Our Work in 2025 and Beyond

As a second Trump presidency approaches, so much seems bleak and uncertain for many in our community. But at The Appeal, our dedication to creating a better world through reporting that supports grassroots community organizing and holds powerful people accountable remains unchanged.

This work is as critical as ever. Our ambitious coverage of the criminal legal system exposes wrongdoing committed by government actors at federal, state, and local levels, and elevates solutions that emerge from local communities. We have never strayed from this mission, and our reporting delivers change.

From Wisconsin to Georgia, our work has prevented local governments from defunding alternatives to incarceration and ensured that court diversion programs continue. In Arizona, our reporting on the criminalization of abortion prompted a federal judge to block the state’s “fetal personhood” statute from being used to prosecute pregnant people. After we uncovered systemic sexual abuse of immigrant women in a federal prison in California, authorities released a sexual assault survivor from ICE custody.

Change does not come easily. But giving up is not an option. The actions of a second Trump administration are sure to put the lives of our incarcerated, over-policed, trans, immigrant, and unhoused neighbors at risk. The Appeal is uniquely placed to meet their needs. As a newsroom, we work with our community to build a better future. We regularly publish essays and investigations by incarcerated writers and engage movement builders on the ground as experts, community representatives, and sources. 

And, as we prepare for a second Trump presidency, The Appeal will continue to produce community-centered reporting. Here’s what our reporters will be watching.

• Police accountability: Time and again, our work has exposed systemic failures of police departments nationwide, from the NYPD botching rape cases to the Phoenix Police Department’s wanton abuse of civil rights. These stories spurred the Department of Justice to investigate both agencies.
  
  Trump’s Department of Justice appointee is likely to thwart federal oversight of police departments, but we will continue to hold police, and local municipalities that fund them, accountable for abuses of power.
• Local jails and state prisons: Our investigations have revealed ongoing human rights crises inside jails and prisons—from price-gouging at prison commissaries in Florida to a record number of deaths at a Georgia jail. The Appeal’s reporting on conditions at Georgia’s Clayton County Jail spurred U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff to call for a Department of Justice investigation.
  
  The Appeal will continue to expose these abuses and demand accountability from local lawmakers, who are responsible for the health and safety of their constituents, including incarcerated people and their families.  
• The expanding net of criminalization: Protections for unhoused people, trans people, protesters, and pregnant people are increasingly being stripped away. In Alabama, lawmakers tried to criminalize mutual aid for abortions. Nationwide, state lawmakers introduced 483 anti-trans bills in 2023 alone. And this year, police arrested more than 3,000 protesters—with many facing serious charges—as students across the country denounced what experts have repeatedly called the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. 
  
  As state legislators, attorney generals, judges, and local prosecutors try to criminalize more Americans, The Appeal will be tracking their moves.
• Crimmigration: From uncovering inhumane conditions at immigration detention facilities run by sheriffs in Louisiana and New Mexico to exposing police complicity in the deportation of a community activist in North Carolina, our reporting has documented the critical role that officials in the criminal-legal system play in facilitating the arrests and deportations of immigrants by the federal government. We’ll also be keeping an eye on which state and local law enforcement agencies choose to cooperate with federal deportation efforts—and which ones choose to fight back.
• Local alternatives to police, jails and prisons: Changing the criminal legal system for the better requires experimenting with new ideas and transformative alternatives. As states and municipalities across the nation consider new approaches to public safety, we’ll continue to report on what works and what doesn’t, as well as the political challenges and pushback these new policies face. When Atlanta’s successful Policing Alternatives & Diversion Initiative saw its funding threatened, we were the first national outlet to call attention to the problem, helping build pressure for officials to continue the program. Trump has threatened to further reduce federal funding for alternatives to policing and incarceration, meaning this coverage will continue to be essential over the next four years.

At The Appeal, we envision a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, create public safety. We know this is a societal and political shift that will take decades, even lifetimes. Successful changes to the criminal legal system take a long time to be implemented. We know the importance of continuing to support our community so they don’t lose the good work that has been accomplished. 

The Appeal’s journalism is critical now for catalyzing changes that may take years to come to fruition. These next few years are just the foundation for the shifts and reforms that our community will build upon in the future, and we have an essential role to play in raising their urgency now. 

This is why The Appeal needs your support now: To hold police, prosecutors, prisons, and politicians accountable, to raise up the voices of our impacted community, and highlight solutions that offer a bright light towards a better future, just as we have done since the day we started this work.

So, please, donate now so we can continue this critical work.