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Hundreds of people had gathered on campus, both inside a barricaded tent encampment and outside of it in support.

ST. LOUIS -- Thursday will bring partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures. Highs in the mid 80s. Thunderstorms are expected to move in from the west as we transition into Thursday evening. Some storms could be strong to severe, with quarter size hail and damaging winds being the main concerns. Rain showers will linger overnight. [...]

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker wants state employees to have access to medication to help them lose weight. But the price tag, and how it was passed, has lawmakers and taxpayers outraged. Dave McKinney has more on the plan to cover injectable weight-loss drugs like Ozempic on the tax-payer dime.

Although flooding concerns are typical for this time of year, it will be different because the ground is more saturated due to torrential rain.

by Gerardo del Valle

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

The Pabón family is among the nearly 8 million Venezuelans who have left their country in the last decade, fleeing an authoritarian regime and a collapsed economy — one of the largest population displacements in the world.

The family arrived in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico — across the border from El Paso, Texas — on Dec. 1, 2022, following a six-month journey across seven countries and thousands of miles. They’d left their homeland at a time when the United States had agreed to suspend the deportations of Venezuelans who were already living in the country because Washington had broken diplomatic relations with that country’s president, Nicolás Maduro. Thousands of new Venezuelan migrants arrived in Mexican border cities like Juárez hoping to take advantage of the opening.

But by the time the Pabóns arrived, the U.S. had reversed course and subjected Venezuelans to many of the same immigration restrictions as people of other nationalities. They were required to use a special app, called CBP One, to make an appointment to enter the U.S. to seek asylum. In El Paso, there were about 150 appointments available a day. Suddenly, the Pabóns found themselves stranded with countless other tired and frustrated migrants in a city of 1.5 million residents that lacked the resources to provide for the staggering number of new arrivals.

The Border and the Election

Join us May 29 to discuss why immigration is a top issue for voters and the U.S. policies that gave rise to the deadly Juárez fire.

The pressure-cooker situation culminated in a fire on March 27, 2023, inside the city’s only immigration detention center. It killed 40 immigrants and injured more than two dozen others in one of the deadliest incidents involving immigrants in the country’s history.

Five months later, the Pabón family managed to get an appointment via the CBP One app and cross into the U.S. They eventually applied for asylum, but after joining a migrant population ever more numerous and visible and without family roots or acquaintances in the country, a clear path for them remains elusive.

Help ProPublica Reporters Investigate the Immigration System

The Rolling Stones are celebrating their new Hackney Diamonds tour with a special release from their Crossfire Hurricane premium rum. The limited-edition gift set, which costs $125, has been designed specifically…

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"This is extremely important to me, and the whole world is talking about it. I had to be here," SLU grad student Ahlam Jaber said.

The linkages between anti-war protesters and 317,000 students who waited a decade for restitution for their fraudulent college loans

On top of the protests, the Anti-Defamation League said antisemitism is on the rise at an alarming rate.

The Supreme Court’s corruption scandals will not soon be forgotten, but many already fail to appreciate their full implications.

Housing advocates, animal shelters should strive to keep people and their animal companions together.

by Robert Faturechi, Ellis Simani and Justin Elliott

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The IRS has launched a campaign to examine whether wealthy taxpayers are violating the law when using their ownership of sports teams to save large amounts in taxes.

The effort will focus on sports industry entities that are reporting “significant tax losses” to “determine if the income and deductions driving the losses” are lawful, according to the IRS announcement earlier this year. That announcement, which consisted of one sentence on a webpage devoted to compliance campaigns by the IRS division that focuses on large businesses, did not specify what kinds of abuses the agency will be looking for.

The initiative comes after ProPublica, drawing on leaked IRS data, revealed how billionaire team owners frequently report incomes for their teams that are vastly lower than their real-world earnings.

When someone buys a business, they’re often able to deduct almost the entire sale price against their income during the ensuing years. That allows them to pay less in taxes. The underlying logic is that the purchase price was composed of assets — buildings, equipment, patents and more — that degrade over time and should be counted as expenses. Owners of sports franchises routinely avail themselves of such deductions, which can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

But in few industries is that tax treatment more detached from economic reality than in professional sports. Teams’ most valuable assets, such as TV deals and player contracts, are virtually guaranteed to regenerate because sports franchises are essentially monopolies. There’s little risk that players will stop playing for their teams or that TV stations will stop airing their games. But the team owners still get to deduct the value of those assets over time, sometimes billions of dollars’ worth, from their taxable income.

It helps billionaire sports team owners pay far lower income tax rates than the athletes they employ or even the low-wage workers who sell food or clean their stadiums.

ProPublica’s 2021 article traced how owners, starting with the late baseball showman Bill Veeck decades ago, persuaded the IRS to accept a “gimmick” that allows owners to take massive depreciation write-offs.

Among those benefiting was Steve Ballmer, the billionaire owner of the Los Angeles Clippers and former CEO of Microsoft. His tax records showed that in recent years his basketball team had reported $700 million in losses for tax purposes, despite indications that the Clippers’ real-world financial results were often profitable.

That allowed Ballmer to legally not pay tax on any real-world Clippers profits, and to offset his other income and cut his tax bill. His spokesperson said at the time that Ballmer “has always paid the taxes he owes.”

The practice helps create a counterintuitive overall tax picture that upends conventional wisdom about how taxation works in America. ProPublica found that billionaire owners like Ballmer are consistently paying lower income tax rates than their millionaire players — and often lower even than the rates paid by the concessions workers who staff their stadiums.

The IRS did not immediately respond to questions from ProPublica about what prompted the initiative and what abuses it’s investigating.

In an analysis for clients, the law firm Morgan Lewis credited the IRS campaign to several factors: an increased enforcement budget, criticism that wealthy taxpayers are not audited frequently enough and ProPublica’s reporting.

“The IRS may be acting on its promise to restore ‘fairness’ in tax compliance by taking more shots at partnerships and high-wealth individuals, including sports team owners,” the firm wrote. “With the Sports Industry Losses campaign, the sports industry looks to be the next opponent in the IRS arena.”

Clay Hodges, a tax planning specialist at the firm Moss Adams, said in an interview that the IRS usually selects areas to focus enforcement efforts based on evidence that it will find unpaid taxes. While it’s impossible to judge the IRS’ motivation based on its public announcement, he said, he noted the regular headlines of sports team owners selling teams for huge profits.

“When they announce these campaigns, the IRS is very strategic,” he said. “It’s more than just a fishing expedition. They think it will bear fruit.”

Fast fashion is one of the world’s most polluting industries. Its global workforce is paying the price.

It's the first evidence of an oil company acknowledging that gas wasn't as climate-friendly as promised.

Activists appealed to the United Nations for help staving off “disaster capitalism” in the wake of the deadly blaze.

Board games have long been used to teach players about science, history, and even society itself. Local St. Louis board game companies continue this mission today through games like Wingspan (Stonemaier Games) or Genotype (Genius Games). During the space race, Gameland, Inc. brought the quest for space travel into the homes of everyday St. Louisans. …

Continue reading "Astro Antics"

Hi Folks, This is Part Two of a walking tour that I was asked to lead by the Ten Toes Walking Group from Citizens For Modern Transit.  If you missed the first part, here is the link. Maplewood History: From Bartold’s Grove to the Maplewood Mill – Part One For the second part of this […]