In the early evening on Feb. 19, two Chicago police officers arrested a 40-year-old man in the Englewood neighborhood.

Bolts is a digital publication that covers the nuts and bolts of power and political change. We are focused on two areas where local governments play an outsized role: criminal justice and voting ...

An old-fashioned, four-legged polling booth is on display in the lobby of the Salt Lake County clerk’s office. Its metal ...

Faced with popular initiatives to protect abortion rights and other measures they dislike, state Republicans are passing new bills that local advocates say will hollow out direct democracy. Organizers ...

Prisons across the United States run on incarcerated labor. People behind bars cook food, sew clothes, clean facilities, manufacture goods, and even work in dangerous industries like agriculture and ...

California Attorney General Rob Bonta stunned the Los Angeles political and criminal justice communities in April 2024 with his decision to prosecute Diana Teran, an advisor to then-District Attorney ...

Daniel Jenkins has volunteered to boost voter turnout on Indiana University’s Bloomington campus since becoming a student there in 2022. Jenkins, now a junior studying political science, has spent ...

As millions tuned in to watch the Super Bowl in New Orleans this month, outside the Superdome in the central French Quarter, thousands of law enforcement officers patrolled the streets. The heavy ...

Julia Rock is a reporter for New York Focus. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, the Intercept, the Lever, and the New York Times.

This article was published in collaboration between Bolts and New York Focus. Central New York’s Tompkins County, home to Ithaca, found itself in the federal government’s crosshairs last month when ...

After two Connecticut businesses were found to have played a large role in U.S. executions in the past five years, lawmakers are proposing a bill that would make it illegal for state companies to ...

T.R. Edwards grew up with stories from his grandmother Kathleen about her struggle to vote as a Black woman in Wisconsin: A child of the Jim Crow south, she’d moved to Madison in the 1970s, and then ...