The Breakdown

How politics and government really work, and why they don’t.

The Etan Patz Case

The disappearance of a 6-year-old New York boy has mystified and frustrated police for decades. The trial of his alleged killer ended with a hung jury, a dozen people who spent 18 days unsuccessfully trying to reach unanimity.

Tobacco Debt

A landmark 1998 settlement with Big Tobacco awarded states billions of dollars a year to offset the health-care costs of smoking. What seemed like a boon become a debt trap for many state and local governments when they used it to promise investors billions in the future in exchange for cash advances.

Red Cross

Reporting on the Red Cross

Unforgiven

The Transformation of Consumer Debt

Sex and Gender

ProPublica's Nina Martin reporting on American systems and institutions — from schools to hospitals to prisons — that fail or mistreat people on the basis of their gender or sexuality.

Restraints

Temp Land

Lost Wages, High Injury Rates, Few Benefits

The Prescribers

What Doctors Are Prescribing

The Drone War

The Syria Documents

A trove of internal government documents shows the regime of Bashar al-Assad trying to get cash and choppers from Russia.

Segregation Now

Investigating America’s racial divide in education, housing and beyond.

Presidential Pardons

White criminals seeking presidential pardons are nearly four times as likely to succeed as people of color, a ProPublica examination has found.

Redistricting

Opaque redistricting groups are being quietly bankrolled by corporations, unions and others to influence redistricting. They aim to help political allies — and in the process they're hurting voters.

Tainted Drywall

Foul air from Chinese-made drywall is causing a nightmare for thousands of homeowners, who have complained about severe respiratory ailments and corroded electronics. Several companies that handled the drywall knew there was a problem for two years but didn't warn consumers or regulators.

The Wall Street Money Machine

As investors left the housing market in the run-up to the meltdown, Wall Street sliced up and repackaged troubled assets based on those shaky mortgages, often buying those new packages themselves. That created fake demand, hid the banks’ real exposure, increased their bonuses — and ultimately made the mortgage crisis worse.

The Travel Ban

The Impact of Trump’s Executive Order

Busted

Examining Chemical Field Tests

Machine Bias

Investigating Algorithmic Injustice

Nuisance Abatement

The NYPD’s Aggressive Enforcement of a Little-known Law