Al Shaw
developer / reporter / map maker at ProPublica • dm me on signal: ashaw.01 • also at: @a_l@mastodon.social • he/him
🔗 https://shaw.al
- Reposted by Al ShawMeet Your Mayor 2025 is here! Take @thecity.nyc's quiz on issues and leadership to which candidates are your best match. Quite possibly not who you think. projects.thecity.nyc/meet-your-ma...
- Reposted by Al ShawCongestion pricing was designed to finance more than $15 billion in critical transit upgrades in New York City. Those investments will take years. But the parallel changes at street level are already apparent. Here’s what we know so far. nyti.ms/4mbuGg0
- Reposted by Al Shaw“The reason they’re doing [this] is to try to create an environment of fear, to try to get people like myself... to shut the fuck up,” Piker said on a stream recounting the details of the incident. www.usermag.co/p/hasan-pike...
- Reposted by Al ShawEach time you ask an AI chatbot a question, it sends a request to a data center and strains an increasingly scarce resource: water. A 🧵on our investigation into how the data centers that power AI are increasingly being built in highly water-stressed places: www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
- Reposted by Al ShawJust a few days after Columbia announces the Pulitzers, the university goes and suspends its own student journalists.
- Several Columbia Univ student journalists are suspended after covering protests (while wearing press ID) in the main library. Their access to campus is blocked, and they can't take final exams. Also: Columbia's acting president is a former ABC journalist www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/05...
- Reposted by Al Shaw1/ 🚨 Yesterday, @propublica.org management confirmed that it will again deny steward representation at disciplinary meetings. Our full statement 👇
- Reposted by Al ShawAfter Texas banned abortion, the rates of sepsis in 2nd-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations shot up by more than 50%, @sophiechou.bsky.social and I found. But that jump wasn't equal across the state; women in Houston fared far worse than those in Dallas: www.propublica.org/article/texa...
- Reposted by Al ShawI have written many healthcare stories, but never before have I written about my own health. I decided to do so after learning one of my drugs costs nearly $1,000 a pill and just 25 cents to make. What I found was an incredible story of discovery and exploitation. www.propublica.org/article/revl...
- Reposted by Al ShawFrom EPA's EJScreen to FEMA's Future Risk Index, here are six environmental mapping tools that Trump's White House doesn't want you to see My latest @bloomberg.com (gift link): www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
- Reposted by Al ShawSo grateful to work with such incredible colleagues @anniewaldman.bsky.social @maxblau.bsky.social @mayatmiller.bsky.social @propublica.org! Thank you to all the families, doctors, therapists, lawyers and workers who shared their stories with us. Our series: www.propublica.org/series/ameri...
- Our “America’s Mental Barrier” series, which examines how insurance companies interfere with access to necessary mental health care across the United States, was also named a finalist in the explanatory reporting category: www.propublica.org/series/ameri... Via @pulitzerprizes.bsky.social
- Reposted by Al ShawJUST IN: ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series, which exposes the fatal consequences of abortion bans, has won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. This is the second consecutive year we’ve been awarded this distinction and our eighth Pulitzer: www.propublica.org/series/life-...
- Reposted by Al ShawNearly all of remaining staff at CDC's NIOSH received lay off notices today, we're told This is an org chart shared with us illustrating eliminated divisions to date Cuts had already upended approvals of new N95 respirators and probes of firefighter injuries www.cbsnews.com/news/worker-...
- Reposted by Al ShawThe NYPD has quietly changed its enforcement policy towards bicyclists, slapping them with criminal summonses instead of regular traffic tickets for low-level offenses such as passing through red lights or not stopping at a stop sign.
- Reposted by Al ShawNEW: @bloomberg.com analysis of +13 years of ICE detentions shows immigrants transferred to the South and SW from interior US at unprecedented rates. Reducing the odds of winning their cases. w/ @elenamejia.bsky.social @racheladhe.bsky.social @pollymosendz.bsky.social bloom.bg/43am95w
- Reposted by Al ShawToday, we issued a letter — signed by 70% of our unit — to @sengelberg.bsky.social and @robinsparkman.bsky.social asking them to uphold ProPublica’s values of fairness, transparency and accountability at the bargaining table.
- "They'll be like, don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't have touched or couldn't spell. Yeah, but your grandmother was eating crap... Your can of ground cinnamon could be cinnamon, but more likely it’s brick dust. Your flour could be flour, but more likely it’s cut with gypsum"
- Reposted by Al ShawNews from @propublica.org on the DOGE front: A Treasury Department inspector general is probing efforts by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to obtain private taxpayer data and other sensitive information… www.propublica.org/article/trum...
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- Reposted by Al ShawThe key chart right now: Usually US economic pain is cushioned by falling bond yields and a strengthening dollar, which mean lower interest rates and more spending power for consumers. This time we’re seeing the opposite, meaning the pain will be amplified.
- Reposted by Al ShawNEW: Mahmoud Khalil's wife gave birth to their child without him after ICE denied their request to let him be present. “This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer,” Dr. Abdalla said. “My son and I should not be navigating his first days on earth without Mahmoud."
- > “603,000 El Paso residents, about 90 percent of the city’s population, are exposed to a cancer risk above 1 in 1 million just from Cardinal Health’s two warehouses.” Great work from @naveenasadasivam.bsky.social and Lylla Younes grist.org/health/ethyl...
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- Our DOGE tracker is updated with a whole slew of new names, and now you can filter by agency to see which of the DOGErs have been where. Great work by @williamturton.bsky.social, @chrisbing.bsky.social, @kirstenberg.bsky.social and others! projects.propublica.org/elon-musk-do...
- Reposted by Al ShawJewish classmates of Mohsen Mahdawi speak out— One, an IDF refuser, recalls how Mohsen met with Zionists, including those cruel to him—or how, while seeking to heal campus, he even expressed sympathy for administrators (the same who ignored his pleas for help). "Most profound person I've ever met"
- Reposted by Al Shawthis is Mohsen Mahdawi, the green card holder who was just arrested by ICE for rendition at his citizenship interview
- Reposted by Al ShawThe Trump admin has just detained Mohsen Mahdawi, who: –has green card –was Columbia Buddhist club president –saw his best friend shot & killed by Israeli soldier –said "we are against antisemitism because antisemitism is a form of injustice, and injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"
- > “The officers grabbed him and two other boys right at the entrance to our building. One said, ‘No, he’s not the one,’ like they were looking for someone else. But the other said, ‘Take him anyway.'”
- Reposted by Al Shaw
NEW: Andrew Cuomo used ChatGPT to help write the housing plan he released this weekend, which included several nonsensical passages. The plan even cites to ChatGPT on a section about the Rent Guidelines Board. hellgatenyc.com/andrew-cuomo... - > Ramzi Kassem, a lawyer representing Öztürk, said pro-Israel groups are providing the administration with lists of targets for its deportation campaign against noncitizen student protesters. “The sequence of events,” he said, “is op-ed, doxxing, detention.”
- Reposted by Al Shawif you want to bring back the prosperity* and security of mid-century american life then you need high rates of unionization, a generous social insurance state, and widespread, freely available education. www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnb...
- Reposted by Al ShawToday, hundreds of our colleagues on the technology side of the company announced the formation of @wapotechguild.bsky.social (1)
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- Reposted by Al ShawAlmost all NOAA Research websites that rely on cloud services - including Amazon, Google and WordPress - are poised to disappear at midnight ET Saturday after a contract was targeted for "early termination." Labs may also feel the effects. Story for @bloomberg.com (free link):
- DOGE said last week there are potentially ~58,000 documents responsive to @crew.bsky.social's FOIAs, but that they're sticking with the argument that USDS isn't an agency subject to FOIA and won't release them: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
- Reposted by Al ShawSay hello to a new subway map! 🗺️ Today, the MTA unveiled a new subway diagram that provides riders with essential travel information in an easily readable, bright, and orderly manner.
- Rare opportunity to work with the great @lenagroeger.bsky.social creating graphics at @propublica.org. And yes, it's a remote-friendly, union job in the @propublicaguild.bsky.social -->
- > When the range of factors that can get a person arrested stretches from political speech to a paperwork error, we are in territory described by the Russian saying, “Give us a person and we’ll find the infraction.”
- Reposted by Al ShawThe Guardian has recreated a searchable climate future risk tool developed by Fema but then deleted
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- Go see this movie before you can't.
- Reposted by Al ShawIt's Black Press Day. And the historic Black press understood what it was like to be targeted, surveilled, charged with crimes, even jailed. As similar threats loom, we should take a look at this history. Read/Listen/Share/Subscribe to Fortify here: nicolefcarr.substack.com/p/the-histor...
- > Ms. Srinivasan said she was not an activist or a member of any group that organized demonstrations on campus. > She said that her activity on social media had been mostly limited to liking or sharing posts that highlighted “human rights violations” in the war in Gaza.
- We’ve also added a handful of financial disclosures and ethics waivers to our tracker. Thanks to @pogo.org for first revealing some of these 👉
- Yet another thing that mirrors what happened at Twitter HQ post-Musk, according to @kateconger.com and @rmac.bsky.social's CHARACTER LIMIT:
- Reposted by Al ShawDOCUMENT DESTRUCTION: My reporter Brett Murphy obtained a remarkable directive to folks at USAID: Empty the safes with the classified and personnel records and then, "Shred as many documents first, and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break."
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- So what you’re saying is quality of life is 420% better?
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- Some eye-popping allegations in this USADF complaint about what happened when DOGE came through
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- Reposted by Al ShawAt #NICAR25 the CFPB’s Chief Technologist @erie.bsky.social says the agency is still here and can only be ended by an act of Congress, despite her team being recently fired. The DOGE team has “god mode” access to all CFPB complaint data. “It's a 5 alarm fire for me that they have this data.”
- The EPA IRIS database specifies the cancer + noncancer risk of > 500 chemicals. It's the rosetta stone to calculating the relationship between exposure and risk. It powered our tox map and formaldehyde map. Killing it would destroy the ability to regulate or even show how harmful toxic chems are.
- NEW: While all eyes are on Trump and DOGE, a bill recently introduced in both the House and Senate would cripple the EPA's ability to regulate. It's a very serious threat and experts told me it could pass www.propublica.org/article/legi...
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- Everything going fine at the OPM FOIA office. It may be Just Another Tuesday, but it's also #foiafriday.
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- NO OTHER LAND has no US streaming distributor so if you're in NYC and want to see it, it's showing at BAM until 3/13
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- Reposted by Al Shaw18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated shortly after midnight. Read our letter to the American people: 18f.org
- Reposted by Al Shaw18F, the federal government’s technology shop, was just demolished by Musk’s team. It was a cost-recoverable org, charging agencies for their expertise, using a consulting model. Its cost to government was negligible, its benefits huge. My team there once saved DoD $500 million. A thread about 18F:
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- Reposted by Al Shaw“We are really trying very, very hard ... to move our world forward" through "foundational, sometimes groundbreaking research, and then you get flagged and blacklisted because there is a word like ‘female’ in your project.” My latest, w/the brilliant Agnel Philip www.propublica.org/article/ted-...
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