Raw Story hires two award-winning investigative reporters, new night editor

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Raw Story hires two award-winning investigative reporters, new night editor
Raw Story investigative reporters Alexandria Jacobson and Mark Alesia.

Raw Story, America’s largest independently-owned political news site, has hired award-winning investigative reporters Mark Alesia and Alexandria Jacobson as it embarks on an expansion of its original journalism.

Raw Story has also hired David McAfee as night editor to manage the newsroom's expanded coverage during evenings and weekends.

"At a time when many news organizations are cutting back and laying journalists off, Raw Story is expanding our newsroom and our reporting ambitions," said Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal, who joined Raw Story in January. "Expect us to bring you a lot of news this year that you won't find elsewhere."

Alesia is an Indiana-based reporter who spent 16 years at the Indianapolis Star as an investigative news reporter, sports enterprise reporter and assistant sports editor. He is one of the three Indianapolis Star reporters who broke the Larry Nassar/USA Gymnastics story, which revealed how Nassar serially raped and assaulted child athletes while serving as the gymnastics team's doctor. The reporting, chronicled in books and the Netflix documentary "Athlete A", won numerous awards, including the University of Missouri’s Honor Medal and the Tom Renner Award from Investigative Reporters & Editors.

His reporting on a wide variety of other subjects has won 15 national and 20 first-place state awards, including Indiana Journalist of the Year as selected by the Society of Professional Journalists. A graduate of Indiana University, Alesia most recently worked as communications director for Indiana State University. Earlier in his reporting career, Alesia worked at CBS SportsLine, the Daily Herald of suburban Chicago, the Los Angeles Daily News and Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise. He's frequently appeared on TV and radio, including CNN, ESPN and NPR.

Jacobson brings to Raw Story an extensive track record of social justice, education, consumer affairs, health care, tech and data science reporting. Her reporting has been published by numerous national outlets including ABC News, Chicago Sun-Times and The Chicago Reporter.

Jacobson's investigative work has been recognized with a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and Peter Lisagor Award, and she recently earned first place prizes from the Chicago Journalists Association and Illinois Woman's Press Association. She earned her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in journalism from Northwestern University and has taught journalism classes at Northwestern University and DePaul University. She's also a skilled multimedia journalist, particularly in the realm of news and documentary video reporting and editing.

McAfee comes to the Raw Story after nearly a decade of writing about the legal industry for Bloomberg Law. He is also a co-founder and a commissioning editor at Hypatia Press, a publisher that specializes in philosophical works that challenge religion or spirituality.

Raw Story's focus on original and investigative journalism in 2023 has already yielded notable results.

In recent weeks, Raw Story has exclusively revealed that:

Contact: Editor-in-Chief Dave Levinthal, levinthal@rawstory.com

For customer support contact support@rawstory.com. Report typos and corrections to corrections@rawstory.com.

Postal Service kills Trump voter-vetting system after Supreme Court ruling: report

The U.S. Postal Service has halted work on a computer system central to President Donald Trump's effort to limit mail-in voting.

Postmaster General David Steiner confirmed the stoppage Thursday in an interview with the Associated Press, just days after the Supreme Court rejected the president's executive order for this year's midterms.

"There's an injunction so we're not doing anything," Steiner told the AP.

Trump's drive to eliminate mail-in voting handed the Postal Service an unexpected role as a gatekeeper of voter eligibility just months ahead of the midterm elections, a job Steiner has been reluctant to take on, according to the AP.

Unlike Trump, who blasted the court's decision and mocked several justices, Steiner declined to weigh in on the ruling or the underlying policy, the AP reported. He described his agency as an "independent agency of the executive branch" whose reach over the order was confined to logistics.

"I don't get to decide what rules that are put on us that I decide to accept or not accept," Steiner said. "I looked at it more from the execution side."

The order Trump signed in March instructed federal agencies to compile state citizenship lists that would feed an online Postal Service portal, which would then send mail ballots only to voters cleared through the process, the AP reported. Steiner said he learned of the order about a month before its rollout but focused on carrying it out rather than judging its merits.

A whistleblower report released this month by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) contended the system was rushed and riddled with errors. Steiner said he read portions of it and acknowledged the difficulty of building such a platform on a tight timeline, though he defended his staff.

"There's absolutely no doubt that we worked fast," he said. "My personal opinion is it was a monumental task and I'm very proud of our IT department for being able to do it that fast."

Reuters reported on Wednesday that Steiner told associates he wants to quit because he's deeply discouraged by his job as it comes under scrutiny. Steiner denied the resignation talk in his AP interview.

"There's no truth to that," he said. "I think I know the motivation behind it. I think it's somebody that would like to see me out of a job."

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More Epstein files cleared for release as defiant lawmakers win petition: report

Two congressmen have gathered enough signatures to force the release of more government files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

According to an article by The Washington Sun, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) announced on Thursday that they had secured the 218 signatures needed to bring their bill to the House floor.

The measure, called the Epstein Files Transparency Act II, would let victims, lawmakers, and states sue the Justice Department for unlawfully hiding records tied to the disgraced financier. It stalled in committee after the pair introduced it in July, but a discharge petition lets them bypass Republican leadership and bring it straight to a vote, according to The Washington Sun.

Four Republicans agreed to sign on, including Massie, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC), Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA). Every House Democrat also backed the effort.

"Thomas Massie and I have defied history a second time, securing commitments for 218 signatures on Epstein 2.0," Khanna wrote on X.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) cut the chamber's workweek short by a day, which means lawmakers cannot vote on the bill until after November's midterm elections. The shortened session also blocked a separate Massie resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

A simple majority of 218 votes is all that would be needed to send the bill to the Senate, The Washington Sun noted.

"We will not rest until the Epstein abusers are held accountable and there is justice," Khanna said, per The Sun.

The push follows last year's near-unanimous passage of the first Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the DOJ to hand over millions of documents. That release drew accusations of a cover-up, complaints about botched redactions and fights over omitted records, and the two lawmakers say the DOJ has "grossly failed" to meet its legal obligation, The Sun reported.

Amy Coney Barrett deflects on Trump threatening justices despite her own warnings

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett deflected questions about President Donald Trump's attacks on her and her colleagues, even after publicly decrying the rising threats.

According to reporting by Bloomberg Law, the Trump-appointed Barrett was pressed on Thursday about the topic during a question-and-answer session at the University of Virginia. She was there to promote her book, "Listening to the Law."

She was asked whether disparaging comments made over the past year by Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller had increased threats to the judiciary, Bloomberg Law reported. Barrett reportedly declined to single out the president.

"I don't want to talk about anything that the president has said in particular," Barrett said.

Instead, Barrett framed the danger as a condition shared across political life in Washington rather than the product of any one figure.

"We certainly live in a time and in a climate where people are quick to say things that I certainly wish, you know, that they wouldn't," Barrett said, per Bloomberg Law. "I think it's not just the judges. I think that many members of the House and Senate talk about the threats they get."

Her reluctance to name Trump stands in contrast with how directly she has spoken about the threats justices face. Barrett told Congress in July testimony about Supreme Court security funding that the justices expect a 38 percent increase in threats this year compared to last, Bloomberg Law reported. Her own home was the target of an attempted swatting call this spring, she said during that July testimony.

The deflection came the same week Trump revived his criticism of the conservative justices he appointed. After the court declined to let his administration impose new mail-in ballot restrictions through the U.S. Postal Service, Trump went after the justices who ruled against him.

"These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves," Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. He added that the court was "bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left."

Barrett, a former Antonin Scalia clerk, drew similar anger from the right last term for joining majorities that struck down Trump's global tariff regime and upheld birthright citizenship. She said on Thursday that she has a "lonely job" in many ways and that she has grown more "guarded" by leaning on old friends she trusts.

"I think that part has been a challenge, just in ways that I didn't quite expect, just because what I had seen of the job was watching Scalia do it," Barrett said. "I think that was a different time."

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