Dear Reader,

I am proud to present you with two pieces of good news.

First is our 2025 Annual Report. It’s the first one I’ve been part of, and it brings a mix of emotions. A small, worker-led nonprofit newsroom has made a real impact on health and environmental journalism.

By choosing quality over quantity and publishing rigorously fact-checked stories that are less often picked up by mainstream media, The Xylom continues to grow. In 2025,

• Our unique reach on The Xylom’s web platform increased by 48%.

• The number of newsletter subscribers also grew by 47%, and

• Mentions of our work across TV, radio, podcasts, and print and digital outlets increased by 657%, reaching over 3 million people(!).

Let’s not forget that this growth happened despite a severe budget crunch — there were moments when our coffers were empty, and 2025 has been the most financially challenging year for us. But one thing we’ve held on to: paying all contributors equally — whether they are from the U.S., Kenya, or Nepal. And when we turned to you during our mid-2025 emergency fundraiser, you gave more than we asked for.

Which brings me to the second piece of good news: This morning, our Editor-at-Large Kang-Chun Cheng has been named one of eight global finalists in the Emerging Journalists category of the inaugural Stringer Awards!

You’ve seen KC’s reporting take her from the frontlines of Eastern Ukraine to the floodplains of South Sudan, revealing the most pressing global health and environmental disparities of our time. Now, you can see KC’s face, along with a list of the finalists, in a full-page, full-color spread in this weekend's edition of the International New York Times.

KC’s work is impossible without the support of readers like you. Thank you! But I’ll be frank: even though we are finally back in the black, we currently still only have a two-month runway, so we need your help to sustain our newsroom.

Monthly memberships give KC, me (as her editor), and our roster of contributors the financial stability to take on powerful violators and report from places that don’t always make global headlines — from Jordan to Cambodia. These stories often involve significant personal risk, so to get the story right, we spend months obtaining necessary paperwork, building trust with sensitive sources, and verifying our findings.

You have come through for us when things got tough. Can we count on you again to support our award-winning independent journalism that you can find nowhere else?

Warmly,
Laasya Shekhar
Managing Editor

♨️ HOT OFF THE PRESSES:
This Indian Billionaire is Trying to Get Trump to Drop His Bribery Charges. Meanwhile, His Company is Forcing Out Another Indigenous Tribe for Coal.

Billionaire Gautam Adani is accused of building a global energy empire through bribes, bypassing sanctions, violating tribal rights, and targeting journalists. In Central India’s Raigarh district, a planned coal mine by his rival has been stopped by public outcry, but the Adani group has shown no signs of changing course.

This story by The Xylom is co-published by Mekong Independent and Icarus Complex Magazine. Read more here.

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✨ NEWS BEHIND THE NEWS

• 🛢️After Alex exposed flaws in South Texas’s ambient air monitoring network, near the Crude Oil Export Capital of America, the TCEQ confirmed today in its draft 2026 Annual Monitoring Network Plan that it is constructing its first PM2.5 monitor in San Patricio County, to be activated by the end of this year. The 30-day comment period begins today, and you can see instructions for comments here.

• 🎉 Congratulations to our contributor Myriam Giselle Vidal Valero, who has been named an MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow for the 2026–27 cohort. She is among 11 science journalists selected from a pool of more than 200 applicants.

• 📣 Congrats to our contributor Alex Music on joining The Open Notebook as a program assistant to help plan and execute their social media content!

🍑 A SOUTHERN FLAIR

• AUSTIN, Texas — Big Bend Wall Protests Draw Thousands To Texas Capitol (Roque Planas, Public Domain)

  “We all agree that border security matters,” says State Sen. César Blanco, a west Texas Democrat. “But we don’t have to harm our communities in the process. We don’t have to destroy the ecosystem to achieve it. We can do it the right way. We can do it thoughtfully with the people that live in those communities.”

• HOUSTON — I thought I'd forgotten the joy of space travel. Artemis II reminded me (Gwen Howerton, Chron)

  “And as these intrepid astronauts did what I cannot and will never do, as they braved the dark emptiness of space in search not of riches but of knowledge and glory, I found myself tethered to them by our shared humanity and the problems that come with it,” writes Gwen Howerton.

• FLORIDA — Three Newly Published Studies Reveal Florida Red Tide Blooms Are Becoming More Persistent And Severe With Warming Waters And Nutrient Inputs (University of Maryland, Center For Environmental Science)

  "We can put to rest the idea that increased records of red tide are due to increased monitoring-- these results show that these increases are due to increasing temperatures, increasing river flow in the fall months and the associated nutrients that such flows deliver,” says Dr Patricia Glibert, Professor of Marine Science.

🗺️ WHAT ELSE WE'RE READING

• BERLIN — Some Black Women Say the Best Thing They Did for Their Health Was Leave America (Jenae Barnes, Capital B)

  “I would venture to say that on a whole, the people who live in Germany are healthier and better cared for than in the United States as a whole, because almost everyone has access to health care, so you don’t necessarily have to wait until you have a medical crisis first to get care,” says Denise Banks-Grasedyck, a Louisiana native, who has lived in Berlin since 1988.

• RFK Jr. May Reverse a Peptide Ban He Calls “Illegal.” Former FDA Officials Say He Mischaracterized Their Work. (Anjeanette Damon, ProPublica)

  “It would be a disruption of the societal pact we have had since 1962 that drugs will be studied to see if they work before they are marketed in the U.S.,” says Janet Woodcock, a former FDA acting commissioner. 

• WASHINGTON – Forest Service will close research stations that study wildfire risk (Eric Niiler, New York Times)

  “This move will lead to an increasing divergence between sound science and land management,” said Kevin Hood, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a nonprofit forest protection group.