Nobody told Yaneli Ortiz’s family that the factory they lived near emitted ethylene oxide. Not when the EPA found it causes cancer. Not when she was diagnosed with leukemia. And not when Texas moved to allow polluters to emit more of the chemical.
Investigations
The Texas Tribune’s investigative journalism dives deep into the policy and political decisions that matter most to Texans. Read the latest — and most ambitious — work from our newsroom and the investigative team we share with ProPublica.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
Generators can cause deadly carbon monoxide poisoning. But the industry resists rules to make them safer.
Portable generators are among the deadliest consumer products. Two decades after the government identified the danger, and as climate change leads to more power outages, people are left vulnerable by a system that lets the industry regulate itself.
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Operation Lone Star
Hundreds of migrants accused of trespassing languish in Texas prisons. A county judge’s new approach might prolong their detention.
Despite a surge of arrests under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative, a Kinney County judge removed three judges who have been helping him hear the cases. The judges had been letting some of the migrants out after months in prison, and defense attorneys say the action is retaliatory.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
Trump won Hood County in a landslide. His supporters still hounded the elections administrator until she resigned.
Michele Carew, an elections administrator with 14 years of experience, has resigned after a monthslong campaign by Trump loyalists to oust her. “I’m leaving on my own accord,” she said.
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Investigations
Texas has raised $54 million in private donations for its border wall plan. Almost all of it came from this one billionaire.
Timothy Mellon is the Wyoming-based grandson of banking tycoon Andrew Mellon. He is responsible for nearly 98% of the donations to Texas’ border wall fund.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
“God’s will is being thwarted.” Even in solid Republican counties, hard-liners seek more partisan control of elections.
The political battle in one Texas county where Trump got 81% of the vote offers a rare view into the virulent distrust and unyielding pressure facing elections administrators.
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Redistricting Texas
Texas appears to be paying a secretive Republican political operative $120,000 annually to work behind the scenes on redistricting
Adam Foltz, now on the Texas payroll, played a key role in Wisconsin’s redistricting last decade. A federal court threw out some of the maps and called the effort Foltz was involved in “an all but shameful attempt to hide the redistricting process from public scrutiny.”
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Operation Lone Star
Migrants arrested by Texas in border crackdown are being imprisoned for weeks without legal help or formal charges
Defense attorneys have started asking courts to set migrants free because local justice systems, overwhelmed by arrests under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push, are routinely violating state law and constitutional due process rights.
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Operation Lone Star
Thanks to local politics and a railroad, rural Kinney County accounts for most of Texas’ migrant arrests
Under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push, Texas state police have arrested hundreds of migrants in the conservative county, usually after spotting them on cargo trains or walking remote ranch lands. Sent to a state prison retooled as an immigration jail, many men were left without lawyers for weeks.
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Investigations
UT-Austin working with Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, conservative donors to create “limited government” think tank
Proposals obtained by The Texas Tribune indicate the institute would be “dedicated to the study and teaching of individual liberty, limited government, private enterprise and free markets.”