At 4 AM on the fourth day of the war, my train pulled into Lviv, Ukraine, and hundreds of refugees began to disembark when a 5-year-old boy fainted in the corridor of a passenger car. As his mother frantically tried to resuscitate him, a crush of refugees pushed behind them. Outside the car window about a thousand desperate refugees clamored to get on a train to Poland.

Read my first report for The Nation to find out what happens next. With millions fleeing Ukraine, the railways have become a vital tool of escape. But with no guarantee at landing a seat, just getting on the train is a fight for survival.

More reporting from the war to come.

Photo: Massive crowds at the Lviv train station; Gaelle Girbes / Getty Images

On the second day of the war — with Russia invading Ukraine from the north, east, and south — military aged men in the west mobilized to duty. Men aged 18 to 60 were forbidden to leave the country by martial law, and being conscribed for duty in the city center of Khmelnytskyi, 170 miles southwest of Kyiv.

Read my first report from Ukraine for The Intercept — which I am posting here later than usual due to the challenges of being on the ground in Ukraine. There’s more reporting from Ukraine and on the war coming up.

Photo: conscribed men line up to board buses. They have no idea where they are going or if they will return; by John Bolger

When Scott Stringer was accused of sexual misconduct in April, the accuser’s lawyer was a familiar foe to the labor unions. Read the history of Patricia Pastor, the general counsel for Ron Lattanzio and his web of dubious construction companies. For the greater part of a decade, she worked for one of the “body shops” that provided cheap non-union labor for some of the city’s biggest construction projects, including the developer behind the Hudson Yards project, Related Companies. Stringer, an ally of the unions, became a known enemy of Related.

When the labor union began organizing workers at Trade Off, Pastor filed retaliatory lawsuits. But Trade Off had already caught the attorney general’s eye for a system of gross sexual abuses. Read the scoop for The Intercept with Ryan Grim!

When widespread multi-borough riots broke out last year for the first time since the 1977 Blackout, the city did not mount an organized response for at least four hours. Looters took control of a 90 block area in SoHo. And on the next day they spread to the Bronx. The two nights of riots — along with the entire 11-day period of unrest last summer — will be discussed for years to come.

Read my investigative analysis for The Intercept. Shedding new light on the city’s response, and the tactics used by the NYPD, to document a monumental failure rare in New York City history.

Photo by John Bolger. Macy’s on 34th Steeet the day after it was looted.

The publication of this article marks my contributing debut for The Intercept, with Alice Speri.

Exclusive documents from the Strategic Response Group shed light on the internal workings of NYPD’s secretive counter-terror and protest unit. Read the scoop here!

Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

When a fuel spill broke out in a tunnel of NYC’s L Train, the government can’t find its source for three weeks. Despite obvious evidence to the contrary, the government insists the tunnel is safe, as hundreds of thousands of citizens are exposed to an underground toxic mess.

This is an ongoing investigation. Read part one, and part two.

I promise part three is coming.

Photo credit: Leonardo March

My contributing debut for The Indypendent.

The Metropolitan Transportation Agency, MTA, exposed users’ sensitive private information for years through their very poor website. This, despite having squandered millions of dollars to Oracle in exchange for some of the insecure services. User passwords, phone numbers, addresses, and even sexual harassment complaints were readily readable to countless third parties.

Read the scoop here!

Photo credit: Jens Schott Knudsen

Read the fantastic, and award-winning story, Big Oil, Bad Air, by journalists Jim Morris, Lisa Song, and David Hasemyer, jointly reported between Inside Climate News, Center for Public Integrity, and Weather Channel. I had the privilage of developing an interactive map plotting of the oil wells underneath Karnes County, Texas, for Inside Climate News.

The map was featured on-air by Rachel Maddow for MSNBC.

Full story here. See the map full-screen here.