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Four Years in a Day

6 days 16 hours ago

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President Donald Trump promised a radical reset on immigration, and he didn’t waste any time getting started. Just hours after being sworn in on Jan. 20, he was seated in the Oval Office with a black permanent marker and a stack of leather-bound executive orders. By the end of Day 1, he’d revived many of the same programs and policies he’d previously carried out over four years during his first administration.

There were 10 orders related to immigration in all. And within them lay dozens of policy changes that, if implemented, would upend the immigration system and the lives of millions.

The blitz of executive order signing has continued, so fast and sweeping that it’s been hard to keep up, much less gauge its potential future impact. Trump has paused the resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees who’d already been vetted and approved to relocate to the United States, including as many as 15,000 Afghans. He ended humanitarian parole for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua leaving more than 500,000 already living here in legal limbo. He launched his promised effort to round up and remove millions of unauthorized immigrants starting with those accused of violent crimes, though less than half of the approximately 8,200 people arrested from Jan. 20 through Feb. 2 so far have criminal convictions, according to government data obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.

Taken individually, many of the measures could be considered controversial, said Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, but by the time experts get their mind around one new initiative, they learn there’s been another. “It’s really hard for outside organizations, politicians or the public in general to focus on any one of them,” he said.

In the meantime, some pushback has begun. Two federal judges swiftly blocked an order seeking to end birthright citizenship, calling it unconstitutional, while about a dozen other lawsuits have been filed by civil rights groups, religious organizations and states. Advocates sued this week to reverse an order that declared migrants were invading the country and that authorized the president to use extraordinary powers to stop them. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

In order to provide a glimpse of the enormity of the changes that are underway, ProPublica and the Tribune identified nearly three dozen of the most impactful policy changes set in motion by the orders signed on the first day. Most were pulled from the playbook of Trump’s previous presidency. Others are unprecedented.

Trump Tried It Before

Some of the measures in the executive orders revived policies from Trump’s first administration, including several blocked in court or rescinded following national outcry. Others are expansions of practices that have been carried out by various administrations, both Republican and Democratic.

1. Declare a national emergency at the border

Invokes special presidential powers that allow Trump, among other things, to circumvent Congress to unlock federal funding to build additional border barriers, as well as to deploy the military as needed.

HISTORY

Trump was the first president to declare a national emergency in relation to the border in 2019 to tap into funding to build border barriers after Congress stymied his efforts. The order was legally challenged, and President Joe Biden rescinded it upon taking office.

SOURCE

2. Halt refugee admissions

Temporarily suspends refugee admissions into the United States.

HISTORY

Trump initially paused the refugee resettlement program when he first took office in 2017. He then capped the number of refugees allowed into the country at 18,000, the lowest number in the more than 40-year history of the program.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

Thousands of refugees who already had their travel booked saw their plans canceled. Trump also suspended federal funding to all groups who assist refugees already in the United States, including helping them with housing, finding work and other needs.

SOURCE

3. End “catch and release”

Seeks to end the practice of releasing some immigrants from detention while they await immigration court proceedings.

HISTORY

For years, federal officials under Republicans and Democrats have released certain immigrants they can’t detain, either because of capacity or health or humanitarian concerns. During his first term, Trump ordered an end to “catch and release” practices. But, as did his predecessors, the president had to release tens of thousands of family members and unaccompanied minors because of judges' rulings and laws that ban prolonged detentions for minors, as well as a lack of family detention space.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said the agency is detaining everyone who crosses the border and holding them until they can be processed or transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

SOURCE

4. Make asylum seekers wait in Mexico for U.S. hearings

Orders most non-Mexican immigrants and asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases go through the U.S. immigration court system.

HISTORY

Trump first launched the policy known as the Migration Protection Protocols in 2019 to deter unauthorized crossings. Under the program, the administration returned about 70,000 people to Mexico. Biden sought to end the policy when he first took office, saying it was dangerous and inhumane. A federal judge ordered the Biden administration to restart it, resulting in around 15,000 more immigrants to be placed in the program until the judge's order was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

The Department of Homeland Security announced on Jan. 21 that it was immediately restarting the practice, but it’s unclear how it would be applied since other Trump orders have suspended asylum at the border.

SOURCE

5. Promotes third-country asylum agreements

Allows the U.S. government to reach agreements with other governments to send back immigrants to places other than their home countries where they can seek asylum.

HISTORY

While Trump reached what they called Asylum Cooperative Agreements with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala during his first term, only the Guatemalan policy went into effect, with 945 asylum seekers being transferred to the Central American country over a year.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, reached an agreement with El Salvador that would allow the U.S. to send deported immigrants from other countries to the Central American nation.

SOURCE

6. DNA testing of some immigrants

Requires the DNA testing of some unauthorized immigrants and asylum seekers, in particular families.

HISTORY

During his first term, Trump required that the Department of Homeland Security collect DNA samples from immigrant families, which was later expanded to include others in its custody. The Biden administration revoked the DNA testing contract in 2023.

SOURCE

7. Expanding who is targeted for deportation

Expands the focus of arrests of immigrants beyond those who pose a security threat to include anyone who is in the country illegally.

HISTORY

ICE during the Biden administration was instructed to focus the arrests of immigrants on those in the country illegally who posed threats to the country, border security or public safety. Due to limited resources, agents could decline to take action when there were mitigating factors like age, health, military status, length of time in the country or pending humanitarian applications. Those priorities were challenged and ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

On Jan. 21, Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued a directive rescinding ICE guidelines, in place since 2011, that required officers to get prior approval to conduct arrests at certain “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals and churches. Media reports have already detailed some ICE arrests near churches. A group of Quakers sued over the policy, saying it violates the First Amendment.

SOURCE

8. Focus Homeland Security Investigations on immigration enforcement

Calls for the “primary mission” of the investigative arm of the Homeland Security Department to be enforcing laws related to illegal immigration, rather than its broad mandate to tackle human trafficking, drug smuggling, child sexual abuse and a host of other complex crimes.

HISTORY

A 2019 ProPublica investigation found that the Department of Homeland Security had shifted money away from more complex investigations to support Trump’s push to arrest and deport unauthorized immigrants during his first term, including reassigning hundreds of agents to low-level enforcement tasks.

SOURCE

9. Expansion of expedited removal

Expands fast-track deportation proceedings for people who cannot prove they have been in the country for more than two years.

HISTORY

In 2019, Trump implemented a similar policy to expand the fast-track deportation proceedings, known as “expedited removal.” Before, the practice only applied to people apprehended within 100 miles of a land border who couldn’t prove they had been in the United States for 14 days, as opposed to the broader time frame of two years. Immigrant advocates sued the previous Trump administration over the rule, but the case became moot after Biden reversed the policy.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

A Jan. 24 Federal Register notice put the policy into effect. The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups have already filed a lawsuit challenging the policy.

SOURCE

10. Put pressure on “recalcitrant countries” to take back deportees

Pushes foreign governments to accept the deportation of their own nationals.

HISTORY

For years, the U.S. has kept track of “recalcitrant countries,” such as Venezuela and Cuba, whose governments have refused to take back their own nationals, hampering deportation efforts. Trump’s first administration issued visa sanctions against Cambodia, Eritrea, Guinea and Sierra Leone for failing to accept deportees.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

In a brief diplomatic blow-up, the president of Colombia refused to accept two U.S. military planes carrying deportees, citing concerns about the migrants’ treatment. Trump responded by threatening to impose retaliatory tariffs and visa restrictions on officials and members of the president's family, and the U.S. Embassy in Bogota cancelled visa appointments. Colombia in turn promised to levy its own tariffs on U.S. imports but then backed down and agreed to accept the flights.

SOURCE

11. Create an office to assist victims of crimes committed by immigrants

Establishes a hotline for people to inform the government about immigrants involved in crimes.

HISTORY

The order reestablished the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office, which Trump created in his first administration. Biden dismantled the office and established what he called the Victims Engagement and Services Line to support all crime victims regardless of immigration status. It also included information about reporting abuses inside immigration detention facilities and immigration benefits for crime or trafficking victims.

SOURCE

12. Limit Temporary Protected Status

Says that the legal status that temporarily protects some immigrants from deportation should be “limited in scope.”

HISTORY

Trump in the first administration sought to end Temporary Protected Status for thousands of immigrants living in the country legally, impacting some 400,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua and Sudan. The ACLU and other advocacy organizations won a lawsuit challenging the policy. The Biden administration extended TPS to hundreds of thousands of people, including Venezuelans.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

The Trump administration revoked deportation protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans that Biden had granted before leaving office.

SOURCE

13. Increasing scrutiny of work permits

Says the administration will ensure employment authorization is provided in a manner consistent with immigration law. Does not provide many specifics.

HISTORY

Various Trump-era rules tried to make it more difficult for asylum-seekers to access work authorizations while they waited — sometimes for years — for their claims to be resolved in immigration court. Several nonprofit organizations sued over the policies, later vacated by a federal judge.

SOURCE

14. Target sanctuary jurisdictions

Bars so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement from accessing federal funds and instructs the attorney general to take civil or criminal action against them.

HISTORY

The measure goes further than similar attempts in Trump’s first term to halt some specific law enforcement grants to targeted localities. From the first day of his previous administration, Trump battled against local jurisdictions that refused to cooperate with parts of his immigration crackdown by threatening to limit Department of Justice law enforcement grants as well as suing California over its sanctuary law.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

On Jan. 21, the Justice Department instructed U.S. attorneys offices to investigate and prosecute noncompliance with immigration enforcement initiatives.

SOURCE

15. Information sharing

Ensures more information is shared with the Department of Homeland Security for law enforcement or immigration status verification and anti-human trafficking efforts.

HISTORY

Unaccompanied migrant children who arrive at the border and are taken into custody have protections under U.S. law and a long-standing legal settlement that says they are supposed to be released to sponsors — usually parents or relatives — in the U.S. In the first Trump administration, the agency in charge of their care began sharing information with ICE and expanded the collection of fingerprints from people in the sponsor’s household to aid in the arrest and deportation of those in the country illegally. Congress moved to place some limitations on the practice. Cases have emerged of migrant children working illegally, sometimes in dangerous jobs, after being released from federal custody to sponsors.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

ProPublica reported that a longtime immigration enforcement official has been tapped to run the agency responsible for managing unaccompanied migrant children, in a move that has alarmed experts and advocates who are concerned about further information-sharing between the two agencies. ICE has been granted access to a database with information on unaccompanied kids, according to media reports and a former government source who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of continued relationships with the government.

SOURCE

16. Denying public benefits to unauthorized immigrants

Revokes the eligibility for public benefits of immigrants living in the country illegally.

HISTORY

Unauthorized immigrants are already ineligible for many public benefits. The first Trump administration introduced a new rule that said immigrants likely to become a “public charge” would be ineligible for admission into the country or unable to adjust their immigration status once here. The rule was subject to litigation and blocked in court.

SOURCE

17. Travel bans

Seeks to identify countries considered to have “vetting and screening information” that is “deficient” in order to determine whether it is fully or partially suspending entry of those nations’ citizens to the U.S.

HISTORY

Soon after taking office, Trump issued a sweeping travel ban that barred nearly all travelers from five mainly Muslim countries as well as North Korea and Venezuela. The order was immediately challenged in court. After several revisions, the U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld a third version of the order.

SOURCE

18. Denaturalizing U.S. citizens

Puts resources toward revoking U.S. citizenship for certain offenses.

HISTORY

The first Trump administration launched an effort to strip a large number of Americans of their citizenship, including a new section created by the Department of Justice in 2020 dedicated to these cases. According to the ACLU, under past administrations, those targeted for denaturalization were often Nazis and other war criminals, but the first Trump administration included a broader swath of people.

SOURCE

19. Expulsion based on public health concerns

Suspends or restricts entry of immigrants who pose a public health risk.

HISTORY

In March 2020, in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration implemented a public health rule, known as Title 42, that rapidly expelled back to Mexico almost all migrants without giving them a chance to seek asylum. Biden continued that policy for two years before ending it.

SOURCE

20. Deploy military troops to the border

Tasks the secretary of defense with deploying troops to help secure the southern border.

HISTORY

During his first term in office, Trump ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 troops to help secure the U.S.-Mexico border, something both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama did during their administrations. Military bases have also been used in the past to temporarily house migrants.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

The Defense Department has sent 1,500 additional active-duty service members to the border, on top of the 2,500 members already in the region. U.S. military aircraft have also started flying undocumented immigrants out of the country, and a base in Colorado will be used to process immigrants arrested in enforcement operations.

SOURCE

21. Build border barriers

Orders the secretaries of defense and homeland security to build additional border barriers and to coordinate with state governors willing to assist.

HISTORY

Trump first ordered the erection of a border wall in 2017 and used a national emergency declaration to divert military funds for its construction. By the end of his first term, his administration had built about 450 miles, most of it replacing existing structures. Border barriers had mostly been in place since 1996, their construction happening under Democratic and Republican administrations.

SOURCE

22. Land acquisition for border barriers

Allows the attorney general to seize land adjacent or near the border to build barriers or for other uses.

HISTORY

The Department of Justice used eminent domain to speed up the construction of border barriers during Trump’s first term, an issue he campaigned on and that was later the subject of an executive order he signed. The federal government previously used the legal maneuver after President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act in 2006.

SOURCE

23. Ramping up criminal prosecutions of people crossing the border illegally

Directs U.S. agencies to prioritize the prosecution of entering and reentering the country illegally, which under U.S. law is a crime.

HISTORY

In Trump’s first term, Attorney General Jeff Sessions implemented a zero-tolerance policy to prosecute all border crossers, which led to family separations affecting thousands of children. The Biden administration formed a task force to reunite families that remained separated years later, but on Day 1 Trump disbanded it.

SOURCE

24. Expanding detention

Calls for the Homeland Security Department to “take all appropriate action” to expand facilities to detain immigrants.

HISTORY

Trump early in his first term also pledged through executive action to expand detentions. And while space to hold people is limited and dependent on funding from Congress, his administration opened new facilities. Detentions also grew under Obama, who expanded family detention.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

The Washington Post reported that ICE is preparing to more than double its detention capacity by opening four new 10,000-bed facilities and 14 smaller sites with space for 700 to 1,000 people, with the Department of Defense potentially using military bases. The White House also said it would expand capacity at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to detain some unauthorized immigrants with serious criminal backgrounds.

SOURCE

25. Local cooperation for immigration enforcement

Authorizes state and local law enforcement officials to perform the functions of immigration officers under the supervision of the Department of Homeland Security and through so-called 287(g) cooperation agreements.

HISTORY

In his first term, Trump also moved to expand 287(g) agreements, which have been around since the early 2000s. Biden kept many of them in place and as of December 2024, there were dozens of local law enforcement agencies participating in them across the country. Critics say the program has been costly for localities and has led in the past to racial profiling and caused distrust between police and local communities.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

Following the order, the Texas attorney general entered into an agreement with the administration to help with immigration enforcement, and Gov. Greg Abbott gave the state’s National Guard the authority to arrest immigrants at the border, which they weren’t allowed to do before. Experts say Texas, which already has gone further than any other states on immigration, could serve as a model under this order.

SOURCE

26. Increase immigration agent hiring

Increases the number of ICE and border agents.

HISTORY

Trump in his first term also pledged to hire 15,000 new Border Patrol agents and immigration officers, but those plans fell short. Previous administrations have also pledged to hire more customs officers and border agents, but the agencies have struggled to find and retain qualified personnel.

SOURCE

27. Enhanced vetting

Pledges to ensure that all migrants seeking entry into the United States “are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

HISTORY

During Trump’s first term, he also promised “extreme vetting” and early on began collecting social media handles from visa applicants and refugees, even though refugees have long been one of the most thoroughly vetted categories of people entering the country. Immigrant advocates sued over some of these changes when they alleged it resulted in blanket denials of refugee admissions.

SOURCE

Policies He Hasn’t Tried Before

Some of Trump’s measures have never been tried before, like his bid to end birthright citizenship. Others, if implemented, would push the powers of the presidency much further. Orders that declare an invasion of migrants on the border or designate drug cartels and certain transnational gangs as terrorists could have wide-reaching implications that are not yet completely clear.

1. Defines situation at the border as an “invasion”

Suspends the entry of immigrants across the southern border until Trump determines the “invasion” has concluded. Cites a lack of capacity to properly screen people’s criminal history and a public health risk at the border due to the large number of border apprehensions in recent years.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

On Jan. 23, the acting homeland security secretary used the invocation of an invasion to call on states and local governments to help the federal government with immigration enforcement. The ACLU and a coalition of immigrant rights advocates sued to block the order, arguing it cuts off access to asylum in violation of U.S. law.

SOURCE

2. Make the border a military priority

States that it is the mission of the U.S. Armed Forces to seal the borders and maintain the “sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States.” Until now, immigration has not been part of the military’s core mission.

SOURCE

3. Seeks to end birthright citizenship

Attempts to end birthright citizenship of children born to parents either illegally in the United States or under a temporary legal status, something Trump had only said he wanted to do in his first term.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

Two federal judges immediately blocked the order after at least two dozen Democratic-led states and immigrant rights groups filed multiple lawsuits seeking a temporary restraining order.

SOURCE

4. End Biden-era humanitarian programs at the border

Ends programs that had allowed some immigrants and asylum-seekers to legally enter and work in the United States temporarily.

HISTORY

Under the programs put in place by Biden, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Haitians and Venezuelans could apply for humanitarian parole from abroad and fly to the U.S. if approved, while migrants waiting in Mexico could apply to enter the U.S. through a cellphone app known as CBP One and then seek asylum.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

A Jan. 23 Department of Homeland Security memo gives immigration officials the power to quickly deport more than a million immigrants who were allowed into the country under the two Biden-era programs. Migrants who had pending appointments to approach the border on the CBP One app saw them abruptly canceled.

SOURCE

5. Immigrant registration

Invokes a law that requires all noncitizens to register and present their fingerprints to the U.S. government or be subject to criminal penalties.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

A Jan. 21 Justice Department memo mentions it could prosecute and fine immigrants in the country who fail to register with the government.

SOURCE

6. Ending and clawing back funding from organizations that support migrants

Seeks to stop or limit money to nongovernmental organizations that provide shelter and services to migrants released at the border, as well as legal orientation programs for people in immigration proceedings.

HISTORY

The Biden administration distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to support these programs. During the first Trump administration, Department of Justice officials told providers it was halting its legal orientation program, but then Attorney General Jeff Sessions reversed course after pushback from Congress and advocates.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE

The Department of Justice told legal service providers who receive federal funding to stop holding legal orientation and other programs with immigrants. Legal service providers sued to reestablish the services in detention centers. Some services reportedly have been restored following a ruling in a separate lawsuit.

SOURCE

7. Designating international drug cartels, gangs as terrorists

Starts a process to designate drug cartels, the Central American gang MS-13 and the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations. Also threatens to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which experts said would have the effect of allowing people suspected of being members of those organizations to be deported even if they had legal status in the U.S.

SOURCE

Help ProPublica Reporters Investigate the Immigration System

by Mica Rosenberg, and Perla Trevizo, design by Zisiga Mukulu

Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew

1 week ago

On President Donald Trump’s authority alone, Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. Employees from Musk’s companies and those of his allies, as well as young staffers he’s recruited, are wresting authority from career workers and commandeering computer systems.

While some have been public about their involvement, others have attempted to keep their roles secret, scrubbing LinkedIn pages and other sources of data. With little information from the White House, ProPublica is attempting to document who is involved and what they are doing.

Musk’s team, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, has already thrown entire swaths of the federal government and its programs into disarray — programs that serve millions of Americans.

Musk himself has made no secret of his intentions, saying that DOGE is a “wood chipper for bureaucracy” and that he is “deleting” agencies.

A White House spokesperson wrote, “Those leading this mission with Elon Musk are doing so in full compliance with federal law, appropriate security clearances, and as employees of the relevant agencies, not as outside advisors or entities.” None of the people identified responded to requests for comment.

We are still reporting. Do you have information about any of the people listed below? Do you know of any other Musk associates who have entered the federal government? You can reach our tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201 . Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.

Jacob Altik, 32

Lawyer

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Altik is a 2021 graduate of the University of Michigan Law School. He clerked for D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee known for critiquing the administrative state. For the last year and a half, he worked as a corporate litigation associate at Weil, where he co-authored a detailed legal analysis on administrative law jurisprudence at the Supreme Court. Last year, he was selected to begin a clerkship for Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in the 2025 term, which is set to begin this summer.

Anthony Armstrong, 57

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Worked on Musk’s purchase of Twitter

Armstrong is a technology banker at Morgan Stanley who worked on Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter — since rebranded as X — in 2022. He has been given an influential role at OPM, which handles personnel issues across the federal government. Since Trump took office, OPM has spearheaded the new administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the federal workforce and roll back telework and remote work policies.

Jennifer Balajadia, 36

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Musk link: Worked at The Boring Company

Balajadia, who also goes by “Jehn,” is an official member of the DOGE team, according to federal records viewed by ProPublica. She worked as an operations coordinator at The Boring Company for seven years, according to her LinkedIn page. Recent media reports have described her as Musk’s assistant and close confidant , traveling with him and assisting with scheduling and daily tasks.

Alexandra T. Beynon, 36

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Beynon is an official member of the DOGE team, according to federal records viewed by ProPublica and media reports . According to her LinkedIn page, she most recently worked as the head of engineering at her husband’s startup, Mindbloom, which provides “guided at-home ketamine therapy.” She previously worked as a software developer at investment banking company Goldman Sachs. When reached by ProPublica and asked about her involvement in the new administration and DOGE, she said, “I have no idea what you are talking about.” She did not respond to additional requests for comment.

Riccardo Biasini, 39

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Former engineer at Tesla, executive at the Boring Company

Biasini is an engineer and former executive who has worked at two of Musk’s companies, the Boring Company and Tesla. He has also taken a high-ranking role at OPM. Biasini was listed as the contact person for the government-wide email system put in place by the Trump administration and used to send messages directly from OPM to millions of federal workers across the government, according to a recent court filing .

Brian Bjelde, 44

Senior Adviser

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Vice president of people operations at SpaceX

Bjelde is a longtime SpaceX employee who’s spent more than 20 years at the company, according to his LinkedIn profile, where he’s had a variety of jobs, including as managing director of the “food services group.” He previously worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He’s been referred to in press reports as a “top DOGE Lieutenant,” working at OPM to slash head count. CNN previously revealed that Bjelde had informed OPM staff of a plan to cut 70% of the agency’s workforce. The New York Times reported that Bjelde helped Musk cut staff at Twitter following its takeover.

Akash Bobba, 21

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Bobba was named by Wired magazine as part of a team of six young engineers picked by Musk for his DOGE team. A recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, Bobba worked as an intern at Meta, the social media company, and at Palantir, the software and data analytics firm that is a major defense contractor. Bobba is listed in personnel records as an “expert” at OPM, where he has reportedly been able to access internal databases. He graduated from high school in 2021; in his graduation speech, featured in the Spotlight New Jersey newspaper, he told his fellow graduates that, in life, the “answers we deserve demand discomfort.”

James Burnham, 41

General Counsel

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Burnham is a former litigation partner at Jones Day and a high-ranking Justice Department and White House official from the first Trump administration. The New York Times first reported his involvement with DOGE as a lawyer in January. His title at DOGE is listed internally as general counsel, according to records reviewed by ProPublica. Burnham previously served as a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. On a website for one of his past companies, Burnham is described as having played a “central role” in the selection and confirmation processes for Gorsuch, Justice Brett Kavanaugh and then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Nate Cavanaugh, 28

Connected to: General Services Administration

Cavanaugh is an entrepreneur who has founded companies focused on intellectual property management and small-business finance. He has been interviewing staffers at the GSA as part of the DOGE team, according to those who have spoken with him. GSA procures technology tools, real estate, and other services for federal government agencies. In published interviews, Cavanaugh has expressed an admiration for tech luminaries, including Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, and has said he is “very interested in crypto.”

Edward Coristine, 19

Expert

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Interned at Neuralink

Coristine is a recent undergraduate student at Northeastern University and part of the group of young DOGE staffers detailed to OPM, the government’s human resources office. Wired reported that Coristine interned at Neuralink, Musk’s brain-computer interface company. Friends of Coristine told Northeastern University’s independent student newspaper that Musk was one of Coristine’s idols and that while he finished the fall 2024 semester, he did not return to school for the spring term. According to CBS News, Coristine has been seeking access to the Small Business Administration’s internal records on behalf of DOGE.

Steve Davis, 45

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Musk link: Longtime Musk lieutenant, CEO of the Boring Company

Davis has been a senior executive and close associate of Musk’s for over two decades, working with him at SpaceX, X and the Boring Company. He was one of the first people to be associated with the DOGE effort last year. The New York Times reported he was on early calls with Musk as they conceived of the DOGE effort and explored ways to cut federal programs. Bloomberg reported that Davis has helped recruit staffers for DOGE.

Marko Elez, 25

Connected to: Treasury Department

Musk link: Worked as an engineer at X and SpaceX

Elez works at the Treasury Department, a staffer at the office of the Secretary of Treasury confirmed in a call with a ProPublica reporter. Wired reported Feb. 4 that Elez, who graduated from Rutgers in 2021 and studied computer science, has gained access to the highly sensitive payment systems of the U.S. Treasury Department. According to Elez’s LinkedIn bio, which was recently deleted, he was most recently an engineer at X in New York for roughly a year and an engineer at SpaceX in the Los Angeles area for around three years before that. Elez reportedly resigned Feb. 6 after The Wall Street Journal reported that he has links to a social media account that posted racist comments online. Musk said publicly he planned to rehire the engineer, saying that “to err is human, to forgive divine.”

Luke Farritor, 23

Executive Engineer in the Office of the Secretary

Connected to: Department of Health and Human Services

Musk link: Former SpaceX intern

Farritor works as an executive engineer at the HHS, according to agency data. He studied computer science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and interned at SpaceX, working on its Starlink Wi-Fi team and Starship launchpad software, according to his Linkedin profile. In March 2024, he received a Thiel fellowship , a two-year program founded by billionaire tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel that awards a $100,000 startup grant to students who drop out of college.

Nicole Hollander, 42

Connected to: General Services Administration

Musk link: Worked at X

Hollander is working at the GSA. She most recently worked at X, where she handled the company's real estate . She is married to longtime Musk lieutenant Steve Davis, according to media reports.

Stephanie Holmes, 43

Human Resources

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Holmes is running human resources at DOGE, according to government workers who have been in meetings with her. A former lawyer with Jones Day, a firm that frequently represents Trump, she was previously the chief people officer at Oklo, a nuclear energy company chaired by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. She also ran her own HR consulting firm, BrighterSideHR, which advised companies to pursue “non-woke” approaches to diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

Gautier “Cole” Killian, 24

Federal Detailee

Connected to: Environmental Protection Agency

Killian works at the EPA, according to agency data. His position is a federal detail, which typically allows government employees to transfer between agencies for temporary roles. He studied math and computer science at McGill University, where he conducted blockchain-related research. He recently worked as an engineer at Jump Trading, an algorithmic financial trading company, and is a member of the DOGE team, according to recent media reports .

Gavin Kliger, 25

Senior Adviser to the Director

Connected to: U.S. Agency for International Development, Office of Personnel Management

Kliger is a senior adviser at OPM, according to his LinkedIn profile. He spent nearly five years as a software engineer at Databricks, a cloud-based AI company. He is widely reported to be part of Musk’s DOGE team. On his personal Substack, he wrote an essay titled “Why I gave up a seven-figure salary to save America,” according to press reports, and described failed U.S. attorney general nominee Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from Congress amid allegations of sexual misconduct, as a “victim” of the deep state. On Feb. 3, workers at USAID received an email announcing that their Washington offices would be closed that day. Replies to the email were directed to Kliger at a USAID email address.

Keenan D. Kmiec, 45

Lawyer

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Keenan Kmiec’s career veered from elite law to, more recently, crypto. After clerking for then-Judge Samuel Alito on a federal circuit court, he clerked on the Supreme Court for Chief Justice John Roberts in the 2006-2007 term, according to his LinkedIn. He did a stint at a corporate law firm and had his own firm focused on insider-trading litigation. In 2021, Kmiec began working for a Swiss foundation that promotes a blockchain called Tezos, according to his LinkedIn. He then served for nine months as CEO of a now-defunct startup called InterPop, which described itself as “forging the future of digital fandom with comic, game, and collectible NFTs minted responsibly on the Tezos blockchain.”

Tom Krause, 47

Expert

Connected to: Treasury Department

Krause is a part of DOGE’s efforts to gain access to sensitive federal payment systems as part of Musk’s larger effort to root out spending perceived as wasteful. According to the Treasury Department , Krause leads a team of people who have been granted “read-only” access to the code for the agency’s Fiscal Service payment system, which processes payments for major programs such as Social Security and Medicare. The department has clarified he is designated as a “special government employee.” The New York Times reported that Krause is affiliated with Musk’s DOGE team.

Kendall M. Lindemann, 24

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Lindemann is an official member of the DOGE team, according to federal records viewed by ProPublica. According to her LinkedIn page, she most recently worked as an associate at Russell Street Ventures, a health care firm founded by fellow DOGE associate Brad Smith. She also previously worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company.

Katie Miller, 33

Spokesperson

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

In December, during the transition, Trump named Miller, who served in the first administration as a press secretary to Vice President Mike Pence, as one of the first members of DOGE. She is the wife of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. After reports that DOGE personnel accessed internal USAID data, Katie Miller defended the group, saying that “no classified material was accessed without proper security clearances.”

Justin Monroe, 36

Adviser

Connected to: FBI

Musk link: Senior director for security at SpaceX

Monroe is working as an adviser within the office of the director of the FBI, according to three people familiar with the matter. NBC News previously reported that an unnamed SpaceX employee has been placed in the FBI director’s office but said it could not confirm the individual’s identity. Monroe is a seasoned information security professional who previously served in the U.S. Navy as an information warfare officer .

Nikhil Rajpal, 30

Expert

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Former Twitter employee

Rajpal is listed as an “expert” now working for OPM. An archived version of his personal website from 2018 lists his job title as an engineer at Twitter. Rajpal has extensive access to sensitive personnel data used by OPM, according to a source familiar with his role. Wired reported Feb. 5 that Rajpal also sought and was later granted access to data at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wired magazine reported that he is part of the DOGE team.

Adam Ramada, 35

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Musk link: Previously part of an investment firm with links to a SpaceX alumnus

Ramada is an official member of the DOGE team, according to federal records viewed by ProPublica. He previously worked for Spring Tide Capital, a venture capital company. Spring Tide Capital previously invested in Impulse Space, an aerospace company founded in 2021 by Tom Mueller, a founding member of SpaceX. Ramada has reportedly appeared at the Energy Department and General Services Administration, according to E&E News .

Ryan Riedel, 37

Chief Information Officer

Connected to: Department of Energy

Musk link: Worked as SpaceX network security engineer

Riedel emerged in early February as the new chief information officer at the Department of Energy. His position was confirmed in a LinkedIn post by the former CIO, Ann Dunkin, who wrote, “Handing the keys over to you, virtually.” Riedel, who now lists himself online as the department's CIO, has worked at SpaceX since 2020. He previously served in the U.S. Army Cyber Command.

Rachel Riley, 33

Senior Adviser in the Office of the Secretary

Connected to: Department of Health and Human Services

Riley works as a senior adviser at HHS, according to agency data. She previously worked for consultancy firm McKinsey & Company for about eight years, most recently as a partner leading teams advising the company’s state and federal government clients. She has been working closely with Brad Smith, a former health official in Trump’s first administration who ran DOGE during the transition period, according to media reports .

Michael Russo, 67

Chief Information Officer

Connected to: Social Security Administration

Musk link: Former chief technology officer of Starlink payment processor Shift4 Payments

Russo is a top-ranking technology official at the SSA, which disburses over $1.5 trillion in benefits annually. Russo spent over seven years as an executive and senior adviser with Shift4 Payments, a payment processing company that is both an investor in SpaceX and a payment processor for StarLink, according to his Linkedin . The CEO of Shift4 Payments, Jared Isaacman, has been nominated by Trump to lead NASA and is a friend of Musk’s who has purchased multiple spacewalks with Musk’s SpaceX company. Russo’s office will oversee the SSA’s over $2 billion IT budget.

Amanda Scales, 34

Chief of Staff

Connected to: Office of Personnel Management

Musk link: Previous employee of xAI

Scales’ name came to light in the first week of the Trump administration as federal employees received a memo putting them on notice that diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives in the federal government were now barred through an executive order — and to report efforts to conceal them. The message listed Scales as the point of contact for questions. Scales worked in the human resources department at xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, prior to OPM. Before that, she worked in recruiting at ridesharing company Uber. She is reportedly an integral part of OPM’s sweeping efforts to restructure the federal workforce.

Kyle Schutt, 37

Connected to: General Services Administration

Schutt is a DOGE software engineer working at the GSA. He was previously the chief technology officer at Revv, an online fundraising platform that’s a frequent vendor for the Republican Party. According to his recently deleted LinkedIn profile, Schutt led the development and launch of WinRed, the GOP’s major online fundraising platform, which helped raise $1.8 billion for Republicans in the 2024 election cycle.

Ethan Shaotran, 22

Connected to: General Services Administration

Musk link: Participated in a hackathon organized by Musk's artificial intelligence company xAI

Shaotran is part of the DOGE team. He recently attended Harvard University and studied computer science. He founded Spark, a scheduling assistant startup, for which he said he received a $100,000 grant from OpenAI. He was a member of a team that was a finalist in a hackathon organized by xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company. Shaotran’s name first came to light in an article by Wired magazine about a group of young software engineers recruited by Musk to analyze internal government data and technology programs.

Thomas Shedd, 28

Federal Acquisition Service Deputy Commissioner and Director of Technology Transformation Services

Connected to: General Services Administration

Musk link: Software engineer at Tesla

Shedd’s work at Tesla focused on building software that operates vehicle and battery factories, according to a GSA press release . The office Shedd runs, known as TTS, helps federal agencies improve their tech practices. GSA leaders have told employees they plan to cut 50% of the budget. Shedd has told colleagues he plans to run TTS like a “startup software company,” according to Wired magazine , which will reportedly involve the use of artificial intelligence to analyze government contracts.

Brad Smith, 42

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Smith was among the earliest names associated with DOGE outside of its founder. The New York Times reported he was helping lead the group. He served in a series of health-related policy roles during the first Trump administration, including being part of the board of Operation Warp Speed, the historic COVID-19 vaccine development program. According to The New York Times, which first reported Smith’s involvement in DOGE, he is a friend of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Christopher Stanley, 33

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Musk link: Senior director for security engineering at X and principal engineer at SpaceX

Stanley is an experienced information security professional who has worked at multiple Musk-related companies. He is reportedly an aide to Musk at DOGE, according to The New York Times , and has a role at the White House. He was part of the initial transition team after Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile . On inauguration day, Stanley assisted in the release of individuals associated with the Jan. 6 riots, he wrote on X.

Jordan M. Wick, 28

Connected to: Executive Office of the President

Wick is an official member of the DOGE team, according to federal records viewed by ProPublica. According to his personal website , which has recently been taken offline, he graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and recently worked at autonomous car company Waymo as a software engineer. Before joining the government, Wick was listed as the co-founder of an e-commerce startup named Intercept, which is affiliated with the California-based tech incubator Y Combinator. The incubator has featured speaker events with Musk and other AI leaders.

We are still reporting. Do you have information about any of the people listed above? Do you know of any other Musk associates who have entered the federal government? You can reach our tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201 . Please be as specific, detailed and clear as you can.

by Avi Asher-Schapiro, Christopher Bing, Annie Waldman, Brett Murphy, Andy Kroll, Justin Elliott, Kirsten Berg, Sebastian Rotella, Alex Mierjeski, Pratheek Rebala and Al Shaw

Memory-Holing Jan. 6: What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish?

1 week ago

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On Jan. 10, the U.S. Department of Justice released a 123-page report on the 1921 racial massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which claimed several hundred lives and left the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in smoldering ruins. The department’s investigation determined that the attack was “so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.” While it conceded that “no avenue of prosecution now exists for these crimes,” the department hailed the findings as the “federal government’s first thorough reckoning with this devastating event,” which “officially acknowledges, illuminates, and preserves for history the horrible ordeals of the massacre’s victims.”

“Until this day, the Justice Department has not spoken publicly about the race massacre or officially accounted for the horrific events that transpired in Tulsa,” said Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, in announcing the report. “This report breaks that silence through a rigorous examination and a full accounting of one of the darkest episodes of our nation’s past. This report reflects our commitment to the pursuit of justice and truth, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles.”

Only two weeks later, the department took a strikingly different action regarding the historical record of a violent riot: It removed from its website the searchable database of all cases stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that were prosecuted by the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

These jarringly discordant actions were, of course, separated by a transfer of power: the inauguration of President Donald Trump, who swiftly moved to issue pardons, commute prison sentences and request case dismissals for all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes on Jan. 6, including seditious conspiracy and assaulting police officers. That sweeping clemency order — “Fuck it, release ’em all,” Trump said, according to Axios — prompted a wave of outrage, and criticism even from some Republicans. “I’ve always said that when you pardon people who attack police officers, you’re sending the wrong signal to the public at large,” said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham.

The removal of the database happened more quietly, but it is worthy of notice in its own right. It signals the Trump administration’s intention to not only spare the president’s supporters any further consequences for their role in the riot, but to erase the event from the record — to cast it into the fog of confusion and forgetting in which the Greenwood massacre had existed for so long.

As some have noted, this push to whitewash recent history carries a disconcerting echo of countless autocratic regimes, from the Chinese Communist Party’s memory-holing of the Tiananmen Square massacre to the Argentine military junta’s “disappearing” of dissidents in the 1970s. It comes at the same time as the administration is also seeking to whitewash the teaching of American history, more generally: Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 29 titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” that threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that teach that the country is “fundamentally racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory” and instructs the government to “prioritize federal resources, consistent with applicable law, to promote patriotic education.” One wonders: Would teaching the Tulsa massacre be allowed?

But the removal of the database is troubling for another reason, too: It undermines our ability to consider the events of Jan. 6 in all their complexity and particularity.

I was made aware of that complexity when I spent several days after the riot immersing myself in the more than 500 smartphone videos that participants had shared on the Parler social-media app, for an essay accompanying ProPublica’s compilation of the video trove. What struck me perhaps more than anything else about the videos was the sheer diversity of the motivations, profiles and actions that they put on display. Yes, seen from afar, the mob seemed to assume the unity of purpose of a single, organized mass bent on destruction.

But seen in the close-up of the videos, heterogeneity emerged. There were young women with puffy jackets and pompom hats, middle-aged women who could have been coming straight from a business lunch, young men furtively removing their black tactical gear under the cover of a tree to pull on red MAGA sweatshirts to pass as mere Trump supporters. There were people viciously attacking police officers and denigrating them (“You should be ashamed, fucking pansies”), others pleading with them not to (“Do not throw shit at the police!” “Do not hurt the cops!”) and still others thanking the cops who were arriving on the scene (“Back the blue! We love you!”). There were people smashing in windows and others decrying them for doing so (“Oh, God no. Stop! Stop!” “What the fuck is wrong with him?” “He’s Antifa!”) There were people who, in a matter of moments, swung from being pitchfork-carrying marauders to wide-eyed tourists, as they deferentially asked a Capitol police officer for directions or swung their cameras up to capture the inside of the dome. (“This is the state Capitol,” an awestruck man says to his young female companion.)

This was the great, necessary undertaking of the four-year effort by the Department of Justice: to draw distinctions for the sake of allocating individual accountability. By poring over countless such videos and other evidence, investigators zeroed in on the hundreds of people who could be identified as engaging in and instigating the most violence. There was Daniel Rodriguez, who could be seen on camera driving a stun gun into the neck of Officer Michael Fanone; he was sentenced to more than 12 years. There was Thomas Webster, a former New York City police officer and member of the Marine Corps who swung a metal flagpole at an officer; he got 10 years. There was Peter Schwartz, a Pennsylvania welder who attacked the police with a chair and chemical spray; he got 14 years.

Thomas Webster at the Jan. 6 Rally

Watch video ➜

Inevitably, some of the outcomes were ripe for second-guessing. Kerstin Kohlenberg, the former U.S. correspondent for Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper, reported recently on the case of Stephen Randolph, a 34-year-old Kentucky man who received an eight-year sentence for his role in pushing over one of the metal security barriers on the Capitol grounds, injuring a police officer in the process; others in the same group received much milder sentences. Trump and his allies could have chosen to comb through cases and pardon only the defendants who they could argue had been painted with too broad a brush.

But that’s not what Trump did. Instead, he himself took up the broadest brush possible and wiped it all clear. In doing so, he let the defendants off the hook. But in another sense, with the mass pardon and deletion of the database, he deprived all of the Jan. 6 participants of individual agency, of individuality, period. In a sense, he rendered them just what the most ardent castigation on the other side had cast them as from the outset: a mindless mob.

As chance has it, at the end of Trump’s first week in office, I was in Tulsa. I went to the Greenwood Rising museum, which tells the story of the rise of the neighborhood and its sudden destruction. It is a powerful presentation despite the dearth of documentation of the violence: snatches of oral history from survivors play over a video simulation of gunfire and arson; before and after photos capture the near-total obliteration of the neighborhood’s prospering commercial core by first the attack and later urban renewal.

One of the museum’s central preoccupations is the attempt by Tulsa authorities and leading white denizens to downplay the massacre, by framing it as a “Negro uprising”; only a couple decades afterward, the museum notes, many in Tulsa were barely aware it happened at all. This cover-up came with lasting consequences for Greenwood survivors, who were denied insurance claims for their destroyed homes, not to mention any form of civic restitution.

Even now, many Black residents of Tulsa are left wondering why the reckoning represented by the Department of Justice investigation is not joined by substantive reparations of any sort. The last two living survivors of the massacre, Lessie Benningfield Randle and Viola Fletcher, said in a statement responding to the report, “The DOJ confirms the government’s role in the slaughter of our Greenwood neighbors but refuses to hold the institutions accountable under federal law.” Still, they said, “We are relieved to see one of the biggest cover-ups in American history come crashing down.”

And now, back in Washington, the federal government has embarked on an entirely new cover-up of another day of enormous violence. The erasure will not be nearly as successful this time around. There are, after all, all those videos, which live on ProPublica’s website, among other places, while much of the deleted database can be found on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. (And ProPublica is one of 10 media organizations that have jointly sued the federal government, seeking to obtain 14,000 hours of Jan. 6 surveillance footage.)

But for the time being, at least, those seeking to preserve the record of one of the darkest days in recent U.S. history will be doing so, like the survivors of Greenwood and other outbursts of violence around the world, in direct opposition to their own government.

Alex Mierjeski and Agnel Philip contributed research.

by Alec MacGillis

“We Feel Terrorized”: What EPA Employees Say About the Decision to Stay or Go Under Trump

1 week ago

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In the face of the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to reshape the Environmental Protection Agency and drive out its workers, more than 300 career employees have left their jobs since the election, according to a ProPublica analysis of personnel data.

The numbers account for a relatively small share of the overall workforce at the EPA, but those who have departed include specialist civil servants crucial to its mission: toxicologists, lawyers, engineers, biologists, toxic waste specialists, emergency workers, and water and air quality experts.

Gary Jonesi made the decision to leave on election night. An attorney who helped enforce environmental laws for almost 40 years, he had loved working for the agency under both Democratic and Republican presidents. But he feared what the incoming administration might do.

In the past weeks, as the Trump administration has signaled radical changes at the agency and attempted to entice workers into leaving, he feels he made the right choice. “I didn’t know it was going to be this bad,” said Jonesi, who worked on litigation related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico as well as cases that involved both water and air pollution. “I feel for my old colleagues. And I feel for the American public, who are being put in danger.”

Other career employees expressed a mixture of fear, resignation and quiet defiance as they faced a painful decision: quit or work for an administration that has openly proclaimed its intention to radically transform the agency in addition to rolling back environmental protections.

In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump announced plans to reverse efforts to address climate change, abandon the EPA’s decadeslong focus on protecting the most vulnerable communities from pollution and step away from other key initiatives at the heart of the agency’s work.

At the same time, Trump has embarked on an unprecedented government-wide campaign to drive workers from their jobs. Employees throughout the federal government received offers to resign but get paid through September — a move experts say is legally questionable and unions have challenged in court. Some recently hired workers who are still on probation have been told their agencies have the right to immediately let them go.

EPA workers face additional threats. Trump’s team has discussed relocating the agency’s headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., a move that would likely force many of the roughly 7,000 employees who work there to quit. And he issued an executive order on “radical and wasteful government DEI programs,” which included a directive to terminate, “to the maximum extent allowed by law,” all environmental justice offices and positions. The order could result in the firing of hundreds of staff members who work on pollution in disproportionately burdened areas, which often have lower incomes, higher percentages of residents of color or both.

At a sometimes tearful meeting held at EPA headquarters and online on Wednesday, leaders of the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights told staff members that the EPA was beginning to implement that directive. “We’re all preparing for the worst,” said one environmental protection specialist who attended the meeting, where workers were instructed to prepare for the possibility of being placed on administrative leave and download their human resources files. “We’re preparing to be laid off.”

Employees in other parts of the agency are similarly distraught.

“We feel terrorized,” said one of the more than 20 current EPA employees who communicated with ProPublica about their experience of working at the agency under the second Trump administration. None said they planned to take up the offer to resign, a proposal that the agency said in numerous emails is open to staff until Thursday.

While there is an obvious appeal of quitting a job when your employer is aggressively trying to oust you, the EPA staffer, whose work involves measuring pollution levels in air, water and soil at contaminated sites, said he felt a moral obligation to stay.

“If I leave, my experience would go with me and there would be no replacement,” he said. (Along with the other EPA employees quoted in this story, the scientist spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retribution by the Trump administration.)

Others found the financial enticements to leave insulting. “I don’t work here for the fucking money,” said one longtime agency employee who works on air pollution. “I work here because I believe in it, and I want to serve the public.”

An emergency worker who responds to chemical fires, oil spills and national disasters echoed that sentiment, saying he has no intention of walking away from the work he’s done for more than 20 years, which he described as “the most challenging and amazing job there is.”

Other EPA employees are already bracing themselves for the possible end of their stints at the agency. One young scientist was winding down a day spent reviewing reports on drinking water last week when she received the email informing her that she had been identified as likely being on a probationary period and laying out the process for terminating her.

Until that point, she had been thinking of her first months in what she described as a “dream job” at the EPA as the beginning of a long career in civil service. “All that came crashing down when I got that email,” said the scientist, who recently finished graduate school and is now steeling herself for the likelihood that she will have to move back in with her parents.

If she goes, the scientist will join the more than 300 career staffers who have left since the election. That group is part of a brain drain of more than 500 EPA workers ProPublica identified as having departed since Nov. 22; the full group includes political appointees and short-term staff. Changes in administrations typically trigger turnovers at federal agencies, but ProPublica found the number leaving the EPA appears to have already eclipsed by more than 60 the number that left after President Joe Biden was elected in 2020. It is unclear exactly what motivated staffers to leave in recent weeks and how many more might be forced out or quit on their own terms in the coming days.

The shakeup is unprecedented, according to some veteran employees. “When you take a job at a federal agency, you know there are elections every four years. You know there are going to be changes in administration priorities,” said a scientist who has weathered many of these transitions during her more than 20 years working in the federal government. “This is something else.”

The EPA did not respond to questions for this story, including how many employees had taken the agency up on its offers to resign.

Taking the Side of Polluters

The EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment requires it to do the often difficult work of regulating powerful companies. Under any administration, the agency faces intense lobbying from these entities as they seek to avoid expense and the burdens of compliance. Corporate pressure on the EPA was considerable under Biden as his administration attempted to tackle climate pollution.

But Trump appears eager to both scale back the agency, which has more than 15,000 employees, and align what remains of it with the companies it regulates. During the campaign, he asked oil executives for $1 billion while promising to cut environmental regulations, according to The Washington Post.

On Friday, two days after the Senate confirmed Lee Zeldin as EPA administrator, the agency put out a press release supporting Zeldin’s ability to “Unleash American Greatness.” Among those quoted were representatives of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Mining Association, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, all of which have recently challenged the agency in court.

In a brief welcome address, Zeldin discussed making the nation “energy dominant” and “turning the U.S. into the AI capital of the world.” (AI is widely recognized as a climate threat because it consumes vast amounts of energy.) Other Trump appointees have worked for fossil fuel and chemical companies and have previously opposed stricter environmental regulation. David Fotouhi, whom Trump nominated to be second-in-command of the agency, recently tried to overturn its ban on asbestos.

The administration is planning to remove civil service protections from certain federal workers, which would allow some positions now held by highly skilled personnel to be reclassified so they could be filled based on loyalty to the administration rather than expertise. The move could have tremendous implications for the EPA, whose workforce includes thousands of highly trained experts.

“If he replaces EPA scientists and lawyers with people who just want to say yes to him, it will be the death knell for the EPA,” said Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.

The Human Costs

The redirection of the agency and the loss of experienced professionals who respond to emergencies, monitor pollution, clean up highly contaminated areas and enforce environmental laws will have profound effects across the country.

“Nastier stuff than usual will come out of factories. More people will get cancer. More people will get heart disease. People will die sooner and they’ll be sicker,” said one Ph.D. scientist who works at the agency.

Because he spends part of his time focusing on health in particularly polluted areas, the scientist may find himself in the crosshairs of Trump’s order to eliminate all environmental justice work and positions. The order could directly affect as many as 250 EPA employees, according to Matthew Tejada, who served as the EPA deputy assistant administrator for environmental justice during the Biden administration.

The environmental justice office was established in 1992, after research done in the 1980s showed that communities with hazardous waste sites had higher percentages of Black and low-income residents. Two years later, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order requiring all federal agencies to make environmental justice part of their mission. As of publication, a page about the 1994 executive order had been removed from the EPA website. The agency also disabled EJScreen, an online mapping tool that was used to identify pollution levels in communities around the country, along with other information about environmental justice and climate change.

The Ph.D. scientist described the mood within his office as “a combination of exhaustion and exasperation with what’s very clearly a calculated campaign of harassment.” Still, he is hoping he will escape the apparently imminent purge of EPA staff working on environmental justice.

For some staff, the rapid changes are a bridge too far. One chemist who has worked at the agency for more than a decade described himself as seriously thinking about leaving — though on his terms, not in response to the administration’s resignation offer. “My motivation to work at EPA was because I want to protect human health and the environment and the lure of a stable job,” he told ProPublica. “But now all that’s gone.”

Others say the administration’s aggressive efforts to drive them out of the EPA have left them only more determined to stay. “Personally, it makes me want to hang on until I have the chance to do (or not do) something worth getting fired for,” one lawyer said.

Another scientist, who oversees the cleanup of highly contaminated sites, agreed. He saw the departures from EPA norms and repeated offers to resign as designed to scare him and others out of the agency — and vowed that the tactics would not work on him.

“It won’t make me quit,” the scientist said. “Nothing is going to make me quit.”

Instead, the scientist recently bought a new Black history month T-shirt that he plans to wear when he is required to return to the office full time in late February. “I’m going to dare somebody to say something to me,” he said. He acknowledged that the move, which would broadcast his derision for the Trump administration’s retreat from environmental justice, could get him fired. But he said he didn’t care.

“I’m going to stand up to them,” the scientist said. “I may lose the battle, but principally I will have won the war.”

Do you have any information about the EPA that we should know? Sharon Lerner can be reached by Signal at 718-877-5236.

If you have other information you can share about the federal government, you can reach ProPublica’s tip line on Signal at 917-512-0201.

Kirsten Berg, Mollie Simon and Mariam Elba contributed research. Agnel Philip contributed data analysis.

by Sharon Lerner and Pratheek Rebala

Three Months After Missouri Voted to Make Abortion Legal, Access Is Still Being Blocked

1 week 1 day ago

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Three months after Missouri voters enshrined reproductive rights in the state constitution, abortion remains unavailable as the state’s main provider fights legal hurdles to resume offering the procedure.

At the same time, opponents of abortion in the state Legislature, stung by the passage of Amendment 3 in November, have filed a raft of bills aimed at thwarting implementation of the measure or undercutting its goals while they try to find a unified strategy to prevent the return of abortion services.

This week, state lawmakers held a hearing on a conservative-backed plan to put a new amendment on the ballot that would block most abortions. If passed by the General Assembly, the measure could go to voters as soon as this year.

The proposed amendment would ban abortion except for in medical emergencies, when a fetus has abnormalities, or in cases of rape or incest, with rape or incest cases requiring a police report and subject to a 12-week limit. It would also prohibit public funding for abortions. What’s more, it would ban providing surgeries, hormones or drugs to assist a child with a gender transition, procedures that are already illegal in Missouri.

At a hearing on the proposed amendment before the House Children and Families committee on Tuesday, its sponsor, state Rep. Melanie Stinnett, a Republican from Springfield, acknowledged that some might say she was trying to subvert the people’s will. But Stinnett said she’d heard concerns about the language in Amendment 3 and that this was an attempt to clarify the state’s abortion laws.

Stinnett said voters might not have understood what they were voting for.

Some members of the committee pushed back.

“Did voters know what they were voting for when they voted for you?” asked state Rep. Marlene Terry, a Democrat from the St. Louis suburbs.

The delay in providing abortion access after the election was “a very positive turn of events” that gave conservative legislators time to strategize, state Rep. Brian Seitz, a Republican from Branson, said in an interview. He said it gave his party “time to chip away at certain aspects of Amendment 3.”

Missouri had heavily restricted abortion access long before the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to abortion by striking down Roe v. Wade, with the state’s strict regulations leaving only one clinic — Planned Parenthood in St. Louis — operational by 2018. In 2019, the state passed a trigger law that would ban abortion entirely if Roe fell, except in cases of medical emergencies but with no exemptions for rape or incest. That ban took effect in 2022.

Planned Parenthood stopped performing any abortions in Missouri at that time, and many people traveled to neighboring states to access abortions. In 2023, about 2,850 Missourians obtained abortions in Kansas, while about 8,750 sought the procedure in Illinois, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

In response, a massive campaign gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures to put abortion rights on the ballot. Amendment 3 — which established a fundamental right to reproductive freedom, including in making decisions about prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, birth control, abortion care, miscarriage care and respectful birthing conditions — passed by a 51.6% to 48.4% margin.

The amendment guaranteed the right to abortion up to the point of fetal viability, which it defined as the stage at which, in the judgment of a treating physician, a fetus could survive outside the womb without extraordinary medical measures. While the amendment allowed the state legislature to regulate abortion after viability, it required that any such regulations not interfere with abortions necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

After the amendment took effect in December, Planned Parenthood said it was ready to begin providing abortions at three locations across the state but that it felt limited by Missouri’s ban and other regulations targeting abortion providers, which are designed to make it harder for clinics to operate. It sued.

In December, a state court judge in Kansas City temporarily blocked the ban and most of the rules, including the mandatory 72-hour waiting period and bans based on gestational age. The final outcome will be determined at trial, which is scheduled to begin in January 2026.

The state court ruling left several abortion restrictions in place. Those include strict structural requirements for clinics — such as specific hallway, room and door dimensions — and a mandate that providers perform invasive pelvic exams before prescribing abortion medication.

Abortion rights advocates argue these regulations are medically unnecessary and create barriers to care. At a hearing last week in Kansas City, a lawyer for Planned Parenthood asked the judge to reconsider, emphasizing that the restrictions make it impossible for clinics to resume offering full services.

Planned Parenthood’s lawyer argued that it was because of the licensing requirement that abortion access had been confined to one location in St. Louis in the final years of Roe, and that “such extreme restriction on abortion access is not the result contemplated” by those who voted for the amendment.

The state’s solicitor general, Josh Divine, argued that Planned Parenthood could have requested waivers for the regulations instead of challenging them in court. He noted that the state has granted such waivers in the past, but Planned Parenthood did not submit a request. The judge gave both sides until the end of this week to submit further briefings before her ruling.

The delay has had another effect: fueling division among abortion rights supporters. Some of them opposed Amendment 3, arguing it didn’t go far enough and gave the state too much power to regulate abortion. They note that while the amendment guarantees the right to abortion before fetal viability, it also cements the state’s authority to impose restrictions afterward, giving abortion foes a foothold. (Supporters say they settled on the language as a compromise they believed would appeal to a broad majority of voters, and that an amendment offering unrestricted access to abortion would not have succeeded.)

Representatives for Planned Parenthood did not respond to requests for comment.

The effort to tie abortion to transgender rights mirrors the preelection campaign, where abortion opponents deliberately conflated the two issues on billboards and in radio ads. Critics said this strategy was a distraction — an attempt to shift focus from abortion rights, which had strong voter support, by exploiting voter unease over transgender rights.

Jamille Fields Allsbrook, a professor at Saint Louis University School of Law and a former policy analyst for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, sees Republicans taking a two-pronged approach in response to Missouri’s abortion amendment. With President Donald Trump back in power, she expects them to push familiar strategies, like cutting off Medicaid and Title X funding to clinics that provide abortions.

She said she had expected the Republicans to attack abortion rights in “sneaky, more maneuvering ways” like redefining fetal viability or pushing fetal personhood laws, measures that might sound reasonable to voters but still effectively restrict access.

But she said she was surprised by the Republican effort to simply gut Amendment 3.

“Seems naive politically to try to advance the exact same thing that voters rejected,” she said. “Either they don’t believe that voters have already spoken out loudly and clearly or they think that voters are not smart enough to recognize what they’re trying to do, which is undermine the will of the people.”

by Jeremy Kohler

Washington Governor Orders Team to Study Data Centers’ Impact on Energy Use, Job Creation and Tax Revenue

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Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson on Tuesday signed an executive order forming a team to evaluate the impact of data centers on energy use, state tax revenue and job creation.

The order follows a Seattle Times-ProPublica investigation last year into the clean-energy and economic impacts of the state’s power-guzzling data center industry, the backbone of the modern internet. Data centers — warehouse-like structures filled with computer servers — receive some of Washington’s largest corporate tax breaks. They require enormous amounts of electricity, a need that is only expected to grow with increasing reliance on artificial intelligence.

“We must ensure Washington remains a leader in technology and sustainability — these experts will help us do that,” Ferguson said in a news release. “This group will help us balance industry growth, tax revenue needs, energy constraints and sustainability.”

Ferguson’s order, one of his earliest actions since he took office this year, authorizes a workgroup of state officials and industry stakeholders to study the impact of data centers and recommend policies that balance industry growth with tax revenue needs, energy constraints and sustainability, according to the executive order. That includes evaluating the state’s robust tax incentives for the data center industry, according to the governor’s office.

State lawmakers encouraged the dramatic growth of the data center industry by offering lucrative tax breaks in the name of bringing jobs to rural areas. The Times and ProPublica reported last year that data centers have grown into a major consumer of electricity in some of Washington's greenest counties, threatening the region’s ability to meet power demand while phasing out fossil fuels.

In 2022, then-Gov. Jay Inslee blocked efforts to study data center electricity use, the news organizations reported. State lawmakers included a provision to measure how much power data centers use in a bill that expanded tax breaks for the industry. Inslee signed into law the tax break expansion but vetoed the study.

Inslee’s office said last year that the study would have duplicated work underway by regional power planners, who have produced wide-ranging forecasts about data centers’ power use in the Pacific Northwest. Still, no agency or entity has assessed the industry’s growing energy demands in Washington specifically or the impact of the state’s tax break on its power grid.

As of July, Washington was home to at least 87 data centers, according to the industry-tracking website Baxtel.

Ferguson’s workgroup will be led by the Department of Revenue, the state agency responsible for determining the eligibility of data centers for tax breaks.

Ferguson’s team will include participants from state agencies responsible for tax incentives, clean energy goals, the environment and utility regulation, as well as private representatives from labor organizations and the data center industry.

In addition to examining energy use, Ferguson’s office said the workgroup will review data on job creation in the industry — a key measure for understanding the success of Washington’s tax incentive program, which has been shielded from transparency and accountability for years.

It’s unclear how many high-paying tech jobs the tax break has created at individual data centers because state revenue officials aren’t allowed to say.

The group is tasked with producing findings and recommendations by December, according to the governor’s office.

by Lulu Ramadan and Sydney Brownstone, The Seattle Times

Gun Lobbyists and Cambridge Analytica Weaponized Gun Owners’ Private Details for Political Gain

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Arthur Douglas has been passionate about guns his entire life. He spent his childhood hunting, then amassed a treasured collection of firearms, including antique rifles he considers priceless. For years, he’s worked as a firearms instructor for the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Concealed Carry Association.

But the 61-year-old building contractor was incensed to learn from ProPublica that his name, age, New Hampshire address, phone number and registered voting status were in a database compiled by the gun industry’s chief lobbying group to help friendly politicians win elections.

Ingram holds one of his firearms. He was dismayed to learn his information was in a dataset that the National Shooting Sports Foundation gave to Cambridge Analytica in 2016. “I think it’s horrible that there is such a thing,” he said. (John Tully for ProPublica)

Douglas said he never gave anyone permission to use his personal information for political purposes. He considers his privacy rights sacrosanct, like those bestowed by the Second Amendment. “I like the idea that they’re pro-gun advocates,” he said of the gun industry. “I don’t like the idea that they’re getting information, possibly illegally, to forward their agenda.”

Douglas is one of millions of people whose sensitive personal information was compiled over two decades by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, working with some of America’s most iconic gun-makers and retailers. As ProPublica previously reported, the industry group assembled data on this collection of gun owners and others without their knowledge or consent to persuade them to vote in the industry’s interests. The NSSF credited the campaign with landmark victories that vanquished gun control efforts.

What happened to Douglas’ data in the past decade has never before been revealed. It involves a transatlantic transfer to a now-disgraced political firm, questions of illegality and concerns from insiders about the repercussions should authorities discover the secret data sharing. This story, built on interviews and a new cache of internal documents obtained by ProPublica, details for the first time the sophisticated and invasive nature of the gun industry’s electioneering.

Arthur Douglas, a contractor by profession, is also a gun collector, a member of the National Rifle Association and a firearms instructor with years of experience. (John Tully for ProPublica)

The NSSF, based in Shelton, Connecticut, represents thousands of firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors and retailers, along with publishers and shooting ranges. While not as well known as the NRA, the trade group is considered the voice of the industry and is a power broker in business and politics.

In 2016, as part of a push to get Donald Trump elected president for the first time and to help Republicans keep the Senate, the NSSF worked with the consultancy Cambridge Analytica to turbocharge the information it had on potential voters. The U.S. subsidiary of a London-based firm, which would later go out of business amid a global scandal over its handling of confidential consumer data, Cambridge matched up the people in the database with 5,000 additional facts about them that it drew from other sources.

The details were far-ranging and intimate. Along with the potential voters’ income, debts and religious affiliation, analysts learned whether they liked the work of the painter Thomas Kinkade and whether the underwear women had purchased was plus size or petite.

Cambridge analysts ran the enhanced data through an algorithm to create psychological profiles that allowed for more incisive targeting. Potential voters were assigned one of five personality groups: risk-takers, carers, go-getters, individualists and supporters. Each got a tailored message. Risk-takers were viewed as highly neurotic and susceptible to ads that pricked their fears, Cambridge records show. Go-getters, on the other hand, would respond better to messages of optimism and the promise of a better future.

Privacy experts told ProPublica that companies that shared information with the NSSF may have violated federal and state prohibitions against deceptive and unfair business practices. Under federal law, companies must comply with their own privacy policies and be clear about how they will use consumers’ information, privacy experts said. A ProPublica review of dozens of warranty cards from those gun-makers found that none of them informed buyers that their details would be used for political purposes.

“There’s a pretty clear argument that in some of these cases, there is deception and practices that go against the language in the privacy policy,” said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel and global privacy specialist at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

As it did after the presidential election of George W. Bush, the NSSF credited itself with helping Trump win in 2016, paving the way for a radically different American and global era.

The NSSF declined to comment for this story. It previously defended its data collection, saying its “activities are, and always have been, entirely legal and within the terms and conditions of any individual manufacturer, company, data broker, or other entity.”

ProPublica obtained a portion of the NSSF database that contains the names, addresses and other information of thousands of people. The list was created by Cambridge for a voter survey. ProPublica is not making the record public but reached out to 6,000 people on the list.

Almost all of the 38 people who responded expressed outrage, surprise or disappointment over learning they were in the database.

Alvin Ingram, a retired chemist in Virginia who worked in the aerospace industry and is an avid hunter, described himself as a stickler for “accuracy and precision,” especially in legal matters. Ingram was dismayed to learn he was in the NSSF data given to Cambridge. “I think it’s horrible that there is such a thing,” he said.

Joseph LeForge, a self-described “privacy nut,” struggled to understand how it could’ve happened. The 74-year-old contractor has no Facebook account or email address and spoke to ProPublica on a flip phone. He wondered if he tripped a wire when he bought shotgun shells over a decade ago. “I don’t recall having to give them a driver’s license or anything,” he said, “but I might have.”

Kathy Gavin at her home in Keene, New Hampshire. Gavin, who works in sales and marketing, does not own firearms. (John Tully for ProPublica)

Kathy Gavin, who briefly owned guns in the late 1980s, remembered that a dealer at the time had filled out and mailed a warranty card on her behalf. She shopped at Cabela’s, first in person and later online, for equipment for her father, an avid fisherman. ProPublica previously found that the sporting goods store was among those that shared information for the database.

For years, Gavin received loads of mail during election season, urging her to vote for pro-gun politicians. She threw it away without much thought. But now that she knows about the database, she wants answers from the NSSF: “Why is my information in there? Why did you need it or want it? Yes, you could use it to pummel me with postcards, but what else are you doing with it?”

A High-Stakes Election

The 2016 election was a critical crossroads for the gun industry.

During Barack Obama’s presidency, the industry fought repeated attempts to enact gun control legislation after a series of horrific killings.

In November 2009, a psychiatrist committed the deadliest mass shooting ever at an American military base, killing 13 people and injuring more than 30 others at Fort Hood in Texas. An attempted assassination of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 left six dead and more than a dozen wounded, including the Arizona Democrat.

The next year, during a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” a young man killed 12 and wounded 70 at a theatre in Aurora, Colorado. And five months later, less than three miles from the NSSF’s Connecticut headquarters at the time, another young man, armed with an assault rifle, slaughtered 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, including 20 children.

The Sandy Hook massacre prompted Obama to make gun control a priority. He announced 23 executive actions, but his most ambitious proposals, including an assault weapons ban and universal background checks, failed to win enough support in Congress amid fierce opposition from the NRA and the NSSF.

For the gun industry, a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Hillary Clinton presidency would have meant more legislative battles and a possible return to gun restrictions and loss of profits. Patrick O’Malley, the man who had been running the NSSF’s largely successful electioneering effort for more than a decade, realized it needed to modernize, according to Cambridge emails.

So in April 2016, O’Malley, an NSSF contractor and political consultant, hired Cambridge Analytica. The written agreement called for Cambridge to mobilize supporters of the Second Amendment in the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

The aim, according to staffers on the project, was to help the GOP win the presidency and retain control of the Senate.

Since 2002, the NSSF had paid O’Malley millions to help oversee its voter outreach campaign, called GunVote, internal records show.

For the effort, the trade group had created a huge database of potential supporters. From the late 1990s on, at least 10 gun industry businesses, including Glock, Smith & Wesson, Olin Winchester and Mossberg, had handed over names, addresses and other private data on their customers, NSSF records show. (Most of the companies named in the NSSF documents declined to comment or did not respond to ProPublica. One denied sharing customer data, and the new parent company of another said it had no evidence of data sharing with the NSSF under prior ownership.)

By 2002, the database — filled with warranty card information and supplemented with names from voter rolls and hunting licenses — contained at least 5.5 million people.

In an interview with ProPublica, Larry Keane, senior vice president of the NSSF since 2000, downplayed the significance of the database and said the trade group’s 2016 campaign involved only commercially available data, not information from gun-makers’ warranty cards.

But an internal Cambridge email from before the work began said O’Malley had been “leveraging a database of firearms manufacturing warranty cards” over the years for the NSSF and that Cambridge would receive the trade group’s data. O’Malley signed the contract and Cambridge received the data in April 2016, records show.

A report by Cambridge said the files included 20 years of information about gun buyers harvested from manufacturer warranty cards along with a database of customers from Cabela’s, the outdoor and sporting goods store.

Questions of Privacy

Douglas is among millions of people whose sensitive personal information was compiled over two decades by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, working with some of America’s most iconic gun-makers and retailers. (John Tully for ProPublica)

For the 2016 campaign, records show, the NSSF attempted to acquire even more personal details about gun owners beyond the warranty card information obtained from gun-makers.

Keane and O’Malley launched talks with Gunbroker.com, the largest online firearms auction site in the U.S., and Bass Pro Shops, one of the nation’s largest sporting goods retailers.

During a June 13 conference call, O’Malley, Keane and Steve Urvan, Gunbroker.com’s founder and then-CEO, hashed out the details of a possible data transfer.

“At a minimum,” O’Malley wrote in an email to Urvan later that day, “we’re keenly interested in the buy/sell records of your users, specifically rifle, shotgun or handgun and sale/purchase frequency.”

The next day, Urvan said he could provide data on about 1.1 million registered users of the website in the states Cambridge planned to target.

He also sent a link to the company’s privacy policy, which said: “We hire contractors to provide certain services on our behalf, including trend and statistical analysis, marketing campaigns, information processing and storage, and development of new products and services.”

The policy did not mention using customer information for political purposes.

“This project,” Urvan wrote, “would fall under trend and statistical analysis.”

He asked that Cambridge certify that it would destroy the records once the analysis was done.

“In an era where a large part of the population posts every tidbit of personal info about themselves online for anyone to see, the [Federal Trade Commission] has backed down from privacy substantially,” Urvan said in an email sent on June 15. “Still I don’t want the FTC or some state agency to come knocking on our door saying we violated the privacy of our users.”

Cambridge pushed back, saying destroying the records after conducting its analysis would be like “an engineer shredding his blueprints after handing over designs to the client: counterintuitive, counterproductive and detrimental to the knowledge accumulation process.”

Urvan refused to back down, and the talks fizzled.

“Much of this data is HIGHLY sensitive,” Urvan said. “If you have it, it can be leaked, subpoenaed, or misused, and under any of those cases the data would point back to our company. Those are substantial business risks we are not willing to take.”

O’Malley and Urvan did not respond to requests for comment. During an interview in September, Keane said he didn’t remember discussions with Gunbroker.com and Cambridge about turning over customer information. He said Gunbroker.com worked with the NSSF to send election-related messages to customers but that the company didn’t provide names and addresses to his organization.

Unlike in Great Britain, France, Italy and other major democracies, the U.S. has no federal or state laws that require companies to notify consumers and gain clear, specific informed consent before their data is shared, privacy experts said. And since 1995, the European Union and its member countries have allowed individuals to object to using their information for direct marketing purposes. Only a handful of states, such as California, have in recent years adopted privacy laws that give consumers the ability to opt out of their information being shared.

Despite those weaknesses in American privacy protections, several experts who reviewed the emails at ProPublica’s request concluded that if the deal had actually been done, Gunbroker.com would have broken its privacy agreement with customers and possibly violated federal and state laws. Under the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition against deceptive or unfair business practices, companies must follow their privacy policies and be clear with consumers about how their information will be used. Many states have adopted similar legal requirements.

Matt Schwartz, privacy analyst at Consumer Reports, said the NSSF and Cambridge would have had to provide “trend and statistical analysis” directly to Gunbroker.com, rather than using it for their own political purposes, for the information exchange to comply with the company’s policy.

“It seems like a stretch,” Schwartz said.

Jon Leibowitz, who was appointed to the Federal Trade Commission by George W. Bush and served as chair under Obama, said even if Gunbroker.com’s CEO truly believed Cambridge and the NSSF would do a trend or statistical analysis, it would not justify giving customer information to Cambridge.

“Here, consumers believed their data would be used for commercial purposes and for high level trends, not for political purposes of convincing individual voters,” Leibowitz said, adding that the deal would have involved “an element of either deception or unfairness by Gunbroker.”

Like Gunbroker.com, Bass Pro Shops demanded secrecy and the destruction of its data, but it also had other conditions.

Instead of sending its customer databases directly to Cambridge, Bass Pro wanted to direct the files to the credit reporting company Experian — and for Cambridge to work through Experian to retrieve the information about its customers, emails show.

Cambridge’s decision to do the data analysis in London also meant Bass Pro attorneys would have to “verify we have appropriate rights” from customers before the retailer could send the dataset overseas. They were concerned that they might otherwise run afoul of the United Kingdom’s tougher privacy laws.

“To avoid this, is there a U.S.-based alternative?” emailed Marsha Green, paralegal to Larry Wilcher, Bass Pro’s vice president and general counsel at the time.

The final sticking point was Bass Pro’s demand that Cambridge purchase insurance to protect the transfer, which Bass Pro insisted was standard for all its data recipients.

Cambridge decided the cost was too onerous and quit the pursuit.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Bass Pro’s general counsel, Colby Irving, stressed that “safeguarding our customers’ privacy is something we take very seriously.” Irving provided a 2016 email from Bass Pro’s legal office that emphasized any agreement with Cambridge had to be “consistent with our privacy policy,” and he said none of the Bass Pro employees in the emails obtained by ProPublica had the authority to finalize a deal with Cambridge. Irving said Bass Pro, which acquired Cabela’s in 2017, had been unable to find evidence of Cabela’s “sharing customer information that was not compliant with their privacy policies at or prior to the time of acquisition.”

Turbocharged Targeting

Ingram, a retired chemist, at his home in Virginia. (John Tully for ProPublica)

The Cambridge alchemy had three phases.

First, the company compared the NSSF and Cabela’s data with information about consumer purchases, supplied by data broker companies L2 and Infogroup. That produced more than 1.3 million matches.

Included were details about whether people donated to children’s causes and international aid, had retail store cards, owned antiques or were interested in wine, smoking, audiobooks, board games, camping, scuba diving or cars and auto parts.

Next, analysts used an algorithm to score each person’s behavioral traits based on their habits and shopping history. From those scores, Cambridge placed each of the potential voters into one of the five personality groups.

The third phase involved reaching out to potential voters. Lists and maps were generated and given to NSSF contractors responsible for mailings. Cambridge also found the targeted people on Facebook.

A sample of the NSSF database, containing more than 6,300 people in the 10 battleground states, was given to the Tarrance Group, a Republican research firm, for the first of many polls, conducted over the phone.

The survey included a critical question asking if people would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supported nominating a new Supreme Court justice “who would uphold our Constitutional gun rights.” An overwhelming majority, 86%, indicated they would be much more likely to vote for such a candidate.

The response drove the first set of Facebook ads aimed at voters in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. Each pop-up ad said it came from the NSSF’s GunVote page, but they were crafted by Cambridge. The ads used the Supreme Court to promote support for Republican Sens. Richard Burr, Pat Toomey, Roy Blunt, Rob Portman, Kelly Ayotte and Ron Johnson.

They were sent to potential voters in key states from June 21, 2016, through July 1, 2016, tailored to the leanings of each personality group. The ads highlighted the role that the senators played in blocking the appointment of Merrick Garland, Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

The fear-susceptible risk-takers were targeted with ads that introduced negative scenarios before providing a reassuring and authoritative tone. In Missouri, risk-takers were told, “Senator Blunt is working hard to keep Obama from turning the Supreme Court into an enemy to your gun rights.”

The forward-focused go-getters, however, were shown what appeared to be a father and his son hunting together. In North Carolina, they were told, “Join us in thanking Senator Burr for opposing Obama’s Supreme Court nominee to protect your future and your gun rights.”

Nearly 817,000 people saw the ads, according to Cambridge’s internal metric reports. For the next three months, Cambridge blasted other ads and videos across social media. All together, they garnered nearly 378 million views and drove more than 60 million visitors to the NSSF’s website.

“Make America 2nd Amendmentable Again”

The evening of Nov. 8, 2016, was triumphant for the NSSF.

Republicans maintained control of the Senate, which guaranteed continued protection from gun proposals opposed by the industry. Surveys indicate 62% of gun owners voted for Trump over Clinton.

Political observers widely credited Cambridge Analytica’s data work on behalf of the Trump campaign for the historic victory, but the firm’s work for the NSSF to reach gun owners and others sympathetic to the Second Amendment wasn’t publicly known.

In a report titled “Make America 2nd Amendmentable Again,” Cambridge concluded that its campaign for the NSSF had encouraged nearly 10,000 more voters to turn out in Missouri, 7,744 more voters in Ohio, 6,979 more in North Carolina and 4,743 more in Pennsylvania. The numbers weren’t pivotal, but they contributed to victory for the NSSF’s preferred senatorial candidates in all those states. The back page of the report featured the cartoon character Yosemite Sam holding a six-shooter in each hand.

At 9:17 the morning after the election, Keane, the NSSF vice president, fired off an email of praise to Cambridge’s project managers.

“Thank you for all your hard work on an incredibly successful #GUNVOTE campaign. NSSF and our 13,000 members are grateful to you all for your efforts,” Keane wrote.

Throughout the organization, there was a collective sense of relief.

“After a long eight years of President Obama,” an NSSF report reviewing 2016 said, “the firearms industry can finally operate without daily attacks from the Oval Office thanks to the election of Donald J. Trump.

“Furthermore, thanks in part to our efforts, there is a pro-gun majority in the U.S. House and Senate.”

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Janet Eastham of The Telegraph contributed research.

by Corey G. Johnson and Byard Duncan

How Trump’s EPA Threatens Efforts to Clean Up Areas Affected Most by Dangerous Air Pollution

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More than three years ago, ProPublica spotlighted America’s “sacrifice zones,” where communities in the shadow of industrial facilities were being exposed to unacceptable amounts of toxic air pollution. Life in these places was an endless stream of burning eyes and suspicious smells, cancer diagnoses and unanswered pleas for help.

The Biden administration took action in the years that followed, doling out fines, stepping up air monitoring and tightening emissions rules for one of the most extreme carcinogens. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency requested a significant budget increase in part to issue scores of hazardous air pollution rules and fulfill its obligations under the Clean Air Act. Had the effort been successful, experts said, it could have made a meaningful difference.

President Donald Trump threatens to dismantle the steps his predecessor took to curb pollution. In just over two weeks, the Trump administration has ordered a halt to proposed regulations, fired the EPA’s inspector general, frozen federal funding for community projects and launched a process that could force thousands of EPA employees from their jobs.

So ProPublica set out to understand what modest reforms are now under threat and who will be left to safeguard these communities.

Weaknesses of State Enforcement

The first Trump administration told EPA staff to defer more to state agencies on environmental enforcement. But ProPublica has documented a long history of state failures to hold polluters accountable — mostly in areas where support for Trump is strong.

“States generally do not have the resources, experience, equipment, nor the political will to quickly and effectively respond” to serious pollution complaints, Scott Throwe, a former senior enforcement official at the EPA, said in an email.

In Pascagoula, Mississippi, complaints from residents rolled in to the state’s environmental agency for years as a nearby oil refinery, a shipbuilding plant and other facilities regularly released carcinogens like benzene and nickel, according to emissions reports the facilities sent to the EPA.

The futility of the complaints became apparent when the nonprofit Thriving Earth Exchange learned in early 2023 that the scientific instruments state contractors had used in the neighborhood to investigate recent complaints weren’t sensitive enough to detect some of the worst chemicals at levels that could pose health risks. The instruments were designed to protect industrial workers during eight-hour workdays, not children and medically vulnerable people who need greater protections at home.

“I don’t live in this house eight hours! I live here 24/7,” said resident Barbara Weckesser, who has complained to the state about the toxic air for more than a decade.

Jan Schaefer, communications director for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, said the agency uses “scientifically sound methods and tools” to address complaints and that looking at just one episode omits “critical context and broader actions taken by the agency to address air quality concerns in Mississippi.”

Before Trump’s inauguration, the EPA’s regional office said the state agency had applied for a grant to install air monitors, and data collection should begin this spring. The $625,000 long-term air monitoring effort could finally determine the source and scale of the pollution, but the data it produces isn’t “going to trigger something magical to happen,” said Barbara Morin, an air pollution analyst who advises the environmental agencies of eight northeastern states. Either the state or Trump’s EPA will need to analyze the data to see what’s causing the pollution and how to stop it, Morin said.

Almost immediately after taking office, Trump ordered a freeze on all federal grants, including those at the EPA, sparking a legal battle. Nevertheless, Schaefer said the project’s schedule is on track.

The EPA confirmed that similar activities in the tiny city of Verona, Missouri, where the agency had been cracking down on an industrial plant spewing a dangerous carcinogen, remain ongoing.

While making an animal feed additive, the plant releases ethylene oxide, a colorless gas linked to leukemia and breast cancer.

In response to a request from the city’s then-mayor, Joseph Heck, the state conducted a cancer survey of residents in 2022 and determined there wasn’t enough data for detailed analysis. That same year, the plant, operated by BCP Ingredients, leaked nearly 1,300 pounds of ethylene oxide, the EPA reported.

The EPA intervened, setting up air monitoring in the town, fining the company $300,000 and ordering it to install equipment to remove 99.95% of the ethylene oxide coming out of a particular smokestack. (BCP Ingredients didn’t return a request for comment.) “The EPA has done a lot more than I think the state can ever do,” said Heck, whose partner died of cancer in 2022. Crystal Payne was in complete remission from breast cancer before they moved to Verona, Heck said, but within a year it came back and spread to her brain and her liver.

A spokesperson with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources said the EPA used its authority under the federal Clean Air Act to compel the company to update its pollution-cutting equipment after the spill. He said the state lacks the power to do that.

“Texas Is Extremely Industry Friendly”

For years, a facility that sterilizes medical equipment in Laredo, Texas, released more ethylene oxide into the air than any other industrial plant in the country, according to emission reports the facility submitted to the EPA.

Nearly 130,000 nearby residents, including more than 37,000 children, faced an elevated lifetime cancer risk, a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found. The parents of two children diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, a cancer linked to ethylene oxide exposure, recounted their ordeal and said they had no idea about the risks.

A statement from Midwest Sterilization Corporation, which operates the Laredo plant, said the company “meets or exceeds all federal and state law requirements” and performs the “important job” of sterilizing medical equipment, which “saves lives.”

After the EPA released a report in 2016 on the dangers of ethylene oxide, Texas’ environmental agency conducted its own review of the federal study. The state concluded that people could safely inhale the chemical at concentrations thousands of times higher than the EPA’s safe limit.

The state then passed a rule that meant that polluters didn’t need to lower their emissions.

Richard Richter, a spokesperson for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, said the agency conducted an in-depth analysis that “led to the conclusion that there was inadequate evidence to support” a link between ethylene oxide and breast cancer.

Scientists told ProPublica that the state agency reached that verdict only after wrongfully excluding studies that linked ethylene oxide to breast cancer and using a flawed analysis of the data EPA relied on.

The state is the nation’s top ethylene oxide polluter and home to 26 facilities that emit ethylene oxide, according to ProPublica’s 2021 analysis of EPA data from 2014 through 2018.

“Texas is extremely industry friendly,” said Tricia Cortez, executive director of the nonprofit Rio Grande International Study Center.

Cortez said deferring more responsibility to the states “would be disastrous for normal everyday people. … Why should it matter how much you’re protected based on your state’s affiliation? People exposed to something so horrible and cancer-causing should have the same protection everywhere.”

Representatives for Trump’s transition team didn’t return a request for comment.

Hannah Perls, a senior staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, said giving states more control over how they implement and enforce federal laws enables “legal sacrifice zones,” reinforcing or creating disparities based on geography.

Federal Rules in Danger

One important reform that promises relief for the residents of Laredo is an updated rule adopted by the EPA last spring.

Prompted by a lawsuit brought by Cortez’s group, the federal agency’s rule will eventually require facilities nationwide, including those in Texas, to conduct air monitoring for ethylene oxide and add equipment to reduce emissions of the chemical by 90%.

Facilities have until 2026 to comply and can ask for extensions beyond that.

But the attorney reportedly nominated to lead the Trump EPA’s air pollution efforts is a friend of the industry that depends on the chemical. Aaron Szabo recently represented the Advanced Medical Technology Association, an industry trade group that includes commercial sterilizers that use ethylene oxide. (His work for the group was first reported by Politico.) Last year, according to his lobbying report, Szabo lobbied the EPA on its “regulations related to the use of ethylene oxide from commercial sterilizer facilities.”

Szabo didn’t return a request for comment.

Trump and his key picks for important positions in his government have made it clear they intend to roll back environmental protections that burden industry.

How far they go will have lasting consequences for residents in the more than 1,000 hot spots ProPublica’s 2021 analysis identified as having elevated and often unacceptable cancer risks from industrial air pollution.

Another rule issued by the EPA last year offers a new way to tackle pollution in Calvert City, Kentucky.

Last June, a local chemical plant operated by Westlake Vinyls leaked 153 pounds of ethylene dichloride, a dangerous carcinogen, according to EPA records.

It was the latest in a series of problems at the factory that state and federal fines had failed to stop. From 2020 to 2023, the EPA had found 46 instances when the facility didn’t correctly operate controls for the chemical. During one inspection, the concentration of dangerous gases coming from a tank was so high that it overwhelmed the EPA’s measuring instrument, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica. Westlake did not respond to requests for comment.

The EPA’s updated rule will require more than 100 facilities, including Westlake and the refinery in Pascagoula, to install air monitors along the fence line, or perimeter. The monitors will measure up to six toxic gases, and the data will be posted online. (It’s unclear exactly which chemicals these two facilities would monitor, though the requirement could cover ethylene dichloride.)

Michael Koerber, a former EPA air quality expert, said the rule could finally give residents some much-needed transparency. Koerber said an earlier EPA rule, which required oil refineries to install fence line monitoring for benzene, led to a significant decrease in benzene from those facilities.

But the new rule doesn’t fully take effect until next year.

That leaves its enforcement up to the Trump administration.

by Lisa Song

Hoping to “Trump Proof” Students’ Civil Rights, Illinois Lawmakers Aim to End Police Ticketing at School

1 week 2 days ago

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Citing an urgency to protect students’ civil rights in a second Trump administration, Illinois lawmakers filed a new bill Monday that would explicitly prevent school police from ticketing and fining students for misbehavior.

The legislation for the first time also would require districts to track police activity at schools and disclose it to the state — data collection made more pressing as federal authorities have signaled they will deemphasize their role in civil rights enforcement.

A 2022 ProPublica and Chicago Tribune investigation, “The Price Kids Pay,” found that even though Illinois law bans school officials from fining students directly, districts skirt the law by calling on police to issue citations for violating local ordinances. It also found that Black students were twice as likely to be ticketed at school than their white peers.

Following the news investigation, the governor, state superintendent and lawmakers urged schools to stop the practice, but legislative efforts repeatedly stalled. The bill introduced Monday in the Illinois House takes a new approach to end police ticketing at schools by making clear that police can arrest students for crimes or violence but that they cannot ticket students for violating local ordinances prohibiting a range of infractions, including vaping, disorderly conduct, truancy and other behavior.

That distinction was not clear in previous versions of the legislation, which led to concern that schools would not be able to involve police in serious matters — and was a key reason legislation on ticketing floundered. The tickets, which are issued for civil violations of local laws, often are adjudicated in administrative hearings where students typically don’t get legal representation.

Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat from Chicago and the bill’s chief sponsor, said ticketing students for vaping is an example of how current policies are failing. He said it’s important that school districts disclose what types of police interactions are taking place to monitor for civil rights violations and other concerns.

“We definitely need to make sure to enshrine what we believe into law. We can’t let Trump policies dictate our morals,” Ford said. “Our schools should be a place where we protect students from the school-to-prison pipeline, period.”

Several advocacy groups, which have been drafting the legislation along with the Illinois State Board of Education, say there is new energy behind the stronger, more precise version of legislation that they unsuccessfully pushed in the 2023 and 2024 legislative sessions.

The earlier bills never got a full vote in either chamber. The Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police was among those objecting to the bills because of fears over limiting police responses to criminal activity.

Patrick Kreis, a vice president for the chiefs association, said the group is in favor of police staying out of student disciplinary matters like truancy and vaping. He has not yet seen the new bills but said the group will work with lawmakers and advocates “to see if there is a way to make this work where we can still do this job and appreciate the underlying concern being raised.”

Aimee Galvin with Stand for Children, an Illinois nonprofit that pushes for education equity and racial justice, said ensuring districts track police involvement is a way of “Trump proofing” students’ civil rights.

“We would like to see this data in Illinois,” Galvin said. “If policy were to change at the [U.S. Department of Education], we would lose all data about how schools are interacting with law enforcement, and that is really concerning to us.”

The civil rights division of the U.S. Education Department for years has collected broad information about how often police are involved with students and how often students are arrested. President Donald Trump has said he wants to dismantle the department, and it’s not clear what impact that would have on the civil rights data collection. And the federal government has never monitored student ticketing.

A second bill that also aims to curb police activity in schools is expected to be filed in the Illinois Senate on Tuesday. Although it also would aim to end ticketing, it likely will take a different approach than the House version by prohibiting school administrators from calling on police to write tickets as a disciplinary consequence. It also would bar schools from referring truant students or their parents to authorities to be issued a fine.

Ford and Senate sponsor Karina Villa, a Democrat from West Chicago, said they expect to draw from debate about both bills to earn broad support and refine the final version of the legislation.

There have been some piecemeal changes and efforts at reform following the “Price Kids Pay” investigation, including a state attorney general investigation that confirmed that school administrators were exploiting a loophole in state law by asking police to ticket students. That investigation found a large suburban Chicago district broke the law when it directed police to fine students and that the practice disproportionately affected Black and Latino students. The state’s top legal authority declared the practice illegal and said it should stop.

But the House and Senate sponsors of the new legislation said that without it, the practice will continue. Records show that school-based police have ticketed students at high schools in Kankakee County in the eastern part of the state, East Peoria in Central Illinois and Monmouth near the western border with Iowa over the past year for a range of infractions like possessing tobacco, fighting or drinking alcohol.

In one town, students received fines as high as $450 this fall for possession of cannabis; in another, truancy fines for dozens of students and their families are being sent to collections.

“They should not be fining families and they should not be directing officers to issue tickets to students,” Villa said of schools where students receive tickets. “Our bill is intended to stop the practice.”

Other state leaders also have said they want to end the practice of ticketing students at school, including Gov. J.B. Pritzker and the state schools superintendent, Tony Sanders. The Illinois State Board of Education made preventing students from being ticketed at school as discipline one of this session’s legislative priorities in December.

Board spokesperson Jackie Matthews said changing the law is necessary “particularly because of the disproportionate impact this practice has on students of color.”

“We are continuing to work with stakeholders and lawmakers to arrive at a solution that protects students,” she said.

by Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards

Want to Report on Homelessness? Here’s What Our Sources Taught Us About Engaging Responsibly.

1 week 2 days ago

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It’s not hard to find people who want to talk about cities dismantling homeless encampments and throwing away their belongings. In our reporting over the past year, we found that almost everyone we talked to who lived outside had been through a sweep.

More than 150 people shared their stories with us. Many had lost precious belongings or survival gear, keeping them in a cycle of hardship. Others told us about the barriers they faced trying to get their items back. These interviews allowed us to compare cities’ policies with the reality of what happens on the ground, opening new avenues for our team’s accountability reporting.

While finding stories was not difficult, we faced practical challenges, such as staying in touch with sources. To navigate those and ensure our reporting was as responsible as possible, we turned to the experts: people who experienced homelessness, service providers and key community members. We were also inspired by the work of local reporters who have thoughtfully covered these issues in their communities.

Now, we’re sharing what we learned — and a few ideas we didn’t get to — to help other journalists getting started on this important beat.

If you’d like to reach us, you can contact my.story@propublica.org.

Discuss your reporting plan and make key decisions before going into the field.

You will likely face challenges staying in touch with sources experiencing homelessness. People may not always have cell service, their phones might be taken in sweeps and talking to a reporter may not be a priority when they’re focused on survival. This makes it even more important to have your reporting process figured out before conducting interviews. That way, people will know what they’re signing up for and you can get the information you need in one conversation.

Here are some topics you should discuss with your team, especially editors:

What verification process will you use? To include someone’s account in our stories, we decided we would need to find a record that a sweep occurred in a geographic area around the time they said, using city or county data, sweeps schedules, media reports, visual evidence or additional interviews. Familiarize yourself with your city’s records and data on sweeps to see how feasible it will be to verify certain information. Many cities won’t have detailed records that allow you to find your sources’ names or the items they describe.

What should you ask? It can be helpful to come up with a standard set of questions to ask and determine which are priorities if you have limited time with someone. Think about everything you might need, such as birthdates or months if you are going to include ages in case they change before you publish.

How will you handle requests for anonymity? We published first names only when people said the publication of their full names would pose safety risks. Even in those cases, we still knew our sources’ full names, which is our standard practice.

You should also determine if you will need to publish information about where someone is living, as it may raise safety concerns.

What if someone asks to use a street name? In two cases that we noted, we published street names that our sources are known by. Assistant Managing Editor Diego Sorbara, who oversees standards, said he thinks of street names like nicknames.

“Especially in a population where using a given name could pose safety risks or could cause them serious problems (like being rejected for a job if a prospective employer reads about them and becomes prejudiced against them because of their circumstances), I think using a street name if far preferable than just sticking with anonymity, which is a last-resort situation,” Sorbara said.

What is your plan for visuals and audio? If you need photos or audio, you should ask for them during your first interview. You may not be able to see someone in person again before publishing.

Would you publish someone’s story if you couldn’t reach them after your initial interview? We explained to sources at the outset that this was possible, and we did choose to publish without reconnecting in some cases. It was helpful to speak to someone more than once when we could, though, especially to reconfirm they were comfortable being included.

What will you say if someone asks for help you cannot offer? Our team would say we are journalists and cannot directly help, but we can tell people about other resources. Talk to your team about whether there are local resources or guides you can share with people.

As with any field reporting, editors and reporters should also discuss safety. If you’re going somewhere you aren’t familiar with, we highly recommend going with someone who knows the area and community. We also found it was helpful to pair up with a colleague.

Build relationships with trusted intermediaries. Librarians with Street Books bike around Portland each week to provide books, glasses, essential items and resources to people who are unhoused. (Asia Fields/ProPublica)

Our goal was to connect with as many people who experienced sweeps as possible, and we did much of our reporting while on the ground in 11 cities. We had the most success when an outreach worker, advocate or resident of an encampment helped introduce us to people. That first required earning the trust of these intermediaries, whose feedback also shaped and improved our reporting process.

Before interviewing people in Portland, Oregon, for example, we spent weeks calling street librarians and medics, service providers and advocates, including some who had experienced homelessness. We asked for feedback on everything from how we were planning to phrase our questions to how to stay in touch with people — and adjusted our reporting plan in response. They also flagged things we weren’t thinking about.

You should also ask what language the community uses to describe issues and discuss this with your editors. For example, some of our sources felt that the term “sweep” had a negative connotation, but most said that it is the word commonly used by people experiencing homelessness. Some felt strongly that it should be used instead of more clinical language like “encampment abatements” or “campsite removals” pushed by city officials.

Spread the word about your visit.

We made flyers for day centers and nonprofits to put up before we visited, and some outreach workers told people about our project in the weeks before we went out with them. (If you make flyers, make sure they don’t look like sweep notices in your area.)

Making plans can be tricky when people are frequently moving around to avoid getting towed or swept, but it’s helpful to spread general awareness.

Stephenie, one of our sources in Portland who was featured in our reporting, said she also recommended giving people questions ahead of time so they can think about their answers.

Prepare for reporting on trauma.

During interviews, many of our sources described sweeps as traumatic, and some mentioned other traumatic experiences they had been through. We recommend reviewing resources for reporting on trauma, such as those from the Dart Center.

Some of the trauma-informed practices we used included:

  • Giving people agency over the interview process when possible, such as by asking what setting they’d be most comfortable in. If you’re at a location like a day center, see if there is an office you can use if people want more privacy. Some sources may also feel more comfortable talking while taking a smoke break or walking together rather than sitting down.
  • Telling people they can take a break if they need to during the interview, and offering one if the conversation feels intense. Allow for pauses between questions.
  • Not asking how people became homeless because it wasn’t necessary for our reporting. Some people shared this information with us because they wanted to.
  • Avoiding “why” questions that could be perceived as placing blame on someone. For example, rather than asking why someone didn’t retrieve their belongings after a sweep, ask what got in their way.

This can be difficult work. The Dart Center also has tips for managers and reporters about preparing for and responding to secondhand trauma.

Pack the right supplies.

Many of our sources recommended bringing snacks or small useful items with us, which we felt was in line with customary courtesies we extend to sources on other projects. Make sure you tell people they don’t have to talk to you to take something. Portland Street Medicine founder Bill Toepper recommended bringing tangerines and electrolyte drink mixes, which were popular. People also told us they liked candy and soft granola bars, which are easier to eat than hard ones.

We also brought printed materials, such as flyers about our reporting. It can also be helpful to bring a copy of a story you’ve published so people can see what your work looks like.

As for what to wear, Stephenie said, “Dress down and wear clothing that is simple to minimize the person being interviewed feeling their appearance matters.”

Respect people’s space and time.

If you’re at a day shelter or another location where people are accessing services, don’t get in the way. Approach people when they’re waiting in line or after they’ve gotten a meal, or let people approach you. After describing your project, ask people if they’d like to participate.

You don’t have to jump right into an interview, though. Several organizations and sources emphasized the importance of being able to just hang out. Chat with people.

When approaching an RV or tent, knock or announce yourself — or stand to the side while an intermediary checks to see if someone wants to talk. Don’t touch people’s belongings. And don’t approach someone’s pet without permission.

“Remember that even though the person you are interviewing may have a tent in a public place or sleep outside that it is still their home and respect their area like you would anyone else's home,” Stephenie said.

She also recommended that reporters mentally prepare themselves for things they may see, such as drug use or bathroom situations. Remember that people living outside have less privacy, many cities lack public restrooms and some people use substances to try to keep themselves safe, like in order to stay up at night.

Make the process clear.

At the start of our interviews, we walked through a sheet explaining our process and left a copy with people in case they wanted to review it later or contact us to say they changed their minds.

Make your role and mission really clear. If you’re out with a mutual aid group or at a nonprofit, emphasize that you are a journalist and explain that you’re not affiliated with the group. Explain that people don’t have to talk to you to access resources or services the group is providing.

Stephenie also recommended that reporters “reinforce that you are not there to get anyone in trouble, that you don’t work for the city, police or any other agency.”

Don’t make promises you can’t keep, including about what might happen after your story is published. Set expectations; explain that you may not be able to publish every story but that they all help you do your reporting.

Offer multiple ways to participate.

We handed out notecards that people could write on to share their thoughts in their own words. Some of our sources really liked this, while others said they were self-conscious about their handwriting or spelling. If we were to do this over again, we might try additional options, such as audio statements.

You also shouldn’t assume that people experiencing homelessness aren’t online. Most of our sources had phones, and dozens of people who experienced homelessness connected with us through an online form or email. Some found the form on flyers, our website or social media.

Ask for multiple contact methods — and be patient.

You can say something like: “I know sometimes people have to replace their phones or get locked out of their accounts. Just in case, how else can I contact you with questions and to share the story?” In addition to asking if they’re comfortable sharing a phone number and email, ask if they have a Facebook account or a mailbox at a shelter or nonprofit. You can also ask if there’s a place, like a day shelter, they go to often, or if there’s an outreach worker they see regularly. (This is another benefit of having an intermediary introduce you.)

Send people a message right away so they have your contact information in multiple places.

You may lose touch. Someone might not respond for weeks or months only to resurface. You can keep checking in every few weeks using the contact information you have.

Share your reporting in accessible formats.

Send updates and links to stories as they publish. Think about how you might reach your sources you lost touch with or who don’t have phones. We distributed paper copies of our reporting in Portland through the same intermediaries and organizations that helped us connect with people. We’re working on sending copies to other cities.

If your publication has a print newspaper, can you provide complementary copies to groups that work with people experiencing homelessness? Or would your local street newspaper be interested in collaborating or copublishing? Street Roots, the street newspaper in Portland and one of our Local Reporting Network partners, printed one of our stories.

Some other ideas:
  • Street Books told us that there is high demand for coloring books and graphic novels. For the right project, you could create a service journalism piece in a graphic novel or zine format.
  • We would have loved to explore having an artist do on-the-spot illustrations that we could use in our story and share with sources.
  • We wanted to provide useful information about reclaiming items after a sweep, but our interviews made it clear that most people found the system inaccessible. We were also covering this issue across the country, but most service journalism would need to be hyperlocal to be useful. Local reporters, such as LA Taco reporter Lexis-Olivier Ray, have done great work meeting community needs.
  • Mutual aid groups and advocates often have a lot of photos and videos of sweeps. Can you crowdsource those to show a violation of policy or show the public what sweeps really look like in your city? Stephenie, our source, also recommended providing people with cameras to document what sweeps are like. You would need to come up with a plan to collect them afterward.
  • Researchers and advocates in some cities have used GPS devices to track where people’s belongings end up after a sweep, sometimes finding they appeared to have gone straight to a landfill or incinerator. We considered doing this but ran into challenges. If you’re interested in this approach, you should determine whether it’s essential or if you can find other evidence. You’ll need to build a lot of trust with sources and should also consider the potential hazards if these devices end up being punctured.

ProPublica is actively working with newsrooms through our Local Reporting Network. If you’re a regional reporter with an accountability project you’d like to partner on, you can learn more about the program and sign up for office hours to discuss your idea with an editor.

by Asia Fields, with Maya Miller, Nicole Santa Cruz and Ruth Talbot

“We Will Fight Back”: Aid Workers Fear Closing a Camp on the Arizona Border Will Endanger Migrants

1 week 3 days ago

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This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Arizona Luminaria. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Pastor Randy Mayer skillfully maneuvers his SUV over rough dirt roads, dodging giant potholes and jostling up steep inclines in the predawn darkness. The rugged terrain in this remote stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border is familiar territory. Mayer, co-founder of the Green Valley-Sahuarita Samaritans, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian aid to migrants, has traveled here for nearly 25 years.

His destination on that Friday in January was a small encampment about 20 miles east of Sasabe, Arizona, where for the past two years his and other religious and humanitarian organizations have provided food, water and first aid to migrants stranded in the Pajarito Mountains.

A 30-foot-tall bollard fence built during President Donald Trump’s first term ends in the foothills. In 2022, human smugglers began exploiting the gap to move people into Southern Arizona in greater numbers, adding to a sharp increase that year in migrants crossing between ports of entry.

“There were days that we would find two, three, four, 500 people walking along out there,” Mayer says. The following year, more than 500,000 people entered between ports of entry in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Tucson Sector. Their numbers overwhelmed the agents, causing them to wait days to be picked up.

The rugged mountain range, which stretches into Mexico, can be deadly, with temperatures climbing close to 100 degrees in summer, with torrential downpours and flash floods. In winter, temperatures regularly plunge below freezing.

“People were in great danger,” says Mayer, who is also pastor of the Good Shepherd United Church of Christ in Sahuarita, Arizona.

Most people who stop at the camp in the Coronado National Forest — which has two large circular tents, fire pits and portable bathrooms — want to turn themselves over to Border Patrol.

The Samaritans and other groups that run the camp, including Humane Borders and No More Deaths, said they cooperate with the U.S. Forest Service and border officials in Arizona and hope to continue working with them under the Trump administration. Border Patrol and the Forest Service allowed them to operate the camp over the past two years, Mayer added, because it didn’t disrupt their operations — and in some ways it enhanced them.

But a few weeks before Trump took office, a liaison with the Forest Service notified volunteers that they must close the camp and clear off federal land, according to Mayer.

The volunteers said they won’t willingly dismantle the camp because doing so would endanger migrants. Human smugglers on the Mexican side still drop off people in the area. And a Trump executive order effectively suspending asylum access borderwide will inevitably push migrants to attempt more remote and riskier routes through the deserts and mountains of Southern Arizona, the volunteers said.

“If he cracks down on us, we will fight back,” said Paula Miller, who volunteers at the camp with Tucson Samaritans, a mission of the Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson. “We will respond to the need because it saves lives.”

The Forest Service didn’t answer Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica’s questions about the status of the camp or the groups’ pending application for a special use permit to continue operating on federal lands. The agency said it was reviewing Trump’s executive orders and determining how to implement them.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials told the news organizations in an emailed statement on Jan. 24 that agents’ work patrolling the Tucson Sector is not enhanced by humanitarian aid volunteers, saying the agency is able to provide medical and rescue support when necessary. Agents often engage with members of aid groups while on duty. They encourage private organizations and citizens alike to report any illegal activity or emergencies they become aware of, the agency added.

The number of border crossings has declined since June, when President Joe Biden suspended access to asylum in between ports of entry. At the camp in Sasabe, volunteers see an average of 35-50 migrants per day now, compared to hundreds just over a year ago, Mayer said. Twenty-five migrants — including families with children — stopped at the camp that Friday morning in January.

It’s hard to predict whether those numbers will rise or fall as Trump’s crackdown on legal pathways to enter the United States takes hold. But the volunteers believe the work of providing humanitarian assistance to people crossing the border will come with many more legal risks. During Trump’s first term, the U.S. attorney’s office in Arizona prosecuted at least five volunteers doing humanitarian aid work in Southern Arizona, including members of No More Deaths. Border agents also raided a migrant camp run by volunteers near Arivaca, Arizona.

Still, the volunteers say they have a constitutional right to feed, clothe and save the lives of people seeking refuge. Past crackdowns, and the one they fear might be coming for the camp near Sasabe, infringe on their religious freedoms, which they’re prepared to defend, they say.

“We are following God’s executive order,” Miller said.

A woman from Guatemala cradles her 3-year-old child while turning herself over to a Border Patrol agent on the border near Sasabe, Arizona. First image: Two migrants from Uzbekistan (center) warm themselves by a fire at the humanitarian camp as Mayer (right) makes hot chocolate. Second image: Migrants at the camp turn themselves over to a Border Patrol agent. “Mitigating a Lot of the Problems”

Sunrise is still 90 minutes away when Mayer arrives at the camp. Temperatures are below freezing, and winds funneling through nearby canyons intensify the biting cold.

Mayer immediately sets out hot chocolate and coffee, assembles a camping stove and begins to make bean burritos with flour tortillas. Volunteers have provided blankets to the migrants, who huddle around the camp’s firepits.

The group that day had walked around the fence during the night and were waiting for border agents to arrive. They had come from Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Guinea and Russia.

Before volunteers established the camp, migrants cut down vegetation to build fires, risking igniting wildfires in the protected wilderness area. And trash and human waste accumulated along the fence. Mayer said shutting down the camp would make things more difficult for the Border Patrol and Forest Service. The camp serves as a gathering point where agents can routinely pick up migrants several times a day, he said.

Federal authorities, however, have alleged humanitarian assistance can veer into aiding illegal activity, such as facilitating migrants’ entry into the country or concealing them from law enforcement.

In 2018, border agents raided an Ajo, Arizona, property that No More Deaths used as a staging area for water drop-offs in the desert. Scott Warren, a volunteer with the group, was charged with felony harboring and conspiracy. The case was tried twice, the first ending in a hung jury and the second in acquittal.

In 2019, four volunteers with No More Deaths were found guilty of entering the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge in Southern Arizona — another deadly smuggling corridor — without a permit. The volunteers were dropping off canned beans and gallon bottles of water for migrants. The volunteers were sentenced to probation and each fined $250, but a federal judge overturned their convictions on appeal, citing their “sincere religious beliefs."

No More Deaths said in a written statement that it remains committed to its work of saving lives despite the threat of criminalization. The group cited recent situations in which people were in life-threatening situations, noting that Border Patrol’s response was “largely non-existent.”

“No More Deaths, like other humanitarian aid groups in the region, exists as a response to the absolute dearth of medical and rescue services available for migrants. And this is not due to a lack of resources on the part of CBP; it is by design and a matter of policy that people are left to die in the desert,” the group said in its statement.

Early morning at the makeshift humanitarian encampment along the border

Another ongoing lawsuit offers a glimpse of what faith-based migrant aid groups nationwide could face in Trump’s second term. In Texas, the state’s Republican leaders are trying to shut down El Paso’s Annunciation House, a Catholic migrant shelter, accusing the charity of violating state laws by harboring undocumented migrants.

During oral arguments before the Texas Supreme Court on Jan. 13, attorneys for Annunciation House argued, among other things, that their work caring for migrants at the border is protected by the First Amendment’s religious freedom clause. They have the backing of the First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian legal group that litigates religious freedom cases, which argued that Annunciation House’s work with migrants is protected activity under Texas’ religious freedom law.

“It says the government ‘may not substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion,’” said Elizabeth Kiernan, who appeared on behalf of the institute at the hearing. “And terminating a religious charity’s corporate charter absolutely is a burden on that exercise of religion.”

Policies Force More Dangerous Crossings

As Biden left office, fewer migrants were attempting to cross the U.S.-Mexico border than when he entered the White House, enforcement numbers show. He also left in place restrictions that made it harder to access asylum at the southern border.

Trump in the first week of his second term has further sealed off access. On Jan. 20, he ended the use of the CBP One phone app to process asylum claims at ports of entry and cancelled all scheduled appointments, stranding about 270,000 asylum-seekers in Mexican border cities.

Trump also issued executive orders further curbing asylum access by declaring an invasion at the border and reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols forcing asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico for their proceedings. In addition, he called for construction of more physical barriers on the border.

That directive could seal off the gap used by smugglers now at the Pajarita Wilderness, one of the remaining unfenced portions of Arizona’s border with Mexico.

Humanitarian aid workers fear Trump’s executive orders will push migrants to riskier routes outside of ports of entry, including through the Pajarito Mountains, to evade detection. The groups said that over the past 30 years they have seen barrier construction in Arizona push migrants to more remote areas.

“I’ve been here for five administrations and each administration continues to build upon the bad policies of the other,” Mayer said. “No new ideas.”

Aid groups said they are already anticipating the need for more water drops in the Sonoran Desert to prevent migrants from dying in remote stretches of the Arizona border.

Humane Borders, which provides support for the camp near Sasabe, does water drops across the borderlands. They also have tracked the recovery of human remains since 1981. In that time, they’ve logged more than 4,300 migrant deaths in Southern Arizona.

“We have been doing this a long time. We’ve been doing this longer than Trump has been in power,” Miller, the volunteer from Tucson, said.

Mayer believes he is following God’s orders by helping people along the border. “My Faith Calls Me to It”

As dawn arrived that Friday morning, flashing lights appeared to the west. Border Patrol agents were en route to the camp.

When they arrive, they tell the migrants to form two lines, one for families and the other for single adults. Miller uses an app on her phone to translate the instructions into Russian and Portuguese.

The migrants climb into two vans bound for the Border Patrol’s Forward Operating Base in Sasabe, where they’ll be processed. Because of the new restrictions on asylum access at the border, Mayer says most of the people they assist at the camp are barred from claiming asylum and will likely be deported. Some as soon as that day.

As the Border Patrol’s red and blue lights disappear into the distance, Mayer disassembles his camping stove and packs the coffee and hot chocolate into his SUV.

“Nowhere in my ordination vows did I ever have to say, ‘I will only care for U.S. citizens,’” Mayer says. “I am a pastor of the world. My faith calls me to it.”

Mayer says he will keep returning to the camp as long as it is operating. If they’re forced to remove it, he adds, he’ll go to wherever the need is greatest.

Help ProPublica Reporters Investigate the Immigration System

by Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria, photography by Cengiz Yar, ProPublica

How Climate Change Could Upend the American Dream

1 week 3 days ago

Houses in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods were still ablaze when talk turned to the cost of the Los Angeles firestorms and who would pay for it. Now it appears that the total damage and economic loss could be more than $250 billion. This, after a year in which hurricanes Milton and Helene and other extreme weather events had already exacted tens of billions of dollars in American disaster losses.

As the compounding impacts of climate-driven disasters take effect, we are seeing home insurance prices spike around the country, pushing up the costs of owning a home. In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away.

One little-discussed result is that soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of a generational decline. That’s the finding of a new analysis by the First Street, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing and provides some of the best climate adaptation data available, both freely and commercially. The analysis predicts an extraordinary reversal in housing fortunes for Americans — nearly $1.5 trillion in asset losses over the next 30 years.

The implications are staggering: Many Americans could face a paradigm shift in the way they save and how they define their economic security. Climate change is upending the basic assumption that Americans can continue to build wealth and financial security by owning their own home. In a sense, it is upending the American dream.

Homeownership is the bedrock of America’s economy. Residential real estate in the United States is worth nearly $50 trillion — almost double the size of the entire gross domestic product. Almost two-thirds of American adults are homeowners, and the median house here has appreciated more than 58% over the past two decades, even after accounting for inflation. In Pacific Palisades and Altadena, that evolution elevated many residents into the upper middle class. Across the country homes are the largest asset for most families — who hold approximately 67% of their savings in their primary residence.

That is an awful lot to lose: for individuals, and for the nation’s economy.

The First Street researchers found that climate pressures are the main factor driving up insurance costs. Average premiums have risen 31% across the country since 2019, and are steeper in high-risk climate zones. Over the next 30 years, if insurance prices are unhindered, they will, on average, leap an additional 29%, according to First Street. Rates in Miami could quadruple. In Sacramento, California, they could double.

And that’s where the systemic economic risk comes in. Not long ago, insurance premiums were a modest cost of owning a home, amounting to about 8% of an average mortgage payment. But insurance costs today are about one-fifth the size of a typical payment, outpacing inflation and even the rate of appreciation on the homes themselves. That makes owning property, on paper anyway, a bad investment. First Street forecasts that three decades from now — the term of the classic American mortgage — houses will be worth, on average, 6% less than they are today. They project that decline across the vast majority of the nation, affirming fears that many economists and climate analysts have held for a long time.

Part of the problem is that many people were coaxed into living in the very high-risk areas they call home precisely by the availability of insurance that was cheaper than it should have been. For years, as climate-driven floods, hurricanes and wildfires have piled up, so have economic losses. Insurance companies canceled policies, but in response, states redoubled support for homeowners, promising economic stability even if that insurance — required by most mortgage lenders — one day disappeared. It kept costs manageable and quelled anxiety, and economies continued to hum.

But those discounts “muffled the free market price signals,” according to Matthew Kahn, an economist at the University of Southern California who studies markets and climate change. They also “slowed down our adaptation,” making dangerous places like Florida’s coastlines and California’s fire-prone hillsides seem safer than they are. First Street found that today, insurance underprices climate risk for 39 million properties across the continental United States — meaning that for 27% of properties in the country, premiums are too low to cover their climate exposure.

No wonder costs are rising. Insurers are playing catch-up. But it means Americans are playing catch-up, too, in terms of evaluating where they live. And that leads to the potential for large numbers of people to begin to move. First Street, in fact, correlates the rise in insurance rates and dropping property values with widespread climate migration, predicting that more than 55 million Americans will migrate in response to climate risks inside this country within the next three decades, and that more than 5 million Americans will migrate this year. First Street’s analysts posit that climate risk is becoming just as important as schools and waterfront views when people purchase a home, and that while property values are likely to drop in most places, they will rise — by more than 10% by midcentury — in the safer regions.

There are many reasons to be cautious about these projections. Precise estimates for climate migration in the United States have remained elusive in large part because modeling for human behavior in all its diverse motives is nearly impossible. First Street’s economic models also don’t capture the immense equity many Americans have accumulated in those properties as home values have lurched upward over the past two decades, equity that gives many people a cushion larger than the relatively modest projected losses. The models assume that all the past patterns of reckless building and zoning will continue, and they don’t account for the nation’s housing shortage, nor the difference between longtime homeowners and a new generation trying to buy now.

However imprecise, First Street’s work “plays the role of Paul Revere, of the challenge we could face if we fail to adapt,” Kahn said. Climate-driven costs and climate risk may drive sweeping change in both homeownership and migration, at the same time that both of those factors are expected to continue to increase.

It means that homeowners will need to be far wealthier, or renters will have to pay much more. Like many aspects of the climate challenge, this one will also drive climate haves and have-nots further apart, especially as relatively safe regions emerge, and discerning buyers flock to their appreciating real estate markets.

No one is abandoning Los Angeles. Its wealth, density and government support make it far more resilient than places like Paradise, California, the New Jersey shore or Florida. But it will be economically and physically transformed. Pacific Palisades will probably be rebuilt to its past splendor: Its homeowners can afford it. Altadena, a middle-class neighborhood, may face a different fate: Its properties are more likely to be snatched up by investors, gentrified and made unaffordable by both the cost of rebuilding, insurance and upscaling of new homes as they are rebuilt.

In that way, Altadena may prove to be the true harbinger — of a future in which no one but the rich owns their own homes, where insurance is a luxury good and where renters pay a monthly toll to large private equity landowners who may be better suited to manage that risk.

by Abrahm Lustgarten

“People Will Die”: The Trump Administration Said It Lifted Its Ban on Lifesaving Humanitarian Aid. That’s Not True.

1 week 6 days ago

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On Friday morning, the staffers at a half dozen U.S.-funded medical facilities in Sudan who care for severely malnourished children had a choice to make: Defy President Donald Trump’s order to immediately stop their operations or let up to 100 babies and toddlers die.

They chose the children.

In spite of the order, they will keep their facilities open for as long as they can, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation. The people requested anonymity for fear that the administration might target their group for reprisals. Trump’s order also meant they would stop receiving new, previously approved funds to cover salaries, IV bags and other supplies. They said it’s a matter of days, not weeks, before they run out.

American-funded aid organizations around the globe, charged with providing lifesaving care for the most desperate and vulnerable populations imaginable, have for days been forced to completely halt their operations, turn away patients and lay off staff following a series of sudden stop-work demands from the Trump administration. Despite an announcement earlier this week ostensibly allowing lifesaving operations to continue, those earlier orders have not been rescinded.

Many groups doing such lifesaving work either don’t know the right way to request an exemption to the order, known as a waiver, or have no sense of where their request stands. They’ve received little information from the U.S. government, where, in recent days, humanitarian officials have been summarily ousted or prohibited from communicating with the aid organizations.

Trump’s rapid assault on the international aid system is quickly becoming the most consequential and far-reaching shift in U.S. humanitarian policy since the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after World War II, aid groups and government officials warned.

Among the programs that remain grounded as of Friday: emergency medical care for displaced Palestinians and Yemenis fleeing war, heat and electricity for Ukrainian refugees and HIV treatment and mpox surveillance in Africa.

Experts in and out of government have anxiously watched the fluid situation develop. “I’ve been an infectious disease doctor for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything that scares me as much as this,” said Dr. Jennifer Furin, a Harvard Medical School physician who received a stop-work order for a program designing treatment plans for people with the most drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis. Infectious diseases do not know borders, she pointed out. “It’s terrifying.”

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio first issued the freeze on aid operations last Friday, which included limited exemptions. “The pause on all foreign assistance means a complete halt,” a top adviser wrote in an internal memo to staff. (The order was separate from Trump’s now-seemingly rescinded moratorium on domestic U.S. grants.) Aid groups across the globe began receiving emails that instructed them to immediately stop working while the government conducted a 90-day review of their programs to make sure they aligned with the administration’s agenda.

Trump campaigned on an “America First” platform after unsuccessfully trying to slash the foreign assistance budget during his first term in office. The U.S. provides about $60 billion in nonmilitary humanitarian and development aid annually — less than 1% of the federal budget, but far more than any other country. The complex network of organizations who carry out the work is managed by the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

Over the weekend, that system came to a standstill. There was widespread chaos and confusion as contractors scrambled to understand seemingly arbitrary orders from Washington and figure out how to get a waiver to continue working. By Tuesday evening, Trump and Rubio appeared to heed the international pressure and scale back the order by announcing that any “lifesaving” humanitarian efforts would be allowed to continue.

Aid groups that specialize in saving lives were relieved and thought their stop-work orders would be reversed just as swiftly as they had arrived.

But that hasn’t happened. Instead, more stop-work orders have been issued. As of Thursday, contractors worldwide were still grounded under the original orders and unable to secure waivers. Top Trump appointees arrested further funding and banned new projects for at least three months.

“We need to correct the impression that the waiver was self-executing by virtue of the announcement,” said Marcia Wong, the former deputy assistant administrator of USAID’s humanitarian assistance bureau.

Aid groups that had already received U.S. money were told they could not spend it or do any previously approved work. The contractors quoted in this article spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared the administration might prolong their suspension or cancel their contracts completely.

As crucial days and hours pass, aid groups say Trump’s order has already caused irreparable harm. Often without cash reserves or endowments, many organizations depend on U.S. funding entirely and have been forced to lay off staff and cancel contracts with vendors. One CEO said he expects up to 3,000 aid workers to lose their jobs in Washington alone, according to the trade publication Devex. Some groups may have to shutter altogether because they can’t afford to float their overhead costs without knowing if or when they’d get reimbursed.

Critics say the past week has also undermined Trump’s own stated goals of American prosperity and security by opening a vacuum for international adversaries to fill, while putting millions at immediate and long-term risk.

“A chaotic, unexplained and abrupt pause with no guidance has left all our partners around the world high and dry and America looking like a severely unreliable actor to do business with,” a USAID official told ProPublica, adding that other countries will now have good reason to look to China or Russia for the help they’re no longer getting from the U.S. “There’s nothing that was left untouched.”

Preparation for the launch of the mpox vaccination campaign at the General Hospital of Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in October 2024. The federal aid standstill could affect mpox supplies for patients across Africa. (Aubin Mukoni/AFP/Getty Images)

In response to a detailed list of questions for this article, the White House referred ProPublica to the State Department. The State Department said to direct all questions about USAID to the agency itself. USAID did not reply to our emails. Much of its communications staff was let go in the last week.

In a public statement Wednesday, the State Department defended the foreign aid freezes and said the government has issued dozens of exemption waivers in recent days.

“The previously announced 90-day pause and review of U.S. foreign aid is already paying dividends to our country and our people,” the statement said. “We are rooting out waste. We are blocking woke programs. And we are exposing activities that run contrary to our national interests. None of this would be possible if these programs remained on autopilot.”

The dire international situation has been exacerbated by upheaval in Washington. This week, the Trump administration furloughed 500 support staff contractors from USAID’s humanitarian assistance bureau, about 40% of the unit, and fired 400 more from the global health bureau. Those workers were told to stop working and “please head home.”

The remaining officials in Washington are now attempting to navigate a confounding waiver process and get lifesaving programs back online. Officials and diplomats told ProPublica that Trump’s new political appointees have not consulted USAID’s longtime humanitarian experts when crafting the new policies. As a result, career civil servants said they are struggling to understand the policy or how to carry it out.

During an internal meeting early in the week, one of USAID’s top Middle East officials told mission directors that the bar for aid groups to qualify for an exemption to Trump’s freeze was high, according to meeting notes. It took until Thursday for the directors to receive instructions for how to fill out a spreadsheet with the programs they think should qualify for a waiver and why, a government employee told ProPublica. “The waiver for humanitarian assistance has been a farce,” another USAID official said.

“Like a Russian nesting doll of fuck-ups,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, who ran some of USAID’s largest programs under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. “It’s just astonishing.”

Fear of retaliation is permeating the government’s foreign aid agencies, which have become some of Trump’s first targets in his campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Earlier this week, the administration pulled down photographs of children and families from the agency’s hallways.

Many are afraid of being punished or fired for doing their jobs. Officials in USAID’s humanitarian affairs bureau say they have been prohibited from even accepting calendar invites from aid organizations or setting up out-of-office email replies.

On Monday, USAID placed about 60 senior civil servants on administrative leave, citing unspecified attempts to “circumvent” the president’s agenda. The group received an email informing them of the decision without an explanation before they were locked out of the agency’s systems and banned from the building.

“We’re civil servants,” one of the officials said. “I should have been given notice, due process. Instead there was an agencywide notice accusing people of subverting the president’s executive orders.”

Then, on Thursday, the agency’s labor relations director told the group that he was withdrawing the agency’s decision because he found no evidence of misconduct, according to emails obtained by ProPublica.

Hours later, the director was put on administrative leave himself. “The agency’s front office and DOGE instructed me to violate the due process of our employees by issuing immediate termination notices,” he wrote to colleagues, referring to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency run by Elon Musk. (Musk did not respond to a request for comment.)

Later that night, the original 60 officials were placed back on leave again.

On Thursday, the U.S. Agency for International Development’s director of labor relations told about 60 senior civil servants placed on administrative leave by the Trump administration that he had reinstated them. (Obtained by ProPublica. Redacted by ProPublica.) Hours later, the labor relations director himself was put on leave. He said the agency’s front office and the Department of Government Efficiency had instructed him to fire his colleagues without due process. (Obtained by ProPublica. Redacted by ProPublica.)

Diplomats have long lauded American humanitarian efforts overseas because they help build crucial alliances around the world with relatively little cost.

When he created USAID in 1961, President John F. Kennedy called it a historic opportunity to improve the developing world so that countries don’t fall into economic collapse. That, he told Congress, “would be disastrous to our national security, harmful to our comparative prosperity and offensive to our conscience.”

USAID is responsible for the most successful international health program of the 21st century. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, created in 2003 by President George W. Bush to combat HIV globally, has saved an estimated 26 million lives over the past 22 years. It currently helps supply HIV medicines to 20 million people, and it funds HIV testing and jobs for thousands of health care workers, mainly in Africa.

That all ground to a halt this week. Since receiving the U.S. government’s stop-work orders, contractors who manage the program say they have so far received little communication about what work they will be allowed to continue, or when. They are not allowed to hand out medicines already bought and sitting on shelves.

If the exemption waivers don’t come through, policy analysts and HIV advocates say the full 90-day suspension of those programs would have disastrous consequences. More than 222,000 people pick up HIV treatment every day through the program, according to an analysis by amFAR, a nonprofit dedicated to AIDS research and advocacy. As of Friday morning, those orders had not been lifted, according to three people with direct knowledge.

Up through last week, PEPFAR was providing HIV treatment to an estimated 680,000 pregnant women, the majority of whom are in Africa. A 90-day stoppage could lead to an estimated 136,000 babies acquiring HIV, according to the amfAR analysis. Since HIV testing services are also suspended, many of those could go undiagnosed.

The disarray has also reached warzones and foreign governments, risking disease outbreaks and straining international relationships forged over decades.

Government officials worried about contract personnel who were suddenly stranded in remote locations. In Syria, camp managers were told to abandon their site at al-Hawl refugee camp, which is also a prison for ISIS sympathizers. That left the refugees inside with nowhere to turn for basic supplies like food and gas.

In Mogadishu, Somalia, the State Department instructed security guards who were protecting an arms depot from insurgents to simply walk off the site, according to a company official. When the guards asked what would happen to the armory, their government contacts told them they didn’t have any answers. (Concerns about the armory were first reported by The Wall Street Journal.)

The contractors in Syria and Somalia have since been allowed to return to their sites.

An executive at a health care nonprofit told ProPublica he has not been so lucky. His group is still under the stop-work order and can’t fund medical operations in Gaza, where there is a fragile ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel that depends in part on the free flow of humanitarian aid.

“People will die,” the executive said. “For organizations that rely solely or largely on U.S. government funding, this hurts. That may be part of the message. But there would be less drastic ways to send it.”

In response to criticism, the Trump administration has offered misinformation. During a press conference, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, touted the initiative’s success so far and said the government “found that there was about to be $50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” Trump later went further, saying Hamas fighters were using the condoms to make explosives.

They didn’t name the contractor, but the State Department later cited $100 million in canceled aid packages slated for the International Medical Corps.

IMC said in a response that no U.S. government funding was used for condoms or any other family-planning services. The organization has treated more than 33,000 Palestinians a month, according to the statement. It also operates one of the only centers in Gaza for severely malnourished children.

“If the stop-work order remains in place,” IMC said, “we will be unable to sustain these activities beyond the next week or so.”

There are also new outbreaks of Ebola in Uganda’s capital and of the disease’s cousin, the Marburg virus, in Tanzania. The U.S. has long been a key funder of biosecurity measures internationally, including at high-security labs. That funding is now on hold.

In Ukraine, groups that provide vital humanitarian aid for civilians and soldiers fighting Russia have been told to stand down without any meaningful updates in days, according to three officials familiar with the situation. The halted services include first responders, fuel for hospitals and evacuation routes for refugees fleeing the front lines.

“These are people who have been living in a war zone for three years this month,” the head of one of the organizations said, adding that they may have to lay off 20% of its staff. “And we are taking away these very basic services that they need to survive.”

Concrete electrical poles provided by USAID replace some that were damaged by fighting in Ukraine as Russia targets electrical infrastructure across the country. (Scott Peterson/Getty Images)

A contractor for the U.S. in Yemen said her entire team had been told to stop their work last weekend, which ProPublica corroborated with contemporaneous emails. “One of my tasks was summarizing how many people had been directly saved by our health programs every week,” she said. “It was usually 80 to 100.”

Their stop-work order has not been lifted. It will be a week on Sunday.

Do You Work for the Federal Government? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

by Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry-Jester

ICE Enforcement Official Tapped to Lead Unaccompanied Migrant Children Office, Triggering Alarms

1 week 6 days ago

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A longtime immigration enforcement official has been tapped to run the agency responsible for managing unaccompanied migrant children, in a move that has alarmed experts and advocates who are concerned that information about children and their families will be shared for arrests and deportations.

For the past two decades, an office within the Department of Health and Human Services has supervised children who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian. The government handed this duty to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, not its immigration enforcement agency, underscoring that the process shouldn’t be punitive but instead is meant to help safely place children with sponsors living in the United States.

That wall eroded during President Donald Trump’s first administration, when the ORR began to share identifying information about unaccompanied children and their potential sponsors with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, presaging a wave of arrests. Congress put limits on this sharing and President Joe Biden stopped the practice — but a new hire in Trump’s second administration has advocates and experts worried the separation between the agencies is once again breaking down.

Mellissa Harper, a veteran immigration enforcement officer at ICE, has been tapped to lead the ORR, according to three current and former government officials, and oversee the care of unaccompanied migrant children. The officials requested anonymity to discuss government operations. Her position is a federal detail, according to a federal employee directory, which allows career government employees to transfer between agencies for temporary roles.

This appears to be the first time an ICE official has been hired to lead the refugee resettlement office, former administration officials told ProPublica. Harper’s experience mostly comprises immigration enforcement. A former ICE official said Harper has a good reputation inside the agency and expertise dealing with issues involving minors across the government.

A review of legal documents shows that her tenure has been marked with litigation alleging violations of immigration law. While she was leading the unit within ICE overseeing minors and families, the agency was subject to a 2018 class-action lawsuit that challenged the transfer of teenagers into adult detention facilities on their 18th birthdays.

She led the family unit in 2018, when the administration implemented its “zero tolerance” immigration policy and separated thousands of migrant children from their parents. The former ICE official said that, during zero tolerance, the unit was not making separation decisions but did have a role providing transportation of minors and coordination of their immigration cases.

HHS, under which the refugee office sits, did not respond to ProPublica’s emailed questions, citing “a pause on mass communications and public appearances that are not directly related to emergencies or critical to preserving health.”

Harper did not respond to ProPublica’s emailed questions. The Trump administration and ICE also did not respond to requests for comment.

Harper has worked at ICE since 2007, most recently leading the enforcement and removal operations field office in New Orleans.

Her new role appears to be a part of the administration’s “desire to ensure enforcement against both unaccompanied kids and their sponsors,” said Scott Shuchart, who served at ICE as a political appointee during the Biden administration.

In the past, he said, some smugglers have encouraged migrants to send their children across the border alone — knowing that, under U.S. law, they have to be taken into ORR custody and released to sponsors. That scenario pushed up the number of kids arriving by themselves, he said. Once released, they can apply for asylum and other immigration relief in the U.S., a process that can take months or years to resolve.

Cases have emerged of children who have ended up working illegally, sometimes in dangerous jobs, after being released from ORR custody to sponsors. In one high-profile 2015 case, unaccompanied minors from Guatemala were allegedly trafficked to work on an Ohio egg farm.

Republicans have called out the agency for not providing adequate protections to prevent those types of cases. Amid a flurry of executive orders Trump issued after taking office on Jan. 20, one administration directive said HHS should share “any information necessary” to stop trafficking and smuggling of migrant children.

During the first Trump administration, the ORR drew scrutiny after it started to share information with ICE about children and their adult sponsors in 2018. Using this information, the immigration enforcement agency arrested around 300 people, which led many sponsors to fear interaction with the refugee agency and contributed to many children staying in custody for longer.

Congress put limits on the information sharing and Biden revoked the practice. Last December, his administration issued a notice stating “ORR is not an immigration enforcement agency and does not maintain records for immigration enforcement purposes."

Harper’s appointment comes after the authors of Project 2025, the playbook developed by conservative groups to serve as a policy blueprint for the Trump administration, recommended transferring the welfare unit under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security and eliminating a key legal settlement that established standards for the treatment of detained immigrant children.

Scrutinized Oversight of Minors

Harper’s direction of the Juvenile and Family Residential Management Unit within ICE had previously come under scrutiny.

In March 2018, the immigration agency faced a class-action lawsuit from a group of teenagers who were transferred out of ORR custody on their 18th birthdays into adult ICE detention facilities. The plaintiffs alleged they had been illegally transferred without consideration of less restrictive placements, in violation of federal law.

Two years later, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras determined that ICE had violated the law. In his 180-page statement of findings, he referenced Harper — or her testimony on how she ran her unit — more than 160 times.

The court issued a five-year permanent injunction, requiring the immigration agency to comply with federal law by considering the placement of these teenagers in less restrictive settings than detention facilities. The court also mandated the agency retrain its officers and revise its policies on how they determine custody for children when they turn 18.

In October 2022, one month after the judge approved a final settlement agreement in the class-action case, Harper became the director of the ICE field office in New Orleans, according to her LinkedIn profile.

The year the case was filed, an ICE spokesperson told a reporter that the agency was in compliance with legal standards and agency policy. Neither ICE nor Harper responded to ProPublica’s questions regarding the case or its settlement.

Now, advocates question whether such issues will resurface.

“When Congress decided over 20 years ago to move unaccompanied children out of the custody of the enforcement side of federal immigration, it did so with the clear intention to prioritize child welfare principles,” said Neha Desai, a senior director of immigration at the National Center for Youth Law.

“Unaccompanied children are uniquely vulnerable and should be treated as children, not Criminals.”

Do You Work for the Federal Government? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

Pratheek Rebala contributed research.

by Annie Waldman and Mica Rosenberg

ProPublica’s Coverage of Donald Trump’s Appointments — and How They Could Reshape Federal Agencies

1 week 6 days ago

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During his campaign, Donald Trump vowed to remake the federal government, promising to cut jobs, slash spending, end diversity and inclusion programs, and dismantle the Department of Education. Now, he’s chosen a slate of nominees for cabinet posts and other key positions who have a history of pushing back against the work of the departments and agencies they’ve been tapped to lead.

When Doug Burgum was governor of North Dakota, the state sued the Department of the Interior at least five times, ProPublica reported in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Trump selected Burgum to lead that same department. Meanwhile, Scott Turner, Trump’s nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has a history of voting against protections for poor tenants. And Trump’s choice to lead the Internal Revenue Service once supported legislation to abolish it entirely.

As confirmation hearings continue in the Senate, read through ProPublica’s reporting on how some of Trump’s selections could reshape federal agencies.

Doug Burgum, Department of the Interior

Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, has been confirmed as the secretary of the interior, which manages federal lands and natural resources.

North Dakota sued the same department at least five times, ProPublica and the North Dakota Monitor reported this month.

One of the lawsuits took aim at the agency’s rule that limited the amount of methane oil companies could release. Another targeted the department’s Public Lands Rule, which places conservation of public lands on equal footing with natural resource exploitation. Burgum did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment, but he has previously said that many of the environmental policies of the administration of President Joe Biden posed “an existential threat to the energy and ag sectors, our economy and our way of life.”

Read more.

Billy Long, Internal Revenue Service

Trump chose Billy Long, who represented Missouri in the U.S. House of Representatives for over a decade, to lead the Internal Revenue Service. Long previously supported legislation that would have abolished the agency altogether. Trump has said he wants to end “IRS overstepping” and issued an executive order that places a hiring freeze on the agency until the new Treasury secretary “determines that it is in the national interest to lift the freeze.”

Tax experts told ProPublica’s Jeremy Kohler and Alex Mierjeski last month that they believe Long doesn’t have the right credentials to oversee the agency. Long, who didn’t respond to ProPublica’s request for comment, labeled himself as a certified tax and business advisor, or CTBA, on the social network X. That designation — which tax experts told ProPublica they hadn’t heard about — is offered only by a small, Florida-based firm after the completion of a three-day seminar.

Read more.

Scott Turner, Department of Housing and Urban Development

Trump nominated Scott Turner to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees federal efforts to provide housing assistance to low-income residents. But, as ProPublica’s Jesse Coburn and Andy Kroll reported in December, Turner has previously opposed legislation that would provide aid and protections for poor tenants.

During his time in the Texas House of Representatives, Turner opposed legislation to expand affordable rental housing in the state and endorsed a bill to allow landlords to turn down applicants because they received federal housing assistance. Turner has also previously described welfare as “one of the most destructive things for a family.”

A spokesperson for Turner told ProPublica in December: “Of course ProPublica would try and paint a negative picture of Mr. Turner before he is even given the opportunity to testify. We would expect nothing less from a publication that solely serves as a liberal mouthpiece.”

Read more.

Paul Atkins, Securities and Exchange Commission

Paul Atkins is Trump’s choice to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Atkins, who worked as an SEC commissioner under George W. Bush before serving as the co-chair of a crypto advocacy group, will be responsible for regulating Trump’s own publicly traded company.

Current and former SEC officials told ProPublica’s Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Mierjeski in December that they worried the agency wouldn’t aggressively regulate Trump Media, which has previously tangled with the commission. Trump’s crypto investments — which include a Trump-affiliated token by a company called World Liberty Financial and a memecoin known as $Trump launched days before his second inauguration — could also come into conflict with the agency.

Under Biden, SEC chair Gary Gensler led a crackdown on crypto. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to deregulate the industry.

Read more.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, National Institutes of Health

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, has said he wants to dedicate half of the National Institutes of Health’s budget toward “preventive, alternative and holistic approaches to health.” Kennedy has also said he wants to replace 600 employees at the NIH.

Stanford Professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, if confirmed as the head of the NIH, would get to appoint the next director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which plays a key role in researching infectious diseases and developing treatments. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bhattacharya became a vocal critic of how then-NIAID Director Anthony Fauci handled the federal response. He also helped author the Great Barrington Declaration, which argued against restrictions for those “at minimal risk of death” until herd immunity is reached.

Experts and advocates told ProPublica’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester this month that overhauling the NIH’s and NIAID’s work could deter research and hamstring the development of future treatments. Bhattacharya declined an interview request.

Read more.

David Fotouhi, Environmental Protection Agency

Trump tapped lawyer David Fotouhi for the second highest role at the Environmental Protection Agency. If confirmed by the Senate, he’ll be the deputy administrator under Lee Zeldin, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives chosen to lead the agency.

This month, ProPublica’s Sharon Lerner reported that Fotouhi played a critical role in pushing to roll back climate regulations while working as a lawyer in the department during Trump’s first term. He has since worked on a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s water quality standards for PCBs, toxic chemicals linked to some cancers. In October, Fotouhi, who declined to comment to ProPublica, challenged the EPA’s ban on the cancer-causing substance asbestos.

Read more.

Russell Vought, Office of Management and Budget

Trump chose Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget, sparking concerns from Democratic lawmakers, who, ahead of his Senate confirmation vote, led an all-night protest of his nomination over concerns about his plans to dramatically shrink the federal government. In October, ProPublica’s Molly Redden and Andy Kroll and Documented’s Nick Surgey obtained videos of private speeches given by Vought in 2023 and 2024 that outlined an agenda for a second Trump presidency. In the speeches, Vought said one priority was targeting career government workers, saying “we want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected.” He also said that he wants to defund the Environmental Protection Agency and invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military to shut down domestic “riots.” Vought, who led the OMB during Trump’s first term before becoming one of the architects of Project 2025, did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

Read more.

Do You Work for the Federal Government? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

Update, Feb. 6, 2025: This story was updated to include Russell Vought.

by ProPublica

Boxed Up: A Portrait of an Immigrant Community Living Under Threat of Deportation

1 week 6 days ago

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A blender, still in its box, won at a grocery store raffle. Framed photos from a child’s birthday party. A rabbit-hair felt sombrero and a pair of brown leather boots that cost more than half a week’s pay.

Box by box, the Nicaraguans who milk the cows and clean the pens on Wisconsin's dairy farms, who wash dishes at its restaurants and fill lines on its factory floors, are sending home their most prized possessions, bracing for the impact of President Donald Trump’s mass deportations.

In the contents of the boxes is a portrait of a community under pressure. The Nicaraguans are as consumed as everyone else by the unfolding of Trump 2.0, wondering whether the bluster about deporting millions of people, most of whom live quiet lives far from the southern border, is going to mean anything in the Wisconsin towns where they’ve settled. For now, many are staying in their homes, behind drawn curtains, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible as they travel to and from work or pick up their kids from school. Few have given up on their lives in America, but they’re realistic about what may be coming. Methodically, they have begun packing their most cherished belongings into boxes and barrels and shipping them to relatives back in Nicaragua, ahead of their own anticipated deportations.

“We don’t have much, but what we do have is important,” said Joaquín, the man with the love of western boots and sombreros. He’s 35 years old and has worked over the last three years as a cook at the restaurant below his apartment. “We have worked so hard and sacrificed so much in order to acquire these things,” he added.

The packing is happening all across Wisconsin, a state that in recent years has become a top destination for Nicaraguans who say they are fleeing poverty and government repression. And it is happening among immigrants of varying legal statuses. There are the undocumented dairy workers who came more than a decade ago and were the first from their rural communities to settle in Wisconsin. And there are the more recent arrivals, including asylum-seekers who have permission to live and work in the U.S. as they await their day in immigration court.

Nobody feels safe from Trump and his promises; in just his first week back in office, the president moved to end birthright citizenship, sent hundreds of military troops to the southern border and launched a flashy, multi-agency operation to find and detain immigrants in Chicago, only a few hundred miles away.

Yesenia Meza, a community health worker in central Wisconsin, began hearing from families soon after Trump’s election; they wanted help obtaining the documents they might need if they have to suddenly leave the country with their U.S.-born children, or have those children sent to them if they are deported. When she visited their apartments, Meza said, she was stunned to discover they had spent hundreds of dollars on refrigerator-sized boxes and blue plastic barrels that they’d stuffed with nearly “everything that they own, their most precious belongings” and were shipping to their home country.

At one home, she watched an immigrant mother climb into a half-packed box and announce, “I’m going to mail myself.” Meza knew she was joking. But some of the immigrants she knew had already left. And if more people go, she wonders what impact their departures — whether voluntary or forced — will have on the local economy. Immigrants in the area work on farms, in cheese-processing factories and in a chicken plant — the kind of jobs, she said, that nobody else wants. She’s talked to some of the employers before and knows “they’re always short-staffed,” Meza said. “They’re going to be more short-staffed now when people start going back home.”

Last week, on the eve of Trump’s inauguration, I traveled to Wisconsin along with photographer Benjamin Rasmussen to capture what sounded like the beginning of a community coming undone. We talked to Nicaraguans in their kitchens and bedrooms, and in restaurants and grocery stores that have sprung up to cater to them. Many of the people we met either were packing themselves or knew someone else who was, or both.

Some were almost embarrassed to show us what they were packing — items that might have been considered frivolous or extravagant back home. Nicaragua was already one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere before its government took a turn toward authoritarianism and repression, further sinking the economy. But thanks to their working-class jobs at American factories and restaurants, they could afford these things, and they were determined to hold on to them. Some of their belongings carried memories of loved ones or of special occasions. Other items were more practical, tools that might help them get started again in Nicaragua.

From the stories these immigrants told about their belongings emerged others, stories about what had brought them to this country and what they have been able to achieve here. They spoke about the panic that now traps them in their homes and keeps them up at night. And they shared their hopes and fears about what it might mean to start over in a country they fled.

Yaceth plans to send a plastic barrel filled with shoes to her mother in Nicaragua for safekeeping. What’s in the Boxes

Yaceth’s guilty pleasure is shoes. The 38-year-old left Nicaragua nearly three years ago and works in the same restaurant kitchen as Joaquín. Her wages allowed her to buy a pair or so a month on Amazon, mostly Keds lace-up sneakers, though she also owns glittery stilettos and knee-high red boots. The boxes fill the top half of her closet. Some pairs have never been worn.

We stood along the edge of her bed, admiring her collection. “I’m a bit of an aficionado,” she said sheepishly. Like the other immigrants we spoke with, Yaceth asked not to be identified by her full name to lessen the risk of deportation.

Yaceth said she stopped buying shoes after Trump’s election, uncertain how her life, not to mention her finances, might change once he took office. By the time we met, she had already packed one box of belongings and sent it to her mother in Estelí, a city in northwestern Nicaragua. In the corner of her already crowded bedroom, she kept a blue plastic barrel, which is where she’d planned to put the shoes, hoping it would keep them dry and undamaged during the shipping. If she goes, they’re going, too.

She rents a room in the apartment of another family. They, too, are thinking about what it might look like to return to Nicaragua. Hugo, 33, is setting aside items that might help him make a living back in his hometown of Somoto, about an hour and a half north of Estelí. This includes a Cuisinart digital air fryer he bought with his wages from a sheet-metal factory. Hugo used to sell hot dogs and hamburgers at a fast food stand in Somoto. If he has to return, he envisions starting another food business. The air fryer would help.

Hugo plans to send an air fryer to Nicaragua in the hopes of using it to start a business if he’s deported.

We visited a new Nicaraguan restaurant in Waunakee, a village in Dane County that’s seen significant numbers of Nicaraguan arrivals in recent years. One diner, a 49-year-old undocumented dairy worker, told me he plans to send barber trimmers and other supplies for the barbershop he’d like to open up if he’s deported. As we spoke, his dinner companion called a friend who lives a few towns away and handed me the phone; that man, also a dairy worker, told me he is sending back power tools he bought on Facebook Marketplace that are expensive and difficult to find in Nicaragua.

Other immigrants expressed deep uncertainty about whether they might face jail time or worse if they are deported, due to their previous involvement in political activities against the Nicaraguan government. If you don’t toe the party line, said Uriel, a former high school teacher, “they turn you into an enemy of the state.”

Uriel, 36, said he never participated in any anti-government marches. But he worried that local party leaders had been watching him, that they knew how he spoke about democracy and free speech in the classroom.

Uriel bought a plastic barrel to send belongings, like a guitar he was given, to his wife and children in Nicaragua.

He said he left Nicaragua almost four years ago both because of the political situation and because he knew he could make more money in the U.S. He has an ongoing asylum case, a work permit and a job at a bread factory. His wages have allowed him to buy a plot of land for his wife and two children, still in Nicaragua, and begin construction on a house there.

He’d hoped to stay in Wisconsin long enough to pay to finish it. But bracing for the inevitable, he’s got a barrel too. Soon, he plans to pack and send a used Yamaha guitar he was given as a gift a few years earlier. Uriel learned to play the instrument by watching YouTube videos and now plays Christian hymns that he said make him feel good inside.

This summer, he plans to return as well. His children have been growing up without him. He has been told his 6-year-old daughter points to planes in the sky and wonders whether her father is inside. He worries that his son, 11, will grow up believing he has been abandoned.

It has been hard to be separated from his children, he said. But he left in order to provide them a life he didn’t believe he could have if he had stayed — a reality he thought was missing from so much of the new president’s rhetoric on immigration. “We are not anybody’s enemy,” Uriel said. “We simply are looking for a way to make a living, to help our families.”

Joaquín plans to send his clothing to family in Nicaragua. He’s afraid it will end up in a landfill if he’s deported. A Life in Hiding

It used to be that on Sundays, his day off, Joaquín would pull on his favorite boots and sombrero to drive somewhere — to a restaurant or to visit family and friends who had settled in south-central Wisconsin. But ever since Trump’s election, he doesn’t leave his apartment unless he has to. Some days, he says, he feels like a mouse, scurrying downstairs to work and upstairs to sleep and back downstairs again to work, always alert and full of dread.

The gray 2016 Toyota 4Runner that he bought last year, his pride and joy, sits mostly unused behind his apartment building. He’s too afraid of driving and getting pulled over by police officers who, by randomly checking his vehicle’s plates, could discover he doesn’t have a driver’s license. Joaquín doesn’t have the documents he needs to qualify for one. He worries that drawing the attention of police, even for the smallest of infractions, could get him swept into the immigration detention system and deported. “What’s happening now is a persecution,” he said.

On a recent Sunday, his apartment was filled with the sweet, warm smell of home-baked goods. Joaquín said he spent two hours making traditional Nicaraguan cookies called rosquillas and hojaldras, one savory and the other sweet. We talked over coffee and the cornmeal cookies. Half of his living room floor was covered with piles of clothes and shoes, and one tall, empty box. There were shirts, pants and sneakers for each of his three children, who remain in Nicaragua. Most of the clothes belonged to Joaquín: a crisp pair of tan Lee jeans, rarely worn; several pairs of boots; a box of sombreros.

Joaquín said he plans to send all of it to relatives in Nicaragua in February. It pains him to imagine being trotted onto a deportation flight and leaving everything he owns here to get tossed in a landfill somewhere.

Another day, I spoke by phone with an immigrant named Luz, 26. Like Joaquín, she said she rarely leaves her apartment anymore. The week Trump was inaugurated, she stopped going to her job at a nearby cheese factory, afraid of workplace raids. She now stays home with their 1-year-old son. A woman she knows picks up the family’s groceries so they don’t have to risk being out on the street.

Like many of her friends and relatives, Luz came to the U.S. as an asylum-seeker almost three years ago. She missed an immigration court hearing while pregnant with her son and now worries she has “no legal status here.”

“Those of us who work milking cows, we can’t afford to hire a lawyer,” she said. “We don’t even know what’s happening with our cases.”

After Trump’s election, she began packing some of the things she’d accumulated in her time in Wisconsin, including some used children’s clothes she’d received from Meza, the community health worker. She packed most everything in her kitchen: most of her pots and pans, some plates and cups, knives, an iron and “even chocolates,” she said, almost laughing. “It is a big box.”

Luz said she wants all of her household items to be in Nicaragua when she returns with her family. They hope to leave in March. “I don’t want to live in hiding like this,” she said.

Isabel sent her 14-month-old son’s toys and stuffed animals in a cardboard box to Nicaragua. Family Separation Redux

Isabel’s son cried as she filled her box. In went the shiny red car, big enough for the 14-month-old to sit in and drive. It had been a gift from his godfather on his first birthday. She added other, smaller cars and planes and stuffed animals. A stroller. A framed photo from the birthday party, the chubby-cheeked boy surrounded by balloons.

The 26-year-old mother knew her son was too young to understand. But she hoped he would if the dreaded time came when they had to return to Nicaragua.

And to make sure she wouldn't be separated from him, she applied for his passport early last fall, when she became convinced that Trump would win the election. She could see his lawn signs all around her in the rural community in the middle of the state where she lives. Her husband, who works on a dairy farm, told her he’d begun feeling uncomfortable with the way people glared at him at Walmart. Sometimes, they shouted things he didn’t understand, but in a tone that was unmistakably hostile.

Their son was born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents — exactly the kind of child Trump says does not deserve citizenship here. Isabel got his passport both to secure his rights as an American citizen and to secure her rights to him. She wants to make sure there is no mistaking who the boy belongs to if she gets sent away.

We met Isabel about a week after she’d shipped off the box with her son’s red toy car to her mother’s home in southern Nicaragua. It was the morning of Trump’s inauguration, and Isabel welcomed us into her apartment, her eyes still red and bleary from an overnight shift at a nearby cheese-processing factory.

She said they were ready to go “if things get ugly” and the people around her start getting picked up and sent back. But there was another box, still flat and unpacked, propped up against a wall in the living room. That one, she explained, belonged to a neighbor with the same game plan.

I ask her what happens if they don’t get deported, but their most precious belongings are gone. Won’t they miss those things? “Yes,” she said. But it would be even worse to go back to Nicaragua and have nothing.

Additional design and development by Zisiga Mukulu

by Melissa Sanchez, photography by Benjamin Rasmussen for ProPublica

The Rewriting of a Pioneering Female Astronomer’s Legacy Shows How Far Trump’s DEI Purge Will Go

2 weeks ago

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During his first presidential term, Donald Trump signed a congressional act naming a federally funded observatory after the late astronomer Vera Rubin. The act celebrated her landmark research on dark matter — the invisible, mysterious substance that makes up much of the universe — and noted that she was an outspoken advocate for the equal treatment and representation of women in science.

“Vera herself offers an excellent example of what can happen when more minds participate in science,” the observatory’s website said of Rubin — up until recently.

By Monday morning, a section of her online biography titled, “She advocated for women in science,” was gone. It reappeared in a stripped-down form later that day amid a chaotic federal government response to Trump’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

While there are far more seismic changes afoot in America than the revision of three paragraphs on a website, the page’s edit trail provides an opportunity to peer into how institutions and agencies are navigating the new administration’s intolerance of anything perceived as “woke” and illuminates a calculation officials must make in answering a wide-open question:

How far is too far when it comes to acknowledging inequality and advocating against it?

“Vera Rubin, whose career began in the 1960s, faced a lot of barriers simply because she was a woman,” the altered section of the bio began. “She persisted in studying science when her male advisors told her she shouldn't,” and she balanced her career with raising children, a rarity at the time. “Her strength in overcoming these challenges is admirable on its own, but Vera worked even harder to help other women navigate what was, during her career, a very male-dominated field.”

That first paragraph disappeared temporarily, then reappeared, untouched, midday Monday.

That was not the case for the paragraph that followed: “Science is still a male-dominated field, but Rubin Observatory is working to increase participation from women and other people who have historically been excluded from science. Rubin Observatory welcomes everyone who wants to contribute to science, and takes steps to lower or eliminate barriers that exclude those with less privilege.”

That paragraph was gone as of Thursday afternoon, as was the assertion that Rubin shows what can happen when “more minds” participate in science. The word “more” was replaced with “many,” shifting the meaning.

A portion of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s page about its namesake as of Jan. 29 (first image), compared to the original portions of the same page as of Jan. 15 (second image), as captured by the Internet Archive. (Screenshots highlighted by ProPublica)

“I’m sure Vera would be absolutely furious,” said Jacqueline Mitton, an astronomer and author who co-wrote a biography of Rubin’s life. Mitton said the phrase “more minds” implies that “you want minds from people from every different background,” an idea that follows naturally from the now-deleted text on systemic barriers.

She said Rubin, who died in 2016, would want the observatory named after her to continue her work advocating for women and other groups who have long been underrepresented in science.

It’s unclear who ordered the specific alterations of Rubin’s biography. The White House, the observatory and the federal agencies that fund it, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

The observatory’s page on diversity, equity and inclusion was also missing Thursday afternoon. An archived version from Dec. 19 shows that it described the institution’s efforts “to ensure fair and unbiased execution” of the hiring process, including training hiring committee members “on unconscious bias.” The DEI program also included educational and public outreach efforts, such as “meeting web accessibility standards” and plans to build partnerships with “organizations serving audiences traditionally under-represented” in science and technology.

Similar revisions are taking shape across the country as companies have reversed their DEI policies and the Trump administration has placed employees working on DEI initiatives on leave.

If the changes to Rubin’s biography are any indication of what remains acceptable under Trump’s vision for the federal government, then certain facts about historical disparities are safe for now. But any recognition that these biases persist appears to be in the crosshairs.

The U.S. Air Force even pulled training videos about Black airmen and civilian women pilots who served in World War II. (The Air Force later said it would continue to show the videos in training, but certain material related to diversity would be suspended for review.)

One of Rubin’s favorite sayings was, “Half of all brains are in women,” Mitton said. Her book recounts how Rubin challenged sexist language in science publications, advocated for women to take leadership roles in professional organizations and declined to speak at an event in 1972 held at a club where women were only allowed to enter through a back door.

Jacqueline Hewitt, who was a graduate student when she met Rubin at conferences, said she was inspired by Rubin’s research and how she never hid the fact that she had kids. “It was really important to see someone who could succeed,” said Hewitt, the Julius A. Stratton professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It felt like you could succeed also.”

Rubin was awarded the National Medal of Science by then-President Bill Clinton in 1993. The observatory, located in a part of Chile where conditions are ideal for observational astronomy, was named after her in 2019 and includes a powerful telescope; it will “soon witness the explosions of millions of dying stars” and “capture the cosmos in exquisite detail,” according to its website.

Mitton said the observatory is a memorial that continues Rubin’s mission to include not just many people in astronomy, but more of those who haven’t historically gotten a chance to make their mark.

“It’s very sad that’s being undermined,” she said, “because the job isn’t done.”

Do You Work for the Federal Government? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

by Lisa Song

To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Floats Plan to Slash Benefits for the Poor and Working Class

2 weeks ago

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One of the hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was a promise of sweeping tax cuts, for the rich, for working people and for companies alike.

Now congressional Republicans have the job of figuring out which of those cuts to propose into law. In order to pay for the cuts, they have started to eye some targets to raise money. Among them: cutting benefits for single mothers and poor people who rely on government health care.

The proposals are included in a menu of tax and spending cut options circulated this month by House Republicans. Whether or not Republicans enact any of the ideas remains to be seen. Some of the potential targets are popular tax breaks and cuts could be politically treacherous. And cutting taxes for the wealthy could risk damaging the populist image that Trump has cultivated.

For the ultrawealthy, the document floats eliminating the federal estate tax, at an estimated cost of $370 billion in revenue for the government over a decade. The tax, which charges a percentage of the value of a person’s fortune after they die, kicks in only for estates worth more than around $14 million.

Among those very few Americans who do get hit with the tax, nearly 30% of the tax is paid by the top 0.1% by income, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center think tank. (Many ultra-wealthy people already largely avoid the tax. Over the years, lawyers and accountants have devised ways to pass fortunes to heirs tax free, often by using complex trust structures, as ProPublica has previously reported.)

Another proposal aims to slash the top tax rate paid by corporations by almost a third.

Trump promised such a cut during the campaign. But Vice President JD Vance came out against it before Trump picked him as his running mate. “We’re sort of in line with the OECD right now,” he said in an interview last year, referring to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 38 wealthy developed nations. “I don’t think we need to be cutting the corporate tax rate further.”

In Trump’s first term, he brought the top corporate rate down from 35% to 21%, where it’s at now, taking the U.S. from a high rate compared to other OECD nations to about average. The proposed cut to 15% would make the United States’ rate among the lowest of such countries.

To pay for new tax cuts, the House Republicans’ proposal floats a series of potential overhauls of government programs. One major focus is possible cuts to Medicaid, the health care program for people with low incomes that is administered by the states. Medicaid expansion was a key tenet of the Affordable Care Act, passed under President Barack Obama. Many Republican governors initially chose not to take advantage of the new federal subsidies to expand the program. In the intervening years, several states reversed course, and the program has expanded the number of people enrolled in Medicaid by more than 20 million, as of last year.

The deep cuts to the program floated in the document include slashing reimbursements to the states. States would need to “raise new revenues or reduce Medicaid spending by eliminating coverage for some people, covering fewer services, and (or) cutting rates paid to physicians, hospitals, and nursing homes,” according to an analysis by KFF, a health policy organization.

Trump has been inconsistent in his position on Medicaid over the years. He sought to slash the program in his first term. But he has also made statements about protecting it over the years.

As recently as a 2023 campaign event, Trump promised that “we’re not going to play around with Medicare, Medicaid.” But it’s not clear whether the comment was a throwaway: While preserving Medicare, the program that covers health care for the elderly, has been a focus for Trump, maintaining Medicaid has not. The official GOP platform rolled out by Trump last year, for example, promised not to cut “one penny” from Medicare but was silent on Medicaid. In separate remarks during the campaign last year, Trump appeared to endorse cuts to "entitlements," after an interviewer asked about Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Other proposals would eliminate tax breaks for families with children.

Currently, parents can get a tax credit of up to $2,100 for child care expenses. The House Republican plan floats the elimination of that break. The cut is estimated to save $55 billion over a decade.

Vance, in particular, had promised economic policies that would lessen the load on parents. “It is the task of our government to make it easier for young moms and dads to afford to have kids,” he said last week. (He campaigned on a proposal to more than double the child tax credit.)

Another proposal in the list of options takes aim squarely at parents raising children on their own. The provision would eliminate the “head of household” filing status to collect almost $200 billion more in taxes over a decade from single parents and other adults caring for dependents on their own.

The “head of household” status was created in the 1950s under the rationale that single parents should have a lighter tax burden. Eliminating it would affect millions of Americans, largely women. (The after-tax pay of people with incomes between the 20th and 80th percentiles, those making between about $14,000 and $100,000, would fall by the highest percentage, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation.)

Democrats have criticized the proposals as a gift to the wealthy at the expense of the working class. “Republicans are gearing up for a class war against everyday families in America,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in a statement.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to questions about the specifics in the House GOP document but said in an email that “This is an active negotiation and process one that the President and his team are working productively with congress. His visit to the House Retreat [Monday] was a sign that he wants to prioritize unity and a good deal for American that achieves his campaign promises.”

A spokesperson for the House Budget Committee declined to answer specific questions but said “this is a menu of policy options for authorizing committees to consider as members navigate the reconciliation process.”

Some of the proposals would fulfill Trump’s campaign promises geared toward the working class.

The document includes a plan to eliminate income taxes (but maintain payroll taxes) on tips, at a cost of $106 billion over a decade. The proposal is one Trump touted while campaigning in Las Vegas to win support from the city’s huge contingent of service workers. Trump’s Democratic opponent, former Vice President Kamala Harris, later pledged to do the same. Economists have criticized the idea as one that unfairly benefits one group of working-class employees over others who get paid the same but work in other industries that don’t deal in tips.

Another Trump campaign promise included in the document is ending taxes on overtime pay, at a price of $750 billion over a decade. That proposal has also been criticized by tax experts as an inefficient way to provide relief for lower-paid workers who are eligible for overtime because they’re paid hourly and perform repetitive tasks. The provision, critics say, would invite gaming and further complicate tax reporting by creating new reporting requirements about the hours a taxpayer worked.

One of the biggest-ticket proposals to raise new revenue in the House Republicans’ document would hit a tax break cherished by upper-income Americans: eliminating the mortgage interest deduction. The document estimates $1 trillion in savings over 10 years by eliminating the break. Because of a complex interplay of different features of the tax code, an estimated 60% of the value of this deduction flows to Americans making over $200,000 per year, according to the Tax Foundation.

Eliminating the mortgage interest deduction would have an uneven geographic impact: analyses have found the tax break is more valuable to Americans in Democratic-dominated states such as California, Massachusetts and New Jersey.

Pratheek Rebala contributed research.

Do you have any information about the tax proposals that we should know? Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217. Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240.

by Robert Faturechi and Justin Elliott

In the Wild West of School Voucher Expansions, States Rely on Untested Companies, With Mixed Results

2 weeks ago

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Last April, West Virginia awarded a nearly $10 million contract to a company called Student First Technologies to manage the state’s Hope Scholarship program, which gives families about $4,900 per child to spend on private-school tuition and homeschooling expenses. The company’s founder, Mark Duran, reacted with delight. “We are very excited to serve your great State,” he wrote.

But problems soon emerged, as reflected in emails obtained by a ProPublica public-information request. Some private schools were so late in receiving their voucher payments from families that they were having trouble meeting payroll. In late August, a state official wrote to Duran with a list of invoices that needed to be paid promptly, including three from a school, Beth Haven Christian in Chauncey, that had “called and indicated they are experiencing significant cash flow issues.” The email continued, “We need to make sure they have their funds early in the day if at all possible.”

The school eventually got its funds. But the episode highlights the challenge that states are facing with their rapidly expanding school-choice programs: making sure the taxpayer money they are allowing families to spend on behalf of their kids is being processed efficiently and properly. To do so, they are relying on a small group of fledgling companies that have seized the opportunity to serve as middlemen for this fast-growing market. The work can be lucrative, but it has also proven so daunting that in several states, the companies that carry it out have ended up losing contracts to their rivals — sometimes less than a year after winning them — as questions arise and audits and lawsuits pile up.

An idea sold on the basis of its simplicity — give parents money to spend on their kids’ education as they see fit — has turned out to be anything but simple in practice. And this complexity comes at a cost: paying companies to run the programs.

There are now a dozen states in the country that offer universal private-school vouchers, making them available to families of any income level. The largest of those programs, in Florida, is now costing taxpayers nearly $3 billion a year, with the programs in Arizona and Ohio each drawing around $1 billion a year from taxpayer funds.

In some of the states, the money comes to parents in the form of “education savings accounts,” which can be used on education-related expenses other than tuition. These programs are especially complex to implement, since some form of oversight is needed to make sure families are spending the money in ways that comply with the rules.

Angling for the task of managing this spending are four companies. The largest is ClassWallet, which is based in Hollywood, Florida. Its founder, Jamie Rosenberg, initially offered its online procurement technology to teachers and administrators to reduce the amount of paperwork involved in school expenditures. But the company has shifted to capitalize on the school-choice market. With backers including Lazard Family Office Partners, a global investment firm, ClassWallet has more than 200 employees and contracts in more than 10 states, among them Florida and Arizona, the latter of which has faced headlines about some parents using state education aid for questionable purchases as the cost of its program has swelled far beyond projections.

The smallest is Student First, based in Bloomington, Indiana, with 14 full-time employees. Both its founder, Duran, and its chief technology officer were educated in alternative settings, including homeschooling and so-called learning pods — kids from multiple families clustered together — and say they view the company as part of the larger cause of promoting school choice. Duran, 30, previously worked for his family’s homebuilding company in northern Michigan, served as lifestyle assistant and boat captain for an executive couple and their family, and helped deliver a yacht on a 4,000-mile journey from northern Michigan to Key Largo, Florida, via Nova Scotia, Canada, and Nantucket, Massachusetts.

The other two companies fall in between in scale. Odyssey, based in lower Manhattan, was founded by Joseph Connor, 37, a former teacher and lawyer who had previously created a company called SchoolHouse, which connected teachers with the learning pods that sprouted up during the pandemic. Odyssey, with about 40 employees, has received investor funding from Andreessen Horowitz and Tusk Venture Partners, among others. It works with Iowa and Wyoming and recently won contracts for the newly expanding voucher programs in Georgia and Louisiana.

The fourth, Merit International, is based in Silicon Valley, and it likewise has considerable venture-capital backing, including from Andreessen Horowitz; its contracts include programs in Ohio and Kansas. The 100-person company also manages payments for government programs outside of education. One of its co-founders, Jacob Orrin, said in an interview that he, too, was drawn to the school-choice business by his background: He struggled in school when he was young, and he says he would have greatly benefited from having had more educational options. “We’re mission-driven — but we make a profit,” he said.

Competition among the companies often gets fierce as they face off in state after state. They dispatch lobbyists to cast aspersions on their rivals with legislators and state officials. They try to influence the legislation creating the voucher programs to tailor them to their company’s offerings. They feed whisper campaigns among parents about problems arising in states where their rivals are in charge.

In Iowa, after Odyssey won that state’s contract in 2023, Student First and an Iowa organization it was partnering with brought a legal challenge, alleging “substantial material misrepresentations” by Odyssey; an administrative judge dismissed the suit.

In Arkansas, the state had selected ClassWallet in 2023 to manage its Education Freedom Accounts, which give families about $7,000 per student. But last spring, the state considered switching to Student First to save money. A lobbyist for ClassWallet paid visits to state legislators, warning them that this was a bad idea. “They sent someone to talk to me,” recalled state Sen. Bart Hester, a Republican from Cave Spring. The lobbyist for ClassWallet explained that the company has three times the number of employees as Student First. “‘There’s no way they can do it,’” the lobbyist said, according to Hester.

Student First won the contract, worth about $15 million over seven years. But by October, state officials had decided to switch back to ClassWallet, saying that Student First had missed deadlines to set up the program, was late in processing payments, and owed the state $563,000 in fees as a result of the delays. “Student First Technologies is proud of our work to empower Arkansas families,” Duran wrote in a response to questions from ProPublica. (Of Student First’s experience in West Virginia, he said the company has been making “month-on-month improvements, and this will never stop.”)

ClassWallet previously became embroiled in difficulties one state over, in Oklahoma. A 2022 investigation by The Frontier and Oklahoma Watch found widespread questionable spending under a program in which Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, provided $18 million in federal pandemic-relief funds for families to use for private-school vouchers or educational materials, to be overseen by ClassWallet. Some used the state aid to buy Christmas trees, gaming consoles, electric fireplaces, outdoor grills, dishwashers, pressure washers, car stereo equipment, coffee makers, exercise gear, smartwatches and at least 548 TVs.

The 2022 article quoted Rosenberg, the ClassWallet CEO, praising the program at a 2020 panel discussion: “They were literally able to deploy $18 million without having to engage any human capital from the government agency, and for it to be almost hands-free and incredibly, incredibly streamlined.” But a subsequent federal audit reported that ClassWallet had blamed Oklahoma for the abuses, saying that the company had offered to limit purchases to items preapproved by the state, but that a teacher who helped arrange the contract — Ryan Walters, now Oklahoma’s education secretary — had declined this option. (Walters did not respond to a request for comment.)

The problems with the program sparked an odd three-way legal fight, with Stitt attempting to sue ClassWallet and Oklahoma’s own attorney general opposing the governor and blaming problems on poor state oversight. (The Stitt administration is still pursuing the case, now using outside lawyers. ClassWallet has said the claims are “wholly without merit.”) The company declined to respond to specific questions, but spokesperson Jason Hart provided a statement saying “ClassWallet is the country’s most trusted citizen digital wallet technology platform.”

In Idaho, ClassWallet had the contract to administer an early-pandemic initiative that evolved into what is now called Empowering Parents, a $30 million state program that gives families up to $3,000 each for supplemental educational expenses. The current system could be a possible prelude to a full voucher program, which is up for debate now in the Legislature. Odyssey won the contract in 2022, for $1.5 million per year. A year later, the state ordered an audit after receiving reports of spending on clothes, TVs, smartwatches and other noneducational items. The audit found that only a tiny sliver of purchases were inappropriate, but it ordered Odyssey to pay back the state for $478,656.22 in interest it had collected from unspent federal funding for the program.

Meanwhile, parents and business owners were reporting other issues with the program under Odyssey’s oversight, as reflected in emails obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by ProPublica. Last February, Tina Stevens, the owner of a music store and academy in Coeur d’Alene that is one of the program’s biggest vendors, wrote to her state senator saying that she had lost $10,000 because families were unable to access their funds to pay for music classes. She also wrote that Odyssey’s requirement to ship all purchases to families was wasting money. (Odyssey said the shipping requirement was imposed by the state.) The system, Stevens wrote, is “rife with more fraud than we ever saw last year and super easy to cheat.” Stevens elaborated in an interview, saying that in one instance, she was required to ship a digital piano via a freight truck, at a cost of $423, even though the family it went to had come in person to select it. And it took her 1,000 hours, she said, to list and update her products on Odyssey’s online marketplace for the program.

Still, she said, the difficulties had not undermined her support for the program. “Parents and kids need musical products and a lot of kids can’t afford it,” she said. “I’ve had mothers coming in the door crying, saying ‘I never thought I could get a musical instrument, and now my kid can have something I never thought they could have.’”

In September, the director of the Idaho State Board of Education, Joshua Whitworth, wrote to Odyssey’s CEO, Connor, listing problems, including “ongoing customer service concerns,” sales taxes charged in error, and vendors being owed payments since January 2024. Connor replied with a lengthy email defending the company, saying that the company had an above-average customer satisfaction rating in Idaho and paid out the “vast majority” of orders within a week. But days later, Idaho said it was switching back to ClassWallet.

Emails show ClassWallet executives and lobbyists celebrating their victory and collaborating with state officials over how to word the announcement. “The tone of this one was markedly more vicious,” said one of the participants in the Idaho competition, describing the latest round. “It’s like two heavyweights exchanging blows.”

In response to questions about the loss of the Idaho contract and the problems that preceded it, a company spokesperson said, “Odyssey’s bid was undercut on price and the decision to rebid had nothing to do with performance.”

In an interview, Orrin, the Merit co-founder, said the programs’ problems were due partly to states coming under pressure to limit costs and expecting companies to operate them at thin margins. “At a certain level, as states continue to squeeze on these budgets, it will be hard for anyone to deliver successfully,” he said. Some companies were contributing to this by making unrealistically low bids and were then having trouble delivering. “Some of the companies in this space are trying hard to chase the dragon,” he said.

Vanessa Grossl, who worked for ClassWallet before being elected last fall as a Republican state representative in Kentucky, calls the new mode of spending “Venmo government” and predicts it will improve with time. The novelty of the programs has “gotten some of them in trouble,” she said. “But you have to uncover those bugs in any new system. It’s worth the price of innovation and discovery for working through the bugs.”

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Correction

Jan. 30, 2025: This story inaccurately described the effort Tina Stevens spent 1,000 hours on. It took her that long to update her products on Odyssey’s online marketplace, not to build a separate website required by Odyssey.

This story has also been updated to include additional comment from Odyssey.

by Alec MacGillis

A Defense Department Directive to Expand Access to Military Courts Falls Short of Federal Law’s Requirements

2 weeks 1 day ago

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More than two years after ProPublica sued the Navy over its failure to provide public access to military courts, the Department of Defense has for the first time directed U.S. military branches to give advance public notice of preliminary hearings, a crucial milestone in criminal cases.

These “Article 32” hearings end with a recommendation about whether the case should move forward, be dismissed or end in a nonjudicial punishment.

DOD General Counsel Caroline Krass issued the guidance earlier this year, directing the secretaries of the Navy, Army, Air Force and Homeland Security (which oversees the Coast Guard) to post upcoming preliminary hearings, provide access to certain court records and publish results of military trials — known as courts-martial — on a public website.

But legal experts say the new guidance falls short of the conditions laid out in a federal law requiring the military to dramatically increase public access to its justice system.

The military has long resisted opening its proceedings to the public. The 2016 law, passed after revelations about rampant sexual assault in the armed forces, instructs the DOD to develop policies similar to civilian courts that provide public access to “all stages of the military justice system.” The federal court system gives the public wide-ranging, real-time electronic access to hearing schedules and filings in all but the most sensitive criminal cases.

In contrast, the military typically withholds all court records while cases are active and keeps records secret indefinitely if a defendant is found not guilty. It also grants no public records access to cases in the preliminary hearing stage, including reports recommending whether cases should be dismissed or move forward to court-martial.

Experts say the lack of transparency robs the public of the ability to understand whether the military justice system operates fairly and how the branches are responding to issues like sexual assault within the ranks.

The new guidance doesn’t change any of that. It requires the military to disclose outcomes of court-martial hearings, but not until up to seven days after they conclude. Records from trials and appeals don’t have to be made public until 45 days after the record is “certified,” which can be months after a trial or appeal concludes.

And the new guidance requires the military to give at least three days’ notice of upcoming preliminary hearings in its courts. That gives anyone interested in attending a preliminary hearing just a few days to obtain clearance to enter a military base where the hearing is scheduled to be held and travel to the base, possibly across the country. Getting clearance to enter a military base can take a week or more depending on the location.

Even then, attendees wouldn’t know the significance of the case or even the accused’s full name unless they were directly involved. The Navy began posting notices of preliminary hearings late last year on its court website, but those postings currently lack the full name of the accused and don’t explain what the person is accused of beyond a crime category.

“The preliminary hearing phase is often when public interest in a controversy is highest,” said Franklin Rosenblatt, associate professor at the Mississippi College School of Law and president of the National Institute of Military Justice. “News media, affected communities and others now have more of a glimpse into the military justice process than they had before. But ultimately these are half measures. This is not the kind of contemporaneous access to criminal dockets that the rest of the country has come to expect.”

ProPublica’s lawsuit seeks contemporaneous access to court records at all levels, including to cases that resulted in acquittals, and a ruling that this kind of information is presumed open unless the military shows on a case-by-case basis that there’s a compelling need to withhold it.

The Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press and 34 media organizations have filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the military’s opaque practices don’t comply with federal law and decades of court rulings, including several from the U.S. Supreme Court. ProPublica is represented in the suit by its deputy general counsel, Sarah Matthews, and by pro bono attorneys at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP and Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP.

“We’re happy to see some incremental progress, but it is far less than what the First Amendment and a congressional mandate demand,” said Matthews. “Three days is often not enough time to get access to the base, and since the Navy withholds charge sheets until a case is over, the public won’t even know what the hearing is about or whether it’s worth attending. And the Navy still withholds all court records while the case is happening, only releasing a tiny fraction of the record months or even years after a case has ended, and then only if the defendant is found guilty.”

Matthews said this practice “makes it virtually impossible for the public and press to know if military courts are treating service members fairly and if justice is being done.”

The Navy does not comment on pending litigation, a spokesperson said.

In a December motion, attorneys representing the Navy, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other defendants asked a judge to dismiss the suit, arguing that decisions about military policy on court access are not up to the judicial branch and that the First Amendment does not require contemporaneous or “unfettered” access to such records and hearings. ProPublica opposed that motion in January.

The Navy has repeatedly and broadly invoked the federal Privacy Act as a reason to withhold military court records, a law ProPublica argues does not apply because the act does not trump the First Amendment or permit blanket sealing of court records. The DOD has also acknowledged it can release records despite the Privacy Act.

The Navy’s handling of a high-profile arson case prompted ProPublica’s lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of California’s U.S. District Court. In 2020, the amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard caught fire and burned for more than four days. The ship was destroyed, a more than $1 billion loss to the Navy.

The Navy prosecuted Seaman Recruit Ryan Mays on charges of aggravated arson and willfully hazarding a vessel. ProPublica found there was little to connect him to the blaze, including no physical evidence that Mays — or anyone — set the fire.

Mays was found not guilty at his court-martial in 2022, and ProPublica sued that year over the Navy’s refusal to release any court documents associated with his case.

ProPublica has asked the court to order the secretary of defense to issue proper rules for the release of records, hearing schedules and other information. The government tried to get that part of the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that Austin was allowed to decide how to implement the law.

A federal judge ruled last year that ProPublica’s claims against Austin should move forward. The judge wrote that ProPublica has “plausibly alleged that the issued guidelines are clearly inconsistent with Congress’ mandate.”

A recent independent federal review of the military justice system by a panel of experts recommends that the DOD fully comply with the 2016 law by developing electronic access to public dockets and providing “direct public access to pretrial, trial and appellate court-martial records at the time of filing.”

“More accurate data and greater transparency are needed to enhance trust and confidence in the system,” the review states.

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Megan Rose contributed reporting.

by Ziva Branstetter