There are millions of youths playing soccer in the United States. So why is the men’s national team so terrible?

It’s not just at Guantánamo. In a supermax facility on US soil, inmates are force fed — and barred from sharing their stories. An inmate breaks his silence for the first time.

Since Trump took office, figuring out whom the US is killing and why has become nearly impossible.

DOI quietly rescinded two memos that provided guidance on protecting vulnerable communities.

But in southern Brooklyn, they may have swung an election.

Whether they get translation services at the polls could swing 20 congressional races.

How parents in Uganda lose their babies to adoptive families in America.

Proposals jeopardize safety precautions put in place after the Deepwater Horizon blowout.

How conservative activists have shut down nominee questions on abortion and LGBTQ rights.

The chemical industry strikes again, shifting from lead to flame retardants that also sicken and kill.

Deported parents may be forced to leave their children behind so they can seek asylum.

The National Right to Work Committee and its affiliates are now closer to that goal.

Governor McMaster intervened on behalf of Miracle Hill Ministries.

Food-service workers, housekeepers, and claims processors have lost their jobs under a new accountability law.

Trump’s BLM is rapidly opening previously off-limits areas to drilling.

A special investigation into the rise of Alliance Defending Freedom.

A little-known bureaucrat named James Cason is reshaping the Department of the Interior.

Leaked five-year plan reveals the priority of “energy dominance.”

Dozens of senior officials have been reassigned at the Department of the Interior.

If signed, the order would create wholesale exemptions for organizations who claim religious objections to same-sex marriage, abortion, and trans identity.

The only way to quickly deport 3 million immigrants is to first make them into criminals — and he’ll have the tools to do so on day one.

My weekend of gun training in the desert.

Thousands of arrestees a year are forced into get-out-of-jail-broke cards that are loaded up with deceptive fees.

The US government repeatedly ignored its own watchdogs as dozens of noncitizens died in its private prisons.

How the US let dozens of immigrants die in segregated, privatized prisons.

The freshman senator has gone beyond other candidates in tailoring a foreign-policy platform that appeals to moneyed hawks.

Nearly 3 million kids have a parent in prison. They’re fast losing the right to family visits.

The community’s stalled recovery is a man-made disaster.

When Indiana Gov. Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he claimed the law was “not about discrimination.” But employers there can fire workers for being gay or trans — and they do, all the time.

The Center for Medical Progress is led not by well-meaning bioethicists but by members of the anti-choice movement.

Twenty-one states, including Kansas, have refused to expand Medicaid, leaving millions of sick Americans without healthcare.

Medical centers for treating trauma are being shuttered in places that need them most.

In Wisconsin, a new bill is threatening to kill workers’ one day of rest.

A wave of lobbyists has arrived on Capitol Hill. But this time, they’re occupying top staff positions in the new Congress.

Tennessee is arresting women for using drugs while pregnant, even though many can’t access drug treatment.

Hiding in the shadow of the Kochs, wealthy fellow travelers aim to roll back labor and environmental regulations.

After drugs were found aboard the Ping May, a vessel owned by his wife’s family’s company, Colombian authorities are investigating.

Post–Citizens United, candidates aren’t supposed to coordinate with “outside” spending groups — but even that minimal restriction isn’t being enforced.

Families in this south Florida town point to two companies as the source of the contamination that caused their children’s disease.

In Philadelphia, education reformers got everything they wanted. Look where the city’s schools are now.

Venture capitalists and for-profit firms are salivating over the exploding $788.7 billion market in K-12 education.

As the Obama administration signals an effort to partner with the kingdom as its key ally against ISIS, the Saudi government adds GOP Super PAC Chair Norm Coleman to its payroll.

Talking heads are fanning fears of ISIS — but the public doesn’t know about their links to Pentagon contractors.

Neocon think tanks get millions from wealthy donors, which they use to game the system, buy influence — and push for regime change.

Taxpayer dollars are bankrolling conservative religious groups, including discredited HIV and pregnancy prevention programs.

Opponents of marijuana-law reform insist that legalization is dangerous — but the biggest threat is to their own bottom line.

The same right-wing operatives that led the attack on ACORN are now going after “alt labor.”

How a US government loan enabled an environmentally destructive project plagued by lethal landslide, police repression and civil unrest.

While trumpeting “pension reform,” Governor Chris Christie placed retiree assets in the hands of the hedge fund managers who bankrolled his political career.

Worker and consumer safety advocates are vastly outgunned by lobbyists for pesticide manufacturers.

On paper, influence peddling has declined. In reality, it has gone underground.

Life as a temp in California’s Inland Empire, the belly of the online shopping beast.

Recently filed tax returns shed light on some of the dark money that flooded the campaigns season.

Why are children working in American tobacco fields?

Under pressure, the Obama administration withdrew rules barring children from dangerous agricultural work — a decision with grave consequences.

How a criminal record prevents people like Luis Rivera from entering the formal workforce — thanks to one youthful mistake.

Academics get paid by financial firms to testify against Dodd-Frank regulations. But do they kiss and tell?

The buyers come from all over the globe, bearing cash and complicated pasts.

The former finance minister of a notoriously corrupt regime in Angola is living in high style.

A recounting of three horrific civilian massacres by coalition forces — and a probe of the inadequate safeguards put in place after the fact.

Coalition forces in Afghanistan pay compensation to civilian victims and their survivors — but keep no comprehensive records, and the US military denies all responsibility.

Despite rules of engagement to the contrary, targeting of military-age males pervades the entire chain of command — up to the Oval Office.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal put it best: “Because of civilian casualties, I think we have just about eroded our credibility here.”

If you want stats from the government, you better be prepared to pay.

Even among staunchly antiwar politicians and pundits, few bother to mention the cost of the war to civilians.

Up an unpaved Idaho road, self-styled “patriots” gather to plan and train in close quarters battle.

After Mexico City liberalized its abortion law, a fierce backlash followed. Is its striking resemblance to the US pro-life movement a coincidence?

Women who care for poor kids are often mothers living in poverty themselves.

Disclosures reveal that corporations and lobbying firms award six-figure bonuses to staff who leave to take powerful positions on Capitol Hill.

Battalions of regulatory lawyers burrowed deep in the federal bureaucracy to foil reform.

Media-savvy conservative nonprofits take aim and fire at progressive power bases in the states.

The NSA Four reveal how a toxic mix of cronyism and fraud blinded the agency in the lead-up to 9/11.

Corrections Corporation of America and Geo Group dominate the big business of immigrant detention. And they’ve made a lot of friends in Washington.

The foundation gives out $175 million a year — often to groups that support Walmart during contentious political disputes.

The man renowned as an anti-tax ideologue is actually a typical K Street operator.

Those who make decisions about Haiti’s recovery work in a Sapphire City of deluxe trailers, glistening toilets, and international cuisine. Few actual Haitians are welcome there.

How Mitt and Ann made millions — and Mitt’s hedge fund donors made billions — from the auto-industry rescue he condemned.

Investors in Tagg Romney’s firm, Solamere Capital, could hit the jackpot if his father wins the presidency.

Under the radar, the faux grassroots group Americans for Prosperity is pulling out all the stops to defeat Obama.

In his Bain years, the GOP nominee helped fashion Monsanto into a biotech giant. What would the notorious purveyor of genetically modified foods get from a Romney presidency?

The GOP veep candidate loves to rail against Obamacare. But in December 2010, he requested grant money for a health clinic in his Wisconsin district — a grant funded by Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

Never mind the Super PACs, post-Citizens United, it’s trade associations that are shoveling corporate cash into the November elections — and helping foreign money influence American politics.

The NRA’s dire warnings that the President is a threat to the Second Amendment are bogus — but extremely profitable. See sidebar on New York City gun laws here.

Seven years after Katrina, poor people in New Orleans who are accused of crimes are being denied counsel — and left to languish behind bars.

A DOJ probe into the mental health program at a medium security prison could put solitary confinement on trial.

One Georgia county bet its financial future on becoming a regional center for immigrant detention. But harsh immigration politics scared off the very workers farmers depend on for the harvest.

In the wake of the BP oil spill, will a new settlement be enough to heal the damage?

A US policy of criminalizing undocumented immigrants has led deportees to be jailed and ostracized once they’re returned.

Republicans are using the redistricting process to undermine minority voting power and ensure their party’s dominance.

In just two years, half of Mexican states passed extreme fetal-rights amendments — and women are serving time in jail for suspected abortions.

Impoverished by NAFTA, residents of Veracruz crossed the border to work in Smithfield’s Tar Heel slaughterhouse. Now they’re condemned as “illegals.”

Under the banner of high-tech progress, corporate lobbyists have rammed through legislation privatizing K-12 education across the country.

After Haiti’s earthquake, the Clinton Foundation promised hurricane shelters that would double as classrooms. But they delivered shoddy, formaldehyde-tainted trailers from the same company that supplied FEMA after Katrina.

How a small group of wealthy American Jews and Israeli politicians set out to create the next generation of Zionists.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is poised to launch on July 21. But banks, payday lenders, and the GOP have joined forces to try to gut it first.

Former agents say the Army’s attempt at accountability after Abu Ghraib was a whitewash.

Even after the Silsby affair, when ten American missionaries were arrested in Haiti for attempted child theft, the Christian adoption movement is unchastened.

It’s easy to fall down the payday lending rabbit hole. And the industry is adapting so quickly to new regulations, you just may never get out.

They were set up covertly by Bush — but the Obama administration has expanded them. Inside the secret prisons that ban virtually all contact with the outside world.

How Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Bloomberg LP helped fix the NBC-Comcast merger — and protect Bloomberg’s media empire.

After New York Times reporter David Rohde’s escape, Taliban factions turned on one another — and Pakistan’s ISI stepped in to arbitrate.

Camden, New Jersey, was once an industrial giant, employing tens of thousands in its shipyards and factories. Now it’s a poster child for postindustrial decay — and its streets are filled with the unemployed.

The myth of widespread voter fraud by liberals is commonplace among Republicans. Now evidence emerges of voter suppression efforts by Tea Partiers.

The Minutemen were the nation’s largest border vigilante group before financial scandals and criminal violence tore them apart. Now former leaders are bringing their anti-immigrant politics inside the Tea Party.

The “biggest loan modification in American history,” announced in October 2008, has done more to protect Bank of America than to compensate victims of predatory lending.

While he railed against “illegal aliens” and their “illegal employers,” undocumented immigrants tended to Lou Dobbs’ estates and prize horses.

In Texas, the combination of abstinence education and anti-abortion stigma is driving some women away from abortion clinics — to unsafe do-it-yourself chemical abortions at home. Is the post-Roe era already here?

Two independent eyewitnesses say Iranian forces crossed the border into Iraq to arrest the three Americans last July. Then a rogue officer took over custody.

The congressional report was sparked by an Investigative Fund/Nation magazine probe.

To make room for its ecotourism industry, Tanzania is forcing villagers off their land. And a $16,500-a-night “bush-chic” reserve owned by hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones is one of the beneficiaries.

With its deep pockets, the Templeton Foundation is rewriting the academic landscape by giving scientific legitimacy to religion. And the new chairman of the ‘nonpartisan’ group has strong ties to the far right.

A close look at the race gap in the census, which means large numbers of African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans aren’t counted when budgets and political districts are set.

The effort to keep fuel flowing for the American military has led to questionable alliances in Kyrgyzstan and allegations of corruption entangling the US government.

Chuck Luther is the latest victim of the military willfully misdiagnosing injured soldiers with a “pre-existing” personality disorder — and discharging them without the health benefits they desperately need.

As Washington dithers, sites long slated for clean up continue to threaten human health, coating homes and yards with poisonous dust and saturating the air near schools.

To Western consumers, carbon offsets sound good on paper — but the devil is in the details. On the ground, many of these enterprises are dubious at best.

A private memo from lobbying powerhouse Patton Boggs reveals that a Pentagon contractor currently under Congressional investigation has sought to influence U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

Defense contractors in Afghanistan use federal funds to pay off suspected insurgents not to attack US supply convoys. And this payola may be a major source of funds for the Taliban.

How the Gates Foundation’s war on sex trafficking in developing countries may harm the young victims it is designed to rescue. Part two of two.

The brazen killing of journalists in Russia and its former territories continues post-Putin, unabated, unpunished – and too often uninvestigated.

How the Gates Foundation’s “war” on child prostitution in developing countries may harm the young victims it is supposed to rescue. Part one of two.

How the Pentagon is asserting new control over US foreign policy with its own vast programs of foreign aid and “military operations other than war.”

The spread of highly questionable practices — including coercion of destitute pregnant women — in the anti-abortion movement’s “crisis counseling” centers.

The state of play of Iranian politics around this year’s much-disputed presidential election, which saw a massive popular opposition movement take to the streets.

Plans to resume uranium mining on Native American lands in New Mexico have sparked fears of renewed environmental destruction, illness and death – along with racial tensions.

The first major investigation of Iraq’s Special Operations Forces, the largest special forces outfit ever built by the United States, which functions with near total impunity.

Tent cities like the one in Sacramento aren’t just creatures of the current recession – but products of years of smaller government and social service cuts.

Plan Colombia, the US aid package aimed at fighting the drug trade, appears to have channeled funds to palm oil companies connected to bloody paramilitary commanders.

A Main Street fix depends on mortgage servicers, but Wright finds they are incentivized to foreclose on homes, rather than ever cut back on principal.

The planet’s future depends largely on the fate of China’s nascent wind sector—but the increase in renewable energy may not be large or fast enough.

A peek inside Project HERO, an ambitious “public-private partnership” at the Veterans Health Administration could threaten the agency’s ability to provide top-notch care.

The Tennessee Valley Authority appears to have manipulated science to downplay water contamination caused by a massive coal ash disaster.

Despite PR claims of a new commitment to sustainability, the biggest coal companies have spent only a fraction of their profits to reduce carbon emissions.

Hardship and trauma mark the lives of 2 million Iraqis — more than a sixth of the population — forced into exile since the American invasion in 2003.

A toxic Tennessee spill shows clean coal is an oxymoron: though technology can restrict atmospheric emissions, toxins simply get transferred into waste water and coal ash.

From Wal-Mart to Home Depot to the Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby has declared war on the Employee Free Choice Act — to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

In post-Katrina New Orleans, armed white residents, shouting racial epithets, opened fire on passersby, shooting at least eleven African Americans seeking refuge.

Did the New Orleans police play a role in the grisly death of Henry Glover? Eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence leads straight to NOPD personnel.

Victims of post-Katrina violence at the hands of white vigilantes describe their experiences in this video.

A look behind Roberto Bolaño’s last novel, 2666, and the author’s relationship to reporter Sergio González Rodríguez, who risked his life to uncover the Juarez murders.

A multiyear investigation into Operation Speedy Express uncovers a pattern of civilian slaughter by the US military during Vietnam whose carnage dwarfs My Lai.

A 1972 Newsweek article could have exposed US killing of Vietnamese civilians on a massive scale — but editors there excised much of the reporting, fearing to antagonize President Nixon.

Just months after the Keating Five scandal, John McCain hosted a family reunion at a Bermuda Navy base — on the taxpayer’s dime.

McCain’s tough talk on Russia belies his close ties with Russian oligarchs, including the role played by advisor Rick Davis in advancing Putin’s ambitions in Montenegro.

GOP loyalists have taken over the Justice Department and retooled the civil rights division as a political weapon.

Sarah Palin’s part in the conservative evangelical invasion of Wasilla, Alaska.

John McCain never misses an opportunity to tout his Vietnam POW credentials. Then why did he help suppress a real investigation into evidence of POWs left behind?

Drastic changes in immigration enforcement mean that undocumented immigrants who were once allowed to leave voluntarily are now being tried as criminals.

Conservation International attracted $6 million to protect marine life in Papua New Guinea. Instead, they secured little more than plush offices and first class travel.

The burden of proof rests on injured vets to show their wounds are “service-connected” before they can access benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

China’s peasants, the victims of land grabs for industrial development, have begun to fight back.

The mortgage industry’s predatory lending practices are not only destroying home ownership – they’re bankrupting black America.

McCain’s close ties with lobbyists and corporate interests give the lie to his image as a maverick campaign finance reformer.

The super rich fund think tanks and lobbyists to increase the distance between them and everyone else – while those at the bottom face the economic draft.

To get enough recruits to go fight in Iraq, the Department of Defense has lowered recruiting standards – and now it’s throwing money at the problem.

Inside the fierce – if hidden – struggle for sovereignty in Hawaii.

A paramedic for a defense contractor in Iraq was brutally gang raped by a US soldier and a KBR employee. Then KBR tried to silence her.

Obama has made his Christian faith clear and he’s been defended by AIPAC on Israel. But the media keeps repeating the right-wing smears against him.

Iran’s influence in Iraq is staggering, from the political leadership to the insurgency. But the US is looking the other way.

The Christian Right warns of a “demographic winter” in Europe – as immigrant birth rates outpace that of white Europeans.

Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions, claims process was manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Marines with PTSD tend to go untreated by the Corps, developing depression and substance abuse problems. When this leads to charges of misconduct, many end up jailed or discharged without badly needed benefits.

In a new gambit to further restrict women’s reproductive rights, pro-lifers invent “Post-Abortion Syndrome” for men.

The Bush administration implicated Iran for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina, but a deeper look at the evidence finds no persuasive link.

Expert witnesses in terrorism trials often have deep ideological biases and shallow resumes. Many are also getting lucrative contracts from the Pentagon.

The operatives behind the campaign that smeared John Kerry’s war service have deep pockets – and they’ve given to Republicans from Mike Huckabee to John McCain.

Ari Berman uncovers Rudy Giuliani’s million-dollar contract with one of Washington’s most powerful — and sinister — toxic energy lobbying firms.

Closing multibillion dollar tax loopholes for hedge funds is trickier than it should be — especially when Democrats like John Kerry get big donations from financial giants.

Former Alabama governor Don Siegelman was convicted of bribery and jailed after a politically motivated prosecution. How one whistleblower risked it all to reveal the truth.

When three of Sudan’s Lost Boys return home, they learn of the stymied peace process, and how conditions remain as difficult as ever.

Hillary Clinton’s ties to financier Alan Quasha, the controversial figure who bailed out George W. Bush’s failing oil company in the 1980s.

Evidence of more than a dozen cases of soldiers who passed the rigorous health screening given recruits — and yet were diagnosed, after serving in Iraq, with a pre-existing “personality disorder.”

Cheap beauty products are making Americans sick. How an epidemic is plaguing poorly paid workers at nail salons – while the FDA does nothing.

Congo’s tropical forests are the second largest on the planet, and they process staggering amounts of CO2. But the nation’s new political stability may put them at risk of deforestation.

Fifty military veterans speak on the record about attacks on Iraqi civilians

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vows to defend Americans against the privileged and powerful, but her ties to big business compromise her populist promises.

Though the U.S. Army in Iraq is training the Iraqi Police, many worry that the militiamen who infiltrate the police cadre will use their newfound knowledge to turn on the Americans or rival sects.

He took shrapnel to the head in Ramadi, Iraq. But instead of care, he got booted from the Army for an alleged pre-existing “personality disorder.”

Will the mammoth contractor be forced to pay the U.S. government $400 million because they violated military policy by hiring Blackwater to provide security for them rather than the military?

Christian mothers who believe in the “Quiverfull” movement — domestic warriors against 40 years of women’s liberation — aim to have more than six children, arrows in the quiver of God’s army.

The executive branch is systematically being replaced by a conservative cadre hired by the Bush administration for their political views, not their merits.

The organic food industry, which prides itself on a gentler approach to land and the people who work it, is little different in its shabby treatment of a low-paid immigrant workforce.

Shorrock reports that AT&T, Sprint, MCI and other telecommunications giants are cooperating with the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program.

The Kurds have almost no natural resources and suffer from a culture of corruption. But their call for autonomy is a serious threat to the building of a united Iraq.

Bush’s Special Presidential Envoy to Iraq, James Baker, has a classic conflict of interest: to reduce — and to maximize — the country’s debt burden.

You might think its naturally occurring, but there is no lead in gasoline unless somebody puts it there.

While there’s millions in the nursing home industry for investors, there’s only misery for the elderly who live in the homes.