Deep in the foothills, miles above California’s Sacramento Valley, the 640-acre home of the Cortina Band of Wintun Indians lies empty except for six houses,…
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Officials in one of the nation’s fastest growing counties defeated a plan to purchase nearly 100 acres of land, at a cost of more than…
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Stand-up comedian Tim Slagle was on a roll. In a lunchtime routine tailored to 400 conference attendees, Slagle was killing ‘em with jokes about, well,…
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On the night of September 30, 2004, few of the estimated 62.4 million viewers watching President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry square off…
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WASHINGTON, D.C., October 20, 2008 — A renegade network of Russian and Eastern European factories is behind at least $1 billion worth of contraband “Jin…
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WASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2008 — The Center for Public Integrity has added two new editors and three new senior journalists to its editorial team,…
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The latest media coverage of Center projects.
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The Center's podcast series, narrated by Bill Buzenberg, features our reporters and sources discussing investigations.
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Archive InvestigationsThe Center’s investigation of the pharmaceutical industry’s lobbying might and gifts of free travel for members of Congress — and its resulting political influence and impact on the American public.
The shaking in Jeffrey Tamraz’s right hand began in 2001. It was intermittent, so he paid it little mind. A six-foot, 260-pound bear of a man, he’d played football and thrown shot and discus in high school; later he got into competitive weightlifting, and worked up to bench-pressing 465 pounds — once, to win a bet, he flipped a Honda Civic on its side. He brought the same passion to his work. “I taught welding for six years,” he says. “I read books on welding. I loved to weld.”
Rusk County, Texas — A gentle twilight pink stretches across the sky, touching the waters of Martin Creek Lake. The still air, smelling only of East Texas pines, brings the faint sounds of wildlife in the surrounding woods. Smog and traffic seem much further away than the 145-mile drive to Dallas.
Here’s the report that top officials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention thought was too hot for the public to handle — and the story behind it.
The Center reveals that military contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan grew from $11 billion in 2004 to more than $25 billion in 2006 — and that billions have gone to unidentified foreign companies.
Washington State is tops in making it easy to track the private interests of public officials, and Vermont, Michigan, and Idaho tie for last in the Center’s national ranking. Check where your state ranks.
Post-9/11 U.S. foreign policy and military aid and assistance had a huge impact in nations around the world — and at home. This award-winning project includes 20 articles from four continents.
The Superfund isn’t so super anymore. A year-long investigation examined all 1,624 Superfund sites and found daunting toxic threats across the country 27 years after the Environmental Protection Agency program was launched.
At least 900 little-known federal advisory committees wield enormous influence over government policy, some to good ends — but many have become secretive, ideological, or packed with industry representatives.
A year-long investigation of President Bush’s initiative to fight AIDS abroad finds that conservative ideology hinders its real benefits by insisting on abstinence-only programs over promoting condom use.
This project offers a comprehensive examination of business and legislative influences on media — and includes the Media Tracker, a searchable online database of who owns the media serving any U.S. community.
200 trips to Paris? 150 to Hawaii? 140 to Italy? The Center’s investigation of how private interests gain access to members of Congress by funding supposedly educational or investigative travel.
Government contracts awarded for cleanup and reconstruction after Hurricane Katrina are collected in a searchable database, and the best coverage of what happened on the Gulf Coast is gathered and categorized.
An investigation into the state of federal lobbying identifies the top 100 lobbying companies and organizations — led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — as well as the top 250 lobbying firms.
The Center for Public Integrity is dedicated to producing original investigative journalism about significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable.
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There’s an early energy test coming for the new Congress. The question: Will lawmakers follow the lead of 29 states and the District of Columbia and commit the nation to drawing a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources like solar, wind, and geothermal energy?
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We already know that Obama’s transition staff is stacked with campaign donors and fundraisers. And despite the vaunted small-donor base developed by the Obama campaign, big-ticket bundlers are also beginning to filter into the emerging Obama administration, led by Gregory Craig and Valerie Jarrett.
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Iconic D.C. restaurant Ben's Chili Bowl is adding the Obama family to its very short list of customers that eat for free, The New York Times reported earlier this week. (Previously, the list was limited to Bill Cosby.) If PaperTrail were so lucky to be added to this exclusive list, we would take advantage of this offer as often as possible, so we certainly don’t want to be spoilsports. The president, though, is subject to federal regulations limiting the gifts he can receive. So just how many of Ben's famous chili half-smoke sausages can Obama eat without stepping over the ethical line?
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The idea of an “energy stimulus” is picking up momentum in the corridors of power, along with a fancy new title. Look for such a plan, perhaps going by the name of “green recovery” or even “green prosperity,” to be the first climate change initiative of the Obama administration and the newly bolstered Democratic leadership of the 111th Congress.
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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal name-checked the Center for Public Integrity when touting his gubernatorial accomplishments on MSNBC Tuesday, but he didn’t get our assessment of his state’s new ethics package quite right. And while we love the publicity, we feel compelled to set the record straight.
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Conventional wisdom had it that the current economic morass might temporarily sideline President-Elect Obama’s push to reform health care. But today brings news that a handful of influential Washington players might not be willing to wait.
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If the current returns hold up, then Alaskans will have reelected a newly convicted felon to the U.S. Senate; Senator Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in that august body, currently leads his opponent by about 3,000 votes. His victory comes less than two weeks after he was convicted on seven counts of corruption. Unlike the chattering classes, what surprises PaperTrail is not Stevens’s victory, but that he will be the first convicted felon to be elected – or reelected – to the U.S. Senate. Apparently, in even the darkest corners of our history books, we have so far managed to avoid this eventuality.
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The European Parliament’s environment committee voted last week in favor of new pesticide regulations that make America’s laws look a little, well, wimpy. The European package cracks down on chemicals that pose a risk to human health or the environment, setting strict guidelines that could result in bans on a large number of common agricultural products — up to 10 percent of insecticides, 10 percent of herbicides, and 32 percent of fungicides, according to estimates from the U.K.’s Pesticide Safety Directorate. The committee vote serves as a recommendation to the whole parliament, which will consider the proposal in January.
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