Terms

The Badger provides local reporting, newsletters, membership features, reader accounts, archives, and related services. You may use the service only for lawful purposes and in a way that does not interfere with our systems, our reporting, or other readers.

You may not scrape, overload, reverse engineer, bypass access controls, attempt unauthorized access, submit malicious code, impersonate another person, or use The Badger to harass, threaten, defame, or violate anyone's rights.

Some features require a reader account. You are responsible for the activity on your account and for keeping your sign-in credentials secure.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, create security risk, abuse the service, or are used in a way that harms The Badger or other people.

Paid memberships support local reporting and may unlock account features or access across Badger editions. Prices, features, renewal terms, and availability may change prospectively.

Membership payments and billing management are handled through Stripe. Unless stated otherwise at checkout, paid memberships renew automatically until canceled. You can manage or cancel billing through the membership account flow. Cancellation stops future renewal but does not automatically refund past charges.

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You can unsubscribe using links in the emails or manage preferences from your account when available. Transactional or account-related messages may still be sent when needed to operate the service.

The Badger publishes reporting for informational and journalistic purposes. Articles may rely on public records, official statements, interviews, documents, meeting materials, and other sources. We may update, correct, remove, or archive content at our discretion.

We work to be accurate, but we do not guarantee that every story, source link, transcript, summary, date, or data point will be complete, current, or error-free. Do not rely on The Badger as legal, financial, medical, emergency, or other professional advice.

The Badger site, branding, design, software, articles, newsletters, photographs, graphics, and other original materials are owned by The Badger or its licensors and are protected by law.

You may link to Badger articles and quote short excerpts with attribution. You may not republish substantial portions, remove attribution, sell access to our content, train commercial systems on our content, or create competing archives without written permission.

If you send us tips, corrections, comments, documents, emails, photos, or other material, you represent that you have the right to share it. You grant The Badger permission to review, store, edit, publish, quote, summarize, and otherwise use that material for reporting, editorial, operational, and legal purposes.

Do not submit confidential, privileged, trade secret, classified, or highly sensitive material through routine site channels. If you need to share sensitive information with a reporter, use a channel specifically provided for that purpose.

The Badger uses third-party providers for authentication, analytics, email delivery, payments, hosting, and other operations. Their services may be subject to their own terms and policies.

Our reporting links to public agencies, source documents, videos, maps, social platforms, and other third-party sites. We are not responsible for third-party content, availability, security, or practices.

The Badger is provided as is and as available. To the fullest extent allowed by law, we disclaim warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, availability, accuracy, and uninterrupted operation.

To the fullest extent allowed by law, The Badger will not be liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or business interruption arising from your use of the service.

We may update these terms as The Badger changes. Continued use of the service after an update means you accept the revised terms. The effective date below shows when this page was last revised.