CIR's First Home

When we opened up the Center for Investigative Reporting in 1977, our office suite was on the top floor of the magnificent old Broadway Building in downtown Oakland.

There was a definite 1930s feel to the place, as if we were private detectives from a bygone era. Early visitors fed that impression, including a woman who wanted us to follow her husband because she suspected he was cheating.

(We politely declined.)

Instead, we did long stories about corporate crime, environmental degradation, political corruption and other journalistic topics.

When I recently posted about CIR’s origin — “49 Years Ago: CIR is Born” — I didn’t have a photo of the headquarters building. I also made a math error in that post, originally labeling it 50 years, which I rapidly corrected on Substack. That math error is a first for me and this newsletter.

One of my co-founders, Dan Noyes, kindly sent me this old photo, so this gives me the chance to update that post and correct the record on both counts.

Now on to the news...

HEADLINES:

• Trump’s changing course on Strait of Hormuz strategy raises questions about US war preparation (AP)

• An American-operated Patriot air defense battery likely fired the interceptor missile involved in a pre-dawn explosion that injured dozens of civilians and tore through homes in US-ally Bahrain (Reuters)

• Israel Thought It Could Spur Rebellion Inside Iran. That Hasn’t Happened. (NYT)

• ICE officers deployed to some airports as TSA callouts worsen (CNN)

• American Aviation Is Near Collapse (Atlantic)

• US airport travel chaos gets worse (BI)

• ICE agents seen ‘terrorizing’ woman and child at SFO, Calif. senator says (SFGate)

• Trump rejects off-ramp to fund DHS as airport delays worsen (NBC)

• Mullin Confirmed to Lead Homeland Security Dept. (NYT)

• How Trump Killed Conservatism (Atlantic)

• Supreme Court Appears Poised to Reject Late-Arriving Mail-In Ballots Law (NYT)

• Is Cuba Next? (New Yorker)

• How Amazon Is Bringing Fast Delivery to Rural America (WSJ)

• The Treasury just declared the U.S. insolvent. The media missed it (Fortune)

• It’s not just vaccines — parents are refusing other routine preventive care for newborns (AP)

• The dark, disruptive symbolism of Trump’s plans to renovate Washington (WP)

• Colombian Air Force plane crashes with 125 people on board (BBC)

• Why I Stopped Forcing My Kid to Share (Atlantic)

• Is Taste the One Thing A.I. Can’t Replace? (NYT)

• In China, a rush to ‘raise lobsters’ quickly leads to second thoughts (NBC)

• Trump Demands Allies Do Their Fair Share To Fuck Up The World (Onion)