Lizzie Walsh

Lead in the Water: More Than a Third of Test Kits Submitted in Last Decade Show Some Contamination Thousands of lead pipes still serve individual buildings, as a city program offering free replacements falls short of its goals.

My story here!

www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/25/l...

All eyes on lead! 💧

It’s been very rewarding to see my lead story, published Monday in THE CITY, prompt similar investigations (with very similar interactive maps!) across the nation.

Outlets in Syracuse, Cleveland, Duluth, and other cities have also released pieces following my story.

Lead in Your Water? A New Yorker’s Guide to How to Test and Lower Your Risk Thousands of NYC homes still get water through lead pipes. Here's how to check your service line, test your tap and take simple steps to reduce exposure.

Plus: A guide, also by @ekwalsh.bsky.social, on what you can do to minimize exposure to lead in drinking water.

Lead in the Water: More Than a Third of Test Kits Submitted in Last Decade Show Some Contamination Thousands of lead pipes still serve individual buildings, as a city program offering free replacements falls short of its goals.

NYC is going to be extremely hard-pressed to get property owners to replace more than 100K lead service lines connecting the city water system to homes. @ekwalsh.bsky.social reports on evidence that the toxin is widely leaching into drinking water.

LISTEN: A Pipe Dream and ‘A Key to Everything’

this is an amazing episode of @thecity.nyc's FAQ NYC podcast.

kudos to @ekwalsh.bsky.social and Harry for hosting such a captivating conversation.

Stanley Greenberg's book sounds fascinating and I got to make a plan to meet this fellow #bikenyc personality!

www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/23/a...

Board of Elections Certified Dead People’s Votes, Says It Had No Choice Just 16 votes gave a Brooklyn Council primary win to MAGA candidate George Sarantopolous over Brooklyn GOP chair Richie Barsamian, even as evidence of fraudulent ballots mounts.

The Board of Elections “had no choice but to count the ballots cast in the names of multiple dead people and at least one living person who did not vote.”
🗳️ 🤡
Politics Is Absurd, Chapter DCCCXVI
🤡 🗳️
Quite a tale here from @ekwalsh.bsky.social in @thecity.nyc
www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/30/b...

Board of Elections Certified Dead People’s Votes, Says It Had No Choice Just 16 votes gave a Brooklyn Council primary win to MAGA candidate George Sarantopolous over Brooklyn GOP chair Richie Barsamian, even as evidence of fraudulent ballots mounts.

Strange things are afoot following the (very) narrow victory of the MAGA candidate in the Republican city council primary for Bay Ridge. @ekwalsh.bsky.social has been reporting the story, which isn't getting any less weird.

Live updates: Tsunami strikes Japan and Russia after an 8.8-magnitude earthquake, warnings issued for Hawaii, Alaska, California A tsunami has hit coastal areas of Russia’s Kuril Islands and Japan’s large northern island of Hokkaido after a powerful, 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Russia.

The strongest quake in over a decade
apnews.com/live/japan-e...

Brooklyn Ballot Fraud Probe Unfolds as Council Race Hangs on 32 Votes Kings County GOP chair Richie Barsamian, who appoints Board of Election staff, trails in a tight race now under probe by the Brooklyn DA.

The Brooklyn District Attorney's office is investigating preliminary evidence of fraud in a tight City Council race that's set to be certified tomorrow. This is a developing story.

www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/28/b...

Screenshot of CUNY interactive map of NYC 2025 mayoral primary ranked choice vote transfers. https://www.urbanresearchmaps.org/nycrcv2025/

Some NYC RCV 2025 mayoral primary map updates from @thegraduatecenter.bsky.social. We've published our interactive map of round-by-round (non-batch-eliminated) vote patterns at www.urbanresearchmaps.org/nycrcv2025/ For each election district we display a vote transfer diagram for all candidates. (🧵)

are you a trans or nonbinary new yorker who has considered, successfully applied for or been denied from changing your gender marker on your passport?

we’re reporting on this and would love to hear from / talk to you about the process. reply here and / or DM, and thank you!

Follow @thecity.nyc. We relentlessly investigate people in power & when we have the goods on them, whatever their political position, we hit publish.

What we don't do: Publish crap.

The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine Selected as U.S. Site for Neuralink Clinical Trial - InventUM The study aims to enable paralyzed patients to use their own thoughts to control external devices through a brain-computer interface.

Finally:
Ochobee detention center, AKA "Alligator Alcatraz", is an hour and 25 minute drive from the University of Miami's Neuralink testing center.

Based on current FDA timelines, getting Neuralink approved in time for H.R. 1 2028 funding seems unlikely. But federal pressure, influenced by private sector tech companies close to the administration, may fast-track these approvals in a weakened regulatory system.

Neuralink was approved for IDE human testing in 2023. The now-decimated FDA will need to see efficacy data in hundreds to thousands of humans to approve its use nationally. H.R. 1 cut FDA funding by $271 million, meaningfully impacting its regulatory oversight abilities.

R.F.K. wants all Americans to wear digital health tech by 2029. H.R. 1 bill provisions will fund digital tech in rural areas to the tune of $10 billion in 2028, with $18 billion more over the next 4 years. Neuralink and Palantir will likely be key players in this space.

This shutdown will make way for the projections R.F.K. set forth in a speech on Tuesday—equipping Americans with digital health technologies in lieu of actual healthcare—funded by the H.R. 1 bill. The bill allocates $28 billion in funding for this vague objective. But we can connect the dots.

Historically operating on shoestring CMS reimbursement, the data on past RHC closures is already scarce.

As the influx of newly-uninsured Americans flood these clinics, they will be forced to shut down.

Pandemic aid revived rural health care clinics. Losing it imperils access. Trump administration's cuts to pandemic funding is hitting rural health care clinics and imperiling services like transportation for patients who live far away. Here's more on what rural clinics face ...

In an interview with Sarah Hohman, Director of Gov't Affairs at organization advocating for rural health centers in Washington, Hohman says "So much of my job is explaining to decision-makers in Washington what rural health clinics are. And the data just isn't there."

4 of the 5 key policy models used to estimate H.R. 1 impacts—Manatt, CBO, HIPSM, and KFF—exclude RHC data, effectively ignoring 62% of rural Americans in their analyses.

13.9 Million rural Americans, insured and uninsured, receive their healthcare from Rural Health Centers, clinics that historically have not and cannot participate in detailed operational or patient data reports.
Here's why the H.R.1 bill and legacy media have undercounted the impacts it will have:

Here's a longer video of Brad Lander's detention just now inside 26 Federal Plaza as he tried to walk a man out of immigration court, by masked federal agents.

This is a good moment to recognize @thecity.nyc, a nonprofit newsroom that covers stuff that other organizations (even really large ones that are based in New York City) often miss
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/n...