Hannah Beckler

Business Insider fights for access to prison attack dog records An RCFP attorney is representing Business Insider and one of its reporters.

@hannahbeckler.bsky.social and @businessinsider.com, represented by @rcfp.org attorneys, are fighting for access to records that could shed light on how Virginia deploys attack dogs in its prisons — which it does more often than any other state.

🎥 WATCH: Alaska leaders repeatedly promised to address their failure to solve the disappearance of Indigenous people.

But when a nonprofit asked officials for a fundamental piece of information — a list of Indigenous murders they’d investigated — the state said no.

More: https://propub.li/3IphLYO

On Feb. 15, José Manuel Ramos Bastidas called his wife from inside a Texas immigration detention facility.

He asked her to record a message, “just in case something happens to me.”

Thread 👇

Stephen Miller’s Financial Stake in ICE Contractor Palantir Over a dozen Trump appointees in the White House and Department of Homeland Security have owned stock in the controversial company raising privacy concerns across the political spectrum.

🚨 NEW from me: Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's immigration crackdown, has a financial stake of up to a quarter million dollars in Palantir, a key ICE contractor. Experts cite conflict of interest concerns

Read it @pogo.org:

www.pogo.org/investigatio...

Massive subsidies, minimal jobs: The math behind America's data center boom Some city governments give data center companies big tax breaks to revitalize local economies. The math might not make sense, Business Insider found.

New! From @rosemarieho.bsky.social, Ellen Thomas, Daniel Geiger, and me: We found that tax breaks given to developers can amount over time to more than $2 million for every permanent, full-time job at an operational data center. www.businessinsider.com/data-centers...

Data centers' environmental impact is hard to quantify. Here's how we did it. How Business Insider calculated data centers' true cost, from their electricity and water use to their impact on the environment and public health.

These stories have lots of cool data! Read about how @rosemarieho.bsky.social, Narimes Parakul, and I + so many others spent months painstakingly piecing together all sorts of records to build this project. www.businessinsider.com/how-calculat...

AI runs on dirty power and the public pays the price Data centers are setting back sustainable energy goals across the country. They also contribute to air and water pollution, Business Insider found.

From @rosemarieho.bsky.social +Ellen Thomas + me: spiking data center electricity demand is driving utilities to torpedo renewable energy goals and rely on fossil fuels. www.businessinsider.com/ai-runs-dirt...

The 'AI boom' pits neighbor against neighbor As data centers crop up across Northern Virginia's sleepy suburbs, residents are divided over whether the noise and fumes outweigh the benefits.

And Dakin Campbell dug into what it means for people living among these massive (and loud!) data centers built cheek by jowl with residential neighborhoods. www.businessinsider.com/data-centers...

AI's promise is still taking shape. The costs of its data centers are already here. Data center costs in electricity and water have been hard to pin down. We dug up documents to figure out the impact of AI infrastructure.

We estimate that US data centers could soon consume more electricity than what Poland, with a population of 36.6 million, used in 2023. Federal estimates expect that demand to as much as triple over the next three years. www.businessinsider.com/ai-data-cent...

My colleagues @businessinsider.com and I spent months mapping 1,240 data centers (!!) nationwide and investigating data centers' impact on water, power, pollution, and local economies. The series is rolling out this week.

Airlines Don't Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS A contract obtained by 404 Media shows that an airline-owned data broker forbids the feds from revealing it sold them detailed passenger data.

New from 404 Media: Delta, United, American etc don't want you to know they sold your flight data to DHS. The country's airlines sell bulk names and flight itineraries to DHS to be searched without a warrant. Contract tells DHS to not reveal where this data came from www.404media.co/airlines-don...

🌟 The 2025 Livingston Award Finalists for National Reporting!

These exceptional journalists under 35 are telling stories that challenge assumptions and deepen our understanding of the nation.

Read their work here: loom.ly/LAVASEQ

#JournalismExcellence

Wired is dropping paywalls for FOIA-based reporting. Others should follow As the administration does its best to hide public records from the public, Wired magazine is stepping up to help stem the secrecy

They're called public records for a reason. Starting today, WIRED will *stop paywalling* articles that are primarily based on public records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, becoming the first publication to partner with @freedom.press to offer this for our new coverage.

Few prisoners claiming abuses have access to a jury trial. The Supreme Court could soon change that. A Clinton-era law, the PLRA, stymied prisoner lawsuits claiming serious harm. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments over whether certain prisoners deserve jury trials.

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case tomorrow, related to the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, that could expand prisoners' access to jury trials.

@hannahbeckler.bsky.social and I wrote about the case here: www.businessinsider.com/supreme-cour...

Trump and Musk froze USAID funding to put Americans first. US citizens are feeling the impact. The Trump administration shut down USAID to put "American interests" first. In North Carolina, the freeze has thrown hundreds out of work.

Trump & Musk froze USAID funding to put "American interests" first. Yet 12,700 Americans have been fired or furloughed already thanks to frozen USAID contracts.

In North Carolina, Trump country, hundreds are feeling the pain. From @dakincampbell.bsky.social www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump...

They spoke out against their employer. Then trade secrets law was used against them. Companies have hit whistleblowers with trade secrets suits over actions like saving code to GitHub or printing documents for remote work.

It's stunning how much energy employers put into silencing their critics.
via @robaeprice.bsky.social www.businessinsider.com/defend-trade...

Business Insider investigation into prison attack dogs wins awards, sparks reforms Students at UVA Law's First Amendment Clinic, run by RCFP attorneys, helped Business Insider access records about prison attack dogs in Virginia.

Free legal support from RCFP attorneys at @uvalaw.bsky.social's First Amendment Clinic helped @businessinsider.com and @hannahbeckler.bsky.social secure records for an award-winning investigation into Virginia prisons that led to significant legislative reforms.

Business Insider investigation into prison attack dogs wins awards, sparks reforms Students at UVA Law's First Amendment Clinic, run by RCFP attorneys, helped Business Insider access records about prison attack dogs in Virginia.

On behalf of @businessinsider.com and @hannahbeckler.bsky.social, @uvalaw.bsky.social's First Amendment Clinic — run by RCFP attorneys — helped obtain records that fueled an award-winning investigation into the use of attack-trained dogs inside U.S. prisons.

Business Insider investigation into prison attack dogs wins awards, sparks reforms Students at UVA Law's First Amendment Clinic, run by RCFP attorneys, helped Business Insider access records about prison attack dogs in Virginia.

Huge thanks to attorneys from @reporterscommittee.bsky.social and the University of Virginia School of Law First Amendment Clinic who helped us obtain critical records for @hannahbeckler.bsky.social's incredible investigation into the use of attack dogs inside prisons. www.rcfp.org/uva-clinic-b...

A palm oil company, a group of US financiers, and the destruction of Peru's rainforest A company backed by US investors sold "deforestation-free" palm oil to the makers of Cheetos, Colgate and Pepsi. But its investors have ties to the company that cleared Amazonian rainforest for planta...

How are so many products from the Amazon sold as "deforestation free" while the forest keeps being destroyed?

Brendan Borrell goes deep on one palm oil producer & finds US private equity players, a UN coca eradication program & lots of corruption. www.businessinsider.com/us-investors...

The Eighth Amendment is meant to protect against prisoner abuse. Less than 1% of cases succeed. The Eighth Amendment is meant to protect prisoners against abuse. BI has found that Supreme Court decisions and federal laws have obliterated it.

This week at @businessinsider.com we launched a deep dive into the 8th Amendment, our nation's foundational protection against "cruel and unusual punishments."

In analyzing nearly 1,500 cases, we found prisoners win less than 1% of the time. www.businessinsider.com/eighth-amend...

It's extremely rare for prisoners to win lawsuits on Eighth Amendment claims. Most civil suits settle in the outside world. But among prisoner Eighth Amendment lawsuits, only 14% settle, and less than 1% win in court.

In analyzing nearly 1,500 Eighth Amendment cases, we found that plaintiffs won only 1% of the time. Only a handful more reached substantial settlements.

Half of the time they involve prisoner deaths.

www.businessinsider.com/prisoner-law...

The most frequent repeat defendants in BI’s sample were for-profit companies. These contractors almost never lost.

The low risk of liability, one law review article argued, "leads to dangerous, ineffective healthcare that is shielded from constitutional challenge."

Hundreds of prisoners in BI's sample complained of inadequately treated illnesses, injuries, and pain. Dozens more said their mental-health crises were met with violence.

Together, the claims describe a US prison medical culture defined by a gross disregard for human life.

Federal courts have allowed prisons and private medical contractors to neglect prisoner health Federal courts have rarely upheld claims of medical neglect in US prisons, even when healthcare providers failed to diagnose cancer or treat heart disease.

Christopher Cox was declared dead in a Florida prison cell after a minimally trained licensed practical nurse denied him CPR.

Cox’s case is one of hundreds of cases in BIs sample that claimed severe medical neglect. Nearly all of those cases lost.

www.businessinsider.com/prison-medic...

"We are to accord prison officials 'wide-ranging deference,'" Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit judge wrote in a majority opinion, quoting case precedent.

"The Supreme Court has told judges not to micro-manage the force necessary to quell such volatile situations."

Prison guards' use of force is rarely deemed excessive by federal courts and judges, analysis shows Supreme Court standards prohibit officer use of force only if it is "malicious and sadistic." Courts rarely rule that extreme violence hits that bar.

To win an excessive force 8th amendment claim, a plaintiff must prove the prison official deployed force “maliciously and sadistically to cause harm.”

We found that courts have often sanctioned extreme acts of violence by guards against prisoners.

www.businessinsider.com/excessive-fo...

In BI’s sample, 1,361 cases were argued under the deliberate-indifference standard. Only 10 prevailed in court; another 164 cases settled without the prison admitting liability.

All 10 of the successful plaintiffs were among the minority in our sample who had a lawyer.

'Deliberate indifference': The Supreme Court standard that requires prisoners to prove mindset to win Eighth Amendment claims Farmer v. Brennan was a landmark case for trans rights. It also cemented a standard that makes it almost impossible to win Eighth Amendment claims.

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that prison officials were liable for 8th Amendment violations only if they acted with “deliberate indifference” to a prisoner’s suffering.

We found it’s a nearly impossible standard to meet.

www.businessinsider.com/deliberate-i...

The PLRA requires prisoners to exhaust their prison’s internal grievance system before filing suit. Legal scholars have described prison grievance procedures as something out of Kafka.

We found dozens of cases alleging serious harm thrown out over small administrative lapses.