Fearless, Adversarial Journalism – Spoken Edition

When I first met Cruzshe had not seen her 9-year-old daughter for 73 days. Cruz is from Honduras and a dead ringer for the terrified but brave Queen Esther, wife of Ahasuerus, the Old Testament king of the Persians. On the advice of Mordecai, a kindly man from her family who worked at the palace, Esther interrupted the king to implore him not to slaughter her people, the Jews. She stood before Ahasuerus even though doing so might provoke him to put her to death.

On a Wednesday morning in July, David Garcia stepped off his campaign’s yellow school bus to meet Democratic voters in Payson, a 16,000-person town about 90 miles northeast of Phoenix. It was a typically scorching hot Arizona summer day, butdozens of Rim Country Democrats had nonetheless gathered to hear Garcia’s pitch.

In the glory days of the House of Representatives, congressional hearings were a place where ideas were exchanged, where members would call in experts to help them craft legislation in the public interest.

Isaí Romero had no idea how to break the news to his parents that their son — his brother — had died. The elderly couple,nearly 2,000 miles away in Puebla, Mexico, had been anxiously waiting for their 40-year-old son, Efraín Romero de la Rosa, to be deported back home. Efraín himself was also looking forward to it. “His big hope was that — going to Mexico,” Isaí Romero, who lives in North Carolina, told The Intercept by phone.

An unusual legislative strategy to revive an infrastructure bill is being tested in the House, with members of the Congressional Black Caucus teaming up with conservative Republicans to sign onto a new bill. The measure would raise money by selling distressed government loans on the private market, using the proceeds to pay down the deficit and invest in infrastructure improvements.

A soldier walks alone down a dirt road with an automatic rifle strapped to his back. It’s an innocuous beginning to a disturbing video. Moments later, a group of soldiers and civilians follows. Another man – dressed in military fatigues and wearing aviator sunglasses — repeatedly strikes a woman who clutches the hand of a young girl, perhaps 7 or 8 years old.

Nabih has lived in a refugee camp called Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos, for over a year, ever since he fled his home in the Kurdish Syrian city of Kôbane. In late May, he was walking back to his tent when he felt a rock fly past his face. Within a matter of seconds, he found himself amid a full-on fight, with rocks thrown left and right. Suddenly, a group of masked men emerged, brandishing metal batons. “Who is Kurdish here?” one of the men barked.

In the weeks since Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez‘s surprise victory in New York’s 14th District, the Democratic Party has been waking up to the possibility that a progressive wave could overturn the party’s leadership and usher in a new guard — one led by young women of color. Ocasio-Cortez said as much in her victory speech, delivered from a bar top at the pool hall in the Bronx that hosted her election night party. “We’ve got a whole bunch of primaries to go.

Ruth Lopez was leaving a bar in Fontana, California, when she was pulled over for a minor traffic offense. Instead of getting a ticket, she was arrested and charged with driving under the influence, a misdemeanor punishable by six months to a year in jail. But there was a problem with the evidence against her.

It was approximately 6:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in early April when the pounding on the front door began. The sun was still coming up over New York City as a man The Intercept will call Michael jumped out of bed to investigate the commotion. Michael opened the door and found three men and one woman wearing tactical vests standing outside. They were accompanied by a man with a camera, already recording.

Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno traveled to Londonon Friday forthe ostensible purposeof speaking at the 2018Global DisabilitiesSummit(Moreno has been confined to a wheelchairsince being shot in a 1998 robbery attempt).

A team offederal prosecutors charged with promoting “consistency and fairness” in death penalty cases has been hurling incredible, on-the-record accusations against one another — from neglecting boxes of evidence to destroying interview notes — and defense attorneys want to know why this is the first they’re hearing about this alleged misconduct. Publicly, prosecutors typically are tight-lipped about missteps.

There are multiple reasons political discourse is degraded by the fact that it now plays out primarily on Twitter, reasons that are inherent in that site’sformat and functionality: the elimination of nuance due to space constraints; mobbehavior coercingadherence to group-think orthodoxies; the addict-like,insatiable craving for re-tweets and likes whichthe brain processes as approval and for which it thus produces chemical rewards of ecstasy and a sense of worth; and highly tribalizedfiefdoms where it’s remarkably...

After initial reluctance, House Republicans have finally reached an agreement to move forward on a bipartisan bank deregulation bill that the Senate passed in March. Its stated aim — to help rural community banks thrive against growing Wall Street power — appears to have been enough to power it across the finish line.

The National Rifle Association has always been clear about drugs: They’re terrifying. Last year, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre darkly warnedthat members of drug gangs “are infiltrating law enforcement and even the military.” In 2013, LaPierre proclaimedthat “Latin American drug gangs have invaded every city of significant size in the United States,” and are a key part of the “hellish world” that awaits us in the future.