Laurels and Darts

Powerful reporting from The Intercept on Lebanon, ghoulishness from Forbes, and the Miami Herald reveals the harms of gambling addiction.

Reporters and content creators team up in the name of accountability. Plus: A wild tale of misrepresentation out west; following the money in Pennsylvania.

Impactful reporting from the San Antonio Express-News; Fargo columnists fed to the wood chipper; profiling the Big Beautiful Bill’s ugliness.

Examining “crisis pregnancy” centers in rural parts of Texas that lack maternal care. Plus: Bad AI practice and CNN’s good reporting from the West Bank.

SFGate’s national parks bureau makes waves. Plus: AI slop on slop at Vanity Fair, and holding Grammarly’s CEO accountable.

Noah Shachtman lands at the Times, somehow. Plus: A strong start for a Substack looking westward, and a Banner week in Baltimore.

Plus, why we should let Trump go to voicemail, and great work from Charleston’s Post and Courier.

Devastation in Iran. Plus: The death of a refugee in Buffalo, and the military’s “simmering white Christian nationalism.”

A profile of El Mencho. Plus: An incredibly long State of the Union that no one will remember; history repeats, nastily, in Georgia.

Ann Curry reports from Sudan. Plus: Second-person scenarios, and AI mayhem.

A tool for parsing the Epstein dumps. Plus: Papers clash in the Deep South; a decades-long Florida waitlist.

Plus: Silence from the White House press corps, a weird AI gimmick, and a brilliant zine.

Courageous reporting from Minnesota and Iran. Plus: tone-deafness at the Tribune; spit hoods in Seattle.

Plus: silent Bezos, post-fire future, and an investigation in Texas.

Vital footage in Minneapolis. Plus, shopworn “new ideas” at CBS; mixed messages for American Samoans; and they shoot horses (up), don’t they?