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Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force

1 day 10 hours ago

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When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system.

Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.

“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.”

One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?”

And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”

During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities.

Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. “It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It worked there, so now let me send them there,’” Amezcua said.

Santa Ana residents chant about ICE raids during a City Council meeting in June. (Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images)

Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups and state governments that stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or out of the country.

And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat.

One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.”

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.”

The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in history right now and it’s frightening.”

Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department.

The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public.

The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.

The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement.

Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.

“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official. “This is very scary.”

Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’ ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”

“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping them from using it against citizens.”

Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, refuted descriptions of ICE as a secret police force. She called such comparisons the kind of “smears and demonization” that led to the recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas, in which a gunman targeted an ICE transport van and shot three detained migrants, two of them fatally, before killing himself.

In a written response to ProPublica, McLaughlin dismissed the current and former national security officials and scholars interviewed by ProPublica as “far-left champagne socialists” who haven’t seen ICE enforcement up close.

“If they had,” she wrote, “they would know when our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs” and other criminals.

McLaughlin said the recruiting blitz is not compromising standards. She wrote that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is ready for 11,000 new hires by the beginning of next year and that training has been streamlined and boosted by technology. “Our workforce never stops learning,” McLaughlin wrote.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson also praised ICE conduct and accused Democrats of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”

“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism,” Jackson said. “Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that lead to violence.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump pick who fired nearly the entire civil rights oversight staff, said the move was in response to CRCL functioning “as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” according to a DHS spokesperson.

Trump also eliminated the department’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with flagging inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of the apprehended immigrants are held. The office was resurrected after a lawsuit and court order, though it’s sparsely staffed.

The hobbling of the office comes as the White House embarks on an aggressive expansion of detention sites with an eye toward repurposing old jails or building new ones with names that telegraph harsh conditions: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.

“It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody anticipated a year ago,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism. “We might’ve thought that we were going to see a slide, but I don’t think anybody anticipated how quickly it would transpire, and now people at all levels are scrambling to figure out how to push back.”

Scenes from the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building’s U.S. Immigration Court in New York City, where federal agents working for ICE detain immigrants and asylum-seekers reporting for court proceedings (Charly Triballeau, Michael M. Santiago and Dominic Gwinn/Middle East Images via AFP/Getty Images) “Authoritarian Playbook”

Frantz and other scholars who study anti-democratic political systems in other countries said there are numerous examples in which ICE’s activities appear cut from an authoritarian playbook. Among them was the detention of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was apprehended after co-writing an op-ed for the campus paper that criticized the school’s response to the war in Gaza. ICE held her incommunicado for 24 hours and then shuffled her through three states before jailing her in Louisiana.

“The thing that got me into the topic of ‘maybe ICE is a secret police force’?” said Lee Morgenbesser, an Australian political science professor who studies authoritarianism. “It was that daylight snatching of the Tufts student.”

Morgenbesser was also struck by the high-profile instances of ICE detaining elected officials who attempted to stand in their way. Among them, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained for demanding a judicial warrant from ICE, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference.

And David Sklansky, a Stanford Law School professor who researches policing and democracy, said it appears that ICE’s agents are allowed to operate with complete anonymity. “It’s not just that people can’t see faces of the officers,” Sklansky said. “The officers aren’t wearing shoulder insignia or name tags.”

U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, recently pointed out that use of masked law enforcement officers had long been considered anathema to American ideals. In a blistering ruling against the administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, he wrote, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.” The Trump administration has said it will appeal that ruling.

Federal agents stand guard outside an ICE detention facility in Newark, N.J. The Trump administration authorized the deployment of National Guard units at immigration facilities, escalating its use of the military as part of the president’s immigration crackdown. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times/Redux) Where the Fallout is Felt

The fallout is being felt in places like Hays County, Texas, not far from Austin, where ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine children, during a birthday celebration in the early morning of April 1.

The agency’s only disclosure about the raid in Dripping Springs describes the operation as part of a yearlong investigation targeting “members and associates believed to be part of the Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.”

Six months later, the county’s top elected official told ProPublica the federal government has ignored his attempts to get answers.

“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them,” said County Judge Ruben Becerra, a Democrat. “By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”

In the raid, a Texas trooper secured a search warrant that allowed law enforcement officers to breach the home, an Airbnb rental on a vast stretch of land in the Hill Country. Becerra told ProPublica he believes the suspicion of drugs at the party was a pretense to pull people out of the house so ICE officers who lacked a warrant could take them into custody. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has yet to produce evidence supporting claims of gang involvement, said Karen Muñoz, a civil rights attorney helping families track down their relatives who were jailed or deported. While some court documents are sealed, nothing in the public record verifies the gang affiliation DHS cited as the cause for the birthday party raid.

“There’s no evidence released at all that any person kidnapped at that party was a member of any organized criminal group,” Muñoz said.

McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, did not respond to questions about Hays County and other raids where families and attorneys allege a lack of transparency and due process.

ICE agents knock on the door of a residence during a multiagency enforcement operation in Chicago in January. (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Images) In Plain Sight

Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino, carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.

Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle of traffic.”

With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.

On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”

The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.

Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit “record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.

Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic “police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal authorities at all.

“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way? There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”

Video footage shows Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.

“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was recorded telling the officers.

Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived, the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.

Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”

by J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam

House Rep Demands Answers About Delayed EPA Report on PFNA, a Toxic Forever Chemical

2 days 3 hours ago

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What Happened: The ranking member of a key House subcommittee demanded answers this week from the Environmental Protection Agency about why it has yet to make public a report documenting the health risks posed by a forever chemical found in the water of millions of Americans.

In a letter sent to the EPA on Thursday, Rep. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, cited a ProPublica story from last week that quoted government scientists saying the report had been ready for publishing in April but had yet to be released. Pingree — the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies — asked EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin for “clear answers” about why the report had not been made public, who directed its delay and when Zeldin would commit to releasing it.

What They Said: Pingree referred to the delay in publishing the report as part of “a growing pattern of interference with the Agency’s scientific work” and pointed to the Integrated Risk Information System, the EPA program that wrote it. IRIS, which was created during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, analyzes the health harm chemicals can cause. “The Trump Administration, Republicans in Congress, and industry have been hostile to the IRIS program,” she wrote, asking whether scientists had been removed or reassigned from the program and, if so, why.

Her letter also noted that the “delay in issuing the PFNA report coincided with EPA’s decision, in May of this year, to rescind” drinking water limits for PFNA and several other forever chemicals, also known as PFAS. “This seems to be more than coincidence given that there has been strong industry pushback on regulating PFAS,” Pingree wrote.

Pingree noted that the delay appears to contradict Zeldin’s repeated public statements about protecting the public from PFAS compounds, which contaminate soil and water in Maine and throughout the country. “Our state is really hoping for help from the federal government. And when you see the federal government turn their back on you and decide to withhold the data … that’s really discouraging,” she told ProPublica. “Reading that piece made my blood boil.”

Background: PFNA is in drinking water systems serving some 26 million people. The report in question found that the chemical interferes with human development by causing lower birth weights and, based on animal evidence, likely causes damage to the liver and to male reproductive systems, including reductions in testosterone levels, sperm production and the size of reproductive organs.

PFNA was a component of firefighting foam and a processing aid to make a kind of plastic used in circuit boards, valves and pipes. Although it was subject to a voluntary phaseout almost two decades ago, the chemical is now widespread in the environment.

ProPublica’s reporting found that IRIS has been drastically reduced under the Trump administration. The program, which calculates values that can be used to set limits for pollutants in drinking water and cleanup levels for toxic sites, has been a frequent target of industry. Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has set the direction for President Donald Trump’s second administration, called for IRIS to be eliminated. Earlier this year, Republicans in Congress introduced legislation called the “No IRIS Act.” Of 55 EPA scientists Publica identified as having worked on recent IRIS assessments, only eight remain in the office, according to a source familiar with the program.

Why It Matters: The report calculated the amount of PFNA that people can be exposed to without being harmed — a critical measurement that can be used to set limits for cleaning up PFNA in contaminated areas called Superfund sites and for removing the chemical from drinking water. This calculation will prove critical to communities around the country as they battle polluters over who will pay to remove PFNA and other forever chemicals from the environment.

Response: Last week, an EPA spokesperson told ProPublica that the report on PFNA would be published when it was finalized but did not answer questions about what still needed to be done or when that would likely happen. The agency’s press office did not respond to questions about Pingree’s letter.

by Sharon Lerner

The Shadow President

2 days 9 hours ago

This story is exempt from ProPublica’s Creative Commons license until Dec. 19, 2025.

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Join us Nov. 5 for a virtual discussion about our yearlong investigation into Russell Vought. Register now.

On the afternoon of Feb. 12, Russell Vought, the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, summoned a small group of career staffers to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building for a meeting about foreign aid. A storm had dumped nearly 6 inches of snow on Washington, D.C. The rest of the federal government was running on a two-hour delay, but Vought had offered his team no such reprieve. As they filed into a second-floor conference room decorated with photos of past OMB directors, Vought took his seat at the center of a worn wooden table and laid his briefing materials out before him.

Vought, a bookish technocrat with an encyclopedic knowledge of the inner workings of the U.S. government, cuts an unusual figure in Trump’s inner circle of Fox News hosts and right-­wing influencers. He speaks in a flat, nasally monotone and, with his tortoiseshell glasses, standard-issue blue suits and corona of close-cropped hair, most resembles what he claims to despise: a federal bureaucrat. The Office of Management and Budget, like Vought himself, is little known outside the Beltway and poorly understood even among political insiders. What it lacks in cachet, however, it makes up for in the vast influence it wields across the government. Samuel Bagenstos, an OMB general counsel during the Biden administration, told me, “Every goddam thing in the executive branch goes through OMB.”

The OMB reviews all significant regulations proposed by individual agencies. It vets executive orders before the president signs them. It issues workforce policies for more than 2 million federal employees. Most notably, every penny appropriated by Congress is dispensed by the OMB, making the agency a potential choke point in a federal bureaucracy that currently spends about $7 trillion a year. Shalanda Young, Vought’s predecessor, told me, “If you’re OK with your name not being in the spotlight and just getting stuff done,” then directing the OMB “can be one of the most powerful jobs in D.C.”

During Donald Trump’s first term, Vought (whose name is pronounced “vote”) did more than perhaps anyone else to turn the president’s demands and personal grievances into government action. In 2019, after Congress refused to fund Trump’s border wall, Vought, then the acting director of the OMB, redirected billions of dollars in Department of Defense money to build it. Later that year, after the Trump White House pressured Ukraine’s government to investigate Joe Biden, who was running for president, Vought froze $214 million in security assistance for Ukraine. “The president loved Russ because he could count on him,” Mark Paoletta, who has served as the OMB general counsel in both Trump administrations, said at a conservative policy summit in 2022, according to a recording I obtained. “He wasn’t a showboat, and he was committed to doing what the president wanted to do.”

After the pro-Trump riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, many Republicans, including top administration officials, disavowed the president. Vought remained loyal. He echoed Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud and publicly defended people who were arrested for their participation in the melee. During the Biden years, Vought labored to translate the lessons of Trump’s tumultuous first term into a more effective second presidency. He chaired the transition portion of Project 2025, a joint effort by a coalition of conservative groups to develop a road map for the next Republican administration, helping to draft some 350 executive orders, regulations and other plans to more fully empower the president. “Despite his best thinking and the ­aggressive things they tried in Trump One, nothing really stuck,” a former OMB branch chief who served under Vought during the first Trump administration told me. “Most administrations don’t get a four-year pause or have the chance to think about ‘Why isn’t this working?’” The former branch chief added, “Now he gets to come back and steamroll everyone.”

“The President loved Russ because he could count on him,” said OMB general counsel Mark Paoletta of Vought, seen at the microphone in the White House in 2019. (Evan Vucci/AP Images)

At the meeting in February, according to people familiar with the events, Vought’s directive was simple: slash foreign assistance to the greatest extent possible. The U.S. government shouldn’t support overseas anti-malaria initiatives, he argued, because buying mosquito nets doesn’t make Americans safer or more prosperous. He questioned why the U.S. funded an international vaccine alliance, given the anti-vaccine views of Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The conversation turned to the United States Institute of Peace, a government-­funded nonprofit created under Ronald Reagan, which worked to prevent conflicts overseas; Vought asked what options existed to eliminate it. When he was told that the USIP was funded by Congress and legally independent, he replied, “We’ll see what we can do.” (A few days later, Trump signed an executive order that directed the OMB to dismantle the organization.)

The OMB staffers had tried to anticipate Vought’s desired outcome for more than $7 billion that the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development spent each year on humanitarian assistance, ­including disaster relief and support for refugees and conflict victims. During the campaign, Trump had vowed to defund agencies that give money to people “who have no respect for us at all,” and Project 2025 had accused USAID of pursuing a “divisive political and cultural agenda.” The staffers proposed a cut of 50%.

Vought was unsatisfied. What would be the consequences, he asked, of a much larger reduction? A career official answered: Less humanitarian aid would mean more people would die. “You could say that about any of these cuts,” Vought replied. A person familiar with the ­meeting described his reaction as “blasé.” Vought reiterated that he wanted spending on foreign aid to be as close to zero as possible, on the fastest timeline possible. Several analysts left the meeting rattled. Word of what had happened spread quickly among the OMB staff. ­Another person familiar with the meeting later told me, “It was the day that broke me.”

What Vought has done in the nine months since Trump took office goes much further than slashing foreign aid. Relying on an expansive theory of presidential power and a willingness to test the rule of law, he has frozen vast sums of federal spending, terminated tens of thousands of federal workers and, in a few cases, brought entire agencies to a standstill. In early October, after Senate Democrats refused to vote for a budget resolution without additional health care protections, effectively shutting down the government, Vought became the face of the White House’s response. On the second day of the closure, Trump shared an AI-generated video that depicted his budget director — who, by then, had threatened mass firings across the federal workforce and paused or canceled $26 billion in funding for infrastructure and clean-­energy projects in blue states — as the Grim Reaper of Washington, D.C. “We work for the president of the United States,” a senior agency official who regularly deals with the OMB told me. But right now “it feels like we work for Russ Vought. He has centralized decision-­making power to an extent that he is the commander in chief.”

At the start of Trump’s second term, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which promised to slash spending and root out waste, dominated the headlines. A gaggle of tech bros, with little government experience, appeared to be marching into federal buildings and, with the president’s blessing, purging people and programs seen as “woke” or anti-Trump. The sight of Musk swinging a chainsaw onstage at a conservative conference captured the pell-mell approach, not to mention the brutality, of the billionaire’s plan to bring the federal government to heel.

But, according to court records, interviews and other accounts from people close to Vought, DOGE’s efforts were guided, more than was previously known, by the OMB director. Musk bragged about “feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” but the details of the agency’s downsizing were ironed out by Vought’s office. When DOGE took aim at obscure quasi-government nonprofits, such as the United States Institute of Peace, OMB veterans saw Vought’s influence at work. “I can’t imagine that the DOGE team knew to target all these little parts of the government without Russ pointing them there,” the former OMB branch chief told me. Vought also orchestrated DOGE’s hostile takeover of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, crippling a regulator that Republicans had hoped to shutter during Trump’s first term. “DOGE is underneath the OMB,” Michelle Martin, an official with Citizens for Renewing America, a grassroots group founded by Vought, said in May, according to a video of her remarks. “Honestly, a lot of what Elon began pinpointing ... was at the direction of Russ.”

Vought, who declined to be interviewed for this story, voiced concerns about some of DOGE’s tactics — canceling budget items that the OMB had wanted to keep, for instance — but he mostly saw the department as a useful battering ram. An administration official who has worked with Vought and Musk told me that DOGE showed Vought it was possible to ignore legal challenges and take dramatic action. “He has the benefit of Elon softening everyone up,” the official told me. “Elon terrified the shit out of people. He broke the status quo.”

Vought is a stated opponent of the status quo. One of the few prominent conservatives to embrace the label of “Christian nationalist,” he once told an audience that “the phrasing is too accurate to run away from the term. ... I’m a Christian. I am a nationalist. We were meant to be a Christian nation.” American democracy, he has said, has been hijacked by rogue judges who make law from the bench and by a permanent class of government bureaucrats who want to advance “woke” policies designed to divide Americans and silence political opponents. “The stark reality in America is that we are in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover of the country, in which our adversaries already hold the weapons of the government apparatus,” Vought said in 2024, during a conference hosted by the Center for Renewing America, a nonprofit think tank that he also founded. “And they have aimed it at us.”

Listen to Vought Talk About Christian Nationalism (Obtained by ProPublica)

The central struggle of our time, he says, pits the defenders of this “post-­constitutional” order — what he calls the “cartel” or the “regime,” which in his telling includes Democrats and Republicans — against a group of “radical constitutionalists” fighting to destroy the deep state and return power to the presidency and, ultimately, the people. Vought counts himself as a member of the latter group, which, in his view, also includes right-wing stalwarts such as the political strategist Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s mass-deportation campaign. “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said in a private speech in 2023. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains.”

The ultimate radical constitutionalist, Vought says, is Donald Trump. In Vought’s view, Trump, the subject of four indictments during his time out of office, is a singular figure in the history of the American republic, a once persecuted leader who returns to power to defeat the deep state. “We have in Donald Trump a man who is so uniquely positioned to serve this role, a man whose own interests perfectly align with the interests of the country,” Vought said in his 2024 speech. “He has seen what it has done to him, and he has seen what they are trying to do to the country. That is nothing more than a gift of God.” As Bannon put it, sitting onstage with Vought at a closed-door conference in 2023, Trump is “a very imperfect instrument, right? But he’s an instrument of the Lord.”

In Vought’s vision for the U.S. government, an all-powerful executive branch would be able to fire workers, cancel programs, shutter agencies, and undo regulations that govern air and water quality, financial markets, workplace protections and civil rights. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, would shed its historical independence and operate at the direction of the White House. All of this puts Vought at the center of what Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown, described to me as the Trump administration’s “complete disregard” for the law. “The president has no authority to not spend money Congress has appropriated — that’s not a debate,” he told me. “The president has no authority to fire civil servants who are protected by statute — that’s not a debate.” He added, “We are seeing exertions of executive power the likes of which we have never seen in this country.”

Vought, who is 49, has spent his entire adult life in Washington. He met his wife, Mary, on Capitol Hill, where they both eventually worked for Mike Pence, at the time a Republican congressman from Indiana. (The Voughts divorced in 2023.) Yet, after nearly 30 years in the nation’s capital, he still views himself as an outsider. He once described his upbringing, in Trumbull, Connecticut, as “blue collar” and his parents as part of America’s “forgotten men and women.”

Vought’s father, Thurlow, served in the Marines and worked as an electrician. His mother, Margaret, spent more than 20 years as a schoolteacher and administrator. Before they married each other, Vought’s parents had both been widowed in their 30s and left to raise families on their own; Russ was their only child together. In 1981, when Russ was 4, one of Thurlow’s daughters died in a car crash. Not long after the accident, Thurlow had a religious awakening. “That completely changed the direction of our immediate family,” one of Vought’s half sisters later wrote on social media.

Vought as a senior in the 1998 yearbook of Wheaton College (Obtained by ProPublica)

Vought’s mother helped launch a Christian school, where the curriculum relied heavily on the Bible. One history book the school considered using included the instruction to “Defend the statement that all governmental power and authority come from God.” America was built on Judeo-­Christian values, she told a local newspaper, and if the American people gave up on those values “then they’re going to have to pay the price based on sin, sickness, disease and anarchy.”

Vought attended a private Christian high school, then went to Illinois to study at Wheaton College, which is known as the “evangelical Harvard.” He moved to Washington after graduation and, in 1999, landed a job in the office of Phil Gramm, a Republican senator from Texas. Vought, who started in the mailroom, would later say that working for Gramm laid the “conservative foundation” for the rest of his life.

Gramm was an uncompromising budget hawk. He was famous for the “Dickey Flatt test,” named after a printer Gramm knew in Texas. For every dollar of federal spending, Gramm said, lawmakers must ask themselves: Did it improve the lives of people like Dickey Flatt? (In Gramm’s estimation, the answer was often no; every year, he introduced legislation designed to ruthlessly slash the budget.) Years later, when Vought testified before Congress, he said that people like his parents “have always been my test for federal spending. Did a particular program or spending increase help the nameless wagon pullers across our country, working hard at their job, trying to provide for their family and future?”

Under Gramm’s tutelage, Vought developed a reputation as a master of the arcane rules that can get legislation passed or killed. He climbed the ranks of the Republican Party, going on to advise Pence, who was then the leader of the House Republican Conference. But the closer Vought got to the center of congressional power, the more disillusioned he became. In the late 2000s, when Republican lawmakers, who professed to care about deficits and balanced budgets, voted in favor of bills loaded with corporate giveaways and pork-barrel spending, Vought felt that they were abandoning their principles and duping their constituents. He later recalled of this time, “I would say, ‘If there’s an opinion in this leadership room, I’m telling you it’s 95% wrong.’” A former Capitol Hill colleague of Vought’s told me, “I think he thought the Republican leadership was a bigger impediment to conservative causes than Democrats were.”

In 2010, Vought quit working for House Republicans and helped launch Heritage Action for America, an offshoot of the influential conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. The foundation was known for dense policy papers and its voluminous “Mandate for Leadership” governing guide. Heritage Action had a different purpose — to strong-arm Republicans in Congress into acting more conservatively.

Vought was instrumental in turning Heritage Action into the interest group that congressional Republicans feared most. He picked fights with party leaders over agriculture subsidies and greenhouse gas regulations, and published a scorecard that rated how lawmakers voted on key bills. In Heritage Action’s first year, according to a person familiar with Vought’s work there, he came up with an idea for a mailer that attacked Bob Corker, a Republican senator from Tennessee, for his vote to approve a nuclear ­weapons treaty with Russia. The mailer featured a photograph of Corker alongside images of Barack Obama, Vladimir Putin and the Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Heritage Action’s tactics so infuriated the Republican leadership that ­Sen. Mitch McConnell called on Heritage donors to stop funding the group. (McConnell did not respond to a request for comment.)

In 2013, Heritage Action announced a campaign to defund the Affordable Care Act. Vought and his colleagues toured the country, whipping up the grassroots, and poured millions of dollars into advertisements and lobbying. They wanted Republicans in the House and the Senate to insist that any spending bill passed to avert a shutdown must also defund Obamacare. The Republican lawmakers who embraced the strategy came to be known as the “suicide caucus,” and their protest led to a 16-day government shutdown. In the end, Republican leaders cut a deal to reopen the government, leaving Obamacare intact.

Heritage Action saw the 2016 presidential election as an opportunity to put a true conservative back in the White House. The group’s CEO, Michael Needham, openly supported Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, who, three years earlier, had helped orchestrate the shutdown. Trump, at least initially, was treated with disdain. During an appearance on Fox News in 2015, Needham called him a “clown” who “needs to be out of the race.”

Vought and Trump couldn’t have been more different: One was a deacon at his Baptist church; the other was a twice-­divorced philanderer who had been caught on camera bragging about grabbing women “by the pussy.” But, after Trump won the election, Vought was offered a job as a senior adviser at the OMB, where he’d dreamed of working since his days in Phil Gramm’s office. Years later, Vought would say that, at the time, he had no ambition of one day running the agency. He had planned to help with the transition and some of the OMB’s early efforts, then go to seminary to become a pastor. But, he later said in a podcast interview, “God had other plans.”

In March 2017, Trump signed an executive order that called for a top-to-bottom reorganization of the federal government. Mick Mulvaney, a former congressman, served as Trump’s first budget director, but, inside the OMB, Vought took the lead. According to a former senior staffer at the agency, Vought initially pushed for the president’s plan to eliminate USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also wanted to fold the Department of Health and Human Services, along with food stamps programs, into a new Department of Health and Public Welfare. “They wanted to call it that because they think it sounds bad,” a former OMB analyst told me. In one meeting, according to a person in the room, Vought asked, “Why do we do economic assistance abroad at all?” The former OMB analyst said, “There were very few, if any, debates where Russ wouldn’t take the most extreme option available to him, the most conservative, the most budget-cutting.”

Trump’s Cabinet secretaries resisted wholesale cuts. The former senior staffer recalled, “The general counsels at these agencies are calling the White House counsel and saying, ‘We’re not trying to introduce legislation to delete ourselves, are we?’” Few of the recommendations in Vought’s final reorganization plan, which was released in 2018, were implemented. But the document now reads like a guide to the second Trump administration. “I didn’t realize it then,” the former OMB senior staffer told me, “but I was writing the first draft of Project 2025.”

Vought increasingly clashed with the OMB’s staff over proposed cuts to popular programs. Meals on Wheels, the food delivery program, was a topic of intense debate. Even after OMB staff explained how the program, which received more than $900 million in funding from Congress, acted as a lifeline for homebound seniors, Vought and Mulvaney pushed for major cuts that would have hobbled its operations, according to the former OMB senior staffer. The staffer added that it was often hard to reconcile Vought’s deeply held Christian faith — he hosted a prayer session for select colleagues — with his eagerness to cut programs that helped the vulnerable. “It always struck me as a strange thing,” the person said. “There’s compassion, but it only extends to certain people.”

In 2018, Mark Paoletta, a former attorney in the George H.W. Bush White House, joined the OMB as general counsel. Paoletta was best known for publicly defending Clarence Thomas, who, during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, in 1991, was accused of sexual harassment by his former colleague Anita Hill. Paoletta had worked on Capitol Hill, then entered private practice, where he advised politicians under scrutiny by Congress. Paoletta and Vought quickly forged an alliance. The former OMB branch chief told me that the office’s culture changed after Paoletta arrived. “There was a shift that we were all deep state,” he said. “They thought we were pushing back because we had our own leftist-leaning agenda.” (Paoletta declined to comment.)

It was Vought’s idea to use an obscure budgetary maneuver called a rescission to claw back funds that Congress had already appropriated, according to Paoletta’s remarks at the conservative policy summit. In 2018, at Vought’s urging, Trump sent Congress the largest rescission request in decades, asking lawmakers to roll back more than $15 billion, including money for USAID’s Ebola response, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and an Energy Department loan program for auto manufacturing. OMB employees “looked at us like we were crazy,” Paoletta said. “They just thought it was something they didn’t do.” Once again, Vought’s own party thwarted him: The measure failed by a single vote in the Republican-held Senate.

Vought also encountered resistance inside the White House. When Congress refused to give Trump billions in funding to construct new border fencing, Vought and Paoletta devised a novel strategy. Trump could declare a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, giving him the authority to seize money from other parts of the government. According to Paoletta, John Kelly, the president’s chief of staff, kept the plan from Trump. Paoletta said that Kelly’s message to the OMB was “We don’t want to tell the president he has that authority, because God knows what he’ll do.”

Eventually, Trump ­badgered Mulvaney, the OMB director, to find him the money for his wall. Mulvaney told the president that he’d been trying to meet with him about the issue, but that Kelly had blocked him. Within days, Trump replaced Kelly with Mulvaney. Vought took over as the acting director of the OMB, and money from the Defense Department was tapped to fund the wall. (Kelly did not respond to requests for comment.)

Under Vought, the OMB produced budgets that called for more cuts than any in modern history. Congress all but ignored them. A former staffer in the OMB’s legislative affairs office recalled that Republicans didn’t believe Trump cared about the sweeping reductions included in his own annual budgets. “They kept saying, ‘The president’s not really pushing this or that cut — that’s a Russ Vought thing, isn’t it?’” the legislative affairs staffer said.

Vought in 2019, a few months before he agreed to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to Ukraine, a step that helped lead to Trump’s first impeachment (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux)

In July 2019, Trump asked the OMB to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars in security assistance to the government of Ukraine. The request coincided with a phone call Trump had with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which Trump pressured him to investigate Biden and Biden’s son Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. The money for Ukraine had already been approved by Congress, but Vought agreed to hold back the funds. Paoletta signed off on a memo authorizing the freeze. Under the law, the move was known as an impoundment. (The Government Accountability Office, an independent nonpartisan agency, later deemed it illegal.)

Any fan of “Schoolhouse Rock!” knows that the first job assigned to Congress in the Constitution is the power of the purse. The president, meanwhile, must “take Care that the Laws be faithfully ­executed,” according to Article 2 of the Constitution. Most legal scholars interpret this to mean that the president’s duty is to spend the money Congress appropriates, and that the president does not have the power to withhold funds. In 1969, William Rehnquist, the conservative future Supreme Court chief justice, wrote that the impoundment power was “supported by neither reason nor precedent.”

The question of impoundment’s legality came to a head in the 1970s, when President Richard Nixon withheld billions in congressio­nally approved funds for environmental ­cleanup efforts. Courts undid Nixon’s actions, and Congress eventually passed the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which outlawed the maneuver, leaving only narrow exceptions — rescissions — that required congressional sign-off. (Democrats are calling for restrictions on the rescission process as part of the current shutdown negotiations.) Over the years, the Impoundment Control Act would come to be viewed as sacrosanct at the OMB. That didn’t stop Vought. “I had been personally told, ‘Look, I want the money cut off until we can figure out where it’s going,’” Vought later said of the Ukraine funding in an interview with the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson. “It was like all hell broke loose within the bureaucracy.”

The impoundment triggered congressional investigations and, ultimately, Trump’s first impeachment. (Ukraine eventually received the money.) Vought refused to cooperate with investigators, calling the probe a “sham process that is designed to relitigate the last election.” One of the impeachment articles named Vought, saying that the president had pressured him and others not to respond to subpoenas. Trump, for his part, continued to express support for impoundment, calling it the “secret weapon” that could tame the “bloated federal bureaucracy.”

In early 2021, on one of the final days of Trump’s first term, Vought visited him in the Oval Office. Both men felt a sense of unfinished business, Vought would later recall. Only a few months earlier, when Vought was sworn in as the OMB director, Trump had told him that, after 3 1/2 years as president, he had finally got the hang of the job. “Russ, we’ve got to get another term,” Trump said. “We finally figured out how to do this.”

Vought, frustrated by what he saw as years of obstruction by civil servants, had recently pushed through a new policy to vastly expand the number of at-will employees in the government, making them easier to fire. But the COVID-19 pandemic had dashed any chance of leaving the government smaller than he’d found it. Trump had signed trillion-­dollar stimulus bills to prop up the American economy; by the time he left office, the national debt had swelled by $7.8 trillion. After the violence on Jan. 6, a second Trump term looked less likely than ever. Vought, however, had not given up hope.

Before Vought, second from left, departed at the end of Trump’s first term, the president asked him to find a way to counter the Black Lives Matter movement. As Vought would later say, “I’m the budget guy. If I can talk about race, you can talk about race.” (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

In the Oval Office, he told Trump that he would soon launch a new political operation that would keep the MAGA movement alive while attacking the policies of the incoming Biden administration. Trump blessed the venture, with one request. That summer, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, national protests had forced a racial reckoning in the country. Trump wanted Vought, who as OMB director had scrubbed training materials for federal employees of any references to “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” to find a way for conservatives to push back against the Black Lives Matter movement. “This was an assignment I was given from President Trump,” Vought later recalled. “I’m the budget guy. If I can talk about race, you can talk about race.”

Listen to Vought: “If I Can Talk About Race, You Can Talk About Race” (Obtained by ProPublica)

A few days after Trump left office, Vought announced the launch of the Center for Renewing America, a MAGA think tank that aspired to act as an incubator for future Republican administrations. Its activist arm, Citizens for Renewing America, would mobilize grassroots supporters to pressure elected officials to embrace the think tank’s agenda. The overarching goal, Vought wrote in an op-ed for The Federalist, was to “restore an old consensus in America that has been forgotten, that we are a people For God, For Country, and For Community.”

At the Center for Renewing America, Vought surrounded himself with other radical constitutionalists from the first Trump administration. He brought on Jeffrey Clark, the Justice Department official who had tried to use his agency to help Trump overturn the 2020 election. (A D.C. disciplinary board recently recommended that Clark, who now works at the OMB, lose his law license as punishment for those efforts, an outcome that Clark is appealing and that his lawyer called a “travesty of justice.”) Kash Patel, Trump’s current FBI director, and Ken Cuccinelli, a top immigration official in the first Trump administration, joined as senior fellows. Working at the center, Cuccinelli explained at the conservative policy summit, allowed him to “stake out the outer boundary of reasonable constitutional law.”

The Center for Renewing America’s ideas included how the president could invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military troops to American cities to put down protests, how the White House could freeze billions in federal funding without waiting for a vote in Congress, and how agency leaders could defy government unions and fire workers en masse. The think tank also set out to create shadow versions of the OMB and of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to anticipate legal challenges and counter internal pushback. In his 2024 address, Vought explained, “I don’t want President Trump having to lose a moment of time having fights in the Oval Office about whether something is legal or doable or moral.”

Vought and his colleagues at the center also worked closely with the House Freedom Caucus to urge other congressional Republicans to use government shutdowns as a way of forcing through major policy changes. One of their first targets was critical race theory, a once obscure academic concept that had become a flashpoint during the 2020 racial ­justice protests.

According to previously unreported recordings of briefings held by Citizens for Renewing America, Vought said that he had pressured members of the Freedom Caucus to yoke a ban on critical race theory to must-pass bills on raising the debt limit and funding the government. “We have to have a speaker that goes into these funding fights with a love for the shutdowns,” Vought said during a November 2022 briefing call, “because they create an opportunity to save the country.”

But Republicans never shut down the government during the Biden presidency, and Vought grew increasingly frustrated with them for not using more aggressive tactics. On one briefing call, he praised Cori Bush, a progressive Democrat from Missouri, after she camped out for several days on the Capitol steps to protest the end of a pandemic-­era moratorium on evictions. Vought called her politics “very, very bad,” but he admired her methods: “We need this from Republicans.”

The centerpiece of Vought’s work during the Biden years was his campaign to popularize the concept of “woke and weaponized” government. The tagline brought together two of Vought’s rallying cries: “woke” policies, like diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and transgender rights, and a “weaponized” FBI and Justice Department that had allegedly been wielded against the Democrats’ political enemies, including, most notably, Trump. When the Center for Renewing America released a federal budget blueprint in late 2022, calling for nearly $9 trillion in cuts in the course of 10 years, the word “woke” appeared 77 times across 103 pages.

Jessica Riedl, a budget expert who works for the conservative Manhattan Institute, told me that it was “just silly” to claim, as the Center for Renewing America’s budget did, that Veterans Affairs, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and farm subsidies required enormous cuts for being too woke. “It’s a way to dress up spending cuts that aren’t popular on their own merits,” Riedl said. Vought described his framing as an attempt to “change paradigms.” “We have to be able to defund agencies,” he said in the private speech in 2023. “That is why these things have to be indelibly linked, and that is why we are focussing so much on ‘woke and weaponized.’”

Listen to Vought Talk About Using the Phrase “Woke and Weaponized” (Obtained by ProPublica)

Any hope that Vought had of implementing his ideas in a second Trump administration nearly ran aground last summer. He had written a chapter of Project 2025’s 887-page report, arguing for an expansion of executive power that would put the Justice Department and other traditionally independent agencies fully under presidential control. Center for Renewing America fellows had written two more chapters in the report. But, as Election Day neared, Project 2025 became a liability for the Trump campaign. Polls showed that a majority of Americans opposed its most aggressive proposals, including removing the abortion drug mifepristone from the market, eliminating the Department of Education and implementing Vought’s plan to more easily fire nonpolitical federal workers. As criticism of Project 2025 grew, Trump insisted that he knew “nothing” about it, while also claiming that “some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

The month before the election, Politico reported that Donald Trump Jr., had compiled a list of people who would not be allowed to serve in a second Trump administration, including a number of leading contributors to Project 2025. But, according to a former Trump campaign official with close ties to the White House, Vought deftly navigated the controversy. “Russ is a consummate team player,” the official told me. “He was the one person at Project 2025 that we could have a conversation with during the course of the campaign.”

A week after Trump’s victory, the president-­elect announced his plans for the Department of Government Efficiency. “It will become, potentially, ‘The Manhattan Project’ of our time,” Trump said in a statement. He tapped two of his biggest backers to run it: Elon Musk, who had donated nearly $300 million to help elect Trump and other Republicans, and the biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly ran for president on an anti-woke platform. Two days after the announcement, Vought met with Musk and Ramaswamy at Mar-a-Lago. Vought and Musk “hit it off,” according to The New York Times; both were “on the same wavelength in terms of taking the most extreme action possible.” Soon after the meeting, Trump nominated Vought to run the OMB.

One of DOGE’s first targets was the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB had first been proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who, as a law professor, argued for the creation of a regulator that could protect Americans from predatory mortgages and hidden fees. Created by law in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the bureau developed a reputation as an aggressive enforcer of fair lending and consumer ­protection laws. The bureau’s work has led to nearly $20 billion in direct relief to consumers and $5 billion in civil penalties for alleged wrongdoing. For Vought, the bureau embodied the gross regulatory overreach that he loathed; outside of government, the agency’s biggest foes, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, were major funders of Trump’s second campaign.

On Feb. 7, Trump named Vought the bureau’s acting director, a role he would perform on top of his duties at the OMB. That morning, a small team of DOGE staffers arrived at the CFPB’s headquarters. According to previously unreported emails and depositions, the members of DOGE took orders from Vought as they disabled the CFPB’s website and decided which of the agency’s employees to fire. Musk weighed in on X: “CFPB RIP.”

Trump had targeted the CFPB during his first term. “There were days in Trump One where it felt like we were getting punched in the face,” one longtime employee told me. Over time, however, the president seemed to lose interest, and the CFPB’s last ­director under Trump, a political appointee named Kathy Kranin­ger, supported the bureau’s mission. In 2020, under Kraninger, the CFPB filed the second-­highest number of enforcement actions in its nearly 10-year existence.

Current and former CFPB staff told me that they assumed a second Trump administration would look like the first one. “Generally, we thought there would be a conservative agenda we’d be handed, and we’d figure out how to enact it,” the veteran employee said. Soon after taking over, Vought informed Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, which funds the CFPB, that the agency would not need any more money. He barred CFPB employees from doing most types of work and told them not to go to the office. When confusion arose over what duties, if any, remained for the staff to do, Vought clarified the matter in a Feb. 10 email, telling employees to “stand down from performing any work task.”

In the following weeks, Vought and Paoletta stopped oversight activities, quashed ongoing investigations and froze active enforcement cases, which included matters involving some of the largest banks in the nation, such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Capital One. Rohit Chopra, the bureau’s director under Biden, said that Vought’s actions had put the CFPB “in a coma.” The bureau’s top enforcement officer resigned in June, writing in a letter to colleagues that the CFPB’s leadership “has no intention to enforce the law in any meaningful way.”

The final blow came when Vought announced a plan to lay off more than 80% of the CFPB’s employees. A federal appeals court ruled in August that the mass-firing plan could proceed. It took Vought four months to accomplish what the previous Trump administration had been unable to do in four years.

The unwinding of the CFPB, however, was quickly overshadowed by another Vought victory. That same month, he completed his assault on foreign aid. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had been running what was left of USAID, announced that, with Trump’s approval, he had empowered Vought to officially eliminate the agency. “Russ is now at the helm to oversee the closeout of an agency that long ago went off the rails,” Rubio announced. “Congrats, Russ.”

Vought’s agency is “like a giant funnel that everything has to go through in order to happen,” a former OMB employee said. “You can get agencies to agree to things just to get the funnel to open back up.” (Kenny Holston/The New York Times/Redux)

Four months before the 2024 election, the Center for Renewing America had welcomed a small group of congressional staffers to its headquarters, a few blocks from the Capitol. Some of them worked for the House and Senate budget committees, which every year help set spending levels for the federal government. The purpose of the meeting was to brief the staffers on the center’s latest policy fight — an attempt to build the case for the use of impoundment.

At the briefing, Paoletta argued that the Impoundment Control Act was unconstitutional. Spending laws passed by Congress were a ceiling, not a floor, Paoletta argued, according to a person in the room. In that view — which most legal experts dismiss as a fringe position — the White House is not permitted to spend more than a law calls for, but it has the power to spend far less. “Congress passes statutes episodically, and often with conflicting purposes and demands,” Paoletta later wrote in an essay for the Center for Renewing America. “It is left to the President and his subordinates to harmonize their execution in a coherent manner.”

According to Democrats on the House Appropriations Committee, the Trump administration has since frozen or canceled more than $410 billion in funding on everything from energy subsidies for low-income households and Head Start after-school programs to President George W. Bush’s HIV-reduction initiative, PEPFAR, and artists’ grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Vought directed the National Institutes of Health to withhold — illegally, according to the Government Accountability Office — an estimated $15 billion in grants for outside research projects. The NIH also moved to cap funding for so-called indirect costs, which research universities rely on to pay for their buildings, utilities and administrative staff. Scientists I interviewed said that these cuts would inevitably lead to less medical research, including into a drug that Vought’s ex-wife credited with improving the life of their 11-year-old daughter, who was born with cystic fibrosis. A scientist who receives government funding to study cystic ­fibrosis treatment told me that, without sufficient money for indirect costs, “we probably won’t be able to do the research and will have to relinquish the grants.”

The OMB claims that it is vetting federal spending to ensure that the money does not fund “woke” programs. “We can confirm that President Trump and Director Vought are carefully scrutinizing spending that has previously run on autopilot or worse — toward transing our kids, the Green New Scam, and funding our own country’s invasion — just as the president promised,” an OMB spokesperson told the Times in August. But blocking funds is also a way to pressure officials and agencies to comply with the administration’s demands. “OMB is like a giant funnel that everything has to go through in order to happen,” Lester Cash, a former OMB employee, told me. “You can get agencies to agree to things just to get the funnel to open back up.”

In March, the OMB took down a legally mandated public website that made it possible to track the funding freezes. The move elicited a rare show of bipartisanship. In a letter to Vought, the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate appropriations committees urged him to “restore public access to apportionment data in accordance with statute.” Vought said the information listed on the site was “predecisional” and a risk to national security. The OMB restored the site only when a judge ruled that taking it down was illegal, saying that the government’s position relied “on an extravagant and unsupported theory of presidential power.”

The OMB’s funding freezes have wreaked havoc. On June 30, the Department of Education told state agencies that congressional appropriations for after-school activities and English-as-a-second-language instruction would not arrive the next day, as planned. The unexpected shortfall affected thousands of school districts, which served millions of students, in all 50 states. The administration only backed down after both Democrats and Republicans criticized the move. “When something’s been appropriated, signed into law, and people are writing contracts based on the commitment of the federal government, and then they don’t know if they’re going to get it or not, it creates such chaos,” Don Bacon, a Republican House member from Nebraska, told me. “I’m not sure what the OMB director thought he was doing.” (A spokesperson for Vought at the OMB would not comment on the record in response to a detailed list of questions.)

Vought faces senators this summer during an Appropriations Committee hearing on the administration’s proposed $9 billion rescission, which was later voted into law, of foreign aid and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (Graeme Sloan/Sipa USA/Reuters)

In June, Trump sent a rescission request to Congress, seeking to cancel roughly $9 billion in funding for foreign aid and for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR, PBS, and other public radio and TV stations nationwide. The programs were viewed, the senior agency official told me, as “soft targets,” a test to see if Vought could persuade Republicans to put aside their concerns about undermining Congress’ power of the purse. Unlike in Trump’s first term, Vought’s rescission plan succeeded. The measure, which faced opposition from Democrats and a few Republicans, passed after Vice President JD Vance cast two tie-­breaking procedural votes. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, told me, “You’ve basically said to Congress, ‘Hey, compromise all you want, but we’re going to undo that in the way we want as soon as you’ve signed the bill.’”

On the Friday before Labor Day, Vought made his most audacious move yet. The White House sent Congress a new rescissions package, targeting nearly $5 billion in foreign aid. But this time Vought informed lawmakers that he didn’t need their approval. He asserted that the president could make the request, putting a temporary freeze on the funds, then simply wait for the fiscal year to expire, on Sept. 30, at which point the money would be canceled out. Vought called it a “pocket rescission,” but it was impoundment by another name. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, said it was a “clear violation of the law.”

The Government Accountability Office can sue the OMB over an impoundment or pocket rescission to get the money released. In April, Gene Dodaro, who leads the Government Accountability Office, testified that his office had opened 39 investigations into potential violations of the Impoundment Control Act by the Trump administration. The OMB has responded by attacking Dodaro’s agency. In one letter, Paoletta said that the OMB would cooperate with the Government Accountability Office only if its demands didn’t get in the way of Trump’s agenda. In another letter, Paoletta told the Department of Transportation to ignore a Government Accountability Office ruling that found that the OMB had illegally impounded money for electric car development. Vought, for his part, has flatly declared that the Government Accountability Office “shouldn’t exist.”

Vought’s actions could provoke a challenge to the Impoundment Control Act in the Supreme Court. In the meantime, a number of current and former government employees told me that they worried about the long-term consequences of what he has already done: the terminating of vital research projects that could have led to lifesaving breakthroughs, the nation’s lost standing as an international leader, the uncertainty cast over the fundamental workings of government. “They’ve given up on the idea that they need to persuade anybody,” Bagenstos, the former general counsel at the OMB, said of Vought and Paoletta. They’re “just going to use brute force and dominance.” As the former OMB analyst told me, “They’ve dropped a grenade into the system.”

The government shutdown has illustrated, in the starkest terms, Vought’s expansive theory of executive power and his willingness to ignore Congress. On Oct. 2, Trump posted on Truth Social that he would meet with Vought to decide which “Democrat Agencies” to cut on a temporary or permanent basis. A few days later, the OMB released a memo claiming that, seemingly in defiance of a 2019 law, furloughed federal employees were not guaranteed back pay following a shutdown. Then, on Oct. 10, Vought announced that his campaign of mass firings across the bureaucracy had begun. So far, more than 4,000 employees have been laid off, disrupting government services devoted to, among other things, cybersecurity efforts, special education programs, substance abuse treatment and loans for small businesses. A federal judge put a temporary stop to the cuts, but that same day Vought predicted that the total number of firings would be “north of 10,000.” As one official texted me, “Trauma achieved.”

Kirsten Berg contributed research.

by Andy Kroll

Who Is Russell Vought? How a Little-Known D.C. Insider Became Trump’s Dismantler-in-Chief

2 days 9 hours ago

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Days into the 2025 shutdown that brought the federal government to a halt, President Donald Trump reposted an AI-generated music video set to the tune of Blue Öyster Cult’s “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper.” Trump plays the cowbell. Vice President J.D. Vance mans the drums. Trump’s budget director, Russell Vought, wields the scythe. “Russ Vought is the reaper,” goes one lyric.

For most of Vought’s nearly three decades in Washington, D.C., he operated largely behind the scenes. He spent a dozen years as a congressional staffer before going to Heritage Action, the advocacy arm of the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative think tank. In 2017, he returned to government, bringing his exhaustive knowledge of the budgetary process to the first Trump administration and becoming one of the president’s most loyal functionaries.

Over the past decade, this unassuming budget wonk and self-proclaimed Christian nationalist has quietly injected his ideas into the bloodstream of American politics. He was one of the chief architects of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and said he spent much of 2024 drafting the executive orders, regulations and other plans to use in a second Trump presidency. Since returning as the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget in January, he has led the president’s effort to dismantle large swaths of the federal government.

ProPublica reporter Andy Kroll spent almost a year chronicling Vought’s rise from the mailroom of the U.S. Senate to his perch as one of the two or three most influential players in the current administration behind only Trump and, arguably, Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff. In his second term as the president’s budget guru, Vought has tried to make good on his desire to put federal workers “in trauma.”

This video is based on scores of interviews, thousands of pages of emails obtained through records requests and dozens of hours of videos and recordings of private briefings given by Vought, most of which have not been previously reported.

Vought declined to be interviewed for this story. His spokesperson at OMB would not comment on the record in response to a detailed list of questions.

The portrait that emerges from Kroll’s reporting is that of a man who is equal parts government technocrat, political operator and zealous iconoclast. Kroll reveals how the seeds of Trump’s presidency in 2025 were planted early in Vought’s career, while uncovering how much Vought has shaped the trajectory of the Trump-era Republican Party from behind the scenes. He also raises questions of what’s to come as Vought leverages his encyclopedic knowledge of the federal government’s inner workings to achieve his goal of remaking the executive branch. As Vought told his supporters in a 2024 speech, “God put us here for such a time as this.”

Kirsten Berg contributed research.

by Lisa Riordan Seville, Andy Kroll, Katie Campbell and Mauricio Rodríguez Pons

We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.

3 days 3 hours ago

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When the Supreme Court recently allowed immigration agents in the Los Angeles area to take race into consideration during sweeps, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that citizens shouldn’t be concerned.

“If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States,” Kavanaugh wrote, “they promptly let the individual go.”

But that is far from the reality many citizens have experienced. Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched.

About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.

Videos of U.S. citizens being mistreated by immigration agents have filled social media feeds, but there is little clarity on the overall picture. The government does not track how often immigration agents hold Americans.

So ProPublica created its own count.

We compiled and reviewed every case we could find of agents holding citizens against their will, whether during immigration raids or protests. While the tally is almost certainly incomplete, we found more than 170 such incidents during the first nine months of President Donald Trump’s second administration.

Among the citizens detained are nearly 20 children, including two with cancer. That includes four who were held for weeks with their undocumented mother and without access to the family’s attorney until a congresswoman intervened.

Immigration agents do have authority to detain Americans in limited circumstances. Agents can hold people whom they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally. We found more than 50 Americans who were held after agents questioned their citizenship. They were almost all Latino.

Immigration agents also can arrest citizens who allegedly interfered with or assaulted officers. We compiled cases of about 130 Americans, including a dozen elected officials, accused of assaulting or impeding officers.

These cases have often wilted under scrutiny. In nearly 50 instances that we have identified so far, charges have never been filed or the cases were dismissed. Our count found a handful of citizens have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanors.

Among the detentions in which allegations have not stuck, masked agents pointed a gun at, pepper sprayed and punched a young man who had filmed them searching for his relative. In another, agents knocked over and then tackled a 79-year-old car wash owner, pressing their knees into his neck and back. His lawyer said he was held for 12 hours and wasn’t given medical attention despite having broken ribs in the incident and having recently had heart surgery. In a third case, agents grabbed and handcuffed a woman on her way to work who was caught up in a chaotic raid on street vendors. In a complaint filed against the government, she described being held for more than two days, without being allowed to contact the outside world for much of that time. (The Supreme Court has ruled that two days is generally the longest federal officials can hold Americans without charges.)

George Retes, an American combat veteran, at the site of his arrest by immigration agents on California’s Central Coast. Retes was detained for three days without access to a lawyer and missed his daughter’s third birthday.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the Department of Homeland Security said agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

A top immigration official recently acknowledged agents do consider someone’s looks. “How do they look compared to, say, you?” Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino said to a white reporter in Chicago.

The White House told ProPublica that anyone who assaults federal immigration agents would be prosecuted. “Interfering with law enforcement and assaulting law enforcement is a crime and anyone, regardless of immigration status, will be held accountable,” said the Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson. “Officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens, and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism.”

A spokesperson for Kavanaugh did not return an emailed request for comment.

An immigration raid on 79-year-old Rafie Ollah Shouhed’s car wash left him with broken ribs. (Courtesy of Rafie Ollah Shouhed. Compiled by ProPublica.)

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Tallying the number of Americans detained by immigration agents is inherently messy and incomplete. The government has long ignored recommendations for it to track such cases, even as the U.S. has a history of detaining and even deporting citizens, including during the Obama administration and Trump’s first term.

We compiled cases by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We did not include arrests of protesters by local police or the National Guard. Nor did we count cases in which arrests were made at a later date after a judicial process. That included cases of some people charged with serious crimes, like throwing rocks or tossing a flare to start a fire.

Experts say that Americans appear to be getting picked up more now as a result of the government doing something that it hasn’t for decades: large-scale immigration sweeps across the country, often in communities that do not want them.

In earlier administrations, deportation agents used intelligence to target specific individuals, said Scott Shuchart, a top immigration official in the Biden, Obama and first Trump administrations. “The new idea is to use those resources unintelligently” — with officers targeting communities or workplaces where undocumented immigrants may be.

When federal officers roll through communities in the way the Supreme Court permitted, the constitutional rights of both citizens and noncitizens are inevitably violated, argued David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He recently analyzed how sweeps in Los Angeles have led to racial profiling. “If the government can grab someone because he’s a certain demographic group that’s correlated with some offense category, then they can do that in any context.”

Cody Wofsy, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, put it even more starkly. “Any one of us could be next.”

The video Garcia Venegas made of an immigration raid on a construction site shows him walking away from the officer while trying to film and then stating that he’s a citizen before being detained. (Courtesy of Garcia Venega)

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When Kavanaugh issued his opinion that immigration agents can consider race and other factors, the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices strongly dissented. They warned that citizens risked being “grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor.”

Leonardo Garcia Venegas appears to have been just such a case. He was working at a construction site in coastal Alabama when he saw masked immigration agents from Homeland Security Investigations hop a fence and run by a “No trespassing” sign. Garcia Venegas recalled that they moved toward the Latino workers, ignoring the white and Black workers.

Garcia Venegas began filming after his undocumented brother asked agents for a warrant. In response, the footage shows, agents yanked his brother to the ground, shoving his face into wet concrete. Garcia Venegas kept filming until officers grabbed him too and knocked his phone to the ground.

Other co-workers filmed what happened next, as immigration agents twisted the 25-year-old’s arms. They repeatedly tried to take him to the ground while he yelled, “I’m a citizen!”

Officers pulled out his REAL ID, which Alabama only issues to those legally in the U.S. But the agents dismissed it as fake. Officers held Garcia Venegas handcuffed for more than an hour. His brother was later deported.

Leonardo Garcia Venegas told agents he was a citizen both times he was detained. His REAL ID was dismissed as a fake.

Garcia Venegas was so shaken that he took two weeks off of work. Soon after he returned, he was working alone inside a nearly built house listening to music on his headphones when he sensed someone watching him. A masked immigration agent was standing in the bedroom doorway.

This time, agents didn’t tackle him. But they again dismissed his REAL ID. And then they held him to check his citizenship. Garcia Venegas says agents also held two other workers who had legal status.

DHS did not respond to ProPublica’s questions about Garcia Venegas’ detentions, or to a federal lawsuit he filed last month. The agency has previously defended the agents’ conduct, saying he “physically got in between agents and the subject” during the first incident. The footage does not show that, and Garcia Venegas was never charged with obstruction or any other crime.

Garcia Venegas’ lawyers at the nonprofit Institute for Justice hope others may join his suit. After all, the reverberations of the immigration sweeps are being felt widely. Garcia Venegas said he knows of 15 more raids on nearby construction sites, and the industry along his portion of the Gulf Coast is struggling for lack of workers.

Kavanaugh’s assurances hold little weight for Garcia Venegas. He’s a U.S. citizen of Mexican descent, who speaks little English and works in construction. Even with his REAL ID and Social Security card in his wallet, Garcia Venegas worries that immigration agents will keep harassing him.

“If they decide they want to detain you,” he said. “You’re not going to get out of it.”

Men building a home in rural Baldwin County, Alabama. Garcia Venegas was detained by immigration agents twice while working on homes in the area.

George Retes was among the citizens arrested despite immigration agents appearing to know his legal status. He also disappeared into the system for days without being able to contact anyone on the outside.

The only clue Retes’ family had at first was a brief call he managed to make on his Apple Watch with his hands handcuffed behind his back. He quickly told his wife that “ICE” had arrested him during a massive raid and protest on the marijuana farm where he worked as a security guard.

Still, Retes’ family couldn’t find him. They called every law enforcement agency they could think of. No one gave them any answers.

Eventually, they spotted a TikTok video showing Retes driving to work and slowly trying to back up as he’s caught between agents and protestors. Through the tear gas and dust, his family recognized Retes’ car and the veteran decal on his window. The full video shows a man — Retes — splayed on the ground surrounded by agents.

George Retes’ family noticed his car in a compiled video posted to TikTok. This clip from that longer video shows his white vehicle surrounded by tear gas. Immigration agents later pinned him on the ground. (nota.sra/TikTok)

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Retes’ family went to the farm, where local TV reporters were interviewing families who couldn’t find their loved ones.

They broke his window, they pepper sprayed him, they grabbed him, threw him on the floor,” his sister told a reporter between sobs. “We don’t know what to do. We’re just asking to let my brother go. He didn’t do anything wrong. He’s a veteran, disabled citizen. It says it on his car.”

Retes was held for three days without being given an opportunity to make a call. His family only learned where he had been after his release. His leg had been cut from the broken glass, Retes told ProPublica, and lingering pepper spray burned his hands.He tried to soothe them by filling sandwich bags with water.

Retes recalled that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.” He said one DHS official laughed at him, saying he shouldn’t have come to work that day. “They still sent me away to jail.” He added that cases like his show Kavanaugh was “wrong completely.”

DHS did not answer our questions about Retes. It did respond on X after Retes wrote an op-ed last month in the San Francisco Chronicle. An agency post asserted he was arrested for assault after he “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement.” Yet Retes had been released without any charges. Indeed, he says he was never told why he was arrested.

Retes said that agents knew he was a citizen. “They didn’t care.”

The Department of Justice has encouraged agents to arrest anyone interfering with immigration operations, twice ordering law enforcement to prioritize cases of those suspected of obstructing, interfering with or assaulting immigration officials.

But the government’s claims in those cases have often not been borne out.

Daniel Montenegro was filming a raid at a Van Nuys, California, Home Depot with other day-laborer advocates this summer when, he told ProPublica, he was tackled by several officers who injured his back.

Bovino, the Border Patrol chief who oversaw the LA raids and has since taken similar operations to cities like Sacramento and Chicago, tweeted out the names and photos of Montenegro and three others, accusing them of using homemade tire spikes to disable vehicles.

“I had no idea where that story came from,” Montenegro told ProPublica. “I didn’t find out until we were released. People were like, ‘We saw you on Twitter and the news and you guys are terrorists, you were planning to slash tires.’ I never saw those spike tire-popper things.”

Officials have not charged Montenegro or the others with any crimes. (Bovino did not respond to a request for comment, while DHS defended him in a statement to ProPublica: “Chief Bovino’s success in getting the worst of the worst out of the country speaks for itself.”)

The government’s cases are sometimes so muddied that it’s unclear why agents actually arrested a citizen.

Andrea Velez was charged with assaulting an officer after she was accidentally dropped off for work during a raid on street vendors in downtown Los Angeles. She said in a federal complaint that officers repeatedly assumed she did not speak English. Federal officers later requested access to her phone in an attempt to prove she was colluding with another citizen arrested that day, who was charged with assault. She was one of the Americans held for more than two days.

DHS did not respond to our questions about Velez, but it has previously accused her of assaulting an officer. A federal judge has dismissed the charges.

Other citizens also said officers accused them of crimes and suddenly questioned their citizenship — including a man arrested after filming Border Patrol agents break a truck window, and a pregnant woman who tried to stop officers from taking her boyfriend.

The prospects for any significant reckoning over agents’ conduct, even against citizens, are dim. The paths for suing federal agents are even more limited than they are for local police. And that’s if agents can even be identified. What’s more, the administration has gutted the office that investigates allegations of abuse by agents.

“The often-inadequate guardrails that we have for state and local government — even those guardrails are nonexistent when you’re talking about federal overreach,” said Joanna Schwartz, a professor at UCLA School of Law.

More than 50 members of Congress have also written to the administration, demanding details about Americans who’ve been detained. One is Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat. After trying to question Noem about detained citizens, federal agents grabbed Padilla, pulled him to the ground and handcuffed him. The department later defended the agents, saying they “acted appropriately.”

How We Did This

Americans have reported a wide range of troubling encounters with immigration agents. To get a wider sense of agents’ conduct, we cataloged all incidents we could find of citizens being held against their will by immigration officers.

Critically, there is no way to know the complete scope of these stops since the government itself does not track them. But we were still able to fill in the picture a bit more.

We reviewed more than 170 cases overall, which we sorted into two categories.

The first is Americans who were held because agents questioned their citizenship. We found more than 50 such cases. The second category is Americans arrested by immigration agents after being accused of assaulting or impeding officers at protests or during immigration arrests of others. In that category, we tallied about 130 Americans, including more than a dozen elected officials. In many of these cases, the government never charged these individuals or the cases were dismissed.

We also tracked another nine citizens who reported being concerned about racial profiling after being extensively questioned by immigration officials. This includes a Mescalero Apache tribal member who was pulled out of a store and asked for his passport, and a California man who was previously deported by mistake and got another deportation order in the mail.

We did all this by sifting through both English- and Spanish-language social media, lawsuits, court records and local media reports. We compiled cases from the beginning of the current Trump administration through Oct. 5. Our accounting of arrests in Portland, Oregon, and Chicago is particularly limited, since the events there are still unfolding.

We did not review cases of Americans detained in airports or at the border, where even citizens are more likely to encounter increased questioning. We also did not review cases of Americans arrested at some point after alleged encounters with immigration agents since those involved a judicial process. We similarly excluded arrests of immigration protestors by local police who, unlike many of the federal agencies, booked protesters into a local jail where they could access the legal process and their families could find them.

Do you have information or videos to share about the administration’s immigration crackdown? Contact Nicole Foy via email at nicole.foy@propublica.org or on Signal at nicolefoy.27.

by Nicole Foy, photography by Sarahbeth Maney

Disabled Idaho Students Lack Access to Playgrounds and Lunchrooms. Historic $2 Billion Funding Will Do Little to Help.

4 days 9 hours ago

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Idaho Statesman. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

At an elementary school in southwest Boise, Idaho, in the fall of 2020, children in pre-K went to their recess on the playground, laughing and climbing ladders to reach the slide. One 3-year-old boy sat on the sidelines.

The loose woodchips prevented the boy, who uses a wheelchair, from joining his classmates. There were no swings he could use or textured panels or blocks he could play with. The only student in the class who used a medical stroller, he was relegated to watching his classmates play as a staff member stood with him.

Another year, he often spent recess inside his classroom.

“It was heartbreaking,” said his dad, Grant Schlink, at a neighborhood park where he pushed his son laying back on a swing made of a large circular disk that curved up on the sides. The boy, now 8, sported sunglasses and Converse shoes. The Schlinks requested that their child’s name not be used to protect his privacy.

The playgrounds at Silver Sage Elementary excluded children like Schlink’s son, even though they had been updated by the West Ada School District in 2016 — decades after the Americans with Disabilities Act required new construction to be fully accessible to all students.

The Schlinks reached out to the school asking for help. The district told them in 2022 that improvements were in the pipeline, the boy’s mom, Stephanie Schlink, said. But at some point, communication stalled, she said. Another year passed.

“I finally was just like, ‘OK, they’re not going to do anything,’” Stephanie Schlink told the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica. “‘F this, I’m going hard.’” In 2023, she filed a complaint with the Office for Civil Rights within the U.S. Department of Education, the agency that investigates complaints over discrimination against people with disabilities in schools. The West Ada School District said in an email it is committed to “safe and equitable access” and that it is making progress toward that goal.

Like Silver Sage Elementary, many schools in Idaho struggle to meet the standards laid out under the law. In 2023, nearly 70 superintendents told the Statesman and ProPublica that accessibility for people with disabilities was a concern in at least one of their buildings. In many cases, school leaders said, they would need major renovations to make those schools inclusive to students with disabilities.

Silver Sage Elementary updated its playgrounds in 2016, but still had elements, like wood chips, that excluded some children who use wheelchairs or walkers. (Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman)

Over a year after the state approved $2 billion to help schools repair and replace their aging buildings, around three dozen superintendents told the Statesman and ProPublica that their buildings are still not fully accessible, while others said they had workarounds that were not ideal. Many pointed to funding as a continued challenge. Lawmakers cited the Statesman and ProPublica’s previous reporting last year when they approved the $2 billion investment, while acknowledging the funds still wouldn’t solve all of the issues.

Many of the problems the Statesman and ProPublica heard from superintendents had disproportionate impacts on students with disabilities. One of the most common was broken or outdated HVAC systems, often an expensive upgrade; freezing or overheated classrooms can be especially hard on students who can’t regulate their body temperatures, such as children with Down syndrome.

“Unfortunately there is not nearly enough for us to do any type of major construction that would make our building more ADA compliant particularly in such a rural part of North Idaho where construction is very expensive,” Megan Sindt, the superintendent of the Avery School District, a K-8 district of just about 10 students, said in an email. The North Idaho school, built in 1918, has stairs to the second floor, where most classes are held.

It’s far from the only district trying to navigate these challenges. Despite a historic funding push by the state, that’s not likely to change.

Why $2 Billion Isn’t Enough

In January 2024, in his State of the State address, Gov. Brad Little pulled up photos from deteriorating school buildings that had appeared in a Statesman and ProPublica investigation. He highlighted the reporting that showed how school districts’ limited ability to fund facility upgrades left students learning in schools with leaky ceilings, failing plumbing and freezing classrooms. Months later, lawmakers approved the $2 billion and celebrated it as the largest investment in school buildings in state history.

In reality, that money will do little to help schools address the needs of students with disabilities. As it is, many districts received only enough to make a few repairs; the smallest ones, which often have significant needs, got less than $1 million to upgrade schools.

Before the state investment, we surveyed superintendents in all districts and heard back from 91%, more than half of whom cited ADA issues in their schools, including multifloor buildings with no elevators or elevators that often don’t work, inaccessible playgrounds and restrooms, plus uneven sidewalks that were difficult to navigate with wheelchairs. We followed up with them again this year. Some superintendents said they planned to use money they received to make accessibility improvements. A handful said they have since been able to fully address such issues but many others said the money wouldn’t be enough to do so.

Small, rural districts didn’t get enough money from the bill to retrofit older buildings “without completely exhausting the funds,” Superintendent Brian Lee of the Nezperce School District in North Idaho said.

“If we don’t have a functional roof, heat, and functional classrooms, electrical, and plumbing, ADA compliance is a non-issue because we can’t have school,” he said in an email. “Most older buildings are not architecturally capable of making small changes to meet ADA compliance.”

The Americans with Disabilities Act, which was updated in 2010, requires schools to provide equal access to programs for students with disabilities and to eliminate barriers to their learning. But schools have some leeway in physical alterations if their buildings were constructed before certain standards were in effect. Schools can still comply with the law without altering their buildings by providing reasonable modifications for students and ensuring equal access. For example, if a library is on the second floor, a school can bring books to a floor that students with disabilities can access.

In struggling to make their schools fully accessible, Idaho is not alone. A 2020 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found most schools had some kind of physical barrier, like steep ramps or door handles that were difficult to use, and noted that schools needed more guidance in interpreting the Americans with Disabilities Act. There’s little enforcement by the federal government or the state to ensure districts follow the law, and little recourse for families when their children are excluded.

Districts have contingency plans for when they can’t make a school accessible. In larger districts, students can be bused to different schools. In other cases, districts will move classrooms to the main floor if a student enrolled in those courses can’t use stairs.

But in some cases, the infrastructure simply prevents students from being able to participate in school in the same way as their peers. At least 10 districts in Idaho said in 2023 that their bathrooms, gyms and cafeterias weren’t all accessible. Students in those schools have been unable to get their meals at lunch, to make it to classes on different floors or even to attend their neighborhood school. Administrators in three districts, like West Ada, said they don’t have playgrounds that all students are able to use.

At an elementary school in Salmon in remote Central Idaho, a narrow stairway with no wheelchair ramp is the only access to the school cafeteria line. Students who are unable to navigate the stairs must rely on others to get their food for them. The district passed a bond last year after about a dozen failed attempts to build a new school. (Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman)

“When you have old buildings, it’s sometimes difficult to do what is required to meet all of those expectations because they just weren’t built with some of those things in mind,” said Anthony Butler, the superintendent of the Cambridge School District, two hours north of Boise. Butler said the district has an old gym with inaccessible restrooms, and seating can be challenging, but it has made a number of other updates to make its other buildings more inclusive for students with disabilities.

State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield said the state doesn’t track whether buildings are accessible. But she said the state does care about students with disabilities.

“It’s certainly not a lack of desire or commitment to serve students,” she said. “We don’t want the system to exclude a student from enjoying the same experience of any other students because they can’t be with friends at lunch, or for no other reason than, there isn’t a way for them to get to that cafeteria in the basement.” Her office said she encourages districts to make a plan that “prioritizes facilities needs.”

Jeremy Maxand, executive director of LINC Idaho, an organization that helps people with disabilities live independently, said these kinds of issues that can seem less important, like having accessible playgrounds, can affect how students with disabilities are viewed by others and how they see themselves. Students with disabilities “are at a distinct disadvantage when you’re supposed to be getting the playing field level so you have an equal opportunity, like everybody else, to succeed or fail,” Maxand said.

No Way Down

In the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District, Mariah Larkins, a sophomore at the time, approached the doors leading to the elevator on the second floor of her high school in September 2022, according to an account laid out in a 2024 lawsuit. There, she saw a sign that read: “closed for lunch.” The girl has a disorder that causes debilitating bone spurs throughout her body, requiring frequent operations and forcing her to use crutches or wheelchairs at times. She called the front office, but no one answered, according to the lawsuit, which is ongoing. She called her mom, who said she’d come to the school right away.

Trapped upstairs and embarrassed, she tried to traverse the stairs with her crutches in hand. Larkins’ mom met her daughter outside the school, “alone, in pain” and crying, the lawsuit read. The family alleged that from Larkins’ first day of school, she was met with an elevator that didn’t yet work, excluded from classes and physically and emotionally harmed.

It was one of several times the student, who has since graduated, risked injury or was separated from her peers during her years at the school, according to the complaint. The district had installed an elevator in the building before the girl started high school, but it didn’t go to the basement, where the cafeteria and some classes were located. The lawsuit said the district did not move those classes to an accessible location.

Larkins couldn’t get to the cafeteria and on one day couldn’t get lunch at all. She also fell behind in classes and struggled with her mental health, her family said in the lawsuit. Her anxiety and depression worsened as she sat in rooms alone while her classmates were educated downstairs.

Aaron Bergman, Larkins’ attorney, said Larkins, who is now 18, cares about improving access for other children in school now.

“This was a very difficult time in her life that did not need to be as difficult,” he told the publications. “We expect Domino’s to do it for people in their restrooms. I think we can expect school districts to do it for schools, for kids in their schools.”

Pocatello High School was first built over a century ago, long before the ADA was enacted. In 2021, the district completed major construction at the school. Part of that, as required by law, included making the school accessible.

But even at the time, officials acknowledged students still wouldn’t be able to navigate the whole building. In an email earlier this month, Pocatello spokesperson Courtney Fisher said extending the elevator to the basement would have required “significant structural changes,” since storm water drains and sewage pipes run directly underneath the new elevator.

Larkins’ mom asked the district to do more, but little changed, the lawsuit said. Just before her daughter’s senior year, she took it to the courts.

“Because M.L. is disabled, and for no other reason, she received much less than her peers,” the family’s attorney said in the lawsuit, which identifies Larkins only by her initials.

The Pocatello school district declined to comment on pending litigation, but in court filings, denied many of the allegations in the lawsuit. On its accessibility issues in general, the district said it’s addressing some of those problems but, with the lack of funding, can’t make every building fully compliant with current standards.

“The cost of retrofitting our current buildings to full compliance is prohibitive, if not impossible, and that reality does limit our ability to provide every service in every building,” Fisher said in an email. “School districts across Idaho — and across the nation — are grappling with the same issue: aging facilities that were built long before ADA requirements, limited resources to modernize them, and the significant costs associated with comprehensive retrofits.”

Interviews with superintendents across the state revealed similar problems. In 2017, parents sued the Oneida School District, in southeast Idaho, after their children struggled for years to navigate an old building with no elevator and at times had to crawl up stairs and got injured. In 2019, a judge ruled against the district, requiring it to pay two families $1.2 million. It wasn’t until 2023 that the district passed a bond to build a new school.

In West Ada, the Schlinks’ son spent years on the sidelines before the district agreed to address their concerns.

On a warm day in September, Schlink’s son crawled on the squishy, rubber surface of the large playground near their house. The playground was built to be inclusive of children with mobility challenges, according to the city of Boise, describing it as one of the “most unique playgrounds” in the system.

On the side sat his wheelchair with wheels featuring Lilo and Stitch decals.

At his school down the road, the playground was renovated earlier this year. Before the Office for Civil Rights had completed its investigation, the district agreed to a voluntary resolution to make its playgrounds more accessible. It was the second time in as many years that the agency responded to a complaint about playgrounds at West Ada schools and forced change, according to resolutions posted on the federal government’s website. West Ada said the district has “met OCR standards” at Silver Sage. In addition to updating the playground, it said it brought the parking lot and sidewalks into compliance. Next summer, the district plans to update the second playground at the school. The district said it couldn’t comment on why the playgrounds weren’t made accessible in 2016 because it was a decision made by previous district leadership.

President Donald Trump’s administration has pushed to largely gut the civil rights office, creating uncertainty around whether it will remain an effective resource for families. The administration has argued that cuts to the department will give “parents and states control over their children’s education” and relieve taxpayers from “progressive social experiments and obsolete programs.”

But for the Schlinks’ son, it made a big difference. This is the first year he can participate in recess.

A playground at Silver Sage Elementary School was recently renovated (first image). The school upgraded from woodchips on one of its playgrounds (second image) to artificial grass (third image). While the Schlinks’ son can use a wheelchair on this surface, it gets too hot in the sun for him to crawl on, according to his mother. The city of Boise used a squishy, rubber surface at a playground it built to be inclusive of all kids (fourth image). (Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman)

The updates aren’t perfect. The ground is now a material he can use a wheelchair on, but it gets too hot in the sun for him to crawl around, his mother, Stephanie Schlink, said. The structures don’t include accessible swings or merry-go-rounds, or any kind of enrichment such as textured panels or chimes for kids with disabilities.

Still, after years of watching their son be relegated to the side at recess, “there’s a clear indicator that he is really enjoying himself and happy at school now,” she said. When she picked her son up from school last month, his classmates ran up to her to share how they played with him. He’s social and loves outings and being around people, Stephanie Schlink said.

Finally, she said, he's part of the class.

Asia Fields contributed reporting.

by Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman

A Year Before Trump’s Crime Rhetoric, Dallas Voted to Increase Police. The City Is Wrestling With the Consequences.

5 days 10 hours ago

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This article is co-published with WFAA and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.

The year before President Donald Trump announced he was sending National Guard troops and federal agents into major cities like Washington, D.C., and Chicago, declaring crime out of control, a Dallas nonprofit made a similar case for putting more police on the streets.

“Our capital city has been overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs and homeless people,” Trump said at an Aug. 11 press conference, announcing the unprecedented federal takeover of the Washington police force and the deployment of the National Guard to the city.

A year earlier, a man named Pete Marocco told Dallas City Council members that Dallas was descending into comparable anarchy.

“We cannot wait until Dallas looks like other degenerate cities that have made irreversible mistakes, devaluing their police force and destroying their city center,” said Marocco, who would go on to briefly lead the U.S. Agency for International Development under Trump.

At that time, Marocco was speaking as the executive director of a nonprofit called Dallas HERO, whose leaders wanted voters to pass propositions that would radically overhaul the city’s charter. One of them, a ballot measure known as Proposition U, would force Dallas to grow its police force to 4,000 officers, and significantly raise their starting pay, in order to address the kind of lawlessness Marocco claimed the city was experiencing.

Voters went on to narrowly pass the proposition in the same November election that put Trump back in the Oval Office. They also approved another “citizen enforcement” measure Dallas HERO got onto the ballot, Proposition S, which gave residents the right to more easily sue the city to block policies and have them declared unlawful by stripping Dallas of its immunity from litigation. The measure makes Dallas the first city in the country to lose its governmental immunity, legal experts said.

Few people in Dallas dispute that more police are needed; 911 call response times have increased in recent years, and growing the department’s size has been a goal of mayors, City Council members and police chiefs for decades. But violent crime here, as elsewhere nationally, is trending downward despite the growing claims by Trump and other leaders that certain cities are incapable of governing or policing themselves.

“We’re seeing the national government going into Washington and making noises about going into other cities — we’re talking about blue cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland, maybe New York,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor who studies outside influences on city governments.

But what happened in Dallas last fall, he said, follows a different pattern from these federal or state government takeovers.

“It’s coming up from within the city,” he said. “The state isn’t imposing this; local voters have.”

Now, almost a year after voters approved these measures in Dallas, WFAA set out to understand how the Dallas HERO measures came to pass, look into the often misleading statements about violent crime that the group made to voters and explore the long-term effects of these changes.

Already, the city is feeling the effects of the two Dallas HERO-backed propositions voters passed on that November ballot.

In June, the Dallas City Council voted to change its police-hiring standards, eliminating its college credit requirement in an effort to hire more officers. Critics say lowering standards to boost hiring can lead to less-qualified officers patrolling the streets.

In September, the City Council approved a new budget for next fiscal year. It includes cuts to popular libraries and city pools and eliminates some city jobs, but adds money for 350 new police officers — still far short of the nearly 800 needed to reach the 4,000-officer minimum mandated by Proposition U, which had no timeline for compliance.

And earlier this year, a Dallas couple became the first known litigants against the city to cite Proposition S, the measure that eliminated the city’s governmental immunity, in a lawsuit over construction of a church game court. The couple initiated the lawsuit before Proposition S was passed but filed motions citing the city’s lack of immunity in March. The city of Dallas said in court that the proposition is unconstitutional but declined to comment about the lawsuit. The lawsuit, which is still pending, has not been previously reported.

All of this has locals, including local law enforcement, concerned.

One of the most vocal critics of the HERO initiative is Frederick Frazier, a Trump-endorsed former state lawmaker who spent nearly 30 years as a Dallas police officer. He asked a question many others have had in the course of WFAA’s reporting: Are Dallas HERO’s local efforts a precursor to similar changes in other cities?

“Are you trying to build a better department? Or are you trying to destroy a city?” Frazier said. “I want to know: Are we the experiment?”

Pete Marocco stands beside boxes of signatures used to get the Dallas HERO propositions, aimed at changing the Dallas city charter, on the November 2024 ballot. (WFAA) Dallas Violent Crime Down

This summer, Dallas-area hotelier and GOP megadonor Monty Bennett joined a conversation on X Spaces to discuss Dallas HERO’s efforts.

“Every American city in this country of any size is a disaster,” Bennett said in that recorded audio discussion, “and it’s terrible.”

Last year, Bennett confirmed to WFAA that he helped fund the group, formed in 2023. But because it is a nonprofit organization, it’s not required to disclose its donor lists, so it’s unclear how much of its $3 million in donations in 2023 and 2024 came from him. Bennett declined to answer WFAA’s questions about how much he contributed to the group, but his office did provide a copy of the organization’s 2024 990 tax form.

Both before the November election and after, Bennett — who has contributed money to Trump’s presidential campaign and to local conservative political action committees advocating for school vouchers — pushed HERO’s message that Dallas, in particular downtown Dallas, is a dangerous place, frequently via his conservative online news site The Dallas Express.

Bennett lives in Highland Park, an affluent community that’s surrounded by Dallas but boasts its own city government and police force. The headquarters of his hotel company, Ashford Inc., is just outside the city limits in Farmers Branch, a suburb northwest of Dallas.

His messaging fits an idea that conservatives have increasingly pushed. Trump, in announcing his 2024 campaign for president, referred to the “blood-soaked streets of our once great cities,” calling them “cesspools of violent crimes.”

A group called Save Austin Now tried unsuccessfully in 2021 to convince voters in that city to pass an ordinance forcing it to hire hundreds more police officers.

Bennett later met with Matt Mackowiak, a longtime Austin-based Republican strategist who co-founded Save Austin Now. Mackowiak said he spoke to Bennett about Dallas HERO’s messaging and how to collect enough signatures to get its propositions on the November 2024 ballot.

A spokesperson for Bennett told WFAA that Dallas HERO’s efforts were not modeled after Save Austin Now and that Bennett is not affiliated with the Austin group.

According to city police statistics during the 2021 Austin campaign, violent crime rates in that city were up by 5% compared with 2020, although property crime overall was down in 2021 compared with 2020.

In Dallas, however, violent crime is on track to go down for a fifth year in a row. Last year, Dallas had one of its lowest homicide rates in decades, 14 per 100,000 residents, down from 2023’s rate of 19 per 100,000.

Jay Coons, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University, said Dallas voters in November responded strongly to perceptions about crime — regardless of whether it’s actually declining or on the rise.

“Let’s face it: Fear sells,” Coons said. “If you want people to do something, if you can instill fear, that’s a very powerful motivator.”

But that fear isn’t justified in Dallas, said former interim police Chief Mike Igo.

“To the point of crime is out of control?” Igo said. “It’s not.”

Igo and Frazier are among the unusual collection of voices who opposed the Dallas HERO propositions. The Dallas Police Association, which represents thousands of officers, spoke out against the measures, calling them “contrived by a small group of people who do not live in Dallas, with no open dialogue.” The association’s leaders argued the propositions would affect its ability to negotiate pay raises for all of its officers and had questions about the department’s ability to train so many new officers while retaining current ones. Former police chiefs, all 14 of Dallas’ City Council members at the time, nearly all of the city’s prominent civic and business groups, and at least four former Dallas mayors publicly opposed the measures as well.

Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson, who switched from the Democratic to the Republican party in 2023, lauded HERO’s efforts but still urged voters to reject the propositions.

“Their policy language is deeply flawed, and they would create more problems for the city than they would solve,” Johnson and Cara Mendelsohn, one of the more conservative Dallas City Council members, wrote in an October 2024 op-ed in The Dallas Morning News.

Bennett, who declined an interview request for this story but answered a few questions via email, said he was disappointed in their positions on the measures.

Opponents to the propositions Dallas HERO pushed warned that shackling the city’s budget to such a huge public safety commitment, while at the same time making Dallas vulnerable to lawsuits, could mean cuts to other critical services.

Bennett, in his recent X Spaces conversation, said hiring hundreds of police is simple, though experts have told WFAA it is not.

He also argued that building a new Dallas police academy, which has been in the planning stages for years, is not necessary. He suggested the department instead raise its pay rates in order to hire back officers it had trained but lost to other departments.

Hiring back officers who’ve left for other departments, or recruiting from other departments in general (a practice called lateral hiring that’s regularly employed among police recruiters in Fort Worth, Dallas and other cities across Texas), can indeed be an effective hiring tool, said a police official who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak for the department. But those hires account for only a fraction of the new officers brought on every year. And, after serving in smaller departments, some officers may learn they prefer the slower pace afforded by those jobs, the official said.

Bennett said in an email that the city could hire more officers if it raised their salaries. “The solution to hiring more police officers is to pay them better,” Bennett wrote. “It’s no more complicated than that. Pay them what they’re worth." He didn’t explain how he thought the city would budget for those increases.

Hiring more police officers has been a goal of the Dallas Police Department for more than two decades, Frazier said. But, he argued, the city doesn’t have enough field trainers, cars or physical spaces to accommodate so many new officers joining its ranks in such a short period of time.

“I would say that would be very difficult,” Frazier said. “I’ve heard a lot of folks say that — ‘We could fix you in a minute.’ No one’s done it.”

The new city budget, which took effect Oct. 1, increased the police department’s minimum starting pay, raising it from about $75,000 to more than $81,000 annually. But that still falls thousands of dollars short of several smaller suburban departments in the area.

According to city reports, DPD had 3,215 officers as of June. The city manager’s goal is to gradually increase that number — but at the current rate, she said, the department won’t reach HERO’s 4,000-officer demand until around 2029.

“It’s a balancing act,” City Manager Kim Tolbert told WFAA during a recent extended sitdown when asked about the impact of the HERO amendments on the budget. “We’re listening, we’re being responsive, but we’re also being good stewards of the public dollar.”

In an email, Bennett wrote, “Government will always blame imposed outside requirements when it has to curb its profligate spending.”

Frederick Frazier, a Republican former state lawmaker and Dallas police veteran, is a vocal critic of the HERO initiative. (WFAA) Who Leads Dallas HERO?

WFAA has tried to better understand not just why Dallas HERO’s efforts were successful in the city, but also the motivations of the people behind the initiative. The group bills itself as bipartisan, but at least some of its current and former leaders and associates, like Bennett and Marocco, have championed conservative interests.

HERO’s founding president, Stefani Carter, is a Republican former state representative who is now the lead director on the board of Braemar Hotels & Resorts, a real estate investment trust focused on investing in luxury hotels and resorts. Bennett is Braemar’s founder and chair of its board. (Braemar is for sale, and Carter’s fate on its board is unclear; she did not respond to questions about her status or about the Dallas HERO initiative.)

HERO’s attorney, Art Martinez de Vara, is a municipal lawyer, a historian and the mayor of a small town near San Antonio called Von Ormy, which he helped to incorporate almost 20 years ago as a so-called “liberty city,” operating with minimal levels of government oversight but facing myriad issues including lack of a sewer system. He declined to speak to WFAA about the propositions, citing anticipated litigation.

During the fall campaign to pass the propositions, Marocco led Dallas HERO as its executive director while living in University Park, a self-governed suburban enclave nestled inside Dallas similar to where Bennett calls home. Dallas HERO told WFAA Marocco is no longer with the organization. Trump later tapped Marocco to run USAID, where he wrote the cable ordering a freeze on all U.S. foreign and humanitarian aid, resulting in furloughs and layoffs across the agency.

Marocco did not respond to the news organization’s efforts to reach him.

The man who replaced Marocco in early February as HERO’s executive director, Damien LeVeck, is a horror film director whose social media account Dallas En Fuego trolls city officials with what he refers to as “spicy videos & memes.” He also sells branded merchandise, including a T-shirt with a picture of a Dallas City Council member he often criticizes.

“Show your support for combatting Dallas municipal tyranny (and stupidity) with our great merchandise,” the language on his merch site reads.

All refused to speak with WFAA on camera.

LeVeck provided a statement, on behalf of HERO, that read, in part: “The HERO amendments … decisively passed by voters last November, will boost public safety by expanding the police force and strengthening government accountability. Residents deserve to feel safe where they live and work, and we are committed to ensuring city leadership upholds the will of the voters."

Coons, who spent nearly four decades with the Harris County sheriff’s office as a patrol commander before entering academia, said even in a city like Dallas with declining violent crime, people can still be scared into making political decisions.

“Whether crime is rampant and people are being murdered in the streets, or whether it’s an extraordinarily safe place to be, the truth probably is going to be a little bit separate than the individual Dallasite’s perception of what’s going on,” he said.

Voters in the city’s more affluent northern side narrowly voted against the measure, with 49.3% voting in favor, an analysis by ProPublica and WFAA found. But in the south, where crime rates are higher and police response times are longer, 52.9% of voters cast ballots in favor.

Dallas City Council member Carolyn King Arnold, who represents part of southern Dallas and was an outspoken opponent of the HERO amendments, said the organization’s backers exploited her constituents’ frustrations over crime in order to get their measures passed.

“In talking to some who actually voted in the southern sector for this, they told me basically, ‘I just want to see one officer ride through, that’s why I voted for it,’ not understanding the full impact of that amendment,” Arnold said. “It's always about fear.”

It’s not clear what’s next for the Dallas HERO team.

Since its win in November, the group has taken to social media and spoken at City Council meetings to demand more money be devoted to the police department.

“Crime, homelessness, and property destruction is rampant throughout Dallas,” HERO posted on X on Aug. 19.

Within hours of the City Council passing the coming year’s budget, HERO publicly took issue with it. According to a Sept. 18 statement, the organization said the budget “fails to comply with Proposition U.”

Asked about the city’s argument that the budget meets the proposition requirements, Bennett wrote in an email, “With respect, it just doesn’t seem like this is true.”

LeVeck swore in the organization’s Sept. 18 statement that Dallas HERO will “hold city leaders accountable.”

“Sue them into submission!” one X user wrote in response to that promise.

The organization has already threatened to do so.

In December, HERO, citing Proposition S, the immunity measure, argued that the city isn’t enforcing state laws banning people from sleeping in encampments on public property. In March, the group’s attorney sent a letter to the city threatening to sue it for not hiring police fast enough. The city declined to comment about both incidents.

Frazier said he and other local law enforcement stakeholders remain concerned about Dallas HERO’s efforts. While their actions are abundant, their ultimate goals are murky.

“When you ask that question around,” Frazier said, “no one really knows what the end game is.”

Tanya Eiserer of WFAA contributed reporting, and ProPublica Deputy Data Editor Ryan Little contributed data analysis.

Rebecca Lopez is the senior crime and justice reporter, and Jason Trahan is managing editor of investigations at WFAA-TV in Dallas. Reach them at investigates@wfaa.com.

Correction

Oct. 16, 2025: This story originally misstated the location of Monty Bennett’s hotel company, Ashford Inc. The company is headquartered in Farmers Branch, Texas, not Dallas.

by Rebecca Lopez and Jason Trahan, WFAA

ProPublica Names Kenneth Morales as David Burnham-TRAC Data Fellow

6 days 5 hours ago

ProPublica has selected Kenneth Morales as the inaugural David Burnham-TRAC data fellow. In this two-year fellowship, Morales will work with our data and news applications team to shed light on both the inner workings of the government and the impacts of federal policy.

The fellowship is named in honor of David Burnham, an investigative journalist who reported on local, state and federal enforcement corruption for 50 years, and it was made possible through funding from David Sobel and Beth Critchley.

“David Burnham was a pioneering investigative journalist who believed in speaking truth to power. As an early and skilled proponent of rigorous data collection and analysis, he did cutting edge reporting on law enforcement and intelligence agencies,” said Sobel. “Those skills and techniques are critical today, and ProPublica is the obvious home for work that will continue his legacy.”

Morales was most recently a senior data scientist at the office of the New York state attorney general. His casework there involved a wide range of matters before the office, including investigations of the firearms industry, pharmaceutical manufacturers and lead exposure in public schools, along with civil rights investigations of law enforcement agencies and antitrust litigation. He also served as the primary data analyst for the office’s report into fake comments submitted to the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed “net neutrality” rulemaking. Prior to this role, Morales conducted research at Johns Hopkins University, studying opioid use during the advent of the fentanyl crisis.

“Kenneth brings a passion for public interest work and extensive experience doing rigorous analysis that needs to stand up in the court of law,” said Ken Schwencke, senior editor for data and news applications. “Federal data is becoming more scarce as the importance of the government’s actions only grow, and we’re grateful to be able to bring on more people to cover it.”

“For years I have been an admirer of ProPublica’s investigative reportage, their independence and their drive to hold power to account,” said Morales. “I am passionate about the intersections of data science and social justice, and I am thrilled to have been selected to use those skills during this critical American moment.”

ProPublica

Students With Hearing and Vision Loss Get Funding Back Despite Trump’s Anti-DEI Campaign

6 days 9 hours ago

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Following public outcry, the U.S. Department of Education has restored funding for students who have both hearing and vision loss, about a month after cutting it.

But rather than sending the money directly to the four programs that are part of a national network helping students who are deaf and blind, a condition known as deafblindness, the department has instead rerouted the grants to a different organization that will provide funding for those vulnerable students.

The Trump administration targeted the programs in its attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion; a department spokesperson had cited concerns about “divisive concepts” and “fairness” in explaining the decision to withhold the funding.

ProPublica and other news organizations reported last month on the canceled grants to agencies that serve these students in Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin, as well as in five states that are part of a New England consortium.

Programs then appealed to the Education Department to retain their funding, but the appeals were denied. Last week, the National Center on Deafblindness, the parent organization of the agencies that were denied, told the four programs that the Education Department had provided it with additional grant money and the center was passing it on to them.

“This will enable families, schools, and early intervention programs to continue to … meet the unique needs of children who are deafblind,” according to the letter from the organization to the agencies, which was provided to ProPublica. Education Department officials did not respond to questions from ProPublica; automatic email replies cited the government shutdown.

When the funding was canceled, the programs were in the middle of a five-year grant that was expected to continue through September 2028. The funding from the center is only for one year.

“We don’t know what will happen” in future years, said Lisa McConachie of the Oregon DeafBlind Project, which serves 114 students in the state. McConachie said that with uncertain funding, her agency had to cancel a retreat this fall that had been organized for parents to swap medical equipment, share resources and learn about services to help students when they get older. She hopes to reschedule it for the spring.

“It is still a disruption to families,’’ she said. “It creates this mistrust, that you are gone and back and gone and back.”

Oregon’s grant application for its deafblind program, submitted in 2023, included a statement about its commitment to address “inequities, racism, bias” and the marginalization of disability groups, language that was encouraged by the Biden administration. It also attached the strategic plan for Portland Public Schools, where the Oregon DeafBlind Project is headquartered, that mentioned the establishment of a Center for Black Student Excellence — which is unrelated to the deafblind project. The Education Department’s letter said that those initiatives were “in conflict with agency policy and priorities.”

An advocate for deafblind students said he was happy to see the funding restored but called the department’s decision-making “amateurish” and disruptive to students and families. “It is mean-spirited to do this to families and kids and school systems at the beginning of the year when all of these things should be so smooth,” said Maurice Belote, co-chair of the National DeafBlind Coalition, which advocates for legislation that supports deafblind children and young adults.

Grants to the four agencies total about $1 million a year. The department started funding state-level programs to help deafblind students more than 40 years ago in response to the rubella epidemic in the late 1960s. Nationally, there are about 10,000 children and young adults, from infants to 21-year-olds, who are deafblind and more than 1,000 in the eight affected states, according to the National Center on Deafblindness.

While the population is small, it is among the most complex to serve; educators rely on the deafblindness programs for support and training.

by Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards

On the Front Line of the Fluoride Wars, Debate Over Drinking Water Treatment Turns Raucous

6 days 10 hours ago

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On the far east side of Michigan, the future of fluoride in drinking water — long an ordinary practice for preventing tooth decay — has suddenly provoked passionate debate.

Public meetings in St. Clair County, about an hour northeast of Detroit, have filled with people weighing in. One man waved his Fixodent denture cream before the county commissioners, suggesting that his own experience showed what would happen if local communities stopped treatment.

“I am an unfluoridated child,” he declared, “with a set of uppers and lowers.”

Another man, speaking to the county’s Advisory Board of Health, said that personal responsibility should be factored into the conversation. “I think there are some 3 Musketeer bars, Snicker bars that should be accounted for. Some Coca-Colas.”

And a young man used his time in the public comments to address not just fluoridation, but the county medical director who’s trying to get rid of it. He accused him of grandstanding to land a job with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the U.S. health and human services secretary, by making moves that “lowered the quality of life for underserved people.”

The raucous arguments were spurred by a three-page memo sent in June to the Advisory Health Board by Dr. Remington Nevin, the medical director of St. Clair County’s Health Department. It urges the department to take steps to “prohibit the addition of fluoride” to public water systems because, he wrote in bold print, the additive is “a plausible developmental neurotoxicant” — a claim that runs counter to the assessment of many leading experts and health agencies, which have long celebrated fluoridation as a public health triumph.

Nevin recommended fluoride restrictions that would apply to any system located in the county and serving county residents. Potentially, that could include the Great Lakes Water Authority, which provides water to nearly 40% of the state’s population.

Drinking water fluoridation, which was pioneered in Michigan in 1945, led to a massive drop in tooth decay. Even with the rise of fluoride in toothpaste and other products, it’s credited with a 25% decrease in cavities. But skeptics increasingly hold sway in government, as ProPublica recently reported. Those opponents include Kennedy, the nation’s top health official, who has called fluoride “industrial waste.”

Now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency are reviewing their approaches to fluoride in drinking water, and Utah and Florida became the first states to ban fluoridation.

Local communities, though, are on the front lines of the fluoride wars in most states, typically deciding whether or not to continue fluoridating their drinking water by council vote or community referendum. The public conversation in St. Clair County offers a vivid example of how contentious the issue can become. Advocates from well beyond its borders are getting involved, saying that what happens in the county has implications for the entire state.

Home to about 160,000 residents at the base of Michigan’s Thumb, St. Clair County shares a watery border with Canada. Some 67% of its voters chose President Donald Trump in the 2024 election. (Kennedy got under 1% of the vote.) About 110,000 residents receive fluoridated drinking water, according to the state’s environmental agency, while an additional 6,510 are served by water supplies with naturally occurring fluoride.

In his memo this summer, Nevin, who is a physician epidemiologist, cited a state-of-the-science report from the National Toxicology Program last year that described an association between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQs in children. (The NTP is an interagency program within the Department of Health and Human Services that’s focused on toxicology research.)

Nevin also referenced a court decision in a case filed against the EPA by groups opposed to fluoridation, where a district judge relied, in part, on the NTP report in ruling that fluoride presented an “unreasonable risk.” Even as it appeals the decision, the EPA said its review of new science on fluoride in drinking water “is being done in coordination with Secretary Kennedy and HHS.”

Dr. Remington Nevin, medical director of St. Clair County’s Health Department, issued a three-page memo urging the county to take steps to prohibit the addition of fluoride to public water systems. (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

The NTP report, though, is contested and based on limited studies involving fluoride levels that are more than twice the amount recommended by the federal government. Its own abstract says there isn’t enough information to link lower fluoride exposure with children’s IQ.

Nevin’s memo said that the EPA may take months or years to act on fluoride, but that didn’t mean local officials had to wait. “Across the Michigan Thumb, several townships have expressed a desire for similar measures,” he wrote, “and within St. Clair County, I have received a number of resident concerns related to this issue.” He recommended new regulations that would prohibit the addition of “any form of fluoride” to public water systems in the county that serve residents.

In Michigan, each community decides for itself if it will maintain fluoride in its drinking water system. But in an email to ProPublica, Nevin laid out a process where the St. Clair County Board of Commissioners could approve regulations that, in the name of public health, restrict the ability of suppliers to use the additive — in effect, enacting sweeping change throughout the region.

“Just as items manufactured in California are often subject to more stringent California environmental and health regulations, even if the majority are sold outside the state; so too could drinking water produced in St. Clair County be subject to more stringent county regulations, even if the majority is exported to other counties,” he wrote.

Whether or not this applies to any future fluoride regulations depends on the language that is adopted and approved, he added.

The state Department of Health and Human Services says it knows of no local health departments that have attempted such restrictions. In response to ProPublica’s queries, the Great Lakes Water Authority shared a May statement about fluoride, which says that the agency is required by its owner, the city of Detroit, to fluoridate its water supply. The current dosage is well below the maximum established by the Safe Drinking Water Act and the EPA, the statement said, and is in line with the recommended target for oral health benefits.

The water authority, which serves southeast Michigan, didn’t address the St. Clair County proposal. And it’s unclear whether the push for broad county regulations will gain traction.

As medical director, Nevin has an influential voice with county officials and shares guidance with Liz King, the county’s health officer-director. King, however, expressed reservations about Nevin’s proposal at a July meeting of the Advisory Health Board, according to the minutes.

In a statement to ProPublica, King said: “I do not support county-wide mandates to remove fluoride or actions that override the authority of local jurisdictions, unless there is an emergent or urgent public health need.”

Nevin was new to Michigan when he joined the Health Department in his part-time position about two years ago. He soon established that he would be an active force. He describes it in an email to ProPublica as “counter-activism,” adding: “I am largely working to counter the radical agendas of many past and current state public health officials.”

At the January meeting of the Advisory Health Board, Nevin provided members with a 2022 book by Kennedy — “A Letter to Liberals: Censorship and COVID: An Attack on Science and American Ideals” — that’s critical of the Democratic Party and government restrictions enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. (To the notion that he wants to work for Kennedy, Nevin told ProPublica that it’s “baseless conjecture” and that he’s happy in St. Clair County.)

Less than a year into his tenure as HHS secretary, Kennedy’s approach was challenged by six former surgeons general who served under both Republicans and Democrats. In a recent op-ed, they said that Kennedy is “endangering the health of the nation.” His agency criticized their track records in office when contacted by ProPublica about the op-ed, saying they failed to improve public health.

Nevin has moved to make vaccine exemptions easier to get, saying in an April memo that it would “improve the public’s trust in public health.” Those efforts helped earn him a tribute signed by 10 Republican state legislators, which also highlights his fluoride recommendations. Nevin also successfully pushed for the department to wind down services at school health clinics, arguing, in part, that providing direct primary care isn’t a core function of public health.

Supporters point to his training in the military and at Johns Hopkins University. In addition to a medical degree, his CV lists a master’s degree and doctorate in public health. On his website, Nevin also highlights his ability to serve as an expert witness and consultant in legal cases that involve adverse effects from certain antimalarial drugs.

Nevin told ProPublica that past experience taught him that it can take years for neurotoxic effects of certain substances to be recognized. “I have every confidence that, in due course, fluoride will also be looked upon as a neurotoxicant that has no place being ingested,” he wrote in an email.

He added that the response he’s received to his proposal from the community “has been overwhelmingly positive.”

Dr. Randa Jundi-Samman, a recently retired dentist who worked in Port Huron, Michigan, for 30 years, has been a vocal opponent of removing fluoride from St. Clair County’s drinking water. (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

But there’s been strong pushback. Dr. Randa Jundi-Samman, a recently retired dentist in St. Clair County, was one of the health professionals speaking in support of fluoridation at public meetings. She told ProPublica that dropping fluoridation would be a serious hit to community health.

“You’d 100% get more decay, especially in children in low-income communities that don’t get the chance to go to the dentist every six months,” Jundi-Samman said. “We certainly will see that. We already see it in people who don’t have fluoride in their water.”

Dr. Mert Aksu, president of the Michigan Oral Health Coalition’s board and dean of the University of Detroit Mercy’s dental school, said he’s hustling up to the public meetings in St. Clair County because it’s the duty of professionals “to make sure that the decisions that are being made within our communities are being made based upon scientific merit.”

Speaking broadly about the influence now wielded by fluoride skeptics, Aksu said, “We have opened ourselves up to opportunities from misinformed people who want to use this issue for political purposes.”

Dr. Mert Aksu, dean of the University of Detroit Mercy’s dental school, believes people are leveraging fluoride as an issue for political benefit. (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

At an August meeting of the county commissioners, Kimberly Raleigh, interim executive director of the Michigan Oral Health Coalition, read a letter in support of fluoridation that was signed by the University of Michigan School of Dentistry, the Michigan Dental Association, the Indiana Dental Association, the Pennsylvania Coalition for Oral Health and dozens of others.

Nevin said in an email that the dental community “must recognize that community water fluoridation can no longer be relied upon to mask the dental problems created by our neglect of poor dietary choices.”

He argues that he has science on his side. “Scientific merit favors a recommendation to prohibit fluoride,” he wrote to ProPublica. “I have every confidence this will become much clearer in the coming months, as further federal guidance is inevitably released.”

Nevin’s recommendation is before the Advisory Health Board, which also was provided a fact sheet on fluoridation from the Health Department, submitted with Nevin’s approval. If the board endorses his proposal, King may then decide whether to propose regulations, which the Board of Commissioners would then weigh, according to the Health Department. Nevin estimated that the process could take six to 12 months.

Fluoride was on the agenda for the Advisory Health Board’s September meeting, which ended early because the members failed to reach a quorum. Nevin told ProPublica that he expects it to be discussed at this week’s meeting, and that he will present additional information then.

Meanwhile, Nevin has already influenced one of the county’s townships, Kimball, which receives treated water from Port Huron, the seat of St. Clair County.

At an August meeting, where Nevin spoke to the Board of Trustees, Kimball Township unanimously passed a resolution calling for Port Huron to discontinue fluoridation and direct any funds saved to support access to topical dental fluoride treatments.

Port Huron’s city manager declined to comment for this story, saying the township has not presented the city with any resolution or request. Nevin said in an email to ProPublica that he is “attempting to address every municipality in the county” with similar testimony.

After voting on the measure, one Kimball trustee made a point to show support for Nevin, saying “we’re blessed to have him making decisions.”

Nevin, he said, has had to overcome resistance from staff “pushing hard to make his life rather uncomfortable.”

“They’re not used to leadership,” the trustee said. “They’re not used to boldness. They’re not used to maybe some male energy that’s necessary to get things done.”

by Anna Clark

“I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America

1 week 2 days ago

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She desperately wanted to get out of the country.

It was mid-May and Pérez, a Venezuelan mother of two, couldn’t survive on her own in Chicago anymore. She’d been relying on charity for food and shelter ever since her partner had been detained by immigration authorities after a traffic stop earlier in the year.

Pérez, 25, thought it’d be safer to return to Venezuela with her children than to stay in the U.S. Her request for asylum was still open and she had a permit to work legally, but so did a lot of other Venezuelans getting picked up on the streets and taken into custody. Authorities were detaining immigrants regardless of whether they’d followed the rules.

She had also seen how President Donald Trump singled out her countrymen, calling them gang members and terrorists, even sending hundreds to a foreign prison. She was terrified of getting detained, deported and, worst of all, separated from her young daughter and son. They were the reason the family had come to the U.S.

Then she heard about Trump’s offer of a safe and dignified way out.

“We are making it as easy as possible for illegal aliens to leave America,” the president said in a video on social media in May announcing the launch of Project Homecoming.

He spoke about a phone app where “illegals can book a free flight to any foreign country.” And he dangled other incentives: Eligible immigrants wouldn’t be barred from returning legally to the U.S. someday, and they’d even get a $1,000 “exit bonus.” Believing the president’s words, Pérez downloaded the CBP Home app and registered to return to Venezuela with her children.

Months passed. Her partner was deported. In July, Pérez said, she got a call from someone in the CBP Home program telling her she’d be on a flight out of the country in mid-August. She began packing.

But as the departure date neared and the plane tickets hadn’t arrived, Pérez got nervous. Again and again, she called the toll-free number she’d been given. Finally, somebody called back to say there might be a delay obtaining the documents she’d need to travel to Venezuela.

Then there was silence. No further information, no plane tickets. Pérez registered on the app again in August, then a third time in September, as immigration arrests ramped up in Chicago.

Today, Pérez feels trapped in a country that doesn’t want her. She’s afraid of leaving her apartment, afraid that she will be detained and that her children will be taken away from her. “I feel so scared, always looking around in every direction,” she said. “I was trying to leave voluntarily, like the president said.”

The Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is having the intended effect of terrifying people into trying to leave. There have been some 25,000 departures of immigrants from all countries via CBP Home, according to U.S. Department of Homeland Security data obtained by ProPublica.

The data indicates that of those 25,000 people, a little more than half of them returned home with DHS assistance; nearly all the others who left the U.S. ended up returning on their own.

And it’s not just CBP Home. Applications for voluntary departures — an alternative to deportation granted to some immigrants who leave at their own expense — have skyrocketed to levels not seen since at least 2000, reaching more than 34,000 since Trump’s second administration began, immigration court data shows. (The number is higher than in years past, but nowhere near the number of immigrants the administration has deported this year.)

But for many recent arrivals from Venezuela — arguably the community most targeted by the Trump administration, and whose country is now bracing for the possibility of a U.S. invasion — leaving has not been as simple as the president has made it sound.

ProPublica spoke with more than a dozen Venezuelans who said they wanted to take the U.S. government’s offer of a safe and easy return. They signed up months ago on the CBP Home app and were given departure dates. But after those dates came and went, these immigrants said they feel betrayed by what the president told them.

Part of the problem is tied to the lack of diplomatic relations between Washington and Caracas. There are no consular services for Venezuelans in the U.S. Many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who migrated to the U.S. in recent years seeking asylum or other humanitarian relief entered without valid passports, as Pérez did. But to get on a plane for Venezuela, they’re being told they’ll need a special travel document known as a “salvoconducto,” or “safe passage,” from their government.

And relations between the two countries are getting worse. The Trump administration has pushed for regime change in Venezuela, sent warships to the Caribbean and, in recent weeks, blew up four Venezuelan boats it claimed were transporting drugs to the U.S. Bracing for an invasion, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has said he’s ready to declare a state of emergency to protect his country, which could make it harder for Venezuelans abroad to return home.

The Venezuelans who want to leave the U.S. described how CBP Home representatives told them that their lack of passports wouldn’t be a problem and that the U.S. government would help them obtain the travel documents they needed. Now they are being told that they’re on their own — if they get any response at all.

The Trump administration was aware of the potential challenges from the start. In his May proclamation, the president directed the State and Homeland Security departments to “take all appropriate actions to enable the rapid departure of illegal aliens from the United States who currently lack a valid travel document from their countries of citizenship or nationality.”

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency is working with the State Department “to acquire travel documents for those who lack safe passage. So far thousands of Venezuelans have already self-departed using CBP Home.” The State Department referred questions to DHS.

The internal DHS records obtained by ProPublica show nearly 3,700 departures of Venezuelans via CBP Home through late September. It’s unclear how many Venezuelans have applied. The DHS spokesperson said the agency could not confirm the numbers and would not say whether the program is meeting projections. (A congressional committee has directed DHS to include information about CBP Home departures in monthly reports the agency previously published, but has not published in this administration.)

An estimated 10,200 Venezuelans were deported between February and early October, according to deportation flight data tracked by the nonprofit Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor.

Many of the Venezuelans interviewed by ProPublica are mothers of young children who say they decided to take the president’s offer after their work permits expired, their temporary protected status was canceled or their spouses were deported. Few are willing to return by land because of the dangers posed by cartel violence and kidnappings in Mexico — dangers many of them experienced when they migrated here.

Nearly all of them, like Pérez, asked not to be identified by their full names because they’re afraid of bringing unwanted attention to themselves and of the potential consequences of such attention. Interviews with Venezuelan immigrants were conducted in Spanish.

Before their departure dates came and went, they had made preparations to leave — turning over the keys to their apartments, pulling their children from school, shipping their belongings to Venezuela. And they have sunk deeper into poverty as the weeks and months pass.

Pérez applied for her family to return to Venezuela through the CBP Home app months ago but has been stuck in limbo in Chicago without a clear path forward. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)

In Los Angeles, a family of four slept in their tiny Toyota Echo for weeks to save on rent as they waited for their departure date. They sold the car and other belongings to pay for bus tickets back the way they’d come. Nearly two months after their return to Venezuela, they said they’re still waiting for the exit bonuses they’d hoped would help them start over.

In Youngstown, Pennsylvania, a mother of two said she didn’t enroll her 8-year-old son in school this fall because she assumed they would be gone by now. She recently moved into a friend’s apartment in New York City and plans to turn herself in to immigration authorities and ask to be deported.

“I don’t want to be here anymore,” the woman said, between sobs. “What am I supposed to do?”

Several immigration attorneys and advocates told ProPublica that they don’t trust the CBP Home app or the Trump administration’s promises to help immigrants self-deport. The National Immigration Law Center recently published a guide explaining some of the potential risks of using the app, such as leaving the country without closing an immigration court case and becoming ineligible for a future visa. Some lawyers said they discourage clients from using the app at all.

Ruben Garcia, director of Annunciation House, a nonprofit in El Paso that supports migrants and refugees, said in the current climate, he understands why some people might consider the administration’s offer to leave. But, he said, the offer has to be backed by action.

“If you’re going to say you’re going to do this,” Garcia added, “then you damn well better make sure that it’s truthful and that it works.”

Emily, a Venezuelan immigrant in Columbus, Ohio, holds her phone showing an email from the CBP Home program. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

CBP Home replaced an earlier app that the Biden administration had promoted to try to bring order to the soaring numbers of migrants attempting to enter the country. Pérez and other asylum-seekers used that earlier version, CBP One, to make appointments to approach the border. Trump, who campaigned on the promise of mass deportations, ended that option on his first day back in the White House.

In March, he reintroduced the app with the new name and function, allowing immigrants to alert the government of their intention to self-deport. It was part of a $200 million advertising blitz meant to encourage immigrants to “Stay Out and Leave Now.” Two months later, Trump unveiled Project Homecoming and the added incentives of free flights and exit payments. The administration moved State Department funds meant to aid refugees resettling in the U.S. to DHS to help pay for the flights and stipends, according to federal records and news reports.

DHS officials have mentioned the app in dozens of press releases about policy changes and enforcement operations. For example, in the September announcement that DHS was ending temporary protected status for Venezuelans, officials also encouraged Venezuelans to leave via CBP Home. And immigrants who show up for their hearings at immigration court see posters taped on the walls about the benefits they could get if they “self-deport using CBP Home instead of being deported by ICE.”

Emily and Deybis downloaded the app in June, when it seemed as if their life in the U.S. was collapsing. They said they used the earlier CBP One app to approach the border with their two children in January 2024 and were allowed into the country with protections that were supposed to last two years. They settled in Dallas, applied for asylum and got work permits; Deybis found a job in a hotel laundry and Emily at a Chick-fil-A. Then, this spring, the Trump administration ended protections for immigrants like them and canceled their work permits.

They lost their jobs and could no longer afford their rent. On the app’s sky-blue home screen, they saw a drawing of a smiling man and woman holding hands with a child. “Let us help you easily leave the country,” another screen told them in Spanish. They agreed to share their phone’s geolocation, entered personal information and uploaded selfies.

They received an automated email from “Project Homecoming Support” explaining that they would be contacted soon by someone from a toll-free number who would help coordinate their travel. Within weeks, they got a call from an operator at that number who said she worked on behalf of DHS.

Emily said she made clear the family didn’t have Venezuelan passports but was told that wouldn’t be a problem; the U.S. government would procure any necessary documents for them. They said the operator gave them an Aug. 1 departure date and told them to expect their plane tickets by email.

Emily and Deybis sold their car and moved with their children to Columbus, Ohio, where Deybis’ nephew let them stay in his unfinished basement apartment until their departure. The plane tickets never came.

Then the nephew was detained in a traffic stop and deported. Panicked, Emily and Deybis said they called the toll-free number again and again, leaving messages that went unanswered. Emily submitted a new application and sent more emails.

In mid-September, they got an email from the “CBP Home team” telling them to contact the Venezuelan embassy in Mexico to get travel documents on their own.

“We are working very hard on your case,” the email assured.

When they called the embassy, though, the number was busy. They found travel agencies that offer to procure travel documents at a cost but said they were told the Venezuelan government requires an arrival date and proof that plane tickets have been purchased. Emily and Deybis can’t afford them.

“Thank you so much for your patience and we understand your frustration,” they heard back in another email. “Wait for new instructions from DHS.”

As they wait, they worry about how they’ll survive when winter comes. Most days, Deybis visits local food pantries and looks for discarded items in alleys and on street corners that they can resell. A few weeks ago, they sold their daughter’s bed to help pay the rent.

“We’d rather be in Venezuela with our family than suffer here,” he said.

Emily and Deybis share a basement apartment in Columbus, Ohio with their two children. They’re unable to work and have resorted to selling the few possessions they have to feed the family. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

Pérez said her daughter was the family’s main motivation to come; the girl had been born with a heart defect and needed surgery they could not find in Venezuela, where hospitals operate through power outages and have limited capacity for advanced surgeries, not to mention supplies.

“We didn’t come for the American dream, or for a house, or for some life of luxury,” said Pérez. “What we wanted is for our daughter to live.”

She and her partner made the trek to the U.S. in 2023, with her daughter, then 6, and their 4-year-old son. Pérez thought they did it “the right away” by waiting in Mexico for weeks until they got an appointment to approach the border via CBP One. After they were processed, the family headed to Chicago, a city they had heard was a sanctuary for immigrants. At first they took shelter inside a police station, as hundreds of new immigrant families were doing at the time. Pérez said medical workers who visited the station learned about her daughter’s condition and connected the family to a hospital charity care program. The following spring, the frail little girl with dark brown eyes got the operation she needed.

In late 2024, the family moved to South Florida, where Pérez’s partner found work rebuilding homes damaged by hurricanes. Then in February, he was arrested for driving without a license or registration. He spent about two months in jail before he was transferred into immigration custody.

Pérez didn’t feel safe in Florida anymore. She returned to Chicago with her children.

But as the months pass without an answer from the CBP Home program, Chicago doesn’t feel safe, either. This fall, the Trump administration zeroed in on the city for immigration enforcement, sending in the U.S. Border Patrol. Pérez recently downloaded another app that tells her whether there’ve been sightings of federal immigration agents nearby, and she watches videos of other immigrants getting arrested. One day in September, a federal agent shot and killed an immigrant in a nearby suburb. Pérez wonders if she might die, too.

On a sunny September afternoon, Pérez peered down the street outside her children’s school, scanning for suspicious vehicles. Her daughter, who is now 8, bounded down the steps first, wearing a pink bow and a broad smile. Her son, now 6, in a Spiderman shirt and a blue cast from a playground accident, appeared next.

They share their mother’s anxiety. On their walk home, Pérez’s daughter leaned over her brother and chided him for speaking Spanish in public. The girl said her teacher had warned her that federal agents might be listening.

It reminded Perez that she now needs to leave the U.S. for the same reason she came: her children. She plans to register yet again on the CBP Home app.

Pérez plays with her two children in Chicago. Her partner was deported earlier this summer, leaving her unable to support the family alone. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)

Jeff Ernsthausen contributed data analysis.

by Melissa Sanchez and Mariam Elba

Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Accused of Nearly 800 Environmental Violations on Las Vegas Project

1 week 2 days ago

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Nevada state regulators have accused Elon Musk’s Boring Co. of violating environmental regulations nearly 800 times in the last two years as it digs a sprawling tunnel network beneath Las Vegas for its Tesla-powered “people mover.” The company’s alleged violations include starting to dig without approval, releasing untreated water onto city streets and spilling muck from its trucks, according to a new document obtained by City Cast Las Vegas and ProPublica.

The Sept. 22 cease-and-desist letter from the state Bureau of Water Pollution Control alleged repeated violations of a settlement agreement that the company had entered into after being fined five years ago for discharging groundwater into storm drains without a permit. That agreement, signed by a Boring executive in 2022, was intended to compel the company to comply with state water pollution laws.

Instead, state inspectors documented nearly 100 alleged new violations of the agreement. The letter also accuses the company of failing to hire an independent environmental manager to regularly inspect its construction sites. State regulators counted 689 missed inspections.

The Boring Co. is disputing the violation letter, a state spokesperson said.

The Nevada Division of Environmental Protection could have fined the company more than $3 million under the 2022 agreement, which allowed for daily penalties to be assessed. But regulators knocked down the total penalty to $242,800. For example, the bulk of the total possible fine was linked to the alleged missed inspections, but the agency chose to levy just a $10,000 penalty for each of the company’s 11 permits.

“Given the extraordinary number of violations, NDEP has decided to exercise its discretion to reduce the penalty to two $5,000 violations per permit, which it believes offers a reasonable penalty that will still serve to deter future non-compliance conduct,” regulators wrote in the letter.

Payment of the penalty isn’t required until after the dispute resolution process is complete, a state spokesperson said. In the letter, the agency reminded the company that it “reserves the right to direct TBC to cease and desist construction activities” under the agreement.

In the past, Musk has espoused paying penalties rather than waiting for approvals as a way of doing business.

​​“Environmental regulations are, in my view, largely terrible,” he said at an event with the libertarian Cato Institute last year. “You have to get permission in advance, as opposed to, say, paying a penalty if you do something wrong, which I think would be much more effective.”

Neither Musk nor Boring responded to requests for comment for this story.

The Sept. 22 letter documents the latest in a string of alleged violations of state and local regulations by The Boring Co. since it began construction in 2019 of the Loop project, which uses driver-operated Teslas to move people through the tunnels. The project, initially a 0.8-mile underground route connecting the sections of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority campus to each other, has grown to a planned 68 miles of tunnels and 104 stations across the Las Vegas Valley. It’s carried out in partnership with the LVCVA, the tourism board best known for the “What Happens Here, Stays Here” slogan.

Boring uses a machine known as Prufrock to dig the 12-foot-diameter tunnels, applying chemical accelerants as part of the process. For each foot the company bores, it removes about 6 cubic yards of soil along with any groundwater, according to a company document prepared for state environmental officials.

Because it is privately funded and receives no federal money, the project is exempt from many exhaustive governmental vetting and environmental analysis requirements. But it is required to obtain state permits to ensure the waste does not contaminate the environment or local water sources.

A January story by ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas documented how the company worked to escape county and state oversight requirements by arguing its project didn’t fit under existing regulations and promising to hold itself accountable through independent audits — all while being cited for permitting and water pollution violations in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2023. Last year, the company successfully lobbied to be exempted from holding a county “amusement and transportation system” permit, arguing instead for an oversight plan that removed multiple layers of inspection.

Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and burns. The Boring Co. has contested the violations. Just last month, a construction worker suffered a “crush injury” after being pinned between two 4,000-foot pipes, according to police records. Firefighters used a crane to extract him from the tunnel opening.

After ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas published their January story, both the CEO and the chairman of the LVCVA board criticized the reporting, arguing the project is well-regulated. As an example, LVCVA CEO Steve Hill cited the delayed opening of a Loop station by local officials who were concerned that fire safety requirements weren’t adequate. Board chair Jim Gibson, who is also a Clark County commissioner, agreed the project is appropriately regulated.

“We wouldn’t have given approvals if we determined things weren’t the way they ought to be and what it needs to be for public safety reasons,” Gibson said, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. “Our sense is we’ve done what we need to do to protect the public.”

Asked for a response to the new proposed fines, an LVCVA spokesperson said, “We won’t be participating in this story.”

The repeated allegations that the company is violating regulations — including the bespoke regulatory arrangement agreed to by the company — indicates that officials aren’t keeping the public safe, said Ben Leffel, an assistant public policy professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Not if they’re recommitting almost the exact violation,” Leffel said.

Leffel questioned whether a $250,000 penalty would be significant enough to change operations at The Boring Co., which was valued at $7 billion in 2023. Studies show that fines that don’t put a significant dent in a company’s profit don’t deter companies from future violations, Leffel said.

A state spokesperson disagreed that regulators aren’t keeping the public safe and said the agency believes its penalties will deter “future non-compliance.”

“NDEP is actively monitoring and inspecting the projects,” the spokesperson said.

by Anjeanette Damon, ProPublica, and Dayvid Figler, City Cast Las Vegas

Five Ways the Department of Education Is Upending Public Schools

1 week 2 days ago

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In just over eight months, the second Trump administration has made a rapid succession of political hires and policy decisions at the U.S. Department of Education that could spur profound changes in the way schools are operated and children learn.

After years of advocating to expand private and religious education and homeschooling, using tax dollars, a cadre of conservative activists is in a position to push forward its agenda. Some of its policies are already undermining public schools, which it has denigrated as unsuccessful and out of step with Christian values, a ProPublica investigation found.

In many communities, public schools are valued hubs for community life and services, including meals, socializing and counseling. More than 80% of students are enrolled in traditional public schools, which must serve all children, including those with disabilities. The administration, however, views public schools as a monopoly that should be broken up.

“Millions of young Americans are trapped in failing schools, subjected to radical anti-American ideology,” Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon claimed immediately after taking office. She and others in the administration believe that progressive activists have led schools to focus too much on “woke” policies rather than on rigorous academic standards.

Agency officials and spokespeople declined to speak to ProPublica.

Here are five ways the Education Department under McMahon is creating profound change in public schools.

1. Encouraging an exodus

McMahon and President Donald Trump want to expand tax-funded school choice options, giving more families the financial means to leave public schools. Trump pushed Congress to pass, and signed into law, a new federal tax credit to finance the first national school voucher program, set to open to families on Jan. 1, 2027. The Education Department has also encouraged school districts to spend some federal money meant for disadvantaged students on services from private providers and on children from low-income families who live within district boundaries but attend private schools.

Public school leaders say they’ve already watched students transfer out to private and charter schools in recent years — and with them, they’ve lost essential per-pupil funding. They worry that voucher expansion will cause further damage to their budgets and threaten their survival.

Occasionally, McMahon has spoken positively of public schools — for example, praising some for literacy gains. But more often, and more emphatically, she portrays them as unsuccessful, as do her advisers.

Education Department adviser Lindsey Burke came from The Heritage Foundation, where she co-authored the education chapter of Project 2025, the policy playbook for the Trump administration. It calls for tax-funded education accounts so parents can customize their children’s schooling. Years ago, Burke said she hoped that one day “we will marvel at the fact that we once assigned children to government-run schools consigning the poorest to schools that were often failing and sometimes unsafe.”

2. Cutting federal funding

In a move that affects public school students across the country, the department has slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in grant funding for a variety of programs, including for mental health professionals and for training and supporting new teachers. More cuts are likely.

The administration’s proposed education budget for fiscal 2026 calls for combining 18 existing grant programs — including funds for rural schools and homeless students — into a single $2 billion block grant to be allocated to states. That is about $4.5 billion less than if the grants survived alone. Overall, the Trump administration has proposed reducing federal spending on education by 15% in the 2026 budget. Congress has not passed a budget yet, and the government is shut down.

3. Injecting God into the classroom

Department officials have decried what they view as liberal indoctrination in public schools — what one top leader describes as a “Marxist and anti-God and anti-family agenda.” They now are pursuing policies that align with conservative Christian values, including opposing protections for transgender students and restricting materials about sexuality. Early this year, the department notified schools it would follow Trump’s executive order stipulating that there are “two sexes, male and female.”

McMahon has made Meg Kilgannon, who advocates for more Christian leadership in school districts, a top adviser. Kilgannon has decried the removal of spirituality as a topic from classrooms, arguing that “if we’re not going to discuss our identity as Christians,” schools will push “racial identities” and “sexual identities” on students instead.

In a speech on Sept. 8 at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Trump announced that the Education Department “will soon issue new guidance protecting the right to prayer in our public schools.” He said that the Bible is “an important part of the American story” and that he intends to “protect the Judeo-Christian principles of our founding, and we will protect them with vigor.”

4. Promoting curriculum choices

The federal government historically has not dictated curriculum choices, and McMahon has stressed that she thinks what is taught in schools is best left to local communities. Yet the Education Department is prioritizing patriotic education, promoting civics lessons that present American history and the nation’s founding principles in an “inspiring” manner. History should portray an “ennobling characterization” of the country’s past, the department said. Critics contend that the administration’s aim is to present a sanitized version of history, downplaying bitter episodes, including racial oppression and sexism.

The department has directed states and districts to avoid material that could make white students feel “intrinsic guilt” based on the oppressive acts of past generations. McMahon also supported the rights of parents to pull their children out of classes they find objectionable, such as those involving books with gay characters or themes.

5. Weakening civil rights protections

The department is using its Office for Civil Rights to press public schools to drop programs and policies designed to help Black or Hispanic students. The office has launched investigations against school districts for teaching lessons on systemic racism, hosting empowerment gatherings for students of color and providing remedial help for Black youth, all of which the administration says discriminates against white students.

In addition, the department has repeatedly targeted school districts for allowing students who were born male but identify as female to play on girls sports teams and use bathrooms and locker rooms reserved for girls. In some instances, the department has issued or threatened sanctions, including the potential loss of federal funding and referral to the U.S. Department of Justice for further action.

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by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards

The Complicated Case of Jorge Ruiz

1 week 3 days ago

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When 19-year-old Jorge Ruiz walked into the Autauga County Jail in handcuffs on Oct. 28, 2018, he wasn’t a typical suspect. He was out of place and in big trouble in a deeply conservative part of Alabama.

That morning, he’d been driving about 70 miles per hour in a 55 zone when he crossed the center line of a two-lane rural highway. His Ford pickup collided head-on with a Honda Civic, killing the woman behind the wheel. Paramedics took Ruiz to the hospital, where a blood test found a trace amount of alcohol. At just 0.016, it was below the legal threshold for intoxication.

But rather than charging him with manslaughter, which typically would be the most extreme charge brought under the circumstances, police went further. They arrested him for murder.

To support such a murder charge, prosecutors are supposed to show that a defendant’s conduct displays “extreme indifference” — behavior so reckless that someone is likely to die, as when a person fires a gun into a crowd or steers a boat into a group of swimmers. Suspects charged with murder after car crashes often are documented to have blood alcohol levels more than twice the legal limit and 10 times the level found in Ruiz’s blood, according to a review of Alabama cases from the last 20 years by ProPublica. Many others had prior DUIs or were driving 100 miles per hour or more. In this case, the suspect had a clean criminal history and wasn’t even going fast enough to be ticketed for aggravated speeding.

Ruiz’s trial attorney said that as soon as he started talking to the district attorney’s office, the case felt different. Across the three counties in Alabama’s 19th Circuit Court, only a handful of people have been charged with murder for a car accident in the span of a decade — and most wound up taking a plea deal for a lesser charge.

But this time around, the prosecutor’s offer could hardly be considered a deal at all: The teenager would have to plead guilty to murder, and it would be blind plea, meaning he would have to hope for mercy from the court in his sentencing. “In my 30 years of practicing law, I have never been offered a deal like that,” Ruiz’s court-appointed lawyer, Richard Lively, said.

The lead prosecutor eventually budged, but only a little. He wouldn’t reduce the charge, but he would recommend that the teenager spend 30 years in prison.

That’s longer than any other sentence handed down since at least 2004 for a car crash fatality in Alabama’s 19th Circuit Court, which includes Autauga, Chilton and Elmore counties. A man who fled the scene of a fatal crash — and had a 0.09 blood alcohol level nine hours later — received a 15-year sentence in 2017. A woman who had three times the legal limit of alcohol in her system received 23 years in 2007 after she killed a University of Alabama student.

For defendants who were teenagers when they caused fatal car accidents, the courts can be even more lenient. In 2012, a Madison County judge granted youthful offender status to a man who was 19 when he was charged with murder for a drunk driving crash that killed a high school sophomore in Huntsville. The driver, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.15, was sentenced to a year in jail and two on probation.

Lively had a hard time squaring his client’s charges with the results of his blood test and recorded speed. Alabama’s murder statute does not require a driver to be legally intoxicated, and people have faced murder charges for killing someone by racing or fleeing police. But neither applied here. Lively reasoned that for murder to fit, the teenager would have had to be intentionally driving into oncoming traffic.

He thought his client could beat the charge and told him not to plead guilty. Years later, attorneys involved in the case would attempt to shed light on what was so different about it — and on one fact in particular that they believed eclipsed all the others.

He was a Mexican immigrant.

The case against Ruiz was, as one legal expert put it, “a perfect storm of horrible facts.”

The night before the accident, he stayed up late after drinking at a music festival in Birmingham. At the scene of the crash, police found beer cans in his truck. He was in the country on a temporary work visa and did not have a driver’s license. He spoke little English, relying on his 17-year-old cousin to translate his Miranda rights and the string of questions from police.

The only reason Ruiz was in Autauga County was to visit his extended family after finishing a monthslong job in Georgia and South Carolina clearing brush from power lines. He was days away from returning to Mexico.

The woman he killed was named Marlena Hayes. She was a 29-year-old nurse who’d just finished the night shift at Prattville Baptist Hospital. She wasn’t even supposed to be working at that time. She’d planned to see her brother perform that weekend with the marching band at the University of West Alabama. In the end, though, she took the shift as a favor to a colleague.

Marlena Hayes was killed in a car crash in 2018. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Newspapers and TV stations in central Alabama quickly picked up the story. Some referred to Ruiz as an illegal immigrant even though he’d been in the U.S. on a six-month H-2B visa, which are approved when employers can’t find enough American workers. One of those articles appeared in the Montgomery Advertiser, the largest newspaper in the area.

When Lively was assigned to the case, he felt compelled to show that his client had been in the U.S. legally. Ruiz’s visa had only lapsed when he was in jail. Lively tracked down the Montgomery Advertiser reporter at the Autauga County courthouse to show him that Ruiz’s visa had been valid when he was arrested. But even after that, the newspaper failed to acknowledge that he was in the country legally at the time of the crash. “The Montgomery Advertiser stands behind our reporting,” the newspaper said in a statement released through its parent company, Gannett.

In the years leading up to Ruiz’s arrest, Alabama had established itself as a particularly unwelcoming place for foreigners. In 2011, then-Gov. Robert Bentley signed a bill that criminalized everyday activities like transporting, employing and renting homes to undocumented immigrants.

At the time, historians and legal experts worried the law could usher in a new era of racial injustice similar to Jim Crow that would be enforced by the police and courts. But the impact of the immigration law remains largely unknown because Alabama prisons don’t collect ethnicity data and therefore don’t know how many inmates are Hispanic. In 2013, the state agreed not to enforce most of the provisions as part of a lawsuit.

“The HB 56 legislation brought nativism and xenophobia into the political mainstream in Alabama” wrote historian Raymond Mohl. At the height of the debate over the law, a congressman from north Alabama said that to prevent illegal immigration to the state, he would do “anything short of shooting them.”

Back then, those harsh policies made Alabama an outlier. But with the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, the state’s positions started going mainstream. Alabama even supplied one of the foremost architects of Trump’s first-term immigration policy: U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, a fierce champion of border crackdowns, was tapped to be Trump’s attorney general.

Ruiz was arrested nearly two years into Trump’s first term. At the time, Alabama was growing more red even as a blue wave nationally elected dozens of Democrats to Congress. In Alabama, Republicans swept statewide office that year and expanded their majority in the Legislature.

Some members of Ruiz’s extended family had started moving to Alabama from Mexico nearly 15 years earlier and stayed in the area even after the political winds turned against them. Sandra Ruiz, his 17-year-old cousin, moved from Texas to Autauga County at age 2 and had lived near Prattville, a suburb of Montgomery, nearly all her life. She knew that some of her neighbors could be ignorant of, or even hostile to, people from Mexico. She and her family were afraid for Jorge Ruiz when he was arrested and followed the police to the station. Investigators allowed the high school senior to translate their questions and Ruiz’s responses.

A judge granted Ruiz bond in March 2019, four months after he was jailed. Ruiz’s family members in Alabama sold tamales and organized a raffle of an ornate belt buckle to raise funds for bail. They posted the money to free him.

And they began to wait.

In the weeks and months leading up to Ruiz’s trial, Judge Bill Lewis made several decisions that, according to Ruiz’s lawyer, put his client at a disadvantage.

One of the first things Lewis did was revoke Ruiz’s bond. Because of a technicality, Ruiz’s family never recovered the $5,000 they’d paid to get him out of jail. The news coverage that followed the decision sparked intense, and often misinformed, debate online about the case, and Lively worried that bias would affect potential jurors. Not long after Ruiz’s bond was revoked, the judge got a letter in the mail from a local resident. The writer thanked him and asked Lewis to “do everything in your power to get justice for Marlena.” The letter went on to describe Ruiz as “in this country illegally” and “operating his vehicle under the influence of alcohol.”

About a week later, Lewis denied Ruiz’s application for youthful offender status. That meant he would not be eligible for a sentence capped at three years. Lewis did not respond to a list of questions from ProPublica, including one about not granting Ruiz youthful offender status.

But as the trial neared, Lewis took several steps to attempt to keep bias out of the courtroom. He gave special instructions to the prosecution and the defense, barring any mention of Ruiz’s immigration status and directing attorneys involved in the case to call him “George.”

The judge’s efforts couldn’t erase the obvious difference between Ruiz and almost everyone else in the courtroom: the language barrier. “Longtime courthouse observers don’t recall a case in Prattville where an interpreter was used at trial,” the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

The district attorney had charged Ruiz under the reckless murder section of the statute, reserved for offenders who unintentionally cause a death. Courts have found that driving without a license, a misdemeanor that in Alabama carries a fine of $10 to $100, doesn’t constitute underlying recklessness for charges like manslaughter or murder. Prosecutors only briefly brought up at Ruiz’s trial that he did not have a license. What made the case amount to murder, the prosecutor said throughout the case, was that Ruiz was both speeding and had crossed the center line.

Ruiz’s use of alcohol also played a central role in the trial, even though he hadn’t been charged with DUI — and even though the prosecutors conceded that the evidence didn’t support that charge. A toxicologist testified that almost four hours had passed between the crash and the blood test at the hospital. He said the average elimination rate for alcohol is 0.015 percentage points an hour. That testimony suggested Ruiz’s blood alcohol level would have been higher than 0.07 at the time of the accident.

If the prosecutors could scientifically confirm that figure, it would have been enough to charge Ruiz with DUI because the legal intoxication threshold is lower for underage drivers. But such estimates have been described as unreliable by some scientists and legal experts, with one calling them no better than a “wild guess.” Some states have imposed higher bars than Alabama for the admission of such evidence, and at least one, Massachusetts, doesn’t allow it at all if the blood alcohol reading was, like Ruiz’s, below 0.03.

Lively produced no expert to dispute the toxicologist. In fact, he called only one witness, Ruiz’s date the night of the festival, who testified that Ruiz rode with her to her apartment after the festival, at around 1:30 a.m., and slept on the couch until he left at around 5 a.m.

Lively said in his closing argument that the evidence failed to show that Ruiz’s behavior was so brazenly dangerous that it amounted to murder.

“This was a person who was driving home and fell asleep behind the wheel,” Lively said.

Then-Chief Assistant District Attorney C.J. Robinson said there was no evidence Ruiz fell asleep. “In Alabama, we recognize that you can do something so dangerous that it could kill somebody, and you should realize what you’re doing is that dangerous,” he said during closing arguments. “I submit to you that anyone’s life was in danger, and therefore it was reckless murder.”

Jurors were instructed that, as an alternative to murder, they also could consider the lesser charges of manslaughter or criminally negligent homicide. They deliberated for less than an hour.

The foreman announced guilty verdicts on three counts: minor in possession of alcohol, driving without a license and murder.

Three weeks later, everyone gathered again for the sentencing. Robinson invited members of Hayes’ family to speak about their loss.

The family, along with friends, had come to every hearing. Hayes’ mother, Laura Liveoak, had spoken out on social media about her grief, describing how her daughter had texted her right before she left work that morning, asking what the weather was like. Liveoak said in a Facebook video: “It’s hard to be the parent of a victim, knowing that she’ll never be a mother. I’ll never be a grandmother to the sweet little redheaded kids that she probably would have had.” She declined to comment for this story.

Liveoak told the judge how much her daughter loved being a nurse: so much that she spent some of her days off visiting patients. She’d recently bought a house in a nearby town, Deatsville, and adopted two German shepherds who became the center of her world. She’d texted her mom right before she left work that morning. Her last message was about her dogs.

Hayes’ grave (Obtained by ProPublica)

Then it was Ruiz’s turn. He spoke for the first time in court.

“I want to say that I am sorry to the family,” Ruiz said. “I wouldn’t have wished for this to happen. I wish that this would have only been a dream.”

Lewis peered down from the bench at Ruiz.

“This is America,” Lewis said. “It’s the greatest country in the world and we have the right to trial in this country. I would never penalize you for exercising that right, but Mr. Lively talked about acceptance of responsibility, contrition, remorse. I haven’t seen any of that from you.”

He sentenced Ruiz to the maximum possible punishment, longer even than the 50 years requested by prosecutors: 99 years.

The court went quiet. Even the prosecutor was shocked.

Years later, Robinson remembered that moment. “That was not something that I had expected,” he said.

In 2023, four years after the sentencing, a human rights lawyer from Mexico reached out to the Southern Center for Human Rights, a nonprofit law center in Atlanta that focuses on criminal justice. He let them know that the Mexican Consulate had been following Ruiz’s case from the time he was arrested through the slow-moving appeals process. His 99-year sentence had shocked them, and they wanted to find a lawyer in the U.S. who could steer the increasingly complicated appeal.

Ruiz’s family had cobbled together money for a private attorney, who filed motions to challenge his conviction and sentence. But they had run out of funds. Ruiz was preparing to represent himself when the attorneys from the center stepped in.

“I was like, ‘We need to help this kid,’” SCHR attorney Paulina Lucio-Maymon said. “Otherwise, he’s just gonna end up forgotten by the system.”

The Mexican Consulate connected Lucio-Maymon and her colleague Michael Admirand with family from Prattville, who in turn connected the attorneys with family in Ruiz’s hometown, José María Pino Suárez, in the Mexican state of Durango. Many in the small community knew Ruiz. As a young boy, he had helped his grandfather work a shared plot of farmland and manage his livestock. He dropped out after middle school to support his family and got his visa to come to the U.S. in the spring of 2018. He needed to make more money after his mother’s unexpected death.

“He was always trying to make sure everyone was taken care of,” said his cousin, Sandra Ruiz.

In the U.S., he was part of an all-immigrant crew of temporary visa workers employed by a contractor for the power company. The team trudged through Georgia and South Carolina backcountry, their feet snagging on roots and vines as they cleared vegetation from power lines. They often walked for 10 to 12 hours a day while carrying heavy canisters of weed-killing chemicals, and Ruiz suffered heat stroke twice, one of Ruiz’s fellow workers testified in an appeal hearing. Workers wore out their shoes every eight days, the worker said.

First image: Ruiz, on the horse, grew up taking care of animals on his grandfather’s farm in rural Mexico. Second image: Ruiz, age 17, with his mom before she died suddenly in 2017. (Courtesy of Jorge Ruiz) Ruiz, second from the right, with his work crew in Georgia in 2018 (Courtesy of Jorge Ruiz)

Ruiz wanted to spend his last few weeks in the U.S. visiting family in Prattville before returning to Mexico. He missed his daughter, Noeli, and had begun making plans for her third birthday.

None of that history had been presented at his sentencing hearing. His attorney also failed to highlight his clean criminal record in Mexico.

In September 2019, less than a month after he handed down that 99-year sentence, Lewis had issued an unusual order. He removed Lively from the case despite there being no motion seeking his removal. Lewis determined Ruiz had received inadequate representation.

Lewis cited an offhand comment Lively made at the sentencing hearing. In response to the judge admonishing Ruiz for not being contrite, Lively told the judge that the decision to take Ruiz’s case to trial “may be more of a reflection of my bad advice to him than his own acceptance of responsibility.” Lewis wrote that he saw that as an admission that Lively was questioning his own representation of Ruiz. (Lively later told ProPublica he was trying to “deflect some of Judge Lewis’ criticism of Jorge onto me” and lamented how “that one sentence has been used as a cudgel against me and a tool to scapegoat me in this case.”)

In the hearings and filings that followed, Lewis continued to express concerns about the information that had not been presented at trial or sentencing.

“The Court, when rendering a sentence in this case should have as much information as possible,” Lewis wrote in a more recent order. “Mr. Lively failed to provide any, despite having access to many different sources of information that could have affected the Defendant’s sentence.”

Lively did provide some evidence at Ruiz’s sentencing, calling his aunt and cousin to testify. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals later rejected a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel against him.

In a statement to ProPublica, Lively wrote that he believed he competently defended Ruiz. He said that he only called one trial witness because he felt the state had not proven his client’s guilt. He pointed to the state’s experts, who testified that Ruiz had a very low level of alcohol in his system and drifted slowly into oncoming traffic, which, according to Lively, showed Ruiz did not intentionally jerk the car across the center line. “The most powerful witness is one that is called by the opposition who proves your case,” Lively wrote.

He also described the case as “the most traumatic” he’s encountered in his 30 years as an attorney. “I have made the law my life’s work, and Jorge’s case caused me to question almost everything I believed about the legal system,” he wrote.

When Lucio-Maymon and Admirand first took on Ruiz’s case, they appealed both his murder conviction and his 99-year sentence. Lewis rejected their challenge of Ruiz’s conviction but agreed the sentence deserved another look.

To make their case for a shorter sentence, Ruiz’s attorneys compiled information about other fatal car crash cases. His former attorneys had appealed his conviction to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and lost. The one notable dissent on the panel of judges was penned by Republican Judge J. William Cole, who wrote that the facts did not support a murder conviction.

“Ruiz had consumed alcohol before the accident, but he was not determined to be legally intoxicated, nor was he charged with driving under the influence of alcohol,” Cole wrote. “Although he crossed to the wrong side of the road, there was no evidence that he was racing or driving in a grossly wanton manner.”

Admirand and Lucio-Maymon looked at the four cases cited in the decision to uphold his conviction. The drivers in those cases had blood alcohol levels that ranged from 0.16 to 0.3 — from double to nearly quadruple the level of criminal intoxication. Their sentences ranged from 12 to 25 years in prison.

The attorneys created a simple graph that compared those sentences and blood alcohol levels. Although Ruiz had the lowest amount of alcohol in his system, his sentence was by far the longest.

After Lewis granted a new sentencing hearing, Admirand and Lucio-Maymon felt hopeful. That disparity — along with testimony from Ruiz’s friends and family in Mexico — could help sway the judge toward mercy, they believed. They said they even started talking with the district attorney’s office with the goal of making a deal, though Robinson said he remembered those conversations differently. He recalled that he agreed to listen to evidence about Ruiz’s background but wouldn’t consider reducing the charge and would be hard-pressed to recommend less than 50 years.

“They did initially express some openness to discussion in this case,” Admirand said. “And then something changed.”

Although Lewis had presided over Ruiz’s trial and granted him a resentencing hearing, he was not behind the bench when Ruiz was set to be resentenced in 2024. By then, Lewis had been appointed to the Alabama Court of Civil Appeals.

The case was transferred to Sibley Reynolds, who had retired from the bench but still took cases as needed. When Admirand and Lucio-Maymon arrived early on Aug. 14, 2024, to prepare, they found the judge sitting in the courtroom, paging through a purple binder they had never seen before. It contained pictures of Hayes and letters from friends, family members and even a few local officials.

Each of the dozens of letters urged the judge to uphold Ruiz’s 99-year sentence. Prosecutors asked the judge for 50 years. Lucio-Maymon and Admirand, citing several sentences from cases across the 19th Circuit Court, were seeking 10 years.

Admirand said he watched as Reynolds carried the binder with him to the bench. The hearing he oversaw was short but eventful. At one point, Ruiz addressed Hayes’ family.

“I am profoundly sorry for having caused you this pain,” he said. “I want to say I’m sorry or forgive me, the way I have asked God to do every day during the almost six years.”

Admirand presented all the evidence he believed had been missing from Ruiz’s first sentencing hearing in 2019. He told the judge about the cases they had found in the same judicial district with sentences that ranged from one to 25 years. And he presented mitigating factors — witnesses who testified about Ruiz’s character and work ethic.

His attorneys also played a series of videos of family members in Mexico, accompanied by dramatic music.

When Robinson, who had been elected district attorney in 2022, started to make his argument against Ruiz, he invoked a patriotic anthem as a sort of rebuttal. He said the victim’s family was ready to move on and that he was going to make a case for them “courtesy of the red, white and blue.”

It was a reference to the title of the Toby Keith song “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue,” which includes lyrics like, “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.” Robinson would later tell ProPublica the comment was taken out of context and was meant as a critique of the music in the video, which he described as “manipulative.”

Shortly after, Hayes’ mother asked the judge to uphold the original sentence.

“I’m asking for the 99 years that Judge Lewis saw fit to give,” she said. “Marlena’s life is worth that and so much more.”

At the end of the hearing, the judge announced his decision: He would reduce Ruiz’s sentence to 50 years.

He didn’t offer an explanation for why he chose what’s still an unusually long sentence. Admirand suspected the reason might be found in the purple binder. He objected to the judge considering it without the defense having seen it. He then asked for a copy of the material.

“I mean, it’s literally letters from the victim’s family,” said Assistant District Attorney Mandy Johnson in response to the objection.

When Admirand read it right after the hearing, he found much more than that, including notes from local public officials and incorrect information about the case. He said that, more alarmingly, there were letters that included language he considered biased. One letter said that if Ruiz was released early and deported, he would surely return to the U.S.

“He will again commit crimes,” the letter said. “He will again be a draw on our judicial system and society itself. He will once again be an unnecessary threat to all our lives, including yours.”

“Fry him!” demanded another one.

Excerpts of Letters Reviewed by the Judge in a Sentencing Hearing

Obtained by ProPublica. Highlights added by ProPublica.

The binder presented an opportunity to challenge what Admirand had come to believe was an underlying bias that permeated the case from the first moments after the crash, when a state trooper threatened to take Ruiz to jail if he did not speak English. In September 2024, he and Lucio-Maymon filed a motion for a new trial, arguing that the letters contained improper references to Ruiz’s nationality, including racially derogatory claims. In February, the Mexican Consulate filed an amicus brief in support of the appeal, only the second time in five years it has done that in a criminal case in the United States.

“Ruiz’s equal protection rights were violated from the moment this prosecution began,” the appeal said. “From his earliest interactions with law enforcement through the resentencing proceedings, Ruiz was treated more harshly than other similarly situated defendants because of his race. The Court should remedy this injustice.”

In June, Ruiz’s attorneys identified another 17 car crash cases over 15 years that were heard in the 19th Circuit Court. Most defendants received sentences of less than 15 years in prison, even in cases involving multiple fatalities or high blood alcohol levels. Only one, Ruiz, had a sentence longer than 25 years. Robinson argued those cases were different, though not because of the defendant’s race. Defendants in most of them had accepted plea deals. He did not acknowledge that all of those plea deals were more lenient than the one offered to Ruiz.

Lewis did not respond to questions, including ones about alleged bias in the case. In response to ProPublica’s questions, Robinson wrote that neither he nor the district attorney’s office “treated Jorge Ruiz more harshly than other similarly situated defendants because of his race.”

Though the district attorney’s office did not charge Ruiz with DUI, Robinson wrote that alcohol “was illegally consumed at a rate much higher than legally permissible for Ruiz to be operating a vehicle.” He also wrote, “I do not assess cases using a least common denominator approach. I do my best to evaluate them based on a totality of the circumstances approach.”

In August, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals asked for more information from Reynolds about his reasoning behind the 50-year sentence. Admirand and Lucio-Maymon have asked the court to take Reynolds off the case, arguing that he improperly reviewed the purple binder material. Reynolds did not respond to ProPublica’s questions.

Hayes’ family members have been outspoken about their loss. At every hearing, they tick off the milestones Hayes has missed. Her brother’s graduation. Her sister’s wedding. The births of nieces and nephews.

Ruiz’s family members are quietly marking off their own list. His daughter’s kindergarten graduation, her First Communion. The 9-year-old still doesn’t quite comprehend where he has gone.

Ruiz has learned a little English but still struggles with the language. He said through his attorneys that he’s never been able to adequately convey how bad he feels about the accident. It’s not just the language barrier, but also that his role in Hayes’ death left him so distraught that he felt like “my life didn’t matter anymore.”

Still, the hearing last year that reduced his sentence kindled some optimism. He said that when he first faced the prospect of 99 years behind bars, the only thing he could think about was never seeing his daughter again. After the hearing, his outlook changed.

“That gave me back hope that one day I’ll be able to see my family again,” Ruiz said.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

by Amy Yurkanin

Scientists Completed a Toxicity Report on This Forever Chemical. The EPA Hasn’t Released It.

1 week 3 days ago

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This spring, scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency completed a report on the toxicity of a “forever chemical” called PFNA, which is in the drinking water systems serving some 26 million people. The assessment found that PFNA interferes with human development by causing lower birth weights and, based on animal evidence, likely causes damage to the liver and to male reproductive systems, including reductions in testosterone levels, sperm production and the size of reproductive organs.

The report also calculated the amount of PFNA that people could be exposed to without being harmed — a critical measurement that can be used to set limits for cleaning up PFNA contamination in Superfund sites and for removing the chemical from drinking water.

For months, however, the report has sat in limbo, raising concerns among some scientists and environmentalists that the Trump administration might change it or not release it at all.

The EPA told ProPublica the report would be published when it was finalized, though the press office did not answer questions about what still needed to be done or when that would likely happen.

But the report’s final version was “completed and ready to post” in mid-April, according to an internal document reviewed by ProPublica. And two scientists familiar with the assessment confirmed the report has been finalized and ready for publication since April.

“Scientifically, it was done,” said one of the two scientists, who both worked in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the unreleased report.

“All that was left to do was to brief higher-ups about the report and post it,” the scientist said, adding that such a delay was unusual. “In recent years, the assessments tended to be finalized within a few weeks.”

A draft version of the assessment was made public last year and drew objections from an industry trade group. The final version, which retained the calculations published in the draft report, was completed shortly before the EPA announced its intention in May to rescind and reconsider limits on the amount of PFNA and several other forever chemicals allowed in drinking water. The limits had been set last year by President Joe Biden’s administration.

Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed to that pending change as a possible motivation for not publishing the PFNA assessment. “If you’re trying to roll back drinking water standards, you probably don’t want to release information that makes the case for why those standards are necessary,” said Minovi.

The nonprofit science advocacy group called attention to the unpublished report in a social media post last month that said, “Without this assessment, federal and state agencies are denied the best available science that they rely on to protect public health.”

PFNA is so hazardous that the EPA struck an agreement with eight companies to phase it out nearly two decades ago. The chemical was a component of firefighting foam and a processing aid to make a kind of plastic used in circuit boards, valves and pipes. PFNA has been found in water near sites where the foam was used and in the drinking water in 28 states, according to an analysis of EPA and state data by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

Local governments around the country have been trying to get companies that used and made forever chemicals such as PFNA to foot the bill for the expensive job of cleaning up contamination. In 2019, the state of New Jersey ordered the owner of an industrial plant in West Deptford to address chemical contamination at the site, where high levels of PFNA had been found in the nearby soil and water. The state took the company, Solvay Specialty Polymers, to court, accusing it of failing to fully comply. As part of a legal settlement, Solvay agreed to pay more than $393 million and to clean up contamination. The company, which has since become Syensqo Specialty Polymers, pointed out to ProPublica other sources of PFNA contamination in the area of the plant and noted that it settled the suit without admission of liability.

Solvay tried to influence the EPA over the drinking water limit the agency set for PFNA and other chemicals in the class, according to lobbying records. The company also lobbied Congress over legislation that would prevent chemical assessments conducted by the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System program from being used in regulation. IRIS, as the program is known, analyzes the harm chemicals can cause and put together the PFNA report. Syensqo and Solvay did not respond to questions about lobbying and whether they asked the EPA either to change or not release the IRIS report on PFNA.

Scientists in the EPA’s IRIS program began work on the assessment because PFNA, short for perfluorononanoic acid, appeared particularly dangerous. Like other compounds in its class, PFNA doesn’t break down in nature. Scientists had already found it in soil and water around the country. It was also measured in food, air, indoor dust and fish — as well as in breastmilk, fetal tissues and human blood. Perhaps most worrisome, studies had already suggested that the chemical caused serious harm to people and lab animals.

A draft of the report, which reflected five years of collecting and reviewing studies, found that, in addition to developmental, liver and reproductive harms, PFNA “may cause” immune problems, thyroid effects, harm to the developing brain and a cluster of other disorders, including Type 2 diabetes. The American Chemistry Council took issue with the report’s findings on low birth weight and liver issues, arguing that the evidence wasn’t as robust as the report claimed. The industry trade group did not address the reproductive threats posed by PFNA, which have been documented by other regulatory agencies and are part of a larger body of evidence linking “forever chemicals” with male reproductive harms, such as smaller testes and a reduction in the number and mobility of sperm. Forever chemicals, also known as PFAS, are also associated with female reproductive problems, such as endometriosis, ovarian dysfunction and tumors and dramatic decreases in fertility

Questions about the fate of the PFNA report extend to the fate of the IRIS program that conducted it and to the EPA’s handling of toxic chemicals more broadly.

IRIS was created during Ronald Reagan’s presidency to provide an independent and reliable source of information about pollutants that can harm the public. Dozens of EPA scientists contribute to a typical assessment, which takes years to complete and is subject to extensive peer review. The level of scientific scrutiny and expertise means these documents are trusted by environmental experts around the world.

Many hoped that, because it was separate from regulatory arms of the agency, IRIS would be insulated from political pressures. But almost from its start, industry has targeted the program, whose assessments can trigger toxic waste cleanups and expensive regulatory changes.

Project 2025, the conservative blueprint that has set the direction for President Donald Trump’s second administration, called for IRIS to be eliminated. Earlier this year, Republicans in Congress introduced legislation called the “No IRIS Act.” Their proposal would prohibit the EPA from using the program’s assessments in environmental rules, regulations, enforcement actions and permits that limit the amount of pollution allowed into air and water, and from using them to map the health risks from toxic chemicals. That legislation has been referred to committee in both the House and the Senate but not yet passed in either branch.

Since Trump took office, the IRIS program has been decimated. The program was housed in the Office of Research and Development, which has been dramatically reduced under Trump as part of a major reorganization of the agency. Of 55 scientists ProPublica identified as having worked on recent IRIS assessments, only eight remain in the office, according to a source familiar with the program. The rest have either been assigned to jobs elsewhere in the agency or have left the EPA.

“Through the movement of bodies, they have disassembled IRIS,” said one scientist who worked with the program for decades and recently left the EPA. “It feels like the efforts of a couple of generations of scientists who have worked extremely diligently to produce the world’s most highly vetted assessments has been set aside with no path forward.”

Meanwhile, the IRIS program stopped issuing the reports it has regularly posted for years about its progress. The most recent, published in February, noted that the PFNA assessment was scheduled to be released in the second quarter of the financial year, which ended in June.

Asked about the status of the program, an EPA spokesperson told ProPublica that “it is inaccurate to say that IRIS no longer exists.” The press office did not respond to follow-up questions about whether it’s accurate to say that IRIS does exist, how many people still work there, whether the agency plans to allow continued access to its database of chemical assessments and how it plans to use those assessments in the future. The EPA has not made clear how it plans to continue gauging the toxicity of chemicals.

In its May press release, the EPA said it was “committed to addressing” forever chemicals in drinking water. At the same time, it was rolling back drinking water limits on some of the compounds. The agency is also reconsidering bans on solvents called TCE and PCE, which are linked to Parkinson’s disease. It is offering exemptions from pollution restrictions for up to two years to companies that email the agency and is in the process of reversing rules designed to protect the public from toxic air pollution. The agency recently announced a plan to ease regulations on climate pollutants known as hydrofluorocarbons.

Under Trump, the EPA, which was created to protect public health, has celebrated its efforts to reverse regulations and champion industry. But people concerned about the health effects of chemicals see the agency’s retreat from environmental protections as a betrayal. Laurene Allen, an environmental advocate who lives in Merrimack, New Hampshire, where PFNA was one of several forever chemicals discovered in drinking water in 2016, was awaiting the report and is frustrated and enraged by its delay.

“This is the suppression of information,” said Allen, who co-founded the National PFAS Contamination Coalition. “We have the science, and it shouldn’t be obstructed.”

Mariam Elba contributed research.

by Sharon Lerner

Oregon Fast-Tracks Renewable Energy Projects as Trump Bill Ends Tax Incentives

1 week 3 days ago

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has ordered state agencies to take “any and all steps necessary” to fast-track solar and wind permits that must break ground by next year or likely miss out on a federal tax credit Congress is ending.

The move follows reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica about the role that the state’s lengthy permitting process plays, according to renewables advocates, in Oregon having one of the slowest growth rates in the country for green energy. At the time, Kotek’s office said that she was “carefully considering opportunities to streamline Oregon’s energy siting processes.”

The Democratic governor’s order does not change existing state law, and at least one leading green energy advocate voiced skepticism about its impact because it fails to address another obstacle to construction: the federal government’s sluggish pace of adding transmission capacity to handle new wind and solar.

Kotek’s office, when announcing the order on Monday, couched it as the state’s attempt to reduce the risk “shovel-ready” projects lose out on federal tax benefits that make them more affordable.

“With the elimination of promised incentives by the Trump Administration, states must step up as the last line of defense against climate catastrophe. We have to get renewable energy infrastructure built, and quickly,” Kotek said in a statement. “We cannot afford to lose this critical window.”

Oregon needs to build more renewable energy projects like wind and solar to meet its renewable energy goals. In addition, the state has experienced rising electricity costs amid soaring demand. Yet as OPB and ProPublica have reported, Oregon lawmakers have paid little heed to the region’s inadequate transmission system. In addition, they have rejected or watered down legislation designed to make it easier for developers to get their wind, solar and transmission projects through the state’s approval process.

Then, this year, President Donald Trump signed legislation dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It set a schedule for ending the federal investment tax credit and the production tax credit, which can fund 30% to 50% of most solar and wind projects. The credits were modified and extended during the administration of President Joe Biden as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The legislation signed by Trump says projects can still qualify for the credits if they meet a July 4, 2026, deadline for breaking ground and are completed by 2030. But projects that don’t start construction by July 4 must be up and running by Dec. 31, 2027, to qualify. That’s considered a tough time frame to meet.

One analysis estimated the loss of credits could cost Oregon about 4 gigawatts of planned wind and solar energy, which is roughly enough electricity to power 1 million homes. According to Atlas Public Policy, a data and policy firm based in Washington, D.C., Oregon has 11 wind and solar projects now at risk of not qualifying for the tax credit.

Nicole Hughes, executive director of the advocacy group Renewable Northwest, said Oregon may not get all of those projects or even a handful of them done in time to get the tax credits, in spite of Kotek’s order.

Hughes said that’s because “even projects that already have made it through the permitting process are being held back by massive transmission queue backlogs and some of the transmission upgrades that these projects were waiting for.”

Separate from state permitting, energy developers have to wait for the federal Bonneville Power Administration to allow projects to connect to its transmission lines. Bonneville owns about 75% of the Northwest’s transmission lines, and its lines are largely full with no capacity for new sources of electricity. It can take years before Bonneville determines whether a proposed project can plug into its grid.

“I don’t think it’s right to be just looking at this July 2026 deadline,” Hughes said. “Our energy issues are going to extend far beyond that date, and we need to be thinking more long-term about how we move projects quicker through both the permitting and transmission process.”

She nonetheless described Kotek’s order as a good first step, saying it put state agencies on notice that moving renewable projects forward is a priority.

Kotek’s office declined to comment on concerns raised about the executive order’s limitations.

A spokesperson for Bonneville stated that it has modified the interconnection process to move on a “first-ready, first-served” process that the agency says will improve current backlogs. The spokesperson said the federal agency expects to add about 2 gigawatts of new energy projects by the end of 2028 and complete the first phase of an interconnection study in January that could add more.

The executive order directs the Oregon Department of Energy and the state Energy Facility Siting Council to identify and prioritize siting approval for projects that must begin construction by July 4. The highest priority would be given to projects with secured contracts between a developer and a utility and that can demonstrate anticipated benefits to Oregon ratepayers.

The governor’s order also says the Oregon Public Utility Commission should consider using an outside contractor to study how solar and wind power projects connect to the electrical grid in the future.

“Congress and the Trump administration have launched an all-out assault on affordable clean energy and our safe climate future,” Climate Solutions Oregon Director Nora Apter said in the statement issued by the governor’s office. “By moving swiftly to get as many wind and solar projects across the finish line as possible before the loss of federal tax credits, Governor Kotek is defending Oregon families, family-wage jobs, and energy resilience.”

Oregon joins a handful of states that have already moved to more rapidly approve qualifying projects, like Colorado, Maine and California, due to the expiring federal tax credits.

by Monica Samayoa, Oregon Public Broadcasting

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department.

1 week 4 days ago

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Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.

She calls it “the final mission.

But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.

Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students.

McMahon has described her agency moving “at lightning rocket speed,” and the department’s actions in just one week in September reflect that urgency.

The agency publicly blasted four school districts it views as insubordinate for refusing to adopt anti-trans policies and for not eliminating special programs for Black students. It created a pot of funding dedicated to what it calls “patriotic education,” which has been criticized for downplaying some of the country’s most troubling episodes, including slavery. And it formed a coalition with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, PragerU and dozens of other conservative groups to disseminate patriotic programming.

Officials at the Education Department declined to comment or answer questions from ProPublica for this story.

At times, McMahon has voiced support for public schools. But more often and more emphatically she has portrayed public schools as unsuccessful and unsafe — and has said she is determined to give parents other options.

To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.

Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration.

In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.

More than 8 in 10 elementary and secondary students in the U.S. go to a traditional public school. But Burke expects that public schools will see dramatic enrollment declines fueled by both demographic and policy changes.

Addressing an interviewer in an April podcast, she noted: “We’re going to have a lot of empty school buildings.”

In a 2024 podcast, Noah Pollak, now a senior adviser in the Education Department, bemoaned what he sees as progressive control of schools, which he said has led to lessons he finds unacceptable, such as teaching fourth graders about systemic racism.

“And so the work that I do is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions,” said Pollak, who has been an adviser to conservative groups.

As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation.”

President Donald Trump himself said in July that the federal government needs only to provide “a little tiny bit of supervision but very little, almost nothing,” over the nation’s education system except to make sure students speak English.

Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.

Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.

Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”

Allison Rose Socol, a policy expert at EdTrust, an organization focusing on civil rights in schools, decried what she called the “demo crew” in McMahon’s office. Socol described McMahon’s push to help grow private school enrollment through taxpayer-funded vouchers and other means as a “great American heist” that will funnel money away from the public system.

“It’s a strategic theft of the future of our country, our kids and our democracy,” she said.

“Lead as Christians”

Attention on McMahon often focuses on her former role as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. It was no different on the day of her Senate confirmation hearing, when journalists and social media delighted in noting that seated behind her was her son-in-law, the retired wrestler known as Triple H.

Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first Trump administration.

Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.

AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”

The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity.”

The first AFPI leader pictured in that report is McMahon.

Linda McMahon testifies at her Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of education. Seated behind her are, from left to right, son Shane McMahon, Defending Education’s Nicole Neily, the former wrestler Paul Levesque (also known as Triple H), daughter Stephanie McMahon, Erika Donalds of the America First Policy Institute, and Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.

Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.

Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.

Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.

The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.

These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.

When the department created an “End DEI” portal to collect tips about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in schools, it quoted Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice in the press release. She encouraged parents to “share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.” Moms for Liberty referred to the portal as the “culmination” of Justice’s work. (Federal judges ruled against some of the administration’s anti-DEI actions and the department took the controversial portal down in May.)

Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.”

She and others say most public schools don’t teach students to read, are dividing children over race and are secretly helping students to change genders — familiar claims that have been widely challenged by educators.

When Trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the Education Department, Justice sat in the first row, as she had at McMahon’s confirmation hearing. The president praised her, along with various governors and lawmakers. “She’s been a hard worker,” he said.

Defending Education’s Nicole Neily, who was also at McMahon’s confirmation, stood next to McMahon when the secretary announced an investigation into the Maine Department of Education for keeping records from parents about student gender identity plans. Defending Education has filed civil rights complaints against colleges and school districts and has been successful in having its causes taken up by the Trump administration.

In an email, Neily told ProPublica she is proud of the work that Defending Education has done to challenge schools that have supported DEI in their curricula and have allowed students to hide their gender identity from parents. She singled out teacher unions and “radical education activists” while blaming drops in student achievement on “the education-industrial complex.”

“The sooner this stranglehold is broken, the better,” she wrote.

McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.

Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first Trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.

She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.

Reached by phone, Kilgannon told ProPublica, “I have no comment,” and hung up.

Overhauling “Government Schools”

Betsy DeVos, the Michigan billionaire who was education secretary in Trump’s first term, cheered on July 4 this year when Congress instituted America’s first federal voucher program. It came in the form of a generous tax credit program to encourage voucher expansion at the state level. Families can start accessing the aid beginning Jan. 1, 2027.

DeVos once said she wanted “to advance God’s kingdom” through vouchers for religious schools and has funneled vast amounts of her family fortune into advocating for school choice. She called the passage of the federal measure “the turning point in ending the one-size-fits-all government school monopoly.”

An article in The Federalist, a conservative publication, boiled down the implications into one headline: “How Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Will Help Kids Escape Failing Government Schools.”

But school choice isn’t the only tool that Trump’s education leaders are using to target public schools. McMahon has gutted the Education Department’s civil rights division, where lawyers and other federal employees work to ensure all students can access public school, free from discrimination.

The administration rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ students and students of color, prioritized investigating discrimination against white and Jewish students, and launched aggressive investigations of states and districts that it says refused to stop accommodating transgender students.

It has rescinded official guidance that said schools had to provide language help and other services for students who are learning English, contradicting long-established federal law.

And Trump officials have repeatedly cast public schools as dangerous even as the agency canceled about $1 billion in training grants for more school mental health professionals — money that had been authorized by Congress to help prevent school shootings. The administration now says it plans to resume paying out a fraction of that funding, which would be used for school psychologists.

Over and over, the department has used the threat of pulling federal funding to force compliance with new directives and rapid shifts in policy. The department, for instance, threatened to withhold money from schools that did not verify they were ending diversity initiatives, which were designed to address inequitable treatment of Black, Native and Latino students.

In August, the department announced it was withholding millions of dollars in grants from five northern Virginia school districts that had refused the department’s demands to bar transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity. The districts argued that complying would mean defying Virginia law and a 2020 federal appeals court ruling.

Nevertheless, the Education Department told the districts that until they acquiesced to the agency’s bathroom rules they would have to pay expenses up front and request reimbursement. McMahon wrote to districts that “Lindsey Burke is available to answer any questions.”

The Fairfax County Public Schools sued and in a legal filing said it faced losing $167 million this school year, money that it was relying on to provide meals to students, support programs for children with disabilities, help English-language learners and enhance teacher training. The federal department has argued that it has discretion to withhold funding and admonished the district for taking the agency to court.

In this atmosphere, public school advocates are particularly concerned about what will happen to funding for Title I grants, which is the federal government’s largest program for schools and is aimed at helping students from low-income families. In early September, House Republicans proposed slashing more than $5 billion from the $18.4 billion earmarked for Title I, putting at risk reading and math teachers, tutors and classroom technology.

At the same time, under McMahon, the Education Department is trying to redefine how states and districts can spend the money.

In three guidance letters so far this year, the agency encouraged states to divert some Title I money away from public school districts. One suggested paying for outside services, such as privatized tutoring. Another urged states to use Title I money to benefit low-achieving students who live within the boundaries of a high-poverty public school but attend private schools.

McMahon is prepared to loosen even more rules on the money. The federal dollars currently are distributed to districts using a formula. Project 2025 calls for Title I to be delivered to states as block grants, or chunks of money with few restrictions. McMahon has encouraged states to ask her to waive rules on spending the money.

Critics of this approach fear that Title I money could eventually be used in ways that undermine public schools — on private school vouchers, for example.

Public school advocates like William Phillis, a former official at the Ohio Department of Education, fear the change would devastate public schools.

“I just know any block grant or any funding that would be left up to state officials on Title I money would be misappropriated in terms of the intent,” Phillis said. “Block grants to Ohio would go to the private sector.”

A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce did not respond to requests for comment.

Rainey Briggs, chief of operations for Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa, said he supports parental choice but worries that public schools will suffer financially and will not have the resources to stay up to date.

And he fears that right-wing narratives around public schools, the distrust and lack of support for highly trained district leaders — whether from some parents or politicians — could lead accomplished educators to walk away.

“Public education is irreplaceable,” he said, citing its commitment to serve every child regardless of their background or circumstance.

Those influencing Trump’s education agenda disagree.

“If America’s public schools cease to exist tomorrow, America would be a better place,” Justice told ProPublica.

Help ProPublica Report on Education

Illustrations by Pete Gamlen. Visual editing by Cengiz Yar. Design and development by Anna Donlan. Mollie Simon contributed research, and Brandon Roberts contributed reporting.

by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards

This Little-Known Appeal Could Force Your Insurer to Pay for Lifesaving Care. Here’s How to File It.

1 week 5 days ago

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When a health insurance company refuses to pay for treatment, most people begrudgingly accept the decision.

Few patients appeal; some don’t trust the insurer to reverse its own decision.

But a little-known process that requires insurers and plans to seek an independent opinion outside their walls can force insurers to pay for what can be lifesaving treatment. External reviews are one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and only a tiny fraction of those eligible actually use them.

ProPublica recently reported the story of a North Carolina couple, Teressa Sutton-Schulman and her husband, who we identified in the story by his middle initial, L, to protect his privacy. Last year, L suffered escalating mental health issues and needed intensive psychiatric care. Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield issued the couple multiple denials in their case, even after Sutton-Schulman’s husband attempted suicide twice in the span of 11 days.

The instructions for an external review were buried on page seven of one of the denial letters.

“You can now request that your case be reviewed by a health care provider who is totally independent of your health plan or insurance carrier,” read the letter from the state insurance department in Texas, where the treatment occurred.

Skeptical but hopeful, Sutton-Schulman submitted the request for the external review. Their case was assigned to Dr. Neal Goldenberg, an Ohio doctor who works for a third-party review company as a side job. After reading the extensive appeal, Goldenberg overturned Highmark’s denial to cover treatment that had cost Sutton-Schulman and L more than $70,000.

Highmark previously said in a statement that the company was “passionate about providing appropriate and timely care” to its members. It acknowledged that “small errors made by physicians and/or members can lead to delays and initial denials” but said that those are corrected on appeals.

The lesson is simple, explained Kaye Pestaina, a vice president at the nonprofit health policy think tank KFF, who has studied external appeals.

“Appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal,” she said. “That’s all you have.”

External appeals have been around for decades at the state level, but in 2010, the Affordable Care Act expanded access to the reviews for the majority of people who get their health insurance through work. The details around the external review process vary depending on whether an insurance plan is regulated by state or federal laws.

Karen Pollitz helped draft the federal regulations around external reviews during the Obama administration, but she said an extensive lobbying effort on behalf of insurance companies and employers weakened the initial protections. Now, only a fraction of denials are eligible for an external review, and the health insurance plan gets to hire the reviewers.

Transparency requirements that called for insurers to report data around denials and other metrics, she said, also were largely not implemented.

“There are all kinds of ways they could strengthen the laws and the regulations to hold health plans more accountable,” said Pollitz, who left the administration after the rollbacks and worked at KFF before retiring.

But for now, Pollitz said, filing external appeals is sometimes the only recourse patients have. An advantage of the Affordable Care Act, she added, was that it established state consumer assistance programs to help people get the coverage they were promised.

Federal funding for those programs dried up a couple of years later, but about 30 states decided to find other ways to pay for the programs. (Want to find out if your state has one? Here’s a list from federal officials.) If the remaining 20 or so states — including Wisconsin and Ohio — established programs, families would reap the benefits, according to Cheryl Fish-Parcham, director of private coverage at the consumer health care advocacy organization Families USA.

“Every state needs one of these programs,” she said. “Health care is so complicated, and people really need experts to turn to.”

Fish-Parcham meets with representatives from consumer assistance programs across the country every month. The models differ from state to state. Programs are housed in state attorney general offices, in nonprofits and even as independent agencies. Helping patients or their providers with external appeals is a key part of the programs’ role. The first step often is simply letting them know that appeals — both internal and external — are options.

“The numbers are low because some people just give up. They’re frustrated. They’re tired. They’re battling cancer,” said Kimberly Cammarata, director of Maryland’s Health Education and Advocacy Unit, the state’s consumer assistance program. “And sometimes the information about why the claim was denied or about how to appeal is terribly unclear. A lot of these outcome letters will say you have a right to an external appeal, but they don’t exactly tell you where to go.”

Some states have enacted legislation to combat that confusion. For example, insurers in Maryland are no longer able to bury information on appeals deep in their denial letters. Beginning this month, a new state law requires insurers to include information at the top of all denial letters in “prominent bold print” that states the member has the right to appeal or file a complaint to the insurance commissioner. That declaration advises consumers that the letter contains information on how to file an appeal and reach the Health Education and Advocacy Unit. The unit’s address, phone number, fax and email must also be included in the body of the notice.

Connecticut added similar information at the top of denial letters in a box on the front page in 2023. The office saw an almost immediate effect. In the two years that followed, more than 40% of referrals to the state’s Office of the Healthcare Advocate came from people who received denial letters with the new language.

The office isn’t funded through taxpayer money. It’s paid for entirely by state assessments on insurance companies.

“We want to help people,” said Kathleen Holt, who was nominated in 2024 by Connecticut’s governor to lead the office as the state health care advocate. “The insurance companies know that people don’t appeal, and in some ways I think they can be more aggressive with their denials. They don’t expect people to come back, and when they do that very small percentage of the time, it’s the cost of doing business for them.”

Connecticut’s data shows that the health care advocate office has been able to resolve or overturn denials in the patient’s favor about 80% of the time, Holt said. Some plans may charge up to $25 per external appeal, but Connecticut did away with that fee several years ago. Some states, including New York, have been tracking the outcomes of their external appeals online, which the public can review.

“We can help people write their appeals,” Elisabeth Benjamin, vice president of health initiatives at the Community Service Society, said of New York residents. “We write appeals for them, sometimes going through thousands of pages of medical records and writing 15- to 20-page appeals.”

Experts say these six things can help patients and providers after a denial. Since we are journalists and not lawyers, we are unable to provide any legal advice about this process.

  1. Gather your information: Experts suggest not throwing out any letters or notices from your insurer, including denial notices, explanation of benefits, correspondence and plan documents. If you’ve misplaced them, they said you can contact your insurer for additional copies. They also recommend downloading or requesting your medical records. You can request your claim file, which most people have a right to under federal regulations.
  2. Does your state have a consumer assistance program? Not all states have consumer assistance programs. Here’s a list of those that do. Advocates recommend reaching out and asking them to explain the denial. It might be as simple as a missing or incorrect code. Their job is to use their time, experience and resources to explain the process. Their services are free. Other programs and nonprofits also offer assistance.
  3. Why were you denied, and what are your timelines to appeal? Are you being denied because the insurer determined the treatment was not medically necessary or because your plan didn’t cover it? Does your plan follow federal or state regulations? Experts say these distinctions may determine if and how you appeal your denial. Most plans give you about 180 days from the date of the denial notice to appeal internally, but experts say not to wait. If you’re not sure about the answers to any of these questions, you can call your insurer and ask. They are required to provide you the reason for denial.
  4. Can your health care provider help? Experts suggest reaching out to your doctor or therapist. They said some providers will file the appeal on your behalf. Others will write a letter of support. At the very least, advocates agree, most should help you understand why your treatment was denied and what additional steps you can take.
  5. Filing an internal appeal: Before you can file an external appeal, you typically have to attempt to resolve the dispute internally with the insurance company. This step may involve one or two levels of internal appeals.
  6. How to request an external appeal: This is your last shot before considering a lawsuit. After you’ve exhausted your internal appeals, you can contact your insurer to request an external appeal. When you file a request for a federal external review, your plan usually has five days to consider your request.

If the insurer agrees that your denial is eligible, it will provide directions on where to file the appeal. Experts say to make sure to read the notice all the way through.

Remember that only certain denials are eligible for external appeals. These denials typically involve medical judgment, surprise medical bills, or an insurer deciding to retroactively cancel coverage or determining that a treatment was experimental. Denials based on the terms of the plan or because the service was out of network generally are not eligible.

Under federal rules, third-party review companies typically have between 45 and 60 days to decide the outcome of an external review. You may ask for an expedited appeal if the situation is urgent. In those situations, you may also be eligible to request an external review without exhausting your internal appeals or even file both internal and external appeals at the same time. Federal requirements typically call for expedited external appeals to occur as quickly as your condition requires but not take longer than 72 hours.

If the external reviewer decides to overturn your denial, the determination is binding. Your insurer is required by law to accept the decision and pay for treatment. If the reviewer rules against you, you may be able to file a lawsuit.

by Duaa Eldeib

Seattle Spent Millions on Hotel Rooms to Shelter Unhoused People. Then It Stopped Filling Them.

1 week 6 days ago

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KUOW public radio. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

When Brenna Poppe moved into the Civic Hotel off the damp streets of Seattle in late 2022, she cried with joy. During her next year at the city-sponsored homeless shelter, she’d meet other guests who felt the same way — overwhelmed by the sudden realization that tonight, they would not sleep outside.

The Civic got quieter last year, however. Rooms around her, their doors still painted bright yellow from when the hotel was a boutique property, started to empty out. A “deafening silence” crept in, she recalled.

The 53-room hotel was converted to a shelter in the early days of the pandemic, and the city of Seattle kept it going. After Poppe’s first year there, the city in February 2024 signed a $2.7 million lease extension to continue using rooms at the Civic and other buildings as shelter space through the end of the year. And yet, despite committing to pay the rent, the city stopped sending people there.

Existing residents moved on to permanent housing or elsewhere and no one took their place. Dozens of rooms went unfilled.

By December, Seattle taxpayers were paying a hefty $4,200 a month per empty room — at a time when thousands of Seattleites were without a roof over their heads.

City officials described their decision to leave the rooms vacant as simply a “pause” while they evaluated what to do about an anticipated budget deficit.

One-time federal funding was going away and, if the city eventually succeeded in securing long-term funding, officials wanted to find a cheaper location than the Civic. They said the uncertainty forced them to both hold onto the Civic and stop placing people there, to avoid later sending clients back to the street.

But internal records reveal more complicated motives. At the same time as the city was halting placements, it rejected a move to a cheaper shelter location, which the main advocate of the plan said would keep the program running without interruption. A top official in the office of Mayor Bruce Harrell, explaining the decision in private, voiced animosity toward the nonprofit leader who pitched the new location and signaled an end to city support for the leader’s program.

Regardless of the rationale, the outcome of the city’s decision was that for nearly a year, Seattle paid for just as many rooms as before yet helped fewer and fewer people off the street with them.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, whose plan to address homelessness promised to “better track shelter capacity and ensure beds do not go unfilled.” (Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Placements resumed this year, in a new location, after a 16-month gap.

Many West Coast cities are struggling, as Seattle has, with a rise in homelessness in recent years. Before referrals were halted, the effort that placed people at the Civic had already moved hard-to-reach homeless people from the street to a shelter space and, in many cases, then on to long-term housing and stability.

Seattle’s decision to keep dollars flowing to an effort it had suspended comes as cities such as Los Angeles are facing criticism for failing to accurately track outcomes of their massive outlays on homelessness.

Allowing vacancies to grow at city-leased shelter space also seems to be at odds with a commitment by Harrell, whose 2022 plan to address homelessness promised efforts to “better track shelter capacity and ensure beds do not go unfilled.”

(A spokesperson for Harrell responded that it’s important to note city-funded shelters had 2,850 units in all last year, 87% of which were full on any given night. The city declined a request to interview Harrell.)

Poppe, who lived at the Civic through 2024, viewed its empty rooms as a squandered opportunity, and she told the shelter staff as much.

“Multiple times,” Poppe said, “I spoke to staff about this egregious amount of open rooms.”

After Initial Ramp-Up, Occupancy in City-Funded Rooms Plummets Notes: Data unavailable for June 2024. “City-funded rooms” are defined as rooms reserved for the city of Seattle. Each bar represents a count taken on one day of the month. (Source: CoLEAD, a nonprofit-led program that partnered with Seattle to fill city-funded rooms as shelter space) The Blade

On any given day in a section of Third Avenue between Pike and Pine streets known as The Blade, disorder is commonplace. Some people are screaming at the air, their pants falling off their frail frames. Others are sleeping, huddled in doorways to keep warm and safe. This human suffering stands in contrast with neighboring symbols of Seattle’s affluence: Pike Place Market, Benaroya Hall and the downtown shopping district are within a five-minute stroll.

A walk-up-only McDonald’s on the corner has been dubbed “McStabby’s,” referencing violent crimes that have taken place nearby over the years.

In 2022, nonprofits and downtown businesses came up with a plan that would ultimately involve the Civic Hotel.

The Third Avenue Project was designed to reduce the violence and open drug use through extensive outreach and the deescalation of conflicts between people on the street. But housing was also on the minds of the organizers.

Many believed in a modified version of the “housing-first” approach, which is predicated on the idea that any issues people struggle with on the streets are best addressed if they first find shelter, with no requirements for sobriety. Despite Seattle’s shortage of shelter beds and affordable permanent housing, the nonprofit leaders involved with Third Avenue hoped to help at least some clients move indoors.

The concept seemed to line up with the priorities of Harrell, who on his campaign website the year before had promised “an accountable, ambitious plan with transparency and benchmarks to expand and provide housing and services on demand to every unsheltered neighbor.”

Third Avenue Project organizers got to work after Harrell took office, with significant funding from the city.

“Safety ambassadors” were the first step. They would reverse overdoses and intervene when scuffles broke out, but also develop relationships with people in the street and then connect them with shelter and services.

“The hardest thing that we do is seeing people in the dire straits that they live in daily,” said Stephenie Wheeler-Smith, CEO of the company that hires the ambassadors, We Deliver Care. “This is not easy work. People don’t want to come out and touch these people or look at them or see their wounds or help them get health care.”

Safety ambassadors Trey Kendall, left, and Dee Stokes hand out water and snacks in July in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. (Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Importantly, safety ambassadors wouldn’t just move people along. They also could be a first point of contact on a path to permanent housing.

As one element of their $2.1 million contract with the city, the safety ambassadors referred homeless people on Third Avenue to housing and emergency shelter providers. The main one they’d use was a nonprofit-led program called CoLEAD, which had a $4.6 million contract with the city in 2023 that included placing people in temporary lodging and providing support services they needed.

The next step was the Civic Hotel. City officials signed a $1.1 million six-month lease with the Civic’s owners for its 53 guest rooms. CoLEAD would also let Third Avenue clients use rooms in any of the other shelters it managed, and at the same time the program would send clients from other referral sources to the Civic.

Unlike with some other shelters, these clients did not have to stop using drugs or alcohol, and they had access to their own space, which was ideal for people who may have struggled at traditional shelters.

The plan got results.

By November 2023, city-funded rooms at the Civic and other buildings were packed.

Marco Brydolf-Horwitz, who studied CoLEAD for nearly two years as part of a doctoral program, said he saw people transformed by the stability of temporary lodging.

“You can’t do much when people are on the street,” he said. “Once people are inside, then you can figure out what level of housing resources are needed.”

People shelter themselves along Third Avenue. (Megan Farmer/KUOW) The Halt

For all the success stories, the problem with the Civic was cost. The county had snapped it up as a temporary measure during the frenzy of the pandemic, and the city inherited it. After the initial lease, rent had risen to the equivalent of $2.6 million a year in 2023.

On Jan. 2, 2024, Lisa Daugaard, one of the nonprofit leaders managing the Third Avenue Project, pitched the city on a cheaper alternative: an apartment building in North Seattle with 11 more rooms the city could use for $1 million less.

The city’s obligations with the Civic had ended when its lease expired the month before. Daugaard could get the city’s clients moved by February. Daugaard simply needed some assurance the city would keep backing the project because she was considering a three-year lease on the new location.

Internal chat messages between Chief Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington and other staff in the mayor’s office. “DM Burgess” is Deputy Mayor Tim Burgess, who did not respond to a request for comment from KUOW and ProPublica. (Obtained by KUOW)

A few weeks later, Daugaard had her answer: Stop placing Third Avenue clients in city-funded beds, cycle existing ones into permanent housing and “ramp down” the Civic Hotel shelter. It was couched as a “pause” in placements through CoLEAD, records show.

In emails to Daugaard — and, in at least one case, internally — city officials cited uncertainty created by a looming budget deficit as one of the main reasons for the new marching orders. They reiterated this explanation, along with an expected loss in one-time funding, in interviews and emails with KUOW and ProPublica.

The mayor’s press secretary, Callie Craighead, said the city was “committed to maintaining shelter investments” but had “no way to provide such confirmation” to Daugaard until the city developed its next budget. She said the North Seattle apartment building was also not move-in ready at the time. Extending the lease at the Civic was a stopgap to avoid sending clients back to homelessness.

Chief Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington described the halt in referrals as a way of “winding down” operations at the Civic in anticipation of a move to a new spot, a “best practice” among social services managers.

But a chat message from Washington to a colleague, released to KUOW and ProPublica last week through a public records request, spells out additional reasons for turning down Daugaard’s proposal. It says, in part: “because I want her out of the homelessness business. She is not good at it.”

Washington stated in the message, incorrectly, that the proposed North Seattle location was another hotel, “which is not cheap” and concluded, “This means we would be leasing hotels forever.”

She also asserted that CoLEAD had a high rate of returns to homelessness and a low rate of placements in permanent housing.

Data provided by the mayor’s office and the King County Regional Homelessness Authority shows otherwise. The year before, CoLEAD moved a far bigger share of its clients from its city-funded beds into permanent housing than emergency shelter operators as a whole: 65%, compared with 26%.

Contacted by KUOW and ProPublica last week, Washington said she’d known Daugaard for 10 years and that “I have nothing but respect for her work.” She said of her chat message about ending CoLEAD’s role in the city’s response to homelessness: “Discussions are different than decisions.” She noted that the city’s relationship with CoLEAD continues today.

Daugaard declined to comment on Washington’s private message naming her. The nonprofit that employs Daugaard and oversees CoLEAD issued a statement defending the program’s track record at placing people in permanent housing as “exceptional.”

The mayor’s proposed budget for next year supports programs that follow CoLEAD’s approach, the statement said, “and we greatly appreciate that, in the end, the City has backed this model which has proven to serve the interests of Seattle neighborhoods and chronically unsheltered individuals alike.”

As of February 2024, the North Seattle plan was formally off the table. The city extended its lease with the Civic.

Officials committed to spending $225,000 a month for 53 rooms through year’s end — despite having just told nonprofit shelter managers to ensure those rooms emptied out.

The Fallout

The disruption to the flow of clients off Third Avenue and into the city-funded rooms gradually became noticeable.

The kind of shelter that the Civic Hotel provided — individual rooms that came with services such as help in accessing health care — is a valuable resource, especially when it comes to people who may be struggling with mental illness or addiction, like many of those on Third Avenue. Traditional shelters lack privacy and personal space.

A typical guest room in the Civic Hotel, first image, and the building’s lobby area, pictured in 2019. (Civic Hotel via TripAdvisor)

With the ending of placements at the Civic and city-funded rooms in other CoLEAD shelters, safety ambassadors who were paid to quell the violence on Third Avenue turned to other shelter organizations. But it wasn’t enough to fully offset the loss of CoLEAD’s buildings.

KUOW and ProPublica examined data from We Deliver Care for placements to organizations that provide shelter or housing, including the nonprofit that operates CoLEAD. The number went from 47 in 2023 to 30 in 2024.

Meanwhile, 35 rooms at the Civic and other shelters that CoLEAD managed sat empty as of December 2024.

Among the people who would have said yes to one of the rooms the city had left unused was Tiffany Fields, who at the time was struggling to stay safe outdoors.

“It ain’t no joke,” Fields said of life on the street. “It’s not fun. It’s not for play.”

Fields slept at downtown bus stops, often gathering with groups or pretending to have a firearm in her coat to stay safe. She spoke to herself out loud when she felt at risk in the hopes that feigning mental illness would ward others off.

“I’ve seen a lot of weird things,” Fields said. “They tend to prey on women by themselves, but I know how to hold my own.”

A 2023 University of Washington study of the Third Avenue Project found that of the 980 people contacted by We Deliver Care’s safety ambassadors through October 2023, 90% were unhoused.

“From a human perspective, people want to be inside and they want to be sheltered,” said Wheeler-Smith, leader of the outreach efforts to connect people on Third Avenue with services. “And unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of places to send people to be sheltered, period.”

Daugaard, whose group works alongside Wheeler-Smith’s safety ambassadors, said it was demoralizing for the outreach workers to keep talking to people on Third Avenue about their struggles with limited chances to fundamentally change the path they’re on.

Losing the rooms that the Civic provided meant that “all they’re doing is kind of keeping a lid on the level of disorder and its impact on other people,” Daugaard said.

(The University of Washington report, based on time spent on the street with the safety ambassadors, described reversed overdoses and defused conflicts.)

The kind of shelter that the Civic Hotel provided — individual rooms with supportive services such as help with healthcare and job training — is a hot commodity, especially when it comes to people who may be struggling with mental illness or addiction, like many of those on Third Avenue. (Megan Farmer/KUOW)

Of the estimated 5,000 shelter beds available in Seattle’s city limits and on nearby Vashon Island during early 2024, only 3% were free, according to an annual point-in-time count. Another 4,600 people lived without shelter at the time.

Rachel Fyall, associate professor at the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, said the cost of not housing people includes emergency room care, jail cells and police on the street.

“Philosophically,” Fyall said, “any room that is unused is too many rooms.”

But when organizers know a shelter is likely to close soon, does it then make sense to leave rooms unused so newcomers won’t have to relocate shortly after they arrive?

Noah Fay, senior director of housing programs at another nonprofit that runs homeless shelters, said the desire to avoid disruptions for residents has to be balanced against the desire to keep beds full when unmet demand in Seattle is enormous.

He said his organization recently prepared for a shelter shutdown by halting referrals two months ahead of time. The city did so 11 months before its lease ended.

A crowd of people gathers in Seattle’s Little Saigon neighborhood in March. (Megan Farmer/KUOW) “Pause” Lifted

In July, Fields was strolling through the Third Avenue area.

A safety ambassador called out to her and said Fields’ caseworker had been looking for her. The caseworker had good news. She was getting shelter.

“I said, ‘Are you kidding?’” Fields recalled. “‘Please tell me it’s not a sick joke.’”

The city had recently ended the “pause” on placing CoLEAD clients in temporary shelters.

The new venue was the North Seattle apartment building Daugaard had proposed more than a year earlier. The nonprofit running CoLEAD named it the Turina James.

Washington told KUOW and ProPublica CoLEAD had “significantly improved” its record of moving people to permanent housing since the pause, proving it was a good decision. (Data show CoLEAD’s success rate with city-funded clients declined from 65% in 2023 to 56% last year, while its success for all clients improved marginally, from 69% in 2023 to 71% last year. The city did not address the apparent discrepancy.)

Tiffany Fields (Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source image: courtesy of Tiffany Fields.)

Fields’ intake was done over the phone, and an Uber was sent to pick her up and take her to her new temporary home. When she arrived, she said, she was welcomed with open arms. She was given gifts and a key.

“God, he works in mysterious ways,” Fields said. “Sometimes when you call on him, he may not come right then and there, but when he does come, when he does show up, he shows out.”

Fields said she’s felt much more stable since making it indoors.

“I’m happy. I’m in a very, very, very good place,” Fields said. “So I can, you know, get my life back on track, get my life back in order.”

Others on Third Avenue are still waiting for housing. But the paths available to them look much different now, even with referrals resuming, than they did in 2022 and 2023. When making placements at the Turina James, unlike at the Civic and other CoLEAD shelters, the city is no longer emphasizing Third Avenue clients but instead people from Seattle’s Chinatown-International District.

Brenna Poppe, the woman who lived in the Civic as it emptied out, was still sleeping indoors as of July. She was staying at the North Seattle property, still thankful to have a roof over her head.

Around her, the rooms were starting to fill up.

by Ashley Hiruko, KUOW

Before Tom Dundon Agreed to Buy the Portland Trail Blazers, Oregon Accused the Company He Created of Predatory Lending

2 weeks 2 days ago

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

When the Portland Trail Blazers went up for sale this year for the first time in three decades, local leaders were so determined to keep the team in Portland that they penned a widely publicized letter promising the National Basketball Association they’d work with whoever the new owner was to secure an overhaul of the team’s arena.

Fans cheered as a group of investors led by Texan Tom Dundon went all-in with a $4 billion bid for the team, which has now been accepted. Many speculated about what Dundon’s ownership of a newly successful National Hockey League team in Raleigh, North Carolina, would portend for Oregon’s oldest and biggest sports franchise.

There was no public discussion locally about the fact that Dundon created a company Oregon accused in 2020 of preying on residents through high-interest car loans they couldn’t afford. The state’s then-attorney general said that the business practices of Santander Consumer USA were “predatory and harmful and will not be tolerated in Oregon” as she announced Oregon’s piece of a $550 million multistate lawsuit settlement with the company.

In addition, Oregon is part of an ongoing multistate investigation into another national subprime lender for which Dundon has served in a leadership role, Exeter Finance. The Oregon Department of Justice confirmed to Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica the state’s role in the investigation, the existence of which Exeter has disclosed in securities filings.

It’s unclear how these issues might affect the commitment of Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek and Portland Mayor Keith Wilson to a partnership, which could include tens or hundreds of millions in public money based on past arena projects in other cities. Spokespeople for both Wilson and Kotek declined to answer when asked if the elected leaders knew about Dundon’s history with regulators.

Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve regulator who teaches finance at Boston University, said Dundon’s record is an important consideration.

“The money used to buy the Portland Trail Blazers is money that was built on predatory lending,” Williams said of Dundon. “He had an opportunity. He seized it. He made lots of profit. And how did he make that profit? He made it on the backs of low- and poor-credit individuals.”

Dundon’s purchase of the Blazers awaits approval from the NBA’s board of governors, which often takes months, before it can close.

OPB and ProPublica received no response after sending a summary of their reporting and a list of questions to Dundon, his investment firm, the public relations staff of his hockey team and the attorneys representing him in a bankruptcy dispute.

Dundon later answered to a text message seeking comment: “Unfortunately at this point in the process I am not available. Happy to speak with you after closing. Thx.”

Dundon left Santander Consumer in 2015. In biographical posts online and previous news media interviews, Dundon has described his approach to subprime lending as providing opportunities for people with bad credit to own cars and making sure borrowers receive a fair deal.

“Just because someone has bad credit doesn’t mean they are a bad person,” he told The Dallas Morning News shortly after leaving the company.

Santander Consumer declined to comment on Dundon. In a statement, the company said: “Operating in a highly regulated industry, we have robust processes in place that are designed to protect customers and adhere to all regulatory requirements and industry best practices.”

A spokesperson for Exeter Finance declined to comment. The company has said in filings that it is cooperating with the current investigation by states’ attorneys general.

The case that Santander Consumer settled with attorneys general in 2020 concerned more than 265,000 borrowers across the country, including 2,000 in Oregon. The settlement agreement said it did not constitute evidence of, or admission to, any of the state’s allegations against the company.

As for Exeter Finance, Oregon consumers have filed 23 complaints against it with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, all of which the agency listed as “closed with explanation” from the company.

One of those complaints was from AshLe’ Penn.

Penn, a single mother of three working as a staffing company account manager in 2021, needed a car. Her credit was bad. But a dealership was able to get her a loan on a 2014 Chrysler 300 through Exeter Finance.

Penn would have to make $511 monthly payments over 72 months, reflecting an interest rate of 28%.

“The interest rate was pretty insane,” she said in an interview. “But I needed a car so bad.”

Two years later, Penn found herself three payments behind and had been evicted from her apartment, she said. According to her consumer complaint, she was living in the sedan when Exeter sent a company to repossess it in January 2023. It was late at night, and she was parked outside her ex’s house. Her daughters watched from inside. She wrote that she spent the next 10-plus hours locked in her car, in a standoff with the repo agent, before enlisting a bankruptcy attorney who halted the repossession.

She recorded much of it on video, which she shared with Exeter.

“It was horrific. I mean, I cried. I cried for God,” Penn told OPB and ProPublica. “I was afraid to leave my car. I couldn’t get out of my car after that. I was just so afraid somebody was going to take it.”

Penn complained, arguing the law prohibits repossessing a car with someone inside, and demanded $150,000 in compensation. Exeter told her that it had done a thorough review, which concluded that she had failed to pay and that she was warned ahead of time her car would be taken away.

Penn’s version of events, Exeter wrote, could not be corroborated.

AshLe’ Penn at her home. Her consumer complaint said she was living in her car in 2023 when Exeter Finance tried to repossess the vehicle. (Kristyna Wentz-Graff/OPB) Building an Auto Loan Giant

Allegations of predatory lending would hardly stand out among NBA owners.

It is a billionaires’ club whose past and current members or their companies have been accused of housing discrimination, knowingly underwriting improper mortgages, exploiting prison inmates, making racist comments and engaging in sexual misconduct. The Blazers’ current owner, Jody Allen, settled lawsuits in which her company’s security guards accused her of sexual harassment and attempting to smuggle penguin skulls and giraffe bones out of Antarctica and Africa. All the owners, including Allen, have denied the allegations against them in court filings or in statements to the news media.

Dundon’s path to NBA ownership began at used car dealerships, where he worked in finance. In the mid-1990s, he and other former dealership workers co-founded the company Drive Financial Services. Dundon became its president and chief operating officer.

The company billed itself as “setting a new standard in the sub-prime lending industry.” Dealers appreciated that Drive Financial would loan money to people other companies wouldn’t, according to its website at the time, because it was able to “overlook negative credit histories such as charge offs, bankruptcies and repossessions.”

Finance experts who’ve studied the subprime lending industry say it offers a last resort for some people to own a car. Lenders set high interest rates in part to absorb the losses from those who can’t make payments. Even when lenders follow consumer laws, defaults are common.

“The alternative is, ‘Let’s just not issue loans to people that are very risky, and then they’ll never default,’” said University of Utah professor Mark Jansen, who has authored several papers on subprime loans. “But in a lot of places without public transport, no car means no job.”

In 2006, the Spanish company Banco Santander acquired Drive Financial and transformed it into Santander Consumer USA. Dundon kept a 10% ownership stake and a seat on its board of directors. He stayed on as CEO of the newly formed company.

Dundon emerged as a key figure in the growth of the subprime auto loan industry, said Williams, the Boston University finance professor.

Williams, who made car loans as a bank officer before working in financial regulation and risk analysis, now teaches classes about subprime car loans and other lending risks. He started studying car financing companies like Santander when he was researching a 2010 book about systemic risk in the finance industry. In 2015, he was one of the experts the New York Senate tapped for help with a report on the risks of the subprime auto loans industry.

Williams said Dundon “was one of the individuals that really grew the industry. Many would argue that he took it to a new level.”

Under Dundon, the value of Santander Consumer jumped from just over $600 million at the time of the acquisition to nearly $9 billion in 2014, according to Bloomberg.

That growth was built almost entirely with subprime borrowers. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in Santander Consumer’s early years show the average credit score on its loans was below 540. Roughly two-thirds of its loans had interest rates over 20%.

A speaker bio for Dundon, posted by the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, said he was “able to impact lives by increasing access to reliable transportation for individuals with limited credit history” during his time at Santander Consumer.

But the company was also drawing consumer complaints.

Kenneth Dost was living in Scappoose, Oregon, when the housing market crashed and the architecture firm he worked with went under in 2007.

He was still struggling financially in 2010 when Santander Consumer took over the 15.85% Citi Financial loan that he’d used to buy his yellow Ford F-150 pickup. He said in his complaint with the Oregon Department of Justice that Santander Consumer agreed over the phone to lower his payments from $399 a month to $281. Dost said he then spent weeks going back and forth with the company trying to provide requested documents.

In November that year, Dost said, his daughter saw the yellow truck being hauled away shortly after she stepped off her school bus. After repossessing the Ford, Santander Consumer said in a letter to Oregon officials that the loan modifications Dost thought he received were actually subject to management’s approval and that Dost’s loan “did not meet the guidelines.”

In another letter, Santander Consumer told Oregon officials the documentation necessary to modify Dost’s loan was “not received in its entirety.” The letter also said Dost was 59 days delinquent by the time he sought the modification.

After selling the truck at auction, Dost said, Santander Consumer informed him he still owed more than $2,000. That included a fee for repossessing his truck.

“This ends up being a further windfall for Santander and more money they can bleed from us,” Dost told state investigators. “This is wrong.”

Dost became one of 24 borrowers Oregon’s Department of Justice named in an April 2012 “investigative demand” letter addressed to Dundon. The state ordered the Santander Consumer CEO to give testimony in person or else turn over the borrowers’ documents.

Santander chose the latter, and Oregon’s attorney general reached an “assurance of voluntary compliance” with the company in 2013 that required it to take steps to protect consumers and pay the state $25,000. The agreement said it was not an admission by the company that it violated the law.

There was more to come.

Leaving Santander

Dundon knew pressure on his company from regulators was mounting.

In financial reports between late 2014 and early 2015, Dundon disclosed that in addition to a state attorneys general investigation, Santander Consumer also had received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice and a notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission that the agency planned to investigate its lending practices.

In early 2015, the company reached a $9 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over allegations the company illegally repossessed military service members’ cars. The company neither admitted nor denied the allegations under the settlement. It was quoted as saying it fully cooperated with the government and had taken steps to improve its compliance with the law.

Around that time, a front-page story in The New York Times detailed how Dundon and others had amassed wealth by packaging risky auto loans made to low-income people and selling those loans as securities for hundreds of millions of dollars. Regulators said it resembled the way banks sold bundles of shoddy home loans before the housing bubble burst in the mid-2000s.

Dundon reassured stock analysts in April 2015 that “we’re too good to have a bust.”

But on the same earnings call, Dundon acknowledged problems, saying the company had “a lot of work to do” to meet regulatory expectations.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston was one regulatory agency looking into Santander Consumer. It found numerous deficiencies with the company. In late June 2015, Santander Consumer’s board of directors voted to accept a Fed enforcement action that required the company to submit written plans to improve its risk management and company structure.

Dundon was out as CEO the same day the enforcement agreement took effect, July 2, 2015. In his interview with The Dallas Morning News at the time, Dundon said that the Federal Reserve issues didn’t involve him and that he and Santander Consumer’s parent company “had different ideas about how to run a business.”

He netted more than $700 million in his separation agreement, which included cashing out his stock, SEC filings show.

A slew of multimillion-dollar legal settlements followed for Santander Consumer in the wake of Dundon’s departure: $26 million for allegations of “unfair, high-rate loans” in Massachusetts and Delaware; $12 million to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which found it engaged in “deceptive acts” and violated consumer protection laws; and $550 million — the largest payout — with 34 attorneys general, including Oregon’s. The company did not admit wrongdoing in any of these cases.

After settling with state attorneys general, the company stated at the time it had “strengthened our risk management across the board” and called the lending that regulators had scrutinized a “legacy” issue.

After Santander Consumer

Dundon used the money he made through Santander Consumer to make a wide range of investments, and he soon became known less for his tenure as an auto lender and instead as a prominent figure in recreational and professional sports.

Through a new firm, Dundon Capital Partners, he invested in Topgolf, an entertainment and restaurant chain built around golf driving ranges that was rapidly growing at the time. Along with forays into real estate and health care companies, he became the sole owner of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes in 2021.

Yet Dundon remained a player among subprime auto lenders.

Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show Dundon Capital Partners invested $100 million in Carvana in 2017, and sold much of the stock a year later. Almost half of the loans that Carvana issues are subprime, according to a report from the short-selling firm Hindenburg Research.

In 2023, Dundon Capital invested in subprime car lender Exeter Finance, according to the research firm Pitchbook.

Exeter Finance was founded in 2006 in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, the city where Dundon and others founded the company that became Santander Consumer. Exeter’s website shows that several former Santander executives took leadership roles at Exeter starting in 2015, while Santander Consumer was under state and federal scrutiny. Exeter is currently listed on Dundon Capital’s website as part of its portfolio, and a 2022 news release from Exeter identified Dundon as chairman of the board.

A 2024 investigation by ProPublica found that because of the way Exeter Finance handled loans, it sometimes made more money when borrowers defaulted than when they paid on time.

Exeter has settled allegations of unfair lending practices, paying more than $6 million combined to Massachusetts and Delaware. (The company did not admit wrongdoing in either case.) Meanwhile, it is under investigation by the attorneys general in 42 states, it said in a corporate filing this year. These include Oregon, a spokesperson for Attorney General Dan Rayfield confirmed.

Exeter has described the current multistate inquiry as an extension of demands for information that started in 2015. The company wrote that the initial investigation concerned its “origination, servicing and collection practices” and that it cooperated with state requests for documents.

For JT Cotter of Bend, Oregon, Exeter Finance was the only lender available when he bought a used Honda Pilot at Carmax in 2022 for $28,000.

Cotter, who works privately with families of children with special needs, said he had previously defaulted on a 2018 high-interest car loan from Santander Consumer.

“It demolished me,” he said.

When Cotter needed a new car and Exeter offered him a rate of 19%, he thought, “‘Oh, it’s just another Santander.’ But I didn’t know there was actually a connection.”

Exeter let him skip payments and extend his loan, a practice that ProPublica’s 2024 investigation found was fundamental to the company’s business model. (The company said at the time that it communicates with customers to ensure they know the costs involved with extensions.)

Cotter said what he didn’t know was that the payments Exeter let him skip were moved to the end of the loan, increasing the interest and fees he had to pay. By 2024, his $731 monthly payment went entirely toward interest, according to an Exeter billing statement reviewed by OPB and ProPublica. Exeter repossessed the Pilot eight months ago.

He never filed a complaint with the state Department of Justice because, he said, he didn’t know it was something he could do.

Cotter now drives a Subaru. He said he saved up and paid cash for it.

A New Arena

Portland’s Moda Center arena in 2025. Memorial Coliseum, behind it, was the Blazers’ home until the 1990s. (Brooke Herbert/OPB)

Portland’s city-owned Moda Center arena has been the home of the Trail Blazers since it opened in 1995 under the name the Rose Garden, replacing the city’s aging Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

The team’s future in the Rose City wasn’t a prominent debate in Portland until Allen, the owner, put it on the market in May. Asked to comment on the team’s future in light of a potential sale, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver declared to reporters that Portland “likely needs a new arena.”

“That will be part of the challenge for any new ownership group coming in,” Silver said at the time.

Others echoed Silver’s sentiment. Marshall Glickman, whose father founded the Trail Blazers in 1970, said during an August interview on OPB’s “Think Out Loud” that any new owner would have “extraordinary leverage” over the city and the state to pay for a new or renovated arena. “And that leverage comes from the threat, which may be spoken or it may not be spoken, but the portability of the team that it could leave.”

Glickman started an organization, Rip City Forever, to build public support for keeping the Blazers in Portland. He declined to comment further but said his statements during the “Think Out Loud” interview were not directed specifically at Dundon, whose name had not yet surfaced.

Cities rarely come out ahead when they put tax dollars into these stadium projects, a group of researchers concluded in 2022 after examining more than 130 economic studies of publicly financed stadiums. Any public benefits from increased foot traffic, new visits to nearby businesses or heightened civic stature were too small to justify the amount the public spent, the review found.

Wilson and Kotek, the Portland mayor and Oregon governor, stepped up in a big way nonetheless. In their letter to Silver, they said they’d heard his concerns about the Blazers arena “loud and clear” and “fully support renovating the Moda Center to become a point of pride for the Blazers and for our city.”

“We are prepared to explore the public-private partnerships needed to make it happen,” they concluded.

Then, on Sept. 12, the current Blazers owner announced that the franchise had accepted Dundon’s purchase offer.

Dundon has not commented on the Blazers acquisition since, but U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said he’d spoken with him just before the bid became public. “He sounded very excited about the team’s future being here in beautiful Portland,” Wyden told reporters.

As in Portland, there were concerns the NHL’s Hurricanes would leave Raleigh for a bigger market when Dundon bought the team. In 2023, the Hurricanes signed a long-term lease in the city, announcing the development of a billion-dollar arena and surrounding entertainment district. The deal included $300 million in public money.

Oregonians who borrowed money from companies linked to Dundon voiced emotions ranging from dismay to disgust when they learned their tax dollars might go toward supporting Dundon’s latest investment.

“Great,” Dost said. “Making a partnership with the devil, essentially is what that is.”

Penn, who was homeless when Exeter sent a repo company to take her car away, said she considers herself a Blazers fan. She’s never made it to a game in person, but her kids went on a school-sponsored trip to the Moda Center this year.

She fended off repossession back in 2023, but the car broke down a few months later. She couldn’t afford to fix it and stopped trying to make payments. She eventually found Section 8 housing, but without a vehicle, she said her kids had to stop playing soccer and basketball because she had no way to get them to practices and games.

Penn said she wonders if the people who run Exeter know what’s happened to borrowers like her.

“I’ve seen their executive team, and they’re definitely eating and feeding their families,” she said, having looked the company up online, “and I think it’s definitely at the expense of others not being able to.”

Without a car, Penn says her kids had to stop playing soccer and basketball because she had no way to get them to practices and games. (Kristyna Wentz-Graff/OPB)

Doris Burke and Mariam Elba of ProPublica contributed research.

Correction

Oct. 14, 2025: The highlight box summarizing this story originally misspelled the name of Oregon’s governor. It is Tina Kotek, not Koteek.

by Tony Schick and Conrad Wilson, Oregon Public Broadcasting