EXCLUSIVE If anyone had told Joey Giminiani what was under his house, he never would’ve bought it. On April 23, Giminiani took off work at the electric utility and joined a Zoom meeting from the home he had sunk his life savings into. He watched as the residential developers on the call insisted on two […]
Category: Investigations
Posted inInvestigations
We Analyzed 300 Texas Accounts on a White Supremacist Dating Site. The Data Explains a Lot About Politics Right Now.
EXCLUSIVE At least 30% of adults turn to dating websites to find love these days. The largest platforms — like Match, Bumble, and Hinge — cater to a general audience. Others, like ChristianMingle and JDate, cater to specific ones. Then, there’s White Date. “Ive never joined a dating site before, so I dont know what […]
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Whistleblower Says Radioactive Fracking Waste Site Melted His Jaw. Now There’s an Elementary School There.
EXCLUSIVE Sure, Lee Oldham told me, he had spread radioactive fracking waste on Texas farmland. But in his defense, he never in a million years thought anyone would put a school there. We were standing in the frigid wind on a field in Johnson County. It was January, and 52-year-old Oldham wore a heavy flannel […]
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‘Communities Ripped Apart’: On Texas College Campuses, LGBTQ+ Services Have Been Completely Decimated
EXCLUSIVE Dante Stetson recalled getting his first chest binder at the Pride Closet at the University of North Texas in Denton in 2023. He was 18, and it was his freshman year on campus. “My family isn’t supportive of people with transgender identities, and I’ve never been able to buy one and store it at […]
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RAICES Raised Millions to Protect Minors from Deportation. Then It Dropped Them ‘Like It Was Nothing,’ Ex Staffers Claim.
EXCLUSIVE Yamirla Chavez’s last two months at the Refugee & Immigrant Center for Education & Legal Services, or RAICES, are a blur to her now. She’d been a senior staff attorney for the nonprofit organization’s Unaccompanied Children’s Program, fighting in court on behalf of children who fled violence and poverty in other countries to start […]
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Where Did Anti-Trans Laws Start? How a Forgotten Houston Ordinance Turned Into a Massive, Nationwide Culture War
This story is a collaboration between The Barbed Wire and the Investigative Reporting Workshop— a nonprofit newsroom at American University that trains student journalists on in-depth reporting. When she was elected mayor of Houston in 2009, Annise Parker became the first openly gay mayor of a major American city. In 2014, Houston was one of […]
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‘In Amarillo, Black Women Die:’ The Unresolved Murder of Felita Bailey
Felita Bailey let the shower melt away the sweat and grease from her long shift on the packing line at Tyson Foods. The beef plant could be an assault on the senses. Cows are slaughtered in-house, then processed, pre-cooked, and packaged before being loaded onto trucks. She was lucky to get a job at the […]
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Houston’s Top Horn Musician Allegedly Harassed Rice Students for Decades. And the School Knew.
EXCLUSIVE This story has been published in collaboration with the editorially independent student newspaper The Rice Thresher, where the author Riya Misra is editor in chief. This story contains descriptions of sexual trauma that may be triggering to some readers. Visit RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network), which has a 24/7 hotline and helpful […]
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Who Owns the Dead? Inside a Texas Family’s Fight to Honor Its Ancestors
EXCLUSIVE For most of her life, Lulu Francois believed her family history was a mystery lost to time. That changed when, during a Christmas gathering seven years ago, an aunt revealed she sometimes visited a small, unkempt cemetery in Comal County. There, migrants of Mexican descent are buried on a German ranch — including Francois’ […]