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On Sunday, January 23, there was more gun violence in St. Louis City. Three people were injured in separate shootings.

For the past four years, Alberto Juarez and Laura McNamara have been serving traditional Mexican coffee, beverages and food specialties to patrons at their Yucatán cafe, Brew Tulum. Now, the husband-and-wife team are offering that same experience to this side of the border with a second location of Brew Tulum (5090 Delmar Boulevard), located in the Delmar Makers District, which opened in late November. For McNamara, Brew Tulum's St. Louis location represents the culmination of a coffee journey that traces its roots back to her time abroad in Rome, through Vietnam, then Latin America and ultimately to Mexico's Yucatán region.

Story Collider's mission is to use storytelling to illuminate the role science plays in our lives. It's kind of like The Moth, only with science, or TED Talks, only without the insistence that one overly simplified idea from a polished speaker in a headset can change humanity.

Thank God for the pro-choice faith leaders of Missouri. More than a dozen clergy members of multiple faiths have stepped forward with a lawsuit challenging Missouri’s oppressive laws banning abortion. The case, a national initiative of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, seeks to send an essential message to those who oppose abortion:

by Cassandra Jaramillo, ProPublica, and Lauren McGaughy and Allie Morris, The Dallas Morning News

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 was published in partnership with The Dallas Morning News.

Gregg Phillips and Catherine Engelbrecht are best known as the election deniers behind True the Vote, a Texas-based nonprofit responsible for amplifying conspiracies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

But soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, they shifted some of their focus to the war effort, jumping into the fray with an inspiring idea — to bring a mobile hospital to the region to care for victims of the conflict.

They called it The Freedom Hospital.

Phillips solicited donations on conservative media platforms, linked up with American veterans working in Ukraine and traveled to the region in March to meet with local officials. The Freedom Hospital’s website announced it was halfway to its goal of raising $25 million.

“Our recent project, The Freedom Hospital, in Ukraine helps old folks, women and kids near the fight receive healthcare,” Phillips wrote on the conservative social media site Truth Social on June 5.

But that was one of a series of misrepresentations from Phillips and The Freedom Hospital about the operation’s donations and accomplishments, according to a joint investigation by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News. The Freedom Hospital never got off the ground, and, through their lawyers, Phillips and Engelbrecht now say they never raised significant amounts of money for the project.

They never brought the mobile hospital to the region.

Both Phillips and Engelbrecht declined to answer questions. According to their lawyers, who spoke to ProPublica and the News, the pair’s Ukraine project was a good-faith effort that was unsuccessful.

They said Phillips realized during his March trip to the region that the mission wasn’t feasible because local officials weren’t interested, because potential donors felt the U.S. government was already funneling enough money into the war effort, and because he was worried about the potential for local corruption.

“They pretty much abandoned it all as of, like, April,” Cameron Powell, a partner at Gregor, Wynne, Arney who’s one of the pair’s attorneys, said during a December interview. “Pretty much during his trip, he was deciding it’s probably not going to be feasible.”

Phillips continued to seek donations for months after that and gave the impression that the project was still in the works. The lawyers now say that is because the pair kept pushing forward “with their due diligence for a while longer” and declined to clarify exactly when the project was abandoned.

Asked about Phillips’ statements that The Freedom Hospital had raised half of its $25 million goal, the lawyers said that amount was an in-kind donation from the mobile hospital manufacturer, not cash. The manufacturer's CEO disputed that account, saying it never pledged to make such a donation.

The Freedom Hospital’s Twitter account shared a quote from True the Vote’s Gregg Phillips on April 21, 2022. (Screenshot by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News)

Created by Engelbrecht in 2010, True the Vote vaulted to national prominence after its work was featured in the 2022 Dinesh D’Souza movie “2000 Mules,” a film that included voter fraud claims that have been widely discredited.

The Ukraine venture is the latest in a string of failed initiatives and misleading statements from Engelbrecht and Phillips. Phillips has been a longtime True the Vote board member, and he and Engelbrecht have raised millions on the promise that they would reveal widespread voter fraud. But they have never supplied any evidence the election was stolen, leaving a trail of disappointed donors and frustrated partners, even as the false election-theft narrative has continued to be a potent force in American politics.

An “Awe-Inspiring” Mission

A former health and human services official for the states of Texas and Mississippi, Phillips was eager to use his expertise to aid the people of Ukraine when Russia invaded, his lawyers said.

The Freedom Hospital’s website, which is now defunct, described the project as “awe-inspiring.” A group of Americans had “banded together” to bring to the region “a state-of-the-art mobile emergency hospital system that can skirt battle zones to treat the wounded,” according to the site’s archive. “Every penny of your donation will be used to save lives,” the website stated, with a link to a PayPal donation site.

In March 2022, Phillips traveled to the region and discussed the project with several local governmental and religious officials.

The next month, he explained the ongoing effort to a podcaster. Phillips said his team was “ensuring that we could clear supply paths and ensure that the hospitals could remain sort of fully supplied and fully staffed” and that they had secured a warehouse.

The hospital’s Twitter account described the facility as a 100,000-square-foot warehouse donated by an unnamed family behind “Europe’s biggest transport company.”

The lawyers now say an unnamed citizens’ group offered use of an empty auditorium that was not ultimately needed.

A March 20, 2022, Facebook post from Artur Muntyan, a local official in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, shows him with other local government and religious officials as well as Gregg Phillips, who appears in the top left photo on the left side of the back row, and in the bottom middle photo on the right. (Screenshot by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News)

Over the course of the spring, Phillips continued to promote the humanitarian effort, seeking donations and other support. On Twitter, he called it “history in the making.” In early June, he repeatedly discussed the project on Truth Social and said it was responsible for extracting “dozens” of elderly refugees from the region.

“My work and my calling is to create a private healthcare and extraction ecosystem for old folks, women and children,” he wrote in a post on June 5. “The Freedom Hospital is my commitment to God come to life.”

In the December interview, Powell, one of the pair’s lawyers, said Phillips finished the project’s feasibility study by the time he returned from Ukraine, at which time he told donors he couldn’t ask them to fund the project.

But this week, after being sent questions ahead of publication of this article, Powell was vaguer about the project’s timeline. When asked why Phillips continued promoting the hospital into June, he acknowledged his clients began to “harbor doubts” about the project months before without specifying when it was officially shuttered.

“The group came to the realization sometime after Gregg returned that the project was ‘probably’ not feasible, but it would be unrealistic to expect that realization occurred during a single, identifiable moment in time. There was no epiphany,” Powell said.

The project’s Twitter account still exists but has not tweeted since May 5.

Gregg Phillips continued to post about The Freedom Hospital on Truth Social through early June. (Screenshot by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning New)

True the Vote was listed as The Freedom Hospital’s fiscal sponsor on the project’s website and Engelbrecht successfully applied for nonprofit status for the hospital from the IRS in March.

Phillips and Englebrecht planned to get a medical unit from MED-1 Partners, a mobile hospital manufacturing company based in North Carolina. Phillips’ lawyers said he worked with sales representatives and was told the unit would come at “a substantial reduction in price, which MED-1 spoke of as an in-kind donation to help the effort.”

MED-1 Partners CEO Tim Masud told ProPublica and the News this account is not true.

MED-1 Partners was selling an older demo unit for a reduced price, the same price that would be offered to anyone interested in purchasing it, he said. Masud added neither he nor his authorized liaison on the deal described this reduced price as a donation or pledged to provide a donation to The Freedom Hospital.

In March, Masud said the company drafted a letter of intent for a project called “The Freedom Children’s Hospital” that required a $150,000 deposit. But it was never signed and no money changed hands.

“All we did was offer a hospital for sale to a group of people. That’s it,” Masud said.

Powell said his clients raised only $268 for the project through PayPal, which the lawyers said was returned “at Mr. Phillips’ direction.” Another of the group’s attorneys, Michael Wynne, said in a December phone call that the project had raised no other funds through other means.

The Freedom Hospital’s website, which is now defunct, called for donations and said it was halfway to raising $25 million. (Screenshot of the Wayback Machine by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News)

On April 21, The Freedom Hospital posted a video on its YouTube account with a caption saying that its “team” was “reporting” from Ukraine. But The Freedom Hospital had no role in producing the video.

Christopher Loverro, a Los Angeles-based actor and veteran, made the video, which he said was shot in front of a recently bombed Ukrainian preschool.

In an interview, Loverro said he has never had any connection to The Freedom Hospital and had not given anyone permission to use his work. After being contacted by ProPublica and the News, Loverro said he reported the video to YouTube and commented on the post, warning: “This is a scam. Do not donate to this organization.”

After ProPublica and the News sent the lawyers questions about the video, Loverro said a woman named Catherine, who was associated with the project, contacted him for the first time to discuss The Freedom Hospital. Following that conversation, he said he had no reason to doubt the woman, who told him the project was a legitimate humanitarian effort with “no fraud involved” that simply came to naught.

Phillips’ lawyers said he did not post the video and does not have access to The Freedom Hospital’s YouTube account to remove it. It was likely posted by one of “several volunteers working on the Freedom Hospital project at that time,” they added.

The video and a donation request still remain up on the project’s YouTube channel.

The Freedom Hospital’s YouTube channel has posted one video. An actor and veteran said he produced the video and did not give the project permission to use it. (Screenshot by ProPublica and The Dallas Morning News) Complaints

The Freedom Hospital project and other efforts troubled one of True the Vote’s contractors enough that he submitted a complaint in June referencing the hospital and a number of other concerns to the Texas attorney general’s criminal investigation division.

“After a series of bizarre calls and communications over several months, Gregg told us he’d raised the money for [The Freedom Hospital]. Several times he told us it was $2.5 million. He also gave us the figures of $10 million. He also marketed that they needed $25 million,” Kyle Reyes, whose company had worked on marketing initiatives for True the Vote, wrote.

ProPublica and the News obtained the complaint through a public records request.

In the document, Reyes accused True the Vote of a wide range of questionable business practices and said the organization had not paid his marketing firm for the services it performed.

Wynne said the complaint is “demonstrably false.” It’s unclear what the status of Reyes’ complaint is; the Texas attorney general’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The questions about The Freedom Hospital come as Engelbrecht and Phillips are facing new scrutiny over continued failed efforts to prove widespread fraud in the American election system.

The pair have frequently profited handsomely from their election denial work, according to an investigation by Reveal that found loans issued to Engelbrecht and self-dealing contracts to nonprofit insiders. (Their attorney at the time said that there was nothing inherently wrong about the contracts.) The outgoing attorney general of Arizona, once an ally, now wants the group investigated for potential “financial improprieties” related to this work. In November, the pair spent a week in jail on contempt of court charges for failing to disclose a source behind their election fraud claims.

Reyes told ProPublica and the News that he terminated his firm’s contract with True the Vote in June. After Reyes filed his complaint, he said, True the Vote paid his company the outstanding invoices about $25,000.

“As conservatives, we need to hold our fellow brothers and sisters to the same standard that we hold everyone in America to — no matter what side of the political aisle you’re on,” he said.

There's a two-story slide, but also a really big bar. When is it appropriate to take your kids to the city's newest entertainment attraction? We have some tips.

With artistic artifacts and even a tunnel, this loft is one-of-a-kind.

Congress has approved $40 million for ecological restoration in the lower Mississippi River — the first federal program of its kind for the 1,000-mile swath of river downstream of Cape Girardeau.

Republican legislators have made it clear that challenging the authority of St. Louis’ elected prosecutor Kimberly Gardner — a progressive Black Democrat — is a top priority this year.  And they’ll be searching for a way to make that challenge constitutional.  On the first day of the legislative session, Republican state leaders said Missouri could […]

The post Missouri prosecutors face losing jurisdiction over violent crime cases appeared first on Missouri Independent.

This week has been designated as “National News Literacy Week.” It could not be more important or timely as we continue to be bombarded with misinformation, disinformation and downright lies in all corners of the public square. What is most alarming is the utter disregard and disrespect for facts and truth practiced and tolerated by […]

The post News media literacy is more important than ever appeared first on Missouri Independent.

Healdsburg recycles 350 million gallons of effluent annually and gives it away for free.

Collapse isn’t inevitable. New research shows that nimble, cooperative societies adapted best to rapid shifts.

A new report highlights the link between pesticides and climate change.

A new Rush picture book is ready to hit shelves later this year. Portraits of Rush is being published by Rufus Publications and features photography from legendary music photographer Fin Costello.  Costello had total access to the…

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Ithaca has put its Green New Deal in the hands of a green private equity fund, a private foundation, and a Goldman Sachs–backed software company.

Here are nine practical and urgent suggestions.

Bill Cassidy and Angus King propose an American social wealth fund.

by Lisa Song

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

As a climate reporter, I was well aware of the growing concern about the gas stoves in people’s homes leaking dangerous pollutants, like methane, a potent greenhouse gas and explosive hazard; nitrogen dioxide, which worsens asthma; and benzene, which causes cancer. But I was a renter who had no control over my appliances. So I mostly ignored it — until one day last fall when I smelled the rotten-egg odor of leaking natural gas while baking focaccia.

I borrowed a $30 gas leak detector from a friend (a fellow climate reporter, of course). When I turned on the oven in my New York City apartment, the lights for a “significant” leak lit up. My kitchen was filling up with methane. According to the user manual, that meant I should “VENTILATE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY and move to a safe location” in case of an explosion. I opened the windows and ignored the evacuation advice (don’t follow my example), too intent on taking a video of the leak as proof for my landlord before turning off the oven. Then I vented my frustration by panic-texting friends and eating too much focaccia — after cutting it into pieces and baking it in my toaster oven. Luckily, my landlord replaced my faulty stove within days. I made sure to check the new stove (still gas, alas) for leaks after it was installed.

“People still don’t recognize that there are health downsides to cooking with gas in your home,” said Regina LaRocque, a Harvard Medical School professor who does research on medicine and public health. “This is the 21st century, and we have better ways of cooking than over a fire.”

The issue has caught national attention in recent weeks, as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission considers regulating gas stoves. Public health experts and environmentalists have long warned of the risks of gas ranges. One study found that indoor gas stoves were responsible for roughly 13% of childhood asthma cases in the U.S. The American Public Health Association and American Medical Association have urged consumers to transition away from gas.

LaRocque uses a traditional electric coil stove at home. But she and other experts advocated for induction stoves, which use electromagnets to heat up food. These stoves are growing in popularity as consumers choose them for climate, health and safety reasons, though they can cost more than twice as much as a gas range.

The federal Inflation Reduction Act will provide rebates to upgrade to electric or induction home appliances (here’s a Wirecutter guide on that program). Some states, including Massachusetts, offer their own rebates as well.

Induction stoves are much more common in Europe, LaRocque said. That cultural shift has yet to occur in the United States, where more than a third of households use gas stoves. As Mother Jones reported, the gas industry embraced the term “cooking with gas” in the 1930s; an executive even made sure to get it worked into Bob Hope’s comedy routines. More recently, the industry has opposed electrification efforts with lobbying and social media influencers who tout gas as a “super cool way” to cook.

I consulted multiple experts on the hazards of gas stoves and what people can do about them. Their advice boiled down to this: homeowners who can afford it should switch to an induction or electric stove. For renters and others who can’t replace their appliances, the experts provided tips on lowering the health risks.

What Are the Risks of Gas Appliances? (Illustration by Laila Milevski, special to ProPublica)

Methane is a greenhouse gas. The gas that’s piped into your house is virtually all methane. When you burn methane to cook food, it turns into carbon dioxide. But unburned methane trickles out from loose fittings and faulty stovetop igniters. Every pound of methane released into the air is 30 to 86 times more effective at warming the planet than a pound of carbon dioxide.

When researchers analyzed 53 homes in California last year, they found methane leaking from almost every stove. More than three-quarters of that methane came from stoves that were turned off. The act of igniting a burner or oven released additional puffs of methane. If these leaks are consistent across the nation, then annual methane emissions from U.S. gas stoves would equal the greenhouse gas emissions of half a million cars.

These leaks are “pretty much universal,” said Robert Jackson, a Stanford University professor and a study co-author. Jackson, who’s spent more than a decade studying methane leaks from gas wells, pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, said it can be hard to predict where the leak is coming from. Based on the description of the leak in my kitchen, he told me it likely was caused by ignition problems with the oven. Jackson’s research has inspired him to ditch his gas stove, furnace and hot water heater in favor of induction and electric appliances.

“I did not expect to see the high levels of indoor air pollution we saw consistently,” he said. “It strongly motivated me to replace my own stove.”

Large methane leaks can cause explosions. If you smell gas in your home, leave the building and call your gas company. The distinctive rotten-egg odor comes from chemicals that gas companies add to the methane to make it easier to detect, since the gas is naturally odorless.

Some people are much more sensitive to the smell than others, so it’s not a foolproof warning for explosive risk. Eric Lebel, lead author of the methane study Jackson worked on, recalled smelling gas in some of the homes where he did the testing, even though the homeowners couldn’t smell anything. Lebel is a senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, a nonprofit science and policy research institute.

Burning natural gas releases nitrogen dioxide, a respiratory irritant. Nitrogen dioxide exacerbates asthma and impairs lung function. The Environmental Protection Agency regulates these emissions from cars and power plants with national air quality standards, but those regulations don’t apply to indoor air.

The Lebel and Jackson study measured nitrogen dioxide and a related compound. They found steadily rising emissions after turning on burners and ovens.

“Simply having a combustion stove in your home is a health risk,” LaRocque said. In poorly ventilated kitchens, nitrogen dioxide levels could exceed outdoor air standards. “It would be like standing behind an idling car, or standing in a smoke-filled room,” she added. “I think if my child had asthma, I would definitely want to intervene.”

Gas stoves leak benzene, a carcinogen that can cause leukemia. In a separate study published last fall, Lebel and his colleagues analyzed gas samples from residential kitchens. Out of 160 samples, all but one contained benzene.

“If there’s a leak from that appliance, it likely contains benzene,” Lebel said. “It’s a rather unavoidable cost of owning a gas appliance.”

Raw natural gas contains a mix of methane and toxic chemicals like benzene, toluene or formaldehyde. Gas companies strip out the impurities before piping the processed gas to homes, but they don’t eliminate all the toxins.

Lebel’s team modeled the benzene concentrations from the leaking stoves and found a handful that failed to meet California’s benzene safety guidelines. They also found traces of other harmful compounds, including toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene, which can cause dizziness, nausea and liver damage. A separate study of gas appliances in the Greater Boston area found benzene in 95% of samples, though at lower levels than Lebel’s study.

How Can I Protect Myself? (Illustration by Laila Milevski, special to ProPublica)

Turn on the range hood above your stove. Paul Francisco, associate director of building science at the University of Illinois Urbana, Champaign, suggests cooking on the back burners and using the hood whenever you turn on the stove or the oven. The fans improve ventilation and will pull benzene, methane and nitrogen dioxide outdoors.

However, this only works if the hood connects to the outside of your house. Follow the piping on the hood: If the top of the device goes through the ceiling or the wall, then it should help with air quality.

Another type of range hood, called a “ductless” hood, simply recirculates indoor air. If your hood has grilles or vents on the front, then it’s likely, but not guaranteed, to be ductless, Francisco said. These fans won’t cut down on harmful gases, but they might be able to reduce particulate matter — tiny particles created during cooking, which can cause or exacerbate respiratory illness. A 2014 study found that cooking on induction stoves produced far fewer particles than cooking on gas or electric stoves.

Open a window to improve ventilation. At a minimum, an open window will dilute toxic gases.

If your kitchen is in the upper half of a building, opening the window should draw the contaminants outside as long as there’s no wind and it’s warmer inside than outside, Francisco said. If you live in the lower half of a building, opening a window in the winter won’t be as effective, he said, though any ventilation is better than none.

Get an induction hot plate. If you can’t replace your stove, experts said the next best thing is to buy an induction burner. Here are some consumer guides with reviews of portable hot plates.

During last summer’s heat waves, when I couldn’t fathom lighting a fire inside my kitchen, I did almost all my cooking using an induction hot plate, an Instant Pot and an electric toaster oven. Excessive heat is another reason why some chefs advocate for induction burners.

What about air purifiers? These devices have become more popular as a way to improve air quality and reduce the risk of COVID-19 infections. Most air purifiers won’t have any effect on toxic gases, though they do remove particulate matter, Francisco said. Some specialty models filter out volatile organic compounds, a class of chemicals that includes benzene.

Should I buy a gas detector? There are a number of methane monitors that are designed for consumers, priced from roughly $30 to $200. Some will tell you about the presence of a leak. Others are sensitive enough to detect specific concentrations of methane. You can also find indoor monitors that detect particulate matter for $200 to $300.

It’s much harder to monitor for benzene or nitrogen dioxide. The types of instruments used by Lebel and Jackson cost tens of thousands of dollars and require users to undergo extensive training.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, a regulatory agency in California, maintains a list of “low-cost” air quality sensors (less than $2,000) that can be used by citizen scientists and advocacy groups. These sensors can be used to detect particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and volatile organic compounds.

Lebel said it shouldn’t be up to individuals to solve a systemic issue. It seems problematic, he said, “to be asking citizens to be scientists and try and discover if their stove is leaking.”