Ethan Corey

“We Want to Save This Investment”: Advocates Race to Secure Maternal Health Funding Before It Runs Out Over the last five years, nearly $90 million has gone to state committees that review maternal deaths and identify their causes. Advocates say cuts to the program would be “devastating.”

Federal funding for a program that helps states investigate pregnant and post partum deaths runs out next month. The president’s budget proposal cut the program, too.

My latest:

www.propublica.org/article/mate...

How We Analyzed the Justice Department’s Death in Custody Data A rare look into data collected under the Death in Custody Reporting Act revealed serious problems.

Still, there's been at least some progress towards transparency. FOIA suits from @usatoday.com and @theappeal.org have pushed the DOJ to start releasing some of the data it collects to the public (in addition to what they accidentally leaked, lmao). www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/07/d...

How the Federal Government Lost Track of Deaths in Custody The Department of Justice is leaving researchers, policymakers, and advocates in the dark about deaths in police custody, prisons, and jails.

I wrote a similar story _more than five years ago_, and it's disheartening to read how little has changed since then. theappeal.org/police-priso...

Why Doesn’t the U.S. Government Know How Many People Die in Custody? Under the Death in Custody Reporting Act, the government is supposed to track how many people die in law enforcement custody — but the data is a mess.

Great update from @themarshallproject.org on why the federal government _still_ doesn't know how many people die in prisons and jails each year. www.themarshallproject.org/2025/08/07/d...

Begging journalists and media to publish more explainers like this. They’re not sexy or prestigious but audiences need, like, and, yes, even share them bc they’re a window into an otherwise opaque and confusing world that’s easy to caricature as the deep state

Graph showing that jails working with ICE led to the early expansion of arrests in 2025.

An alarming share of ICE arrests rely on collaborations with local law enforcement.

Since January, 45% of all ICE arrests were transfers from local jails:

California police misconduct records now available in public database A database of 1.5 million pages of records from 12,000 California officer-misconduct and use-of-force cases is now available online.

“The public can now search internal affairs documents and other police-misconduct records from nearly 700 California law enforcement agencies through a database created by UC Berkeley and Stanford University.”

National Guard member admits giving inmates drugs, phones A New York National Guard member has been arrested on charges of selling contraband to state prison inmates at Collins Correctional Facility in Erie County.

Two Nat'l Guard members, brought in during the NY prison guards' strike, have been arrested after selling drugs, phones, and "possibly razor blades" to incarcerated people, per @timesunion.com. Roughly 3k guard members remain stationed in NY prisons www.timesunion.com/capitol/arti...

Statement here: cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

"CPB informed its employees today that the majority of staff positions will conclude with the close of the fiscal year on September 30, 2025. A small transition team will remain through January 2026..."

Power users can even subscribe to search results from search engines or other websites, making RSS a powerful tool for research. Have you ever wondered how I keep up with cryptocurrency news? Besides the crypto publications in my RSS reader, I have feeds for Google searches like (cryptocurrency OR NFT) (theft OR hack OR scam) and CourtListener searches on crypto-related keywords for newly filed cases. CourtListener provides a feed for every docket, so I have a folder in my RSS reader for ongoing court cases I’m tracking.

since i was writing for a general audience i only tucked in a short paragraph about using RSS as a journalist or researcher, but i genuinely have no idea how anyone functions without it.

‘Britain’s most tattooed man’ claims he is unable to watch p*rn as 'new age check system mistakes his ink for a mask' | Need To Know Britain’s most tattooed man says new UK age checks block him from p*rn sites as facial recognition mistakes his tattoos for a mask, calling the tech discriminatory.

‘Britain’s most tattooed man’ claims he is unable to watch porn as ‘new age check system mistakes his ink for a mask’

https://needtoknow.co.uk/2025/07/30/britains-most-tattooed-man-claims-he-is-unable-to-watch-prn-as-new-age-check-system-mistakes-his-ink-for-a-mask/

Staff failed to prevent sexual activity at youth detention center, watchdog finds The report also criticized the agency for mismanaging an evacuation during a flood risk and rising assaults on staff.

Staff failed to prevent sexual activity at youth detention center, watchdog finds

New Eric Adams ‘Donors’ Say They Never Gave to His Reelection Campaign An investigation by THE CITY uncovered Adams donors who insist they didn't donate, a donor who paid with a credit card linked to their employer and donors who don't live where they claimed to.

The feds may have dropped their case, but investigative journalism never sleeps. Blockbuster new reporting from @gregbsmithnyc.bsky.social and @haidee.bsky.social

Remember this -- lawyers at Butler Snow, representing the Alabama prison system, used AI to hallucinate citations?

Yesterday, new sanctions order dropped.

Congrats, Adam!!

This project, which I first began reporting more than three years ago, couldn't have come together without my editors @jerryiannelli.bsky.social and @ethanscorey.bsky.social and the unwavering support of @hughryan.bsky.social, who helped me focus and solidify my ideas throughout the entire process.

Feds Criminalize Aiding Protests Against ICE The Trump administration is targeting nonviolent acts like identifying masked agents and aiding LA’s anti-ICE protests.

Feds Criminalize Aiding Protests Against ICE

Crucial reporting by @akelalacy.bsky.social

theintercept.com/2025/07/23/f...

The Trace analyzed fatal shootings in Chicago between 2010 and 2024, and learned that of the 2,700 cases police declared closed, almost a quarter were cleared because prosecutors declined to file charges — not because an investigation was resolved. Read more: thetr.ac/jBOQX

The language of the Declaration of Independence is equally conclusive: It begins by declaring “that when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” It then proceeds to say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among them is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The general words above quoted would seem to embrace the whole human family, and if they were used in a similar instrument at this day would be so understood. But it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved African race were not intended to be included, and formed no part of the people who framed and adopted this declaration; for if the language, as understood in that day, would embrace them, the conduct of the distinguished men who framed the Declaration of Independence would have been utterly and flagrantly inconsistent with the principles they asserted; and instead of the sympathy of mankind, to which they so confidently appealed, they would have deserved and received universal rebuke and reprobation.

here's taney, explaining why the declaration could not have possibly been inclusive of black americans.

Why the First (and Only) VFW Post Inside a Prison Was Shut Down I wanted to highlight a military veterans service organization new to my prison. Then it got shut down.

The decision to shutter a Veterans of Foreign Wars post at a Colorado prison came after a Youtuber blasted an article written by an incarceration-impacted veteran/writer.

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein was accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls. Prosecutors, including future Trump labor secretary Alexander Acosta, cut Epstein an extraordinary...

You can read all the retrospectives about Epstein running now. But to really understand the case, go right to the @jkbjournalist.bsky.social series in the @miamiherald.com that ran 7 years ago (and for completely inexplicable reasons, never won a Pulitzer).

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/a...

Sanctuary policies provide that local jails will not *voluntarily* hand people over to ICE. The response local governments always gave was "ICE can always get a warrant."

So now, when ICE identifies a person who could be criminally charged for illegal reentry — they get a warrant.

These Substack Kids Wouldn't Last One Shift in the Blog Mines An unintended side effect of digital media's demise is that no one knows how to write anymore.

Loved this ode to the blog mines and the advice therein www.discourseblog.com/p/these-subs...

If you thought legalizing marijuana for medical and recreational use would make it safer and free of contaminants, think again. Labs cheat and cheating labs get more business, @undark.org reports. The answer is more state-run labs.
By @teresacarr.bsky.social
Data viz by @aleszu.bsky.social

Quaker Bridge Mall in Lawrenceville, NJ! The parking lot is like 50% empty, 50% storage space for Cybertrucks. Most of the inside is empty too, except during October, when Spirit Halloween takes over the old Sears space.

Spokane ICE protesters arrested by federal agents Federal agents on Tuesday morning arrested and searched the homes of multiple people who took part in a June 11 mass protest against immigration enforcement in Spokane.

The former city council president, Ben Stuckart, was charged with conspiracy, as were all but two of the other named defendants. (Hatfield and Silva also were charged with assault).

Excellent coverage at The Spokesman-Review, but it didn't have the document: www.spokesman.com/stories/2025...

ICE Lawyers Are Hiding Their Names in Immigration Court ICE attorneys fighting to deport immigrants are able to obscure their identities — no masks required.

In @theintercept.com, Debbie Nathan reports on ICE lawyers refusing to give their names in court - and immigration judges going along with it.

theintercept.com/2025/07/15/i...

This is false... You can see on the screen that the vote is on H. Res. 580, which has nothing to do with the Epstein files. The text isn't online yet, but you can hear the House clerk read it here: live.house.gov (timestamp is roughly -02:15 as of now).

The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation efforts.

NEW: “If this program is implemented in its current form, it’s extremely likely that incorrect addresses will be given to DHS and individuals will be wrongly targeted,” one IRS engineer told @propublica.org

ICE declares millions of undocumented immigrants ineligible for bond hearings A memo from ICE’s acting director instructs officers to hold immigrants who entered the country illegally “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.

Exclusive: The Trump administration has declared that immigrants who arrived in the United States illegally are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court, according to documents reviewed by The Post.