50 billion industry, Sargsyan, 33, had infiltrated the sport, paying pros more to lose matches, or parts of matches, than they could make by winning tournaments.

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The hills above Lahaina’s historic downtown have been surrounded by nonnative grasses for more than a century.

Then on Aug. 8, power lines fell near one of these flammable fields, whipping fire down the hills, in a sequence of events that would lead to one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history.
A Washington Post investigation found that the fire began on a fallow, unmanaged plot of land on a hill north of downtown, and the geographic spread and density of the nonnative grasses were key elements to creating a fast-moving, uncontrollable fire. wapo.st/45RABxV

Only a few months into a new finance job, Sarah Feinberg felt stunned when a senior manager with a Northern Virginia-based defense contractor called federal auditors “too stupid” to notice overcharging, according to a federal complaint she filed.

Feinberg said she had warned the manager that the company, Booz Allen Hamilton, was losing tens of millions of dollars and, in her view, billing more than it should on U.S. government contracts to cover the losses. During the ensuing nine months, Feinberg repeatedly raised concerns with senior executives, including internal compliance officials and the chief financial officer. wapo.st/3YUR9Tg

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas reported three 2022 trips on a private jet of a Texas billionaire in a financial disclosure form, and for the first time detailed the businessman’s purchase of three properties from the justice’s family years earlier. wapo.st/3Ep4mu0 In his required annual financial report, Thomas said he opted to fly on the private plane of his friend and benefactor, Harlan Crow, for one of the trips on the advice of his security detail. wapo.st/3Ep4mu0

For decades, Michael Farris — a conservative Christian lawyer who is the most influential leader of the modern home-schooling movement — had toiled at the margins of American politics.

Now, speaking on a confidential call to a secretive group of Christian millionaires, Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. It was time to “take down the education system as we know it today,” in the words of one member.
His solution: lawsuits alleging schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate parents’ right to claim to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.
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The dark imagery invoked by Donald Trump during his brief visit to the nation’s capital last week renewed the stereotype of collapsing American cities as a means of calling for his federal indictment to be moved out of the District. wapo.st/47jYyPQ Trump rarely ventured out into the District during his time as president and he did not attempt to win the hearts and minds of D.C.’s overwhelmingly Democratic voters. He received less than 5.5 percent of D.C.’s popular vote in 2020, and 4 percent in 2016. wapo.st/47jYyPQ