Mastodawn

Michael Squires Feb 23, 2024

Money set aside to clean up the nation’s #oil and #gas wells covers less than 2% of the projected cost. The remainder that tab? $151.3 billion, which without swift action could fall to taxpayers. These wells are leaking nasty and dangerous stuff, which our reporters measured with special equipment. They found explosive levels of methane and toxic levels hydrogen sulfide.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-rising-cost-of-the-oil-industrys-slow-death

The Rising Cost of the Oil Industry’s Slow Death

Unplugged oil and gas wells accelerate climate change, threaten public health and risk hitting taxpayers’ pocketbooks. ProPublica and Capital & Main found that the money set aside to fix the problem falls woefully short of the impending cost.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Jan 27, 2024

ProPublica's Repatriation Project revealed that museums, including the American Museum of Natural History, avoided for decades consulting with tribes about their collections and displays. AMNH took a big step today toward doing that.

https://www.propublica.org/article/american-museum-natural-history-to-close-native-american-exhibits

The American Museum of Natural History to Close Exhibits Displaying Native American Belongings

The change is in response to new federal regulations that went into effect this month following reporting by ProPublica on institutional failures to return Native American remains and sacred objects to tribes.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Dec 15, 2023

“When our students are in old and run-down buildings, it signals to them that what they do in school is of little value. It makes school less enjoyable, harder to focus.” No state spends less per student maintaining schools than Idaho. ProPublica and the Statesman show what kids and educators have to deal with.

https://www.propublica.org/article/idaho-students-educators-show-us-effects-of-underfunded-schools

Falling Apart

Students and Educators in Idaho Show Us What It’s Like When a State Fails to Fund School Repairs

ProPublica

Show thread

Michael Squires Nov 9, 2023

Why is it like this? The policies of western expansion, business/land consolidation and racism.

Read the fascinating history of the Imperial Valley that is influencing the future of the West.

https://www.propublica.org/article/california-farm-families-gained-control-colorado-river

The Historic Claims That Put a Few California Farming Families First in Line for Colorado River Water

Twenty families in the Imperial Valley received a whopping 386.5 billion gallons of the river’s water last year — more than three Western states. Century-old water rights guarantee that supply.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Nov 9, 2023

The West is running out of water!

Also the West: 20 extended families get as much water as entire cities and states.

Why the West’s water crisis is as much about distribution as it is about drought and growth.

https://projects.propublica.org/california-farmers-colorado-river/

The 20 Farming Families Who Use More Water From the Colorado River Than Some Western States

Tens of millions of people — and millions of acres of farmland — rely on the Colorado River’s water. But as its supply shrinks, these farmers get more water from the river than entire states.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Oct 20, 2023

“After the mass killing at Wounded Knee, the American Museum of Natural History received children’s toys taken from the site. A 1990 law was meant to “expeditiously return” such items to Native Americans, but descendants are still waiting.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/wounded-knee-american-museum-natural-history

A Prominent Museum Obtained Items From a Massacre of Native Americans in 1895. The Survivors’ Descendants Want Them Back.

After the mass killing at Wounded Knee, the American Museum of Natural History received children’s toys taken from the site. A 1990 law was meant to “expeditiously return” such items to Native Americans, but descendants are still waiting.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Oct 16, 2023

Colorado has pioneered intervening — a way for aspiring adopters to have more of a say in whether the birth family should be reunified. With an intervenor, the chance that the birth parents’ rights will be terminated surges from 17% to 43%.
Eli Hager for @propublica and The New Yorker.
https://www.propublica.org/article/foster-care-intervention-adoption-colorado

When Foster Parents Don’t Want to Give Back the Baby

In many states, adoption lawyers are pushing a new legal strategy that forces biological parents to compete for custody of their children.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Aug 20, 2023

“How could so many adults in the child’s life believe he was being abused and report those concerns to authorities while others who saw the same reports came away believing it wasn’t possible?”
Hannah Dreyfus follows an 8-year #Colorado custody case that exposes flaws in the system.

https://www.propublica.org/article/both-parents-agree-child-is-being-harmed-who-will-courts-believe

Both Parents Agree: The Child Is Being Harmed. Which One Will the Court Believe?

As a contentious custody dispute drags on for years, both sides agree on one thing: The child at the center of it is being abused. Is his mother or father to blame?

ProPublica

Show thread

Michael Squires Aug 9, 2023

If you’re unfamiliar with the work, it’s here:

https://www.propublica.org/series/the-repatriation-project

The Repatriation Project

America’s institutions hold human remains and sacred items taken from the graves of tens of thousands of Native Americans. A federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, was meant to help return them, but decades after its 1990 passage, many tribes are still waiting.

ProPublica

Michael Squires Aug 9, 2023

“Even after ProPublica has published multiple stories on repatriation over the past eight months, it is still unsettling to ponder the sheer scale at which museums stored away the bodies of so many Indigenous ancestors. Six thousand at Harvard University. Nine thousand at the University of California, Berkeley. “
Mary Hudetz on her experience reporting on @ProPublica’s Repatriation Project.
https://www.propublica.org/article/what-its-like-to-report-on-repatriation

We Carry the Burden of Repatriating Our Ancestors. Here’s What It’s Like to Report on the Process as an Indigenous Journalist.

Mary Hudetz describes the financial cost and emotional distress that tribal communities face as they continue to wait for the return of the remains of their ancestors, thousands of which are held in museums across the country.

ProPublica