ProPublica

by Aliyya Swaby, Lucas Waldron and Ash Ngu

Major medical associations recognize that access to gender-affirming care, also known as transition-related care, is medically necessary for transgender people, whose mental and physical health may be harmed if they are barred from getting it. Yet conservative politicians across the country have moved to restrict access to gender-affirming care. Our recent investigation found that state and local governments that deny this care to their employees are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on lawyers to defend their policies in discrimination lawsuits.

We are interested in talking to transgender individuals who have faced barriers when seeking quality gender-affirming care; we want to hear about obstacles you’ve faced in any part of the process, from struggling to find providers to limitations in insurance coverage. Documents, such as health bills or insurance denial letters, are always welcome and helpful for our investigative reporting process.

Our team may not be able to respond to everyone personally, but we will read everything you submit. We understand that sharing personal information may feel risky, and we will not publish any of it without your permission. We appreciate you sharing your story and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting, and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.

by Aliyya Swaby and Lucas Waldron

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

When a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia’s Houston County sought surgery as part of her gender transition, local officials refused to change the department’s health insurance plan to cover it, citing cost as the primary reason.

In the years that followed, the central Georgia county paid a private law firm nearly $1.2 million to fight Sgt. Anna Lange in federal court — far more than it would have cost the county to offer such coverage to all of its 1,500 health plan members, according to expert analyses. One expert estimated that including transition-related care in the health plan would add about 0.1% to the cost of all claims, which would come to roughly $10,000 per year, on average.

Since at least 1998, the county’s plan has excluded coverage for “services and supplies for a sex change,” an outdated term to refer to surgeries or medications related to gender transition. In 2016, the county’s insurance administrator recommended changing the policy to align with a new federal nondiscrimination rule. But Houston County leaders said no.

The county argued that even if the cost of expanding its insurance coverage to include transition-related health care was low on average, it could amount to much more in some years. The county also claimed that expanding the plan’s coverage would spur demands to pay for other, currently excluded benefits, such as abortion, weight loss surgery and eye surgery.

“It was a slap in the face, really, to find out how much they had spent,” said Lange, who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the county. “They’re treating it like a political issue, obviously, when it’s a medical issue.”

Major medical associations recognize that access to transition-related care, also known as gender-affirming care, is medically necessary for transgender people, citing evidence that prohibiting it can harm their mental and physical health. And federal judges have consistently ruled that employers cannot categorically exclude gender-affirming care from health care plans, though prior to Lange’s suit, there hadn’t been a ruling covering Georgia. The care can include long-term hormone therapy, chest and genital surgery, and other services that help transgender people align their bodies with their gender identities.

But banning gender-affirming care has become a touchstone of conservative politics. At least 25 states this year are considering or have passed bills that would ban gender-affirming care for minors. Bills in Oklahoma and Texas aim to ban insurance companies from covering transition-related health care for adults as well.

At the same time, state and local government employers are waging long legal battles against covering gender-affirming care for their employees. With recent estimates showing that 0.6% of all Americans older than 13 are transgender, these employers are spending large sums to fight coverage for a small number of people.

ProPublica obtained records showing that two states — North Carolina and Arizona — have spent more than $1 million in attorney fees on legal fights similar to the one in Houston County. Both have claimed in court filings that the decisions they made not to cover the care for employees are purely financial and not discriminatory.

But budget estimates and real-world examples show that the cost of offering coverage of gender-affirming care is negligible. When the state of North Carolina briefly covered gender-affirming care in 2017, the cost amounted to $400,000 — just 0.01% of the health plan’s $3.3 billion annual budget.

Two years later, North Carolina employees sued to get their gender-affirming care covered. The state hired several expert witnesses who expressed professional beliefs contradicting the major medical associations’ standards, including that transition care is unnecessary and even harmful. One expert, whom North Carolina paid $400 per hour, stated in court proceedings that transition care might be a “fad” or “consumer fraud,” similar to the widespread medical use of lobotomies in previous decades.

Julia McKeown, a professor at North Carolina State University and one of several plaintiffs suing North Carolina officials for denying their coverage, spent more than $14,000 out-of-pocket on gender-affirming surgery, pulling from her retirement account and personal savings. “They’re always talking about saving taxpayer money and being judicious with how we spend it,” McKeown said. “But here they are throwing money left and right to score political points, to discriminate, to target.”

Julia McKeown spent more than $14,000 out-of-pocket on gender-affirming surgery after North Carolina refused to cover her care. (Annie Tritt, special to ProPublica)

Officials in North Carolina, Arizona and Houston County, Georgia, did not respond to questions from ProPublica about the amount of money they spent or their reasons for continuing to fight the lawsuits. Dan Perdue, chair of the Houston County Board of Commissioners, referred ProPublica to the county attorney, who declined to comment beyond pointing to existing court documents.

These Places Paid Lawyers Over $1 Million to Try to Avoid Paying for Gender-Affirming Medical Care The total spent includes only direct payments to private law firms from the date the lawsuit was filed through Dec. 31, 2022. Source: Billing records obtained by ProPublica.

Compared to North Carolina and Arizona, Houston County stands out for the huge legal bill it amassed relative to its small size. North Carolina’s employee health plan covers more than 700,000 people and Arizona’s covers over 130,000 people, dwarfing Houston County’s 1,500. Yet Houston County has spent a similar amount of money on legal fees as those states in a shorter time, according to records ProPublica obtained.

In fact, Houston County’s total legal fees on the Lange case have amounted to almost three times its annual physical and mental health budget. “Is this a good use of public money? No,” said Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University who focuses on sex discrimination. “It’s fair to say that this is an issue where it’s pretty clear they’re going to lose.”

After more than a decade working for the Houston County Sheriff’s Office, Lange came out as a transgender woman to her boss and colleagues in 2017. A therapist had diagnosed her with gender dysphoria, characterized by significant distress at the mismatch between her assigned and actual gender.

Sheriff Cullen Talton, who has been in office since the early 1970s, first thought Lange was joking, according to a legal deposition. When he realized Lange was serious, he told her that he didn’t “believe in” being transgender but that she would have her job as long as she kept working hard.

Lange let herself feel cautiously optimistic. But she soon found that the county’s health plan would not cover any of the surgeries needed to make her body align with her gender — the operations are on a list of procedures that the county explicitly opts out of paying for, which are known as exclusions.

After coming out as transgender, Lange found that her county’s health plan would not cover any of the medical procedures needed to treat her gender dysphoria. (Annie Tritt, special to ProPublica)

Lange’s insurance does cover the hormonal medication she takes regularly, but not the lab work she needs once or twice a year to monitor how her body is responding to it. She receives a bill for $400 each lab visit, which is hard to afford on her $58,000 salary. The bills go to debt collectors, and she pays off smaller amounts when her budget allows.

Lange was able to cobble together several thousand dollars from savings and retirement funds to pay out-of-pocket for a chest surgery in early 2018, but the next surgery she needs costs more than $25,000, well above what she can afford. She sent letters to the insurance administrator and the county asking them to remove the exclusion in 2018 and 2019. Her appeals were denied.

Source: Billing and court records obtained by ProPublica.

In early 2019, in a last-ditch effort, Lange walked into the county board of commissioners’ meeting to ask the board to remove the health plan’s exclusion, hopeful they might hear her out. She mentally prepared herself to broadcast some of her most personal struggles to an audience that seemed less than receptive, bringing her son and a friend with her for support.

As Lange nervously waited for her turn at the podium, she watched someone familiar step up right before her. One of her neighbors had come to ask the county not to agree to her request. Addressing the row of commissioners at the front of the room, he launched into his list of questions: How does Lange’s request relate to her work? Why should taxpayers be on the hook for her surgery? How does her request differ from any kind of elective cosmetic surgery that also isn’t covered by insurance?

Lange asked the Houston County Board of Commissioners to allow the health plan to cover her gender-affirming surgery in February 2019. (Houston Home Journal via Facebook)

Watch video ➜

Lange watched, disheartened, as a commissioner reassured the neighbor that the board would not make any changes to the health plan that year. Lange would go on to speak that evening, despite believing it was a futile exercise. “You knew right then and there that no matter what I said, that it wouldn’t matter,” she said. “It’s a really helpless feeling.”

So she turned to the legal system. She worked with a team of attorneys handling a similar case — a lawsuit brought by a transgender employee against Georgia’s university system. In September of 2019, the university system agreed to a settlement that awarded the plaintiff $100,000 and provided all of its employees access to gender-affirming care. Just weeks after the settlement, Lange filed a lawsuit against the county for employment discrimination, arguing that denying her medical care subjected her to “inferior treatment.” Soon after, commissioners unanimously voted to continue excluding gender-affirming care from health coverage for yet another year.

In response to Lange’s lawsuit, the county’s lawyers said health insurance premiums had already soared and that the county wanted to prevent a flurry of requests to remove other exclusions in the plan. The county spent $57,135 — $390 per hour — on a budget expert who concluded that keeping the exclusion in place was “reasonable and consistent with general industry practices.”

The county’s expert argued that removing the exclusion could result in a “catastrophic claim,” in which a member of the county’s health plan seeks multiple surgeries in a single year that, combined, could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The county’s plan is self-funded, meaning that the employer — not an insurance company — is responsible for paying all enrollees’ medical costs, making it harder for the plan to absorb a high-cost claim.

Lange’s lawyers hired their own budget expert, whose estimate was in line with what other experts, government officials and academics have found. In her report, Lange’s expert wrote that, over time, the financial impact of removing the exclusion would be small, especially since few people would use the benefit. The expert also noted that the county has a separate insurance policy to cover unexpectedly large claims. She estimated that the cost of covering gender-affirming care would be “an amount so low that it would be considered immaterial.”

Without necessary treatment, transgender people are at higher risk for depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide. Russ Toomey, a professor of family studies and human development at the University of Arizona, has helped establish that fact through his research on the mental health of transgender youth. He also has firsthand knowledge of discrimination: Toomey is suing his employer for withholding coverage for gender-affirming care.

When he was recruited for his job in 2015, he knew the university had hired other trans faculty members and believed it was committed to supporting them. In 2016, Arizona’s Department of Administration, which controls the health care plan for public employees like Toomey, chose to keep excluding gender-affirming surgery from its health plan, ignoring the advice of its insurance vendors. That same year, Arizona commissioned an internal analysis, in which a state budget expert described the cost of covering gender-affirming care as “relatively low.” A state employee was directed to delete that sentence from the analysis, according to legal documents.

In 2018, Toomey sought coverage for a hysterectomy to alleviate the distress of his gender dysphoria, and he was denied. In 2019, he filed a lawsuit against the state and its board of regents, which oversees all three of Arizona’s state universities.

Russ Toomey, a professor at the University of Arizona, is suing the state for denying coverage of a hysterectomy. (Annie Tritt, special to ProPublia)

The experience made him “see and feel very intensely” the link he’d studied between gender discrimination and mental health. Toomey regularly feels the anguish of “knowing that I have these organs inside my body that shouldn’t be there” and not being able to afford a hysterectomy. Toomey said the unfairness of Arizona’s health plan hit hard last year, when his friend and colleague, a cisgender woman, was able to obtain coverage for her hysterectomy, while he had been denied. Arizona’s employee health plan covers medically necessary hysterectomies except as part of “gender reassignment surgery.”

He said that he developed a panic disorder over the last couple of years due to the stress of the lawsuit and his inability to access care. When he heard that the university board had spent more than $415,000 to fight the case, Toomey was shocked. “That hurts in the gut to hear,” he said.

The Arizona Board of Regents argued in court filings that it should not be a defendant in the lawsuit because it has no control over the state plan — the board provides health care through a plan controlled by the state. And the state of Arizona argued that it was not legally required to remove the exclusion, a change that it said would be too expensive.

The case is still ongoing in federal court. The state, a named defendant in the case, now has a Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, whose win last November ended 14 years of Republican control. In response to ProPublica’s request for comment, a Hobbs spokesperson declined to answer specific questions about whether the new administration would continue to defend the exclusion but emphasized the governor’s support for trans Arizonans.

“The Governor’s Office recognizes the need for the expansion of statewide benefits that are all inclusive,” Hobbs’ press secretary, Josselyn Berry, wrote in a statement.

15 States Offered a Health Plan That Didn’t Cover Gender-Affirming Care for State Employees in 2022 Note: Some states have multiple employee health plans with differing policies on coverage for gender-affirming medical care. North Carolina was ordered to remove its exclusion in 2022 by a federal judge, but the state is appealing the ruling. The exclusion was inactive as of December 2022. (Source: ProPublica review of health plans in all 50 states and D.C.)

Like Georgia’s Houston County and the state of Arizona, North Carolina has claimed that its key concern about removing the exclusion is cost. But the statements of officials suggest that’s hardly the only concern.

North Carolina state Treasurer Dale Folwell, one of the named parties in the lawsuit, has consistently referred to gender-affirming care as medically unnecessary, contradicting medical consensus. (North Carolina had briefly removed its exclusion in 2017, before Folwell took office and reinstated it.)

“The legal and medical uncertainty of this elective procedure has never been greater,” he said in a 2018 press release. “Until the court system, a legislative body or voters tell us that we ‘have to,’ ‘when to,’ and ‘how to’ spend taxpayers’ money on sex change operations, I will not make a decision that has the potential to discriminate against those who desire other currently uncovered elective procedures.”

The state also brought forward several expert witnesses who, rather than voice concerns about spending, expressed beliefs that transgender people should be prevented or discouraged from transitioning.

One of those witnesses, Paul Hruz, a pediatric endocrinologist in St. Louis who acknowledged he had no experience treating transgender patients for gender dysphoria, said in an expert report that in many cases the condition could stem from “social contagion” and that delaying care for children allows time for most of them to “grow out of the problem.” In his career and during the case, Hruz cited controversial theories, including that “cancel culture” and a “Gender Transition Industry” are preventing public debate on the merits of transition care. According to his deposition, Hruz has attended multiple events hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious group that has pushed anti-trans legislation across the country.

In a deposition filed by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, a mother of a transgender child recalled a conversation she’d had with Hruz years ago about trans rights and her child’s challenging experience. She said Hruz told her, “Some children are born in this world to suffer and die.”

Hruz denied in his deposition that he made that statement. He declined to provide comment for this story.

Hruz’s views are so extreme that Judge Loretta Biggs limited what topics he was allowed to speak about during the case. “His conspiratorial intimations and outright accusations sound in political hyperbole and pose a clear risk of inflaming the jury and prejudicing Plaintiffs,” she wrote in a ruling last year. “It is the Federal Rules of Evidence, not some ‘Cancel Culture,’ that excludes this portion of Hruz’s testimony.”

She ordered North Carolina to remove its exclusion and allow transgender employees to access gender-affirming care. The state quickly appealed.

In 2020, as Lange anxiously watched her case inch through the courts, her legal chances suddenly seemed better than ever: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employment discrimination based on transgender status is illegal. Previously, courts had been divided on the issue.

Lange was driving to collect evidence for a financial fraud case she was investigating when she heard the news. She began to cry. “I had to pull over and just lost it,” she recalled. “I was just so happy.”

Still, Houston County kept fighting.

While the case dragged on, Lange was sometimes asked why she didn’t find another job that would cover her health care, but she felt she couldn’t afford to lose her pension benefits. She also loves her work investigating criminal cases, helping victims of violent attacks and fraud. She wondered if any other law enforcement agency nearby would hire a transgender woman, let alone one who was suing her employer. She was in her late 40s at that point and felt too old for a major career change.

“It’s been a lonely process and it’s just a grind,” Lange said. “It just tears at you each day that you go by. You’re constantly reminded that you’re still not who you’re supposed to be.”

Two more years would pass before Lange won her case in 2022, with the federal judge citing the Supreme Court decision as a major reason for ruling in her favor. “The Exclusion plainly discriminates because of transgender status,” Judge Marc Treadwell wrote in his order. A jury soon after awarded her $60,000 for “emotional pain and mental anguish.” Lange celebrated, immediately calling friends who had been there for her through years of heartache, then posting the news on social media. She scheduled an appointment with a surgeon in New York.

But Lange’s joy was cut short when the county appealed the ruling, a move that would cost it tens of thousands of additional dollars; it also meant that Lange wouldn’t get any of the money she was awarded until the process was complete. The county asked the court to let it keep its exclusion in place as the appeal moved forward, arguing again that the cost of covering Lange’s surgery could be exorbitant. In its argument, it referenced a New York Times article, “How Ben Got His Penis,” about a costly surgery not for a transgender woman but for a transgender man. That surgery is much more complicated than the one Lange sought. While the judge weighed the arguments, Lange had to postpone her surgery yet again.

Lange called her friend Shannon West when she found out the county was appealing. “She was really upset. She was crying,” West recalled. “It’s like climbing a stairwell and you get to the top. You’re about to go through the door and then somebody shuts the door and you get hit back down.”

Houston County paid a private law firm almost $85,000 for the month of September 2022, several months after a federal judge ruled that the county’s health plan was discriminatory. The county is appealing the ruling. (Obtained by ProPublica)

This month, the door reopened: Treadwell ordered Houston County to cover transition care for its employees. He admonished the county for misrepresenting the cost of Lange’s surgery in its most recent legal argument, calling the decision “irresponsible.” He stressed that no connection existed, “anatomically or otherwise,” between the surgery mentioned in the New York Times article and the one Lange sought. The county, he added, had already received a specific, much lower estimate for the cost of Lange’s requested surgery.

Treadwell also said the county was “factually wrong” in suggesting that other transgender people would seek out even more expensive care. “It is undisputed that the Health Plan’s third-party administrator generally ‘concluded that utilization of gender-confirming care was low,’” he wrote. “In the four years this litigation has been pending, no other Health Plan members have sought gender confirmation surgery, or even identified as transgender.”

Lange heard about the ruling from her lawyer and struggled to feel excited. After the roller coaster of the previous several years, she had tamped down her optimism.

In many ways, Lange’s life has been on hold. She feels uncomfortable in her body and self-conscious about participating in activities she used to love: swimming, refereeing soccer, anything that would expose her body to heightened scrutiny. She’s divorced but has been hesitant to date. She goes to work, she comes home, on the weekends she plays tennis. She knows the surgery won’t restore the time she has lost.

Now, for the third time, she is starting the process of scheduling her surgery, hoping that the courts won’t yank the opportunity away again. She’s reluctant to book a hotel stay, already anticipating having to cancel it. “Until the case is done-done and over with, that’s when I can have some relief,” she said.

Have You Faced Barriers to Getting Gender-Affirming Care? Help Us Investigate.

by Jesse Eisinger

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This story is exempt from our Creative Commons license until July 15, 2023.

The collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank this past weekend were the end point in an all-too-familiar cycle: first the boom, then the breathtakingly speedy bust and then the bailout. We are now at the postmortem moment — when everyone wonders where the regulators were.

Silicon Valley Bank has already become notorious for how obvious its red flags were. Perhaps the most telling was the rapid growth of its borrowing from the Federal Home Loan Banks system. Banking experts know this Depression-era group of government-sponsored lenders as the second-to-last resort for banks. (The Fed is, as always, the lender of last resort.) At the end of last year, Silicon Valley Bank had $15 billion of FHLB loans, up from zero a year earlier.

“That’s the type of flag that says you need to look closely,” Kathryn Judge, a Columbia law professor who specializes in financial regulation, told me. But there’s no sign the loans triggered any regulatory attention.

Primary responsibility for the debacle lies, of course, with SVB’s management. But regulators are supposed to grasp that they exist because bankers are always tempted to take risks. Bankers want to grow too fast, borrow cheaply, lend freely and lock their investments up unwisely for long periods in hope of gaining higher returns.

Some commentators are now reiterating calls for banking rules to be tightened, which is probably a wise move. But the collapse of the two banks proves once more that the culture of the regulators is as important as any rules, laws or tools at their disposal.

At least one journalist detected banks’ rising vulnerabilities, including those of Silicon Valley Bank, as early as last November; the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s own chair had also warned about the problem. A few short sellers even started betting against the bank’s stock. Now, however, the combination of reckless bankers and lax regulators has left us with a financial crisis and a federal-government bailout — and the well-rehearsed spectacle of regulators promising to do better next time. (And yes, this was a bailout. Some depositors were facing losses and the federal government, backed by the public, prevented that — at as-yet-unknown scale and cost.)

One troubling aspect of this particular collapse is just how unremarkable a bank run it was, how basic its causes were. Regulators didn’t need any fancy analysis to detect the danger at Silicon Valley Bank. They just needed to notice its financial results. Granted, in 2018 Congress had loosened the post-global-financial-crisis Dodd-Frank regulations that would have required a bank like SVB to undergo more frequent stress tests, but those tests measure exotic or extreme risks. All that was required in this case was regular supervision. The bank had clear risk-control flaws and disclosed losses on its books, right there in its Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Silicon Valley Bank’s assets had grown dramatically, quadrupling in five years, as had its deposits. Both phenomena are almost always worrying signs. The bank was also overly concentrated in one sector of the economy, and an unusually large proportion of its deposits — about 94% — was uninsured, above the $250,000 limit that the FDIC will guarantee per deposit.

No bank can survive if every creditor asks for their money back at once. The larger the portion of a bank’s clients that could wake up one day to realize that their deposits are not protected, the greater the risk of a run.

What Silicon Valley Bank did with those deposits should have been another warning signal. It used them to buy too many long-term bonds. As interest rates go up, bonds lose value. Nobody should have needed the warning, but the bank itself said that interest-rate risk was the biggest hazard it faced. And regulators should have noticed before the bank began borrowing heavily from the FHLB system.

In its SEC filings in the third quarter of last year, the bank’s parent company disclosed that it was sitting on losses from its bond purchases big enough to swamp its total equity. That would have been a good time for supervisors to tell the bank to get its act together.

Silicon Valley Bank was far from doing so: It hadn’t had a chief risk officer for most of that year. “Regulators had to know that, and it has to matter,” Jeff Hauser, the founder and director of the Revolving Door Project, a Washington nonprofit that tracks the regulatory state, told me. “Once we valorize success as proof of wisdom, it’s hard for a lowly bank examiner to say, ‘This place doesn’t have a risk officer and doesn’t have a plan to address the risk on its books.’”

Bank regulators have awesome powers. They can go into a bank, examine its operations and demand changes. The problem is that they rarely do. “The regulators are like all the conflicted agents in ratings [agencies] and other areas,” Chris Whalen, a longtime financial analyst, told me. “They go with the flow in good times and drop the ball in bad times.”

The San Francisco Fed, which regulated the parent company, and the California regulators, which oversaw the bank itself, could have required SVB to raise capital last year, when it was less vulnerable. They could also have required the bank to increase rates on its savings accounts — in other words, to pay people more to lend it money. That would have eroded earnings but it would’ve kept customers from fleeing. Ask Greg Becker, the bank’s chief executive, today if he would rather have reduced per-share earnings or avoided having superintended the second-largest banking collapse in U.S. history.

So why don’t we have regulators who can be relied on to do their jobs?

Part of the answer is a legacy of the Trump administration’s penchant for installing regulators who are opposed to regulation. Donald Trump appointed Randal Quarles as the first-ever vice chair of banking supervision at the Federal Reserve. (The Fed did not respond to questions for this story.) Quarles saw it as his mission to relax the post-financial-crisis regime. He sent unambiguous signals about how he felt about aggressive regulators — “Changing the tenor of supervision will probably actually be the biggest part of what it is that I do,” he declared in 2017. Translation: Any sign of showing teeth and he’ll get out the pliers. And when Jerome Powell was nominated to be the chair of the Fed, in 2017, he told Congress that Quarles was a “close friend,” adding, “I think we are very well aligned on our approach to the issues that he will face as vice chair for supervision.” Naturally, Quarles supported the 2018 law to roll back stress tests — something that Becker himself had called for. Quarles also did not respond to my request for comment.

This crisis raises the old issue of how strange it is that the Federal Reserve regulates banks at all. In the years leading up to the 2008-09 financial crisis, an alphabet soup of regulators ostensibly shared responsibility for banking oversight along with the Fed: The OTS (Office of Thrift Supervision), the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency), the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission), and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission). Banks and financial entities played these agencies off against one another to shop for the least restrictive. Policy makers and legislators knew this and toyed with changing the architecture of banking-and-securities regulation. Ultimately, their only action was to close down the least of them, the OTS, and keep the rest, each of which had its own constituency of supporters.

So the Federal Reserve kept its responsibilities. But critics argue that the Fed can never become an effective bank regulator because its chief concern is with the more glamorous business of managing the economy.

The roots of regulatory failure run deeper, however, than the Trump administration’s actions. President Joe Biden’s appointees at the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appear to be trying to wield their powers to make the economy more efficient, safer and more equitable. But pockets of learned governmental helplessness remain. Regulators have an ingrained fear of stepping in, making people uncomfortable, making demands and using their clout.

The Fed’s banking supervisors should have been on heightened alert as its governors started boosting interest rates. Silicon Valley Bank faced not only the interest-rate risk to its treasury-bond holdings but also the likelihood of credit losses accumulating on its books from distressed venture-capital firms and declines in commercial real-estate values last year.

The fact that the Fed supervisors weren’t agile with Silicon Valley Bank indicates that they have failed to internalize how woefully fragile our financial system is. The U.S. has suffered repeated bubbles, manias and crashes since the deregulatory era began under Ronald Reagan: the savings-and-loan crisis, Long-Term Capital Management, the Nasdaq crash, the global financial crisis, the financial convulsions of the early pandemic. Congress and regulators sometimes shore up aspects of the system after the event, but they have failed to foster a resilient financial system that doesn’t inflate serial bubbles. Each time, instead, the regulators reinforce a lesson that if bubble participants huddle as closely together as possible, and fail conventionally, the government will be there to save them.

“One of the most disturbing dynamics here,” Judge, the Columbia Law professor, told me, “is a loss of respect for the Fed as a supervisor, as a regulator.” That is not a good place for the industry’s chief overseer to start rebuilding confidence in the integrity of the American banking system.

by Hannah Dreyfus

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

After two months barricaded in a bedroom to defy a court order directing them to be returned to the custody of their father, who they say abused them, Utah siblings Ty and Brynlee Larson emerged after a judge delayed enforcing the custody change while a new criminal probe into the father is resolved.

“New information has come forward today regarding serious allegations of abuse,” Judge Derek Pullan said in a Monday hearing, citing the criminal probe first reported by ProPublica.

The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office told the news organization last month that it is investigating Brent Larson, the children’s father. The probe is looking into allegations of felony child abuse, according to a spokesperson for the Herriman Police Department.

The Utah County Attorney’s office is also investigating Larson, for allegations of misdemeanor child abuse, officials said in court Monday.

“It appears that these allegations of sexual abuse and other kinds of abuse against the children at the hands of Brent have been put forward after this court’s ruling regarding temporary custody being awarded to Brent,” Pullan said.

Larson, via his attorney Ron Wilkinson, has denied the new allegations. “There have been similar false claims — repeatedly, for years,” Wilkinson wrote to ProPublica.

The judge had sided with Larson and a court-appointed therapist that the children’s mother, Jessica Zahrt, had manipulated the children to falsely believe he had abused them. The argument is based on the disputed psychological theory called “parental alienation,” in which one parent is accused of manipulating a child to turn against the other parent. It has been rejected by mainstream scientific bodies as not a legitimate mental health disorder.

If the DA’s office decides not to charge Larson, the court will consider reinstating its order to force the children into their father’s custody, the judge said.

A previous investigation into Larson stalled in February 2021, when prosecutors determined they did not have enough evidence to lead to a probable conviction.

Hours after the judge temporarily vacated his order on Monday, Ty, 15, and Brynlee, 12, told ProPublica that they had extricated themselves from the boarded-up bedroom where they had lived and Ty had livestreamed, bringing the family court case to the attention of hundreds of thousands of viewers.

“I’m still in fight or flight,” Ty said from the kitchen of his mother’s Salem home. He said he is certain his social media advocacy altered the trajectory of his case. “I need to keep growing this. It’s like, this is the thing that saved me.”

“I know this is temporary,” he said of the judge’s decision. “Like, you found a little field, but you’re not out of the woods. There’s still a fight up ahead.”

Brynlee said she planned to spend her first day of freedom with friends. She said she was heading out the door for the first time in two months, with plans to surprise her friends as they got off the school bus.

“No one knows we’re out yet!” she said, working to unknot the sleeves of her coat.

Monday’s hearing was the result of a request by the Utah County Sheriff’s Office for the judge to clarify his order authorizing police to forcibly remove the children from their mother’s home and place them in their father’s legal custody. Despite the custody change, Pullan had prohibited Larson from having unsupervised parenting time with the children or spending overnights with them, instead ordering Ty and Brynlee to be separately housed at their paternal relatives’ homes pending further court orders.

After an unsuccessful attempt to carry out the order in December — during which officers decided not to break down the bedroom door despite Larson’s request that they do so, according to police reports — the sheriff’s office said the Salem Police department was refusing further attempts to carry out the court’s orders and asked the judge for further clarification given “the delicate and potential combustible situation.”

In the Monday hearing, Pullan also reiterated that he would hold off enforcing his order to send Ty and Brylee to a so-called reunification camp. Turning Points for Families says it treats children who are victims of “parental alienation.”

“There’s also a dispute in this case about the merits of a reunification camp called Turning Points,” said Pullan, who said the children’s parents can hire experts to weigh in on the efficacy of such programs.

Following ProPublica’s coverage of the Larson siblings’ case, Utah lawmakers called for a reexamination of court-sanctioned reunification therapies for “alienated” minors.

“I find this whole thing of taking kids away from a parent to force them into reunification with an estranged parent to be very alarming,” state Sen. Todd Weiler said in an interview with ProPublica.

Weiler said he is learning more about the issue with hopes of introducing legislation to bring Utah into compliance with Kayden’s Law, which offers additional federal funds to states that require family courts to consider past evidence of abuse when making custody decisions. It was incorporated last year into the federal Violence Against Women Act, which provides federal funding to states that improve their child custody laws to better protect children. States that opt in to comply with the federal act limit the use of reunification programs and other court ordered treatments that lack sufficient scientific backing.

“We need to be more cautious throwing around terms like ‘parental alienation,’” said Weiler. “There are a host of legitimate reasons a teen might not want to visit a parent — to jump to blame the custodial parent would be a mistake.”

In an interview with ProPublica, state Sen. Mike McKell said Utah courts and lawmakers should also “take a hard look at reunification therapy.”

“Reunification camps concern me,” said McKell, who also said he plans to look at potential legislation to curtail court-ordered therapeutic practices with “no good science to justify it.”

“The coverage of this case has been very helpful,” he said of ProPublica’s reporting. “You might assume that what’s happening in these family courts is appropriate, until you dig down deep and take a careful look at what’s actually going on.”

Mariam Elba and Mollie Simon contributed research.

Correction

March 16, 2023: This story originally reported incorrectly the level of crime the Salt Lake County District Attorney’s office is investigating. The office is investigating Brent Larson for felony child abuse, not misdemeanor child abuse. The Utah County Attorney’s office is investigating Larson for allegations of misdemeanor child abuse.

by Al Shaw, Irena Hwang and Caroline Chen

In 2013, the worst Ebola outbreak in history started in a small village in southern Guinea, eventually tearing through West Africa. By the time it ended in 2016, more than 11,300 people were dead. Scientists have linked this and other Ebola outbreaks to specific patterns of deforestation.

To understand why, ProPublica adapted an academic model to show how the way forests are being cut down around the locations of multiple previous outbreaks could increase the risk of another outbreak today.

See more in our interactive story.

by Robert Faturechi and Ellis Simani

On Feb. 21, 2018, August Troendle, an Ohio billionaire, made a remarkably well-timed stock trade. He sold $1.1 million worth of shares of Syneos Health the day before a management shake-up caused the company’s stock to plunge 16%. It was the largest one-day drop that year for Syneos’ share price.

The company was one Troendle knew well. He is the CEO of Medpace, one of Syneos’ chief competitors in a niche industry. Both Syneos and Medpace handle clinical trials for biopharma companies, and that year they had jointly launched a trade association for companies in the field.

The day after selling the Syneos shares in February 2018, Troendle bought again — at least $3.9 million worth. The value of his Syneos stake then rose 75% in the year that followed.

In February 2019, Troendle sold much of that position, netting $2.3 million in profit. Two days later, Syneos disclosed that the Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating its accounting practices. The news sent the company’s shares tumbling. Troendle’s sale avoided a 25% loss, the stock’s largest decline in such a short period during either that or the previous year. (Troendle declined to comment.)

The Medpace executive is among dozens of top executives who have traded shares of either competitors or other companies with close connections to their own. A Gulf of Mexico oil executive invested in one partner company the day before it announced good news about some of its wells. A paper-industry executive made a 37% return in less than a week by buying shares of a competitor just before it was acquired by another company. And a toy magnate traded hundreds of millions of dollars in stock and options of his main rival, conducting transactions on at least 295 days. He made an 11% return over a recent five-year period, even as the rival’s shares fell by 57%.

August Troendle (via the Medpace website)

These transactions are captured in a vast IRS dataset of stock trades made by the country’s wealthiest people, part of a trove of tax data leaked to ProPublica. ProPublica analyzed millions of those trades, isolated those by corporate executives trading in companies related to their own, then identified transactions that were anomalous — either because of the size of the bets or because individuals were trading a particular stock for the first time or using high-risk, high-return options for the first time.

The records give no indication as to why executives made particular trades or what information they possessed; they may have simply been relying on years of broad industry knowledge to make astute bets at fortuitous moments. Still, the records show many instances where the executives bought and sold with exquisite timing.

Such trading records have never been publicly available. Even the SEC itself doesn’t have such a comprehensive database. The records provide an unprecedented glimpse into how the titans of American industry make themselves even wealthier in the stock market.

U.S. securities law bars “insider trading” — buying or selling stocks based on access to nonpublic information not available to other investors — under certain circumstances. Historically, insider trading prosecutions and SEC enforcement have both focused on corporate employees, and those close to them, trading in the stock of their own companies.

But executives at companies can also have extensive access to nonpublic information about rivals, partners or vendors through their business. Buying or selling stock based on that knowledge can run afoul of insider-trading law, according to experts. ProPublica described multiple trades, without mentioning names, to Robert Zink, a former chief of the Justice Department’s criminal fraud section, who responded that if he were still at the Justice Department, “of course we would look at it.” He added that the key to ProPublica’s findings is “the trading doesn’t appear to be a one- or two-time thing. It’s happening a lot.”

Harvey Pitt, former chair of the SEC, said it was unwise for corporate officials to bet on the fortunes of competing companies.

“Executives should not be trading in the stocks of their competitors,” Pitt said. “Why go looking for trouble? It’s perfectly possible to invest in the stock market without investing in companies you have actual nonpublic information about or that you might be argued to have nonpublic information about.”

There’s at least one sign that the SEC has gotten interested in this sort of trading. In 2021, the agency brought an insider-trading case against an executive at a biopharmaceutical company who learned his own company was about to get acquired, then bought options in a competitor, whose share price also rose on the news. (The case is still pending; the defendant has denied improper conduct.) It’s not clear if that action is a harbinger of increased enforcement by the SEC, which declined to comment about its enforcement priorities.

Insider trading is a simple concept and simultaneously difficult to prove, because it hinges on blurry definitions and court rulings that have favored defendants and weakened enforcement. Matters are even murkier when it comes to executives buying and selling shares of rivals and partners. This can be perfectly legal.

But even when legal, such trades can allow executives to win when their companies lose, according to securities experts. Executives are often handsomely compensated with their own company’s stock, which gives them a direct reward for maximizing profits and raising their company’s stock price. Owning shares of competitors' stock potentially gives them a reason to root for their rivals to succeed, said Alan Jagolinzer, a professor of financial accounting at the University of Cambridge’s business school.

And by making millions through trading on nonpublic information, executives could contribute to the perception that the stock market is rigged to benefit the privileged. Well-placed executives enjoy access to information within their industry that isn’t available to ordinary investors. The perception that industry insiders use that knowledge for personal gain could undermine the public’s confidence that the markets are fair.

In the wake of the stock market crash of 1929, Americans learned that wealthy corporate executives had taken advantage of their positions to reap profits on their personal investments. In response, Congress created the SEC and passed reforms aimed at leveling the playing field for investors. Those reforms required top executives of public companies, who swim in an ocean of nonpublic information, to disclose any trades they make in their own company’s stock.

This disclosure requirement, however, has never applied to trades that executives make in shares of partner companies and competitors. Congress also didn’t explicitly ban, or even define, insider trading. Instead, it generally outlawed securities fraud, and left it to regulators and judges to hash out the specifics.

Still, the basic concept of insider trading is well-established. Any employee (or contractor who works for them, such as lawyers or investment bankers) who knows about, say, a coming announcement of a bad quarter, a new blockbuster product or an upcoming takeover is generally prohibited from buying or selling shares in that company.

To bring a case, federal authorities have to prove two main elements. First, they must show that the trader had what’s known as “material nonpublic information”: a significant fact, not yet publicly known, that would affect the company’s share price. And second, that the employee who traded on that information, or provided the tip to the person who did, had a duty not to disclose it or use it for personal benefit.

These elements can be hard to pin down. The CEO of a public company can argue their well-timed trade of a competitor’s shares was informed by a deep knowledge of the industry, not a nonpublic tip. The owner of a private firm may argue that they can use nonpublic information from their own company to trade the stock of competitors because they have no duty not to use the information for personal benefit.

Many employers add their own restrictions. Law firms and investment managers often require employees to clear any securities trades ahead of time. Some companies have policies that forbid trading while in possession of nonpublic information about competitors, clients or partners. Medpace, the publicly traded company that Troendle has led while profiting from trades in several competitors, acknowledges the likelihood that employees will learn nonpublic information about firms other than their own and warns that employees “who obtain material non-public information about another company in the course of their duties are prohibited from trading in the stock or securities of the other company.”

No other executives in ProPublica’s database appear to have traded in shares of rival companies on the scale that Isaac Larian did. The CEO of MGA Entertainment, whose Bratz fashion dolls competed with Mattel’s Barbie dolls, Larian traded hundreds of millions of dollars worth of his rival’s securities between 2005 and 2019. (Records show Larian also traded, often profitably, in shares of Hasbro, another close competitor.)

Over a recent five-year span, Larian earned about $28 million in profit on Mattel trades. That equates to an 11% return on his investment, which sounds like a modest outcome until you consider that Mattel’s stock crashed by 57% during the same period.

Isaac Larian (Unique Nicole/Getty Images)

MGA and Mattel are fierce competitors. Larian has poached Mattel employees, and he frequently lashes out at the company on social media and cable news. He uses mocking nicknames to describe Mattel executives in public, referring to former general counsel Bob Normile as Bob “Abnormal,” and refers to the company as the “evil empire.”

Mattel and MGA have sued and countersued each other. Larian’s rival filed suit in 2004, claiming MGA had stolen the idea for Bratz, its first giant success. The litigation dragged on for years, with MGA ultimately claiming victory after an appeal.

And through it all, Larian was buying and selling shares of Mattel. For example, on June 5, 2008, he sold $3 million of Mattel stock. That same day, he was in court fighting the company in the Bratz lawsuit — and he had just obtained evidence that could hurt Mattel. He had received an anonymous letter alleging Mattel was spying on Larian and his family. It was a potentially game-changing piece of evidence in a lawsuit in which Larian’s MGA was being accused of unsavory business practices.

The judge ordered the letter sealed, but its existence became public later that day, when it was revealed in the press. The next day, Mattel stock fell 2.6%. Having sold the day before, Larian avoided the loss on those shares.

By 2015, the two companies were in litigation once again. At that point, MGA was alleging that Mattel was stealing its ideas for new toys. In April, Larian emailed Mattel’s CEO after the two met, suggesting that Mattel’s share price would rise if the two companies came to an out-of-court agreement. “I believe the street will reward the Mattel stock positively once this is settled and the legal fees go away,” Larian wrote in the email.

But Larian never settled. And he appears to have invested millions in bets against Mattel during the month the companies were discussing a settlement. The trades are not described as short sales in the IRS data. But when Mattel’s share price fell, Larian’s broker reported profits, a scenario two securities experts said suggested the trades were either short trades or stock options that Larian took out in anticipation the stock would tumble.

Larian has publicly acknowledged shorting Mattel stock. “I made a LOT more money shorting Mattel stock than they did running a $4.5 billion toy company,” Larian boasted in one LinkedIn post in 2020. (In other instances, he has also posted about holding a long position in Mattel. “I’m a major shareholder,” Larian said on LinkedIn in 2017.)

Larian’s trades sometimes corresponded with the rollout of new MGA products that could cut into Mattel’s market share and thus might lower Mattel’s stock price. In the month before MGA unveiled a new line of Bratz dolls in July 2015, Larian appears to have invested (here, too, the evidence is not conclusive) about $3 million betting against Mattel.

At other times, Larian traded Mattel stock before the company announced news, which industry experts said he may have been in a position to learn about as CEO of a rival. Toy companies all deal with the same vendors and retail stores and compete with each other for prime shelf space. It’s not uncommon to gain intelligence on how well a competitor is doing. And according to interviews with eight people who have worked for him, Larian is a boss with an endless appetite for information about his company and its competitors, constantly grilling subordinates on minutiae about the industry.

On July 26, 2017, Larian sold $1.4 million worth of Mattel shares. The next day, Mattel announced its earnings for the previous quarter, with declining sales for Barbie and some of the toymaker’s other doll lines, including Monster High and American Girl, all of which MGA had competed with. Mattel’s stock fell nearly 8% by the end of the next day, the beginning of a 23% slide over the next month. Larian avoided those losses.

ProPublica described Larian’s trading history — without identifying him or the companies involved — to multiple securities experts. They said the pattern was potentially troubling and deserved regulatory and legal scrutiny. But they also noted numerous caveats and ways in which the law offers latitude for this sort of trading.

Generally, the experts said, these types of trades are more perilous for executives at either public companies or private firms with investors. Executives at such companies typically have a clear duty to refrain from using company information for their own personal benefit, according to experts.

But if an executive owns all of his company, trading ahead of his own actions, such as the announcement of a new product line, or based on his own sales data, would likely not be legally problematic. (Larian’s tax data suggests he owns about 80% of the company, but it’s not clear whether another person or a different Larian entity owns the rest.) “U.S. law does not generally prohibit trading on information that you own,” said Joshua Mitts, a Columbia University law professor who has studied insider trading laws.

However, using confidential information from outside one’s own company, such as if an executive traded after learning something about a competitor from a retailer, experts say, could raise legal questions, as could trading after learning a nonpublic fact that was expected to remain confidential during litigation or settlement talks. “The SEC would certainly look at this,” Mitts said.

Pitt, the former SEC chair, echoed those concerns. “This conduct contains the seeds of some very potentially pernicious activity,” he said. “This is very risky.”

Larian declined requests for an interview and also declined multiple requests to answer a list of detailed questions for this article. His lawyer, Sanford Michelman, told ProPublica that any suggestion that Larian violated the law is “false and defamatory.” He asserted that they were not aware of any evidence suggesting that Larian possessed material, nonpublic information that Larian knew was obtained in breach of a duty. Michelman also accused ProPublica of making “false assumptions and allegations” but did not identify any specific errors in ProPublica’s reporting.

Often executives can know even more about their business partners than they do about their competitors. ProPublica’s data shows that some executives have bought stock in their partners with superb timing.

Gerald Boelte is the chairman and founder of LLOG Exploration, one of the largest privately owned oil production companies in the U.S. After the Deepwater Horizon spill spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, some companies gave up on drilling there. But Boelte stayed, buying up new leases.

One of Boelte’s oil production partners was Stone Energy, at the time a publicly traded company; both LLOG and Stone were based in Louisiana. In 2013, the two companies drilled a deepwater well together in the gulf. And in June 2015, they struck oil together on a well in another part of the gulf known as Viosca Knoll.

That same summer, a separate project Stone was working on in another part of the gulf south of Louisiana, the Cardona wells, looked to be turning into a success. In an earnings report on Aug. 5, 2015, Stone announced that the value of its reserves had increased, along with revealing promising new details of the Cardona field. In the days that followed, Stone’s stock surged.

That was good news for Boelte. The day before Stone’s earnings were announced, he began purchasing $527,000 in the company’s stock. His tax data suggests it was the first and only time he bought the company’s stock during the years for which ProPublica has data. By the time he sold the shares two months later, Boelte claimed $343,000 in profit, a 65% return.

Aside from being Stone’s partner, there’s another reason Boelte could have received insights about how the company was doing before the public did. After seeing positive signs in its Cardona project, Stone sold LLOG its stake in the Viosca Knoll well the two companies had been working on together. Stone planned to use the sale proceeds to continue developing its own projects, such as the Cardona wells. The two sides concluded the sale in October, according to company filings, but typically such negotiations take months, an expert said. That suggests Boelte might have known about Stone shifting resources before he bought shares.

In a detailed statement, Boelte said, “I do not and have never traded on any material, non-public information of competitors, business partners or others.” He went on: “I did not draw any conclusion about Stone Energy’s intentions for other specific investments one way or another, and I had no discussions with Stone Energy regarding their intentions with respect to other investments by Stone Energy.” His purchase of the shares, he said, was motivated by his expectation that crude prices were about to rise; based on that, he invested in “several energy securities, including Stone Energy.”

Boelte said he quickly sold half of the Stone shares, and held on to the remainder until 2021 (which is beyond the period covered by ProPublica’s data), and that overall he lost money on the trades. “Any implication that I was investing based upon advance knowledge,” Boelte said, “is therefore clearly false.”

The board of Checkpoint Systems had been quietly considering its “strategic” options for more than a year. The New Jersey-based company, which makes anti-theft tags and other inventory tracking devices for stores, was suffering as its clients closed brick-and-mortar locations. By late 2015 and early 2016, Checkpoint’s board had made a list of potential acquirers, and the company’s bankers began contacting them.

Talks heated up with one potential buyer, CCL Industries, and Checkpoint gave the company access to its confidential business and financial documents. In January 2016, CCL told Checkpoint that it was going to ask its board for approval to make the acquisition. CCL would offer $10.15 per share, a significant premium.

As this was happening, on Jan. 14, Jim Sankey, the CEO of InVue, one of Checkpoint’s competitors, bought $285,000 in shares of the company. He was just getting started. Over the course of the next month, Sankey bought more shares, $3.2 million in all. (ProPublica’s tax records show no indication that he had traded shares of Checkpoint before.)

A month later, news broke that Checkpoint was getting acquired. Sankey made $2.3 million in profit from his investment, a cherry on top of the $25 million he made from his own company that year.

In an interview, Sankey said that he did not know Checkpoint was going to be acquired, and that his company was not among those approached by Checkpoint about a possible sale or partnership. Sankey said he bought shares because the price had been falling. Years earlier, in 2007, he had overseen a roughly $150 million sale of one of his anti-theft product lines to Checkpoint. He knew that division’s operating income at the time of the sale, and that it hadn’t lost clients since. Based on that calculation, he believed the stock was undervalued. “I built the business,” said Sankey, who remains CEO of privately held InVue. “And I knew they couldn't screw it up.”

Sankey said that investigators, he believes from the SEC, interviewed the two brokers he had instructed to buy Checkpoint shares. The investigators, he said, dropped the matter after his brokers relayed his explanation for why he bought shares. He had no proof, Sankey said, but “they took my word.”

For Barry Wish, on one occasion, losing a contract to a competitor came with a significant benefit. In the 1980s, Wish co-founded Ocwen, a mortgage-servicing company, then helped steer the West Palm Beach, Florida-based firm for decades on its board. Mortgage servicers essentially act as brokers between lenders and homeowners, handling billing, modifying loans for borrowers and carrying out foreclosures.

In the years after the housing crash, Ocwen and its competitors grew rapidly, as big banks auctioned off the loans they were administering amid costly new regulations.

One of the prize tranches — $215 billion in home mortgages from Bank of America — was won by Wish’s rival, Nationstar, in January 2013. The day the company’s deal with Bank of America was announced, its stock shot up almost 17%, its biggest one-day gain since the company had gone public almost a year earlier. According to reporting at the time, Wish’s firm had been jockeying with Nationstar for the deal.

But losing wasn’t a total loss for Wish.

Less than three weeks earlier, he had bought $600,000 of Nationstar shares. The day the deal became public, Wish sold his shares, earning himself a $157,000 profit.

In a phone call with ProPublica, Wish said he didn’t recall buying Nationstar shares. Asked if he ever traded competitors’ stock, he said, “No, not at all.” When told his tax data showed he had, Wish said, “You might see it, but I don’t have any recollection,” before hanging up.

Steven Grossman is another executive who was fortunate enough to buy stock in a company just before it was acquired. Grossman’s grandfather founded Southern Container Corp., a corrugated packaging and containerboard manufacturer based on Long Island. It was one of the largest private companies of its kind, with more than half a billion dollars in annual sales until Grossman sold it in 2008 for about $1 billion. He stayed on after the sale, remaining on the payroll of the new owner, Rock-Tenn, until 2013.

ProPublica’s data shows that during his years in the industry, Grossman was also frequently trading the stock of companies he competed with. He sold no company’s stock in higher volumes than that of Temple-Inland, a Texas-based corrugated packaging firm.

Many of Grossman’s trades were well-timed, but few were as timely as his June 2011 purchases. On June 2, he bought $223,000 of Temple-Inland shares. Then, on June 6, he bought an additional $428,000.

On the very day of Grossman’s second and larger purchase, after trading closed, another paper company announced it was trying to acquire Temple-Inland. Executives had secretly been negotiating the takeover for weeks.

When the market opened the next day, Temple-Inland’s stock skyrocketed in what was its biggest one-day increase in more than a decade. Grossman quickly cashed out, making a 37% return in less than a week.

In an interview, Grossman denied trading stock altogether. When told that IRS data documented his trading activity, and asked about Temple-Inland in particular, Grossman said, “I haven’t traded stock since then.” The IRS data shows he continued to trade. Grossman said that after he sold his company in 2008, he never worked for the buyer, Rock-Tenn. But his tax data shows he was on Rock-Tenn’s payroll through 2013. “They paid me but never used my services,” Grossman said. He asserted that he did not know about the acquisition talks involving Temple-Inland when he bought shares. Asked what prompted him to buy that day, Grossman replied, “That was 10 years ago.” With that, he hung up.

Methodology Data background and limitations

When an investor sells stocks, bonds or other securities through a broker, the firm is generally required to issue a tax form called a 1099-B, which details several pieces of information about the transaction, including a description of the asset sold, the proceeds from the sale and the date the sale occurred. The brokerage provides a copy of the 1099-B both to the investor and to the IRS. ProPublica’s universe of trades was drawn from tens of millions of these records, part of a larger set of records that formed the basis of ProPublica’s series “The Secret IRS Files.”

ProPublica’s database does not include a complete picture of all trades made by or for investors. Investments made through a separate legal entity like a partnership, for example, are not included. Additionally, 1099-B forms are produced when an asset is sold, not when it is purchased. Many records, however, did list the date the securities were acquired, so ProPublica’s reporters were often able to see a portion of an investor's purchasing activity. Securities that were purchased but not sold until recently are not included in the data.

The dataset spans roughly two decades. Trades from more recent years generally include more information because disclosure requirements have increased over the years. That additional detail allowed ProPublica to better determine how successful the individuals in our data were in the stock market. For stock bought before 2011, brokers were required to report the date it was sold and the total proceeds it generated but not the price paid.

These disclosure changes also affected how certain types of trades appear in the data. That includes short sales, in which an investor borrows shares of a stock, sells the borrowed shares, then “closes” the transaction by buying an equal number of shares to replace the borrowed stock at what they hope is a lower price. The IRS previously required that brokers issue a 1099-B disclosing only when someone entered into a short sale and how big the position was, but not when they closed the short. For shorts initiated after the disclosure changes in 2011, the agency required brokers to submit information about the short being closed, listing both the date it was closed and the overall profit, but no longer required the date the short was entered into. By 2014, options trades were also required to be reported in more detail.

Sometimes it was straightforward to identify short sales and options — for example, a field on the 1099-B form described them as such. However, according to experts, the forms are nonintuitive and brokers frequently fill them out incorrectly. To determine whether the anomalous cases were indeed short sales, ProPublica presented them to experts and the subjects themselves to ascertain the nature of those trades.

How we analyzed the records

To gauge how a stock’s price changed after an investor purchased or sold shares on a given date, ProPublica obtained a dataset outlining the price history for stocks traded on the New York Stock Exchange, the Nasdaq or the American Stock Exchange. We combined that data with the records of the trades documented in our IRS records. Reporters then compared the closing price of a stock on the day a trade occurred to the closing price after a number of different intervals of trading days (5, 10, 20, 60 or 120 days). Closing prices were used because brokers aren’t required to report the share price at the moment the trade was made. This approach mirrors a common method used by academic researchers who study insider trading.

By calculating a stock’s change in price after various time intervals, we could identify trades made close to significant movements in a company’s share price. But because the prices of some securities are much more volatile than others, it was important to determine how anomalous those swings were.

We compared the return from each individual trade to the full distribution of returns for that stock: For example, a one-day return of 20% was compared to all other one-day returns for that stock over a certain period of time. We found several instances in which the days executives traded in their competitors’ stock were more opportune — if not the most opportune — over certain windows of time. One executive, for example, sold more than $1 million worth of shares in a competitor’s stock the day before the company had its largest one-day price drop that year.

ProPublica also examined what ties, if any, individuals had to the companies they were trading, using interviews, news reports, SEC filings, tax records, court records, social media and other avenues.

Help Us Report on Taxes and the Ultrawealthy

Do you have expertise in tax law, accounting or wealth management? Do you have tips to share? Here’s how to get in touch. We are looking for both specific tips and broader expertise.

Paul Kiel and Jeff Ernsthausen contributed reporting, and Doris Burke contributed research.

by Logan Jaffe, Mary Hudetz and Ash Ngu

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story is part of an ongoing series investigating the return of Native American ancestral remains. Sign up for ProPublica’s “Repatriation Project” newsletter to get updates as they publish and learn more about our reporting.

Until this year, the University of Kentucky’s William S. Webb Museum of Anthropology had never returned any of the more than 4,500 Native American human remains in its collections.

That is about to change.

Weeks after ProPublica published the “Repatriation Project,” the university told federal officials that 138 ancestral remains in its collection could be repatriated to three Shawnee tribes in Oklahoma and Missouri. The university also announced it will commit nearly $900,000 over the next three years and hire three more staff members to work on repatriations.

“This significant investment in staff and resources is a testament to the university’s steadfast commitment to Native nations and completing the sensitive process of repatriation with transparency, dignity and respect,” Kristi Willet, a university spokesperson, said in an email to ProPublica.

The University of Kentucky is among more than a dozen U.S. schools and museums that have pledged to redouble their efforts to return the human remains and belongings — in some cases numbering in the thousands — that were taken from Native American gravesites. Institutions have also publicly acknowledged the harm inflicted on tribal communities by continuing to keep ancestral remains and cultural items, including after the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act called for them to be returned to tribes.

The wave of responses follow the launch of ProPublica’s series investigating the failures of the federal law.

In the three decades since the law’s passage, museums and universities repatriated fewer than half of the 210,000 human remains they initially reported holding, according to a ProPublica analysis of federal data from December. Ten institutions and federal agencies — including old and prestigious museums, state-funded universities and the U.S. Interior Department — hold about half of those remains, the analysis found.

Nearly 50 local and regional newsrooms have used the data analyzed by ProPublica to report on the progress of repatriation by institutions in their area.

“We want to get this done quickly. We recognize that tribal nations actually feel harm the entire time we’re holding their ancestors,” Catherine Smith, who was recently hired to coordinate University of Florida’s repatriation efforts, told WUFT, a public radio station in Gainesville.

Many institutions have for years told tribes that they will improve their work under NAGPRA and apologized for holding onto remains, said Shannon O’Loughlin, chief executive of the Association on American Indian Affairs, a nonprofit that has long advocated for tribes on repatriation. Meanwhile, museums and universities often continued to interpret the law in ways that allowed for them to resist repatriation and escape scrutiny, she said.

Now, with increased attention from the news media, institutions are facing more pressure to answer for vast collections of Native American remains. The public apologies and commitments to allocate more resources, including hiring staff, mark a shift for many institutions, she said.

“We’ve been told the same stuff, so I’m not sure that we should believe them now,” said O’Loughlin, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. “But, hey, they’re saying it in the public, so we’re gonna hold them to it.”

“More Work to Do”

Tribes could be left with empty promises again, as only a fraction of those institutions stated they will devote more money and other resources to repatriation.

Among those promising to put resources behind their commitment to repatriate is the Tennessee Valley Authority, which told ProPublica that it also has drafted a federal notice that will enable tribal nations to repatriate the remains of nearly 5,000 Native Americans. Federal records show that the utility has at least 3,500 remains in its collections; ProPublica learned that the TVA recently found roughly an additional 1,500 ancestors in its repositories at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the University of Kentucky and the University of Alabama. Those ancestors hadn’t previously been reported under NAGPRA, as required by the law.

Most of the ancestral remains in TVA’s collections are stored at those three universities, which, along with the TVA, are among the 10 institutions that ProPublica identified as holding the largest number of remains of Native Americans in the country.

Nine of those 10 institutions have stated to ProPublica that they are committed to returning remains and cultural items to tribal nations. Indiana University has not responded to ProPublica’s requests for comment.

The speed and scale of the TVA’s effort to repatriate everything in its collections concerns some tribal historic preservation officers and cultural directors.

“We’ve never had a collection of this magnitude be left to have the tribes decide,” said Miranda Panther, NAGPRA officer for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. “Usually we make decisions before transfer of legal control has occurred. So I’m not sure how this process is going to work.”

Archaeologist Megan Cook, who recently became a NAGPRA specialist for TVA, said that consultations will continue with tribes and that the TVA is committed to repatriation “for the long haul.”

Reporting from two Washington state outlets, The Inlander in Spokane and The Bellingham Herald, as well as Axios prompted the president of Western Washington University to issue a statement in response to ProPublica’s investigation.

Last year, the university made the remains of three Native Americans available for return to the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, according to federal data analyzed by ProPublica. It is the institution’s only repatriation since the law’s passage. The university said in an email that it still holds the remains of at least 63 Native Americans.

“We recognize that we have more work to do to ensure that the ancestral remains we currently house are returned home,” Sabah Randhawa, the president of WWU, said in the statement. “We recognize the need for securing additional expertise and resources.”

A school spokesperson told ProPublica that university leaders are still discussing how much funding, and what expertise, is needed.

ProPublica’s investigation also led to a report by South Florida public radio station WLRN that revealed one museum’s intention to return all of the human remains and funerary objects in its collection to the Seminole Tribe of Florida. ProPublica found that HistoryMiami Museum is one of about 200 institutions across the country that have repatriated no human remains.

HistoryMiami CEO Natalia Crujeiras told WLRN that the museum didn’t know which tribe to repatriate to and that no tribe had claimed them. That began to change in 2019, after the museum learned the Seminole Tribe of Florida planned to claim more than 100 ancestral remains in the museum’s collection.

The museum identified some as belonging to Calusa and Tequesta cultures, though it listed all of the remains as “culturally unidentifiable” in an inventory submitted to the national NAGPRA office in the 1990s. Until 2010, the federal law only mandated the repatriation of remains and items that institutions deemed “culturally affiliated” with a modern tribe.

“It’s really upsetting that they still disassociate the Seminole Tribe of Florida from our ancestors,” Tina Osceola, the tribal historic preservation office director for the Seminole Tribe of Florida, told WLRN. “I don’t think HistoryMiami or anyone else should have the power to tell the Seminole Tribe of Florida who their ancestors are. They have our ancestors. End of story.”

ProPublica’s reporting and database also spurred an investigation by Hearst Connecticut Media Group that found 90% of still-unreturned remains in that state are held by the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. According to the news outlet, the museum said it will hire two more full-time staff members to work on repatriation “to meet its own goals and the anticipated federal rule changes.”

A museum spokesperson told ProPublica that it has also secured additional funding for tribal consultations but declined to specify the amount. “We are completely committed to these efforts,” museum Director David Skelly said in a statement.

Student journalists have also used ProPublica’s data to hold their own universities accountable.

At Brown University, student reporting found that in 2018, the campus’ Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology made the remains of 10 ancestors available to the Narragansett Indian Tribe to repatriate. But the tribe’s historic preservation director, John Brown, told The Brown Daily Herald that he wasn’t aware of the notice, and that the museum hadn’t adequately consulted with the tribe before publishing it in the federal register.

The reporting prompted an apology from the museum’s director, Robert Preucel, to the Narragansett Indian Tribe’s historic preservation office. Preucel told the Brown Daily Herald that the museum is “doing everything we can to repatriate all of the human remains” it holds.

At the University of Montana, a spokesperson shared similar comments with the Montana Kaimin, saying that repatriation is a “top priority” for the school, even though completing the work will “take time.”

ProPublica's reporting sparked an investigation by the campus newspaper in February that found the university has no one on staff who is entirely focused on repatriation efforts, despite having been awarded a federal grant last year to hire an employee for such a position. Dave Kuntz, the university’s spokesperson, told ProPublica last week that the school has not been able to fill the position.

Institutions’ Statements on Repatriation

Here’s what other institutions have said in response to recent reporting on repatriation. The figures reported below are from a ProPublica analysis of federal repatriation data from December:

Texas State University’s anthropology department Chairperson Christina Conlee to the University Star: “Our goal here is to repatriate these remains and we’re working towards that. We remain in compliance with the law and we hope that we will make good progress going forward.” The university reported still having the remains of at least 100 Native Americans.

Milwaukee Public Museum President and Chief Executive Ellen Censky in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “While it is a long and complex process, our goal is to repatriate all ancestral remains and associated cultural objects identified under NAGPRA.” However, the museum is preparing to move to a new building in 2026, making a timeline to repatriate tough to “pin down.” The museum reported still having the remains of at least 1,600 Native Americans.

University of Texas San Antonio spokesperson Joe Izbrand to Axios and the Paisano, a student publication, regarding remains held by the university’s Center for Archaeological Research: “It is our intention to repatriate all of the remains and objects to the rightful parties, and we are working methodically to facilitate their return, enabled in part by a grant from the National Park Service.” The university reported still having the remains of at least 200 Native Americans.

Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania Director Christopher Woods to The Philadelphia Inquirer: “This is incredibly sensitive, time-consuming work. Each case is unique and deserves its own consideration. It is essential to proceed with the utmost care and diligence, as we confront our own history of racism and colonialism. That work is ongoing.” The university’s museum reported still having the remains of at least 400 Native Americans.

Temple University Anthropology Laboratory and Museum in a statement to the Inquirer: “We want to make clear that 100% of the ancestors at Temple University are available for repatriation, and we are actively working to accomplish this.” The university reported still having the remains of at least 100 Native Americans.

A New York University statement to Washington Square News, an independent student newspaper, in a report about remains held by the NYU College of Dentistry: “We did not get started on the efforts to audit and repatriate the remains as early as we should have.” The College of Dentistry reported still having the remains of at least 100 Native Americans.

You can reach us using this form or by contacting repatriation@propublica.org or 206-419-7338 (calls or Signal messages). If you would prefer to use an encrypted app, see our advice at propublica.org/tips. We won’t publish anything you write without getting your permission first.

by Charles Ornstein

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

In investigative journalism, impact is the coin of the realm. But impact is unpredictable. At ProPublica, our hope is that by exposing problems — or things not working as they should — legislators and policymakers will make changes.

Sometimes, the impact is immediate. In 2009, my colleagues and I reported that the California Board of Registered Nursing took years to discipline problematic nurses, putting patients in harm’s way. Within two days of our story, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced the majority of board members; a day later, the executive director of the board resigned. Our boss had to call ProPublica’s founder to tell him not to expect this to happen every time ProPublica published a big investigation.

Other times, impact is delayed. In 2011, ProPublica and Columbia University’s Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism reported how a program run by the U.S. Department of Education had failed, leaving many borrowers who became disabled in deep financial debt even though they should have qualified to have their federal student loans dismissed. It took until 2021 for the Education Department to say it would forgive $5.8 billion in loans.

It’s hard to know in advance what stories will prompt change or how fast it will happen. Some stories land at the right moment, capturing the attention of politicians running for reelection, those who have a personal connection to an issue or bureaucrats who have been quietly fighting for change from within. Our Local Reporting Network project with the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about the long-known failure of the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands to return Native Hawaiians to ancestral lands prompted lawmakers last year to appropriate $600 million to fix the program, the largest one-time infusion of money in its more than a century of existence. It didn’t hurt that the state had a huge budget surplus.

And then there are those in positions of authority who are committed to the status quo and dead set against reforms no matter how much evidence is presented that something is broken.

All of this is to say that we can get our facts right and do careful analyses and reporting, but when you get into the realm of impact, it’s a little mysterious.

A slew of recent ProPublica stories show the widespread impact our journalism has produced. Many of the original stories are the result of collaborations we undertook with other news organizations. (Be sure to check out our 2022 annual report for a look at our impact last year.)

WHAT WE REPORTED: Last year, we found that four psychologists on Colorado’s roster of child custody evaluators had been charged with harassment or domestic violence. (These evaluators often help determine custody in cases in which abuse allegations play a central role.) One was charged with assault in 2006, after his then-wife said he pushed her to the bathroom floor, according to police reports. He pleaded guilty to harassment in 2007, though he told ProPublica that his guilty plea was a result of poor legal representation and that his ex-wife made false allegations to get him arrested.

IMPACT: Colorado lawmakers are considering two bills that would reform the way family courts handle cases involving allegations of domestic abuse. One bill would require evaluators to have expertise in domestic violence and child abuse and would restrict judges from ordering forced “reunification” treatments that cut a child off from the parent who expressed concerns about abuse or neglect. The second bill would create a task force to study training requirements for judicial personnel on the topics of domestic violence and sexual assault, among other crimes.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: Rep. Mike Weissman, an Aurora Democrat and the chair of the state House Judiciary Committee, praised ProPublica’s investigation. “We don’t usually see in-depth coverage on this kind of thing,” he said.

WHAT WE REPORTED: The Salt Lake Tribune and ProPublica reported how 94 women who alleged they had been sexually abused by a Utah OB/GYN were treated more harshly in Utah’s civil courts than those harmed in other settings. Their cases had to be filed within two years of the alleged abuse, and they faced a $450,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases.

IMPACT: The Utah Legislature passed a bill that would exclude sexual assault from the state’s medical malpractice law going forward. It would not apply to the 94 women.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “I’m so glad that the legislative side of the law corrected this huge problem, fixing that gap in our legal system that 94 women essentially fell through. We’ll fill it in for future people in this situation,” said Brooke, one of the women who says she was abused by the OB/GYN and who asked to be identified by only her first name. (The doctor’s lawyer said the allegations are without merit.)

WHAT WE REPORTED: An investigation last year by ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that ticketing students in schools was rampant across Illinois, with citations that can result in a fine of up to $750 for fighting, littering, theft, possessing vaping devices and other violations of local ordinances.

IMPACT: A bill in the Illinois legislature, introduced last month, would amend the state’s school code to prohibit school staff from involving police to issue citations to students for incidents that can be addressed through the school’s disciplinary process.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “We have to close that loophole and end school-based ticketing,” said Rep. La Shawn Ford, a Democrat from Chicago who is sponsoring the legislation. “There is no place for this type of system to be in our schools.”

WHAT WE REPORTED: Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises and ProPublica have detailed beatings of patients at a state-run center for people with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, as well as a concerted effort by some staff members to cover up abuse and serious neglect, and intimidation of employees who reported it.

IMPACT: The Illinois Department of Human Services plans to dramatically reduce the number of patients with developmental disabilities who live at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “It became clear, I would say certainly over the last year — and, in part, because of your reporting — that there were more significant changes that needed to be made,” Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said.

WHAT WE REPORTED: An investigation last year by ProPublica and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists found at least 500 current and former volunteer diplomats, known as honorary consuls, have been accused of crimes or embroiled in controversy.

IMPACT: So far, the investigation has prompted action in nine countries: Jordan, Israel, Latvia, Germany, Austria, Finland, Brazil, Paraguay and Spain. Most recently, a former Lebanese diplomat who was a focus of our investigation was arrested in Romania and U.S. officials are seeking his extradition. Federal prosecutors have accused Mohammad Ibrahim Bazzi of attempting to evade sanctions by trying to launder and move money from the United States to Lebanon.

Bazzi has not made an appearance on the latest charges. In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department designated Bazzi a “global terrorist,” saying he had funneled money to the militant group Hezbollah. In court papers, Bazzi said the U.S. government had failed to provide evidence that he had financed Hezbollah.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “Mohammad Bazzi thought that he could secretly move hundreds of thousands of dollars from the United States to Lebanon without detection by law enforcement,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a release. This “arrest proves that Bazzi was wrong.”

WHAT WE REPORTED: ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported last year that local courts were not following a 2009 Texas law meant to keep people with a history of serious mental health issues from legally acquiring firearms. Despite language in the law that says courts should report any time a judge orders a person, regardless of age, to receive inpatient mental health treatment, we found that some were not reporting juvenile records. As a result, the information was being excluded from the national firearms background check system.

IMPACT: Bipartisan legislation has been filed in the Texas House and Senate that would explicitly require courts to report information on involuntary mental health hospitalizations of juveniles age 16 and older.

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “I just want to get this fixed,” said Elliott Naishtat, a former state lawmaker from Austin who authored the 2009 law.

WHAT WE REPORTED: ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune reported how a small Illinois school district, which operates a therapeutic day school for students with severe emotional and behavioral disabilities, turned to police to arrest students at a rate higher than any school in America.

IMPACT: The U.S. Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into whether the Four Rivers Special Education District has denied children enrolled at the Garrison School an appropriate education because of the “practice of referring students to law enforcement for misbehaviors.”

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: “I think it’s long overdue,” a parent named Lena said of the federal attention on Garrison. (ProPublica and the Tribune referred to her by her first name only in order to avoid identifying her child.) “I want some kind of change for that school and the students still in there. I want them to find out everything that was done; I want somebody held accountable for all the crap that people are put through there.”

Some say investigative reporting is a decidedly pessimistic profession. We disagree. The examples above show why there’s reason to be optimistic. When we bring problems to the public’s attention, people of good faith often work to fix them.

by Kavitha Surana, photography by Stacy Kranitz, special to ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Join us for an upcoming live virtual event, “Post-Roe: Today’s Abortion Landscape.”

This story graphically describes serious complications in pregnancies and births, and it mentions suicide.

One day late last summer, Dr. Barry Grimm called a fellow obstetrician at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to consult about a patient who was 10 weeks pregnant. Her embryo had become implanted in scar tissue from a recent cesarean section, and she was in serious danger. At any moment, the pregnancy could rupture, blowing open her uterus.

Dr. Mack Goldberg, who was trained in abortion care for life-threatening pregnancy complications, pulled up the patient’s charts. He did not like the look of them. The muscle separating her pregnancy from her bladder was as thin as tissue paper; her placenta threatened to eventually invade her organs like a tumor. Even with the best medical care in the world, some patients bleed out in less than 10 minutes on the operating table. Goldberg had seen it happen.

Mayron Michelle Hollis stood to lose her bladder, her uterus and her life. She was desperate to end the pregnancy. On the phone, the two doctors agreed this was the best path forward, guided by recommendations from the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, an association of 5,500 experts on high-risk pregnancy. The longer they waited, the more complicated the procedure would be.

But it was Aug. 24, and performing an abortion was hours away from becoming a felony in Tennessee. There were no explicit exceptions. Prosecutors could choose to charge any doctor who terminated any pregnancy with a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison. If charged, the doctor would have the burden of proving in front of a judge or jury that the procedure was necessary to save the patient’s life, similar to claiming self-defense in a homicide case.

Never miss the most important reporting from ProPublica’s newsroom. Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.

The doctors didn’t know where to turn to for guidance. There was no institutional process to help them make a final call. Hospitals have malpractice lawyers but do not typically employ criminal lawyers. Even local criminal lawyers weren’t sure what to say — they had no precedent to draw on, and the attorney general and the governor weren’t issuing any clarifications. Under the law, it was possible a prosecutor could argue Hollis’ case wasn’t an immediate emergency, just a potential risk in the future.

Goldberg was only a month into his first job as a full-fledged staff doctor, launching his career in one of the most hostile states for reproductive health care in America, yet he was confident he could stand in a courtroom and attest that Hollis’ condition was life-threatening. But to perform an abortion safely, he would need a team of other providers to agree to take on the same legal risks. Hollis wanted to keep her uterus so she could one day get pregnant again. That made the operation more complicated, because a pregnant uterus draws extra blood to it, increasing the risk of hemorrhage.

Goldberg spent the next two days trying to rally support from his colleagues for a procedure that would previously have been routine.

Vanderbilt declined to comment for this article, but Hollis’ doctors spoke to ProPublica in their personal capacity, with her permission, risking backlash in order to give the public a rare view into the dangers created when lawmakers interfere with high-stakes medical care.

First, Goldberg and a colleague tried the interventional radiology department. To lower Hollis’ chance of bleeding, Goldberg wanted doctors to insert a special gel into the artery that supplied blood to her uterus to reduce its flow. But that department’s leadership didn’t feel comfortable participating.

Next, they approached a maternal-fetal medicine specialist who a week earlier had said he would be able to provide an injection to stop the fetus from growing and decrease blood flow. But once the law went into effect, that specialist grew uneasy, he told ProPublica. He asked that his name not be used because of the sensitivity of the issue.

The specialist would have to do the procedure in a room of nurses and scrub techs with an ultrasound image projected on the wall — all potential evidence that could be used against him in a trial. He thought about his family, what it would mean to go to prison. “I’m so disappointed in myself,” he told Goldberg and his colleague as he refused to participate.

That night, Goldberg went home and buried his face into the soft fur of his 100-pound Bernedoodle dog, Louie. He believed strongly that knowing how to perform an abortion was a necessary part of health care; he’d spent two years training in Pittsburgh to have the skills to help people like Hollis. Now he felt like everyone was leaving him alone with the responsibility. He worried about being able to manage that massive bleed alone.

He felt sick when he told Grimm his decision: “It’s too dangerous,” he said.

Dr. Mack Goldberg, shown here with his dog, had training in complex abortion care and wanted to help Mayron Hollis, but his colleagues feared they could be prosecuted under the new law.

Grimm felt a mix of anger, fear and sadness burning beneath his ribs. He could scarcely believe the situation. Raised Christian in the deep South, he had never agreed with abortion as a moral choice. But as an OB-GYN whose patient was in mortal peril, he couldn’t begin to comprehend what politicians were thinking. He had told Hollis an abortion ban was coming, but had thought there would be an exception for cases like hers that came with high risks.

He knew Hollis would have difficulty traveling. It began to sink in: The families who would most starkly bear the consequences of the law would be those with little means, whose fragile stability could be disrupted by any unexpected hurdle.

He collected himself as he dialed Hollis. It was Aug. 26, the day after the ban went into effect.

It was also Hollis’ 32nd birthday. She was at her job as an insulator apprentice, monitoring her co-workers as they wrapped rolls of fiberglass around pipes, when she saw Grimm’s name flash on her phone. She headed outside, her long hair coiled under a hard hat, her stomach churning.

The past month had been a dizzying, sickening whirlwind of thrill, then worry, then stubborn hope, then all-consuming terror. She didn’t want to lose her pregnancy, but she didn’t want to die. She had anguished over the decision, prayed about it with her husband, gotten a second opinion and gone around and around with Grimm.

Now, as she stepped outside to take the call, all she wanted to hear was her doctor’s usual calm reassurance and the plan for her care.

But Grimm’s voice was heavy as he began:

“I’m so, so sorry.”

Hollis and her OB-GYN, Dr. Barry Grimm, had to navigate a life-threatening pregnancy under Tennessee’s new abortion ban.

Few Tennessee lawmakers stopped to consider the ramifications when they gathered in 2019 to pass what would wind up being one of the nation’s most severe abortion bans.

It was a trigger law, just words on paper as long as federal abortion rights granted by a 1973 Supreme Court ruling remained in place. “It wasn’t like Roe v. Wade was on the verge of being overturned,” said state Sen. Richard Briggs, a heart surgeon who co-sponsored the bill. “It was theoretical at that point.”

To many, the ban seemed like a publicity stunt. It didn’t even get much pushback from doctors or abortion-rights advocates.

But the influential anti-abortion group National Right to Life was following a strategy.

For decades, the group’s leaders have written and lobbied for model legislation aimed at injecting their particular vision of morality into abortion regulations around the country. In many conservative states, they exert a stranglehold on politics, publishing annual scorecards to track lawmakers’ votes on anti-abortion legislation and funding primary challengers against candidates they don’t consider committed enough.

Invigorated by President Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominations starting in 2018, they pushed so-called “trigger bans,” designed to go into effect in a future where Roe was overturned. It’s an approach Bob Ramsey, a Republican legislator in Tennessee at the time, likened to throwing spaghetti at the wall “to see what sticks.”

Republican lawmakers knew that voting against the abortion ban bill could spell political peril.

“Unfortunately, it's all about the next election,” Ramsey said. “We didn’t get together and debate the morality of pro-choice or the confusion for medical providers. It was pretty much a foregone conclusion.” In the end, he abstained, and lost his next primary to an opponent who castigated him for not being anti-abortion enough.

But the law sailed through without Ramsey, on party lines.

Roe v. Wade was still in effect when Republican lawmakers voted for Tennessee's abortion ban.

The Supreme Court’s decision came on June 24, 2022. Tennessee’s abortion ban kicked in two months later. Overnight, procedures that had not been considered “abortion” by many, but simply part of reproductive health care, were a crime. That included offering dilation and evacuation procedures to patients whose water broke too early or who started bleeding heavily in their first trimester. Terminating dangerous pregnancies that never result in a viable birth, like those that settle inside a fallopian tube or develop into a tumor, was also technically an abortion. Each case now presents doctors with an ethical dilemma: Provide the patient the standard of care accepted by the medical community and face a potential felony charge, or try to comply with the broadest interpretation of the law and risk a malpractice case.

National Right to Life considers Tennessee’s abortion ban its “strongest” law, and the group’s Tennessee lobbyist has said the law should only permit abortions that are urgently necessary, such as for someone bleeding out, and not allow those “to prevent a future medical emergency.”

Gov. Bill Lee has defended the law as providing “maximum protection possible for both mother and child.” But some who voted in favor of the bill have since acknowledged they didn’t read it closely or understand how completely it tied the hands of doctors. Briggs, the bill’s co-sponsor, has advocated for changes and lost the endorsement of Tennessee Right to Life.

Tennessee’s ban and others triggered across the country are already unleashing havoc. The uncertainty over how the vague standards will be treated in the courts has created a chilling effect on patient care, doctors and other experts say. Though most bans contain exceptions for abortions necessary to prevent a patient’s death or “a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function,” data suggests few people have been able to access abortions under those exceptions.

ProPublica reviewed news articles, medical journal studies and lawsuits and found at least 70 examples across 12 states of women with pregnancy complications who were denied abortion care or had the treatment delayed since Roe was overturned. Doctors say the true number is much higher.

Some of the women reported being forced to wait until they were septic or had filled diapers with blood before getting help for their imminent miscarriages. Others were made to continue high-risk pregnancies and give birth to babies that had virtually no chance of survival. Some pregnant patients rushed across state lines to get treated for a condition that was rapidly deteriorating.

Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, a maternal-fetal specialist who left Tennessee in January because of the trigger ban, said that after the law went into effect, she referred an average of three to four patients out of state every week for abortion care to address high-risk conditions she could no longer help with.

But, she said, not everyone has the resources or ability to leave the state for an abortion.

Hollis said she was distraught when Grimm told her the abortion ban would limit her options.

Raised in the depths of Tennessee’s opioid epidemic in a family haunted by addiction, Hollis’ earliest memory is of clutching her baby brother when she was 5 years old, as her alcoholic father flipped tables. When she was 9, she said, her mother’s boyfriend gave her drugs and read her the Bible before he molested her. By 12, she was living with a teenage boyfriend and babysitting his brothers in exchange for hydrocodone pills.

At 21, Hollis began having children: first a son and then two daughters. At 27, when she had her third child, she was trying to stay sober. But the father of that child, Chris Hollis, showed up to the hospital high on opioids. The Department of Children’s Services drug tested him and took custody of all of Hollis’ children.

If her life with her kids had been chaotic, hustling to survive in the pill mill economy and dealing with multiple arrests, her life without them was a black hole of shame and self-hatred. She gave in to drugs and fights and ended up living on the street; one day, in September 2019, she landed in the hospital after an attempted suicide. Three days later, she was a passenger in a car crash that killed a close friend. It was at that moment that she decided she wanted to live. She went from the hospital to rehab.

When Grimm met her in 2021, at a clinic for mothers with opioid use disorder, she was pregnant with her fourth child and sober. He believed Hollis could stay that way; she was sufficiently exhausted by her cycles of addiction. He often used her progress forging a new path for her family to inspire other mothers in the program. He liked her fast-talking boldness and how she owned her past. She liked the way he listened and didn’t judge.

After baby Zooey arrived in February 2022, it seemed to Hollis like life was finally gathering momentum. She had reconnected with Chris Hollis, who she first befriended working at Wendy’s as a teenager. She had always known he held a flame for her, from the time he offered to take her duties cleaning the Frosty machine. Over the years they broke up and reconnected multiple times.

Now both in recovery, they had gotten married, rented a house in Clarksville, a small town near a military base, and joined a church. Together, they ran a small vinyl siding business. Hollis managed the accounting and worked a factory job for extra income. She began to study for her peer recovery specialist certification, imagining a day when she would help other mothers climb out of addiction. She hoped to save enough money to buy a house and eventually pay lawyers to get her other children back.

But three months after Zooey’s birth, Hollis faced a major setback.

Someone accused her of leaving her daughter unsupervised in a car outside a vape shop, records show. Hollis disputed it, but the Department of Children’s Services put Zooey in the custody of her cousin while they investigated the allegation of child endangerment. Hollis and her husband moved out so the cousin could live at their family home.

Hollis was introduced to drugs at a young age. She reconnected with a longtime friend, Chris Hollis, once they both got sober. Hollis was afraid the Department of Children’s Services might take custody of her 5-month-old daughter Zooey at the same time she learned she was pregnant again.

Then, in July, Hollis was shocked to learn she was pregnant again; she’d just begun taking birth control pills, but it might have been too recent for them to be effective. Her first call was to Grimm, who worried that a pregnancy this soon, on top of four previous C-sections, put her at risk of developing a cesarean scar ectopic pregnancy. By Hollis’ eight-week ultrasound in early August, Grimm’s worst fears were confirmed.

Her life was at risk, he told her. Her pregnancy could rupture and cause a hemorrhage in the first trimester. It was almost certain to eventually develop into a life-threatening placenta disorder. There was little data to predict whether the baby would make it. If it survived, it was sure to be born extremely early, spend months in critical care and face developmental challenges. He offered to schedule an abortion for two days later. If they moved quickly, the procedure would be relatively straightforward. But Hollis needed time to think.

She’d felt a faint thrill when she learned about the tiny life inside of her. Building a family with her husband in their fragile new stability had felt like a chance to redeem herself. Abortion went against her beliefs. What if this was her last chance to have another child?

Grimm gave her his cell phone number. “Want you to know this is so difficult,” he texted. “With you, no matter what you decide.”

It was the second opinion, two weeks later, that convinced her. Doctors at another hospital confirmed her condition was, indeed, life-threatening and already worsening. One of the only places in Tennessee equipped to handle a pregnancy as complicated as hers was Vanderbilt.

“Honey,” her husband told her, “I can’t lose you.”

Mayron and Chris Hollis wanted another child but had to weigh the risks to Mayron’s health.

On Aug. 24, about two weeks after learning the diagnosis, she messaged her doctor:

“Dr. Grimm, me and my husband need to talk to you. We have really thought about everything and we need you to call us.”

But two days later, Hollis paced outside her workplace listening to Grimm break the news that the other doctors had backed out “due to the current legal climate.”

The only thought Hollis could muster was no. No no no no no. This could not be happening. Not now.

She squeezed her thumb in her fist as Grimm explained that Vanderbilt couldn’t offer an abortion that would try to preserve her uterus — only a hysterectomy that would end the pregnancy and extinguish any chances she could ever get pregnant again. Grimm told ProPublica it was his understanding that ending the pregnancy this way would comply with the law’s provision for avoiding irreversible impairment to a major bodily function. Other doctors involved in her care confirmed they felt their only option for providing an abortion was to sterilize her.

Grimm told Hollis they could help her arrange to travel out of state, where doctors could perform an abortion and possibly save her uterus. Each day that passed would make that more difficult. Going to Pittsburgh, where Goldberg had connections, was her best option, but would require days of travel to complete paperwork and comply with Pennsylvania’s state-mandated waiting period.

Hollis felt trapped in a different kind of risk calculation: At the same time the state was trying to force her to keep her pregnancy, it was also threatening to take away her daughter.

Already, she and her husband hovered over their phones in case Zooey’s case workers needed their attention. She worried she might be accused of abandonment if she left. She also feared losing her job. Her bosses at the factory had laid her off for “personal reasons” after learning she was pregnant for a second time in less than a year, she said. She had just started a new job and relied on it to help pay two rents and $9,000 for a lawyer to fight to keep Zooey. She didn’t know where she would get money for a sudden trip anyway.

She hung up with Grimm, went back inside and cried for the rest of her shift.

An ultrasound confirmed a high-risk cesarean scar ectopic pregnancy, but Hollis couldn’t afford to travel out of state for abortion care. She feared losing the job that paid for lawyers to fight her child welfare case.

As the months passed, Tennessee’s medical community grappled with the real world implications of the new legal landscape.

Vanderbilt, the largest hospital in the state and a private institution, promised its doctors it would pay to defend against any criminal charges and was able to resume offering limited medically indicated abortion care, according to multiple doctors. Vanderbilt declined to comment.

Goldberg and his colleagues’ approach evolved. They began to admit nearly every patient and make each specialist individually assess them. It was costly and time-consuming, but Goldberg believed it made a difference for medical providers to have to look a patient in the eye before refusing to participate in their care. If they agreed an abortion was appropriate, he wrote up long defenses of the patient’s condition and had three other doctors sign off.

Still, almost weekly, Goldberg found himself having to turn away patients he believed should qualify for medically indicated abortion care. He and his colleagues also noticed that doctors at smaller hospitals, who had far less support, seemed to be treating complex cases as hot potatoes and sending them to Vanderbilt. That delayed care for patients. Goldberg worried about those who might not get transferred in time.

ProPublica spoke with 20 Tennessee medical providers about life under the ban, on condition of anonymity because they feared professional and personal repercussions; some said that they had witnessed a new trepidation in their ranks. “I’ve seen colleagues delay or sit on assessing the clinical data longer when they know the diagnosis is probably ectopic,” one said, referring to pregnancies that implant outside the uterine cavity, which are always life-threatening. “People were like, 'I don’t want to be involved because I don’t want to go to prison,'” said another. “It’s crazy — even assessing the patient or having a role in their care makes people scared.”

Meanwhile, Goldberg’s wife, a therapist who asked that her name not be published to protect their family’s privacy, was hearing from a number of pregnant patients who had bled for weeks, but didn’t understand why. Their providers hadn’t mentioned the word “miscarriage” or offered dilation and evacuation procedures. Instead they were told, “Let your body do what it’s going to do.”

Once the ban went into effect, Hollis felt doctors in Tennessee were afraid to touch her. A few days after her conversation with Grimm, overwhelmed, she texted him: “Schedule a hysterectomy.” He asked her to call him, but before she could, she began to feel an intense pain that made her double over.

She went to an emergency room near her home, but left after an hour without being seen. She drove to Vanderbilt and told workers she was at risk for a placenta disorder, the complication Grimm had told her she was showing signs of developing, hoping to get seen more urgently. “Nobody even looked at me after that,” she said. She remembered waiting for hours in triage, crying and incontinent, until she gave up and headed to a third hospital, which gave her antibiotics for a urinary tract infection. Doctors had spent weeks explaining her condition was life-threatening; she didn’t understand how she could be left to sit in a waiting room.

She never brought up the hysterectomy again. “I thought the law meant I couldn’t have one,” she said. Grimm didn’t follow up about the text and said he always remembered Hollis emphatically saying she wanted to try to preserve her fertility.

As friends and coworkers began to ask her about her visible pregnancy, Hollis acted excited. But there was nothing happy about the experience. She constantly worried about what her husband and Zooey would do if she died, and called up the Social Security Administration and her union to find out what kind of survivor benefits existed. She moved through her days trying to pretend she wasn’t pregnant. It was the only way to keep the overwhelming fear at bay and continue working. Then, in mid-November, her employer laid her off, saying it couldn’t accommodate the work restrictions required by her doctor.

At regular appointments, Grimm watched in horror as her placenta began to bulge and threaten her bladder, an expected consequence of a cesarean scar ectopic pregnancy. She was exhibiting all the signs of developing placenta percreta, the worst form of a placenta disorder, a condition that makes high-risk specialists shudder. Delivery requires massive blood transfusions, often necessitates removal of the bladder and carries a 7% chance of death.

Grimm didn’t know what to do for Hollis other than to lower his boundaries and try to support her whenever she needed him. Her texts came at all hours — about her problems sleeping, her concerns about paying rent, her worries about the baby’s movement and the pains she felt. She had not been at her company long enough to qualify for disability leave and begged him to help her appeal: “I’m not sure what else to do, I am running out of time and I’m scared.”

In the end, he couldn’t offer much more than directing her to social workers and sharing earnest platitudes: “You’re the bravest person I know,” he told her.

After Hollis was unable to get abortion care, Grimm, her OB-GYN, watched her condition progress into a dangerous placenta disorder.

Grimm’s wife noticed the weight he carried home. He found it difficult to be present, zoning out at his kids’ sports games and leaving the dinner table to respond to calls. The culture of medicine assumed that doctors always had the answers and could never make mistakes. But Grimm felt helpless and wrestled with feelings of shame. In his darkest moments, he wondered if a different doctor would have somehow done better by her.

Grimm had always stayed out of politics. But in conversations with family and friends, he began to share more about his work for the first time. Many in his circle abhorred abortion and thought they supported the idea of a ban. He tried to explain that it was more complex. “If this was your wife or my wife in these really intense situations, they'd be fine, because you have the resources,” he told them. “But some people don’t. And they’re going to be forced into these impossible situations where they could die.”

He knew of doctors who had left the profession after losing a pregnant patient. He wondered if this would be his quitting moment.

On Dec. 8, Hollis started bleeding. She was nearly 26 weeks pregnant. She insisted on driving herself to Vanderbilt, an hour away from her home; her husband joined her in the passenger seat and panicked when she started to pass out. They called 911, and an ambulance drove her the rest of the way.

Dr. Sarah Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, was on call that day. She worked exclusively with the most difficult pregnancies, where every decision was a calculation between a pregnant patient’s health and the chances of delivering a healthy baby. It was her job to help patients make an informed decision. Over the years, she said, she had seen some women choose to accept the risks of a dangerous diagnosis and die as a result. But since the law went into effect, patients were arriving at her office asking why they were being counseled all: “It doesn’t matter,” they told her. “I don’t have a choice.”

She could tell Hollis was scared; she felt afraid as well. While she and her colleagues worked to help patients go out of state, she knew of some with cancer, heart conditions, preeclampsia or fatal fetal anomalies who felt forced to continue their pregnancies under the law. She feared it was only a matter of time until one of them died from the complications. She hoped it would not be Hollis.

She wanted Hollis to stay in the hospital for monitoring, but Hollis begged to go home. Zooey’s child welfare case had been closed in October, and she didn’t want to be away from her baby any longer than necessary. She had Christmas presents to wrap, bills to pay and a nursery to set up before her new baby arrived. On top of everything, her fridge was empty and her washer and dryer had stopped working.

Osmundson gave Hollis her phone number, and the hospital released her after three days, planning for her to return in two weeks, when her pregnancy had reached seven months.

Dr. Sarah Osmundson, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist, worries it’s a matter of time until a patient dies of pregnancy complications because of the law.

But less than two days later, in the early morning hours of Dec. 13, Hollis’ husband woke to screaming. He ran to her and slipped in her blood, which was pooling on the ground. Hollis had bled through her pants, soaking her socks and the rug by the front door. She and her husband texted photos to Osmundson, who became convinced an emergency cesarean needed to happen as soon as possible.

As soon as Grimm’s phone rang, he was wide awake. He lay in bed in the dark, calling the hospital and refreshing his phone for updates. At any moment, he knew, Hollis could bleed to death.

Hollis’ husband called an ambulance, and they took her to a local hospital to be stabilized and airlifted. But bad weather meant the helicopter couldn’t fly. Finally, two hours later, they returned to the ambulance, which drove her to Vanderbilt.

Hollis was relieved to see Grimm waiting in his scrubs. He held her hand as they wheeled her into the operating room, which was filled with a surgery team of nearly 20 doctors. She looked pale and petrified. “We will be right there with you the whole time,” he told her.

To Hollis, the doctors around her looked as scared as she was. The anesthesiologist told Hollis to count backwards from 10, but instead she prayed.

Once Hollis was under, Grimm helped make the incision. Typically, patients emerge from a C-section with a small, horizontal cut below their bikini line. But this delivery called for a vertical gash that stretched up past her navel so doctors could have full exposure to her uterus. It allowed them to see where the bleeding was coming from and gave them the best chance to control it.

Careful not to disrupt the placenta, which was attached to the bladder and ballooning outward, Grimm gently removed a baby girl. She emerged weighing one pound and 15 ounces, limp and unable to breathe on her own. Doctors dried and intubated her, wrapped her and placed her under a radiant warmer to try to keep her organs from shutting down. No one knew if she would survive.

Then, Dr. Marta Crispens, a gynecological oncologist trained to deal with big tumors, began work on removing the uterus. The placenta started gushing blood again. This was what made the condition so frightening: There was no predicting the level of bleeding and whether it could be contained in time. The intensity in the room ratcheted up. It seemed to Grimm like hours passed as he helped Crispens stanch the bleeding, though it was only minutes.

Hollis was given a blood transfusion. Finally, the operation ended. Hollis and her daughter had made it through alive.

As the doctors cleaned up, there were the usual back pats and shared congratulations between a team that had united to make it through a life-saving surgery. But they could all recall similar cases where things didn’t end as well.

“I’m glad she’s OK,” Osmundson recalled saying in the moment. “But it’s a tragedy that this happened — this is not a win.”

Crispens felt everyone in the room was traumatized. “This is going to drive people out of the medical profession,” she thought. “We took an oath — we have to be able to take care of these women before they get to this point.”

Grimm left the room, peeled off his scrubs and wept.

When Hollis awoke from surgery, he was holding her hand.

Baby Elayna spent the first week of her life in the neonatal intensive care unit, enclosed in a plastic crib that resembled an aquarium. Nurses bustled in and out to the sound of beeping that monitored the baby’s fluctuating breathing and heart rates.

Elayna, born at 26 weeks and two days, in the second week of her life.

Her skin was pink and translucent, wires and patches poked out from all over her body, and her tiny face was covered with a breathing machine. Nurses told Hollis that Elayna was too fragile to be held. Hollis could only stick a latex-gloved hand through a hole in the crib to feel Elayna’s penny-sized grip on the tip of her finger. Over that first week, doctors monitored Elayna’s brain for bleeding and poured a protein into her breathing tube to help her lungs open and close.

Though Elayna's survival seemed assured, she faced significant hurdles. About 80% to 90% of babies born at 26 weeks survive. Of those, about 40% end up with brain injuries. Over the first two years of life, 12% may develop cerebral palsy, and some have vision, hearing and intellectual development issues. Elayna would be particularly vulnerable to flu and other respiratory illnesses. About half of babies born prematurely get readmitted to the hospital within the first two years. The cost of her care, which included more than two months in the NICU, would come out of the taxpayer-funded state Medicaid program.

After four days, Hollis had to leave Elayna in the hospital and go home. There was no availability in charity housing for parents of NICU babies, and she needed to take care of Zooey.

Then, three days later, sheriff’s deputies showed up at Hollis’ door and took her to jail.

Though the child welfare case had been closed, now prosecutors were charging her with a felony over the same allegation that she left Zooey unattended in a car. She faced eight to 30 years in prison. She paid $6,000 in bail, erasing the savings she and her husband had hoped to use for parental leave. A judge’s order prohibited her from having any contact with Zooey, so her husband took over child care. With nowhere to go, Hollis spent the night in her car outside the hospital, going inside for Elayna’s feedings.

A week after giving birth, Hollis was arrested and prohibited from returning to her home. She slept in her car in the parking garage of Vanderbilt University Medical Center and placed a video call to her psychiatrist.

As Elayna’s lungs developed, her breathing improved. Every time Hollis managed to hold her daughter to her skin, her heart practically burst. She marveled at the fight inside such a small being and scribbled notes in a NICU progress book.

But her unrelenting challenges kept pulling her away. She and her husband quickly maxed out their $400 credit card limit on new legal fees and were down to a few dollars to pay for gas. Hollis knew she needed to get back to work.

Three weeks after Elayna’s birth, she returned to her job as an insulator apprentice and a punishing new routine: waking up at 4 a.m. to drive to the construction site an hour away, where she worked a 10-hour day for $16 an hour. Some evenings she went to school for her apprenticeship. Other nights she led an online Alcoholics Anonymous meeting to bolster her application for a peer recovery specialist certificate. She had finally been approved for housing near the hospital. Every chance she could, she ended the day with Elayna, but often she just had to catch up on sleep.

Then she got a call from the Department of Children’s Services. They were opening a new case because THC had been detected in Elayna’s umbilical cord. Hollis believed it was due to delta-8, a synthetic THC legal in Tennessee that doctors recommend avoiding during pregnancy. Hollis said she took it after the stress of her first hospitalization to help her sleep; she considered it less dangerous than the heavy antidepressant drugs her doctors had prescribed. Grimm wrote a letter to the department in her defense; he saw THC as a minor issue and emphasized her consistent negative tests for deadly drugs.

Sometimes, Hollis felt gripped with anger over her situation. The way she saw it, the same system that had forced her to risk her life offered little support to help her family stabilize in the aftermath. She wasn’t sure where to direct the blame, letting it spill out on her husband, other relatives and sometimes Grimm. She resented that she hadn’t understood enough about the law early enough to make a different decision. If she had been able to get an abortion, she thought, “my life could be so different right now.”

Hollis visited her daughter in the hospital as often as she could.

She heard that lawmakers were considering a change to the abortion law, to make it clear it was not a crime for doctors to provide abortion care in order to prevent life-threatening emergencies. “I’m so glad I have my baby,” she wished she could tell them. “But this was a risk I didn’t have any choice in taking.” She knew others wouldn’t be as lucky. On Tuesday, the state legislature is scheduled to consider bills aimed at creating clear medical exceptions. Tennessee Right to Life has strongly opposed it.

Elayna grew bigger and passed new milestones: Doctors found no bleeding in her brain. She began to breathe on her own and take in small amounts of milk. She was moved to a private room, where Hollis could sleep on a cot.

One night in early February, Hollis kissed Elayna, stretched out on the cot and tried to sleep amid the beeping, whirring and cries of babies in other rooms. Her mind was filled with worries about what life would look like once they left the safety net of the hospital, with its around-the-clock care and endless supply of formula and miniature diapers. She worried about managing it all, and about what could happen if she made another small mistake. She couldn’t bear losing either of her daughters and hadn’t even had a moment to process the loss of her uterus.

She drifted off and slept as the nurse fed the baby at midnight. Her iPhone alarm barely roused her at 3:30 a.m., time to get up for work.

On Feb. 23, the hospital told Hollis she could take her daughter home.

Elayna weighed four pounds and 12 ounces, still the size of one of Zooey’s dolls. Nurses removed all the wires attached to her and tested her to make sure she could keep her head up in her car seat. A nurse handed Hollis a stack of papers that contained instructions on feeding and bathing a premature baby and appointments for eye doctors, heart and liver specialists and neurological providers.

Hollis gently placed Elayna in her car seat and buckled her in. She tried to focus on today. It was Zooey’s first birthday, and the court had allowed them to live together again. Her husband was bringing home a cake and Hollis was desperate to have a moment to celebrate with her family. That night, relatives stopped by to greet the baby.

Hollis brought Elayna home after more than two months in the neonatal intensive care unit, on Zooey’s first birthday.

But about a week later, Elayna began showing signs of respiratory distress. One night, she suddenly stopped breathing. Hollis performed CPR until police officers arrived and saved Elayna’s life.

Two ambulance rides later, Elayna was airlifted to Vanderbilt. Over the following days, doctors found she had rhinovirus and outfitted her with a breathing machine. They told Hollis it was possible Elayna could have a bacterial infection, such as meningitis, in the fluid around her brain. To find out, they would need to do a spinal tap, but they worried it would destabilize her further. As Elayna’s condition worsened, Hollis wasn’t able to hold her because it might deplete her energy.

Hollis stayed as long as she could, but too much was waiting for her back home and she hated seeing her baby suffering. She whispered a quiet blessing and left Elayna in the pediatric intensive care unit, cocooned under the glow of a warming lamp.

Two weeks after coming home, Elayna was back in the hospital due to breathing problems.

How we reported this story:

Mayron Michelle Hollis shared her medical records with ProPublica and authorized doctors to speak about her and her daughter’s medical care. ProPublica spent months following her in the aftermath of her pregnancy and spoke to family members who are mentioned in this story. Doctors involved in her care chose to go on the record or share background information in their personal capacity, not as representatives of Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt declined to comment on the case. ProPublica also interviewed 20 medical providers in Tennessee and spoke with five maternal-fetal medicine specialists not involved in Hollis’ case about cesarean scar ectopic pregnancies and two neonatologists about babies born preterm.

Mariam Elba contributed research.

Photo editing by Andrea Wise.

by Megan O’Matz

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The nonpartisan League of Women Voters has been facing a nationwide backlash after decades of going about its business of surveying candidates, registering voters, hosting debates and lobbying for its causes with little fuss.

ProPublica reported in August how the volatile political climate has caught up with the league, with conservatives increasingly portraying it as a decidedly liberal entity. Since that story was published, we’ve seen candidates reject invitations to debate and try to undermine the league’s work in registering new voters. In September in Illinois, then-Lake County Board member Dick Barr, a Republican, publicly apologized for a Facebook post in which he called the league “partisan hags.”

This week, the group found itself once again in the middle of a political controversy. This time it was in Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis has sought to reshape a wide range of discourse, including by making it easier for public officials to sue for defamation and restricting discussions of systemic racism in workplace trainings. The league revealed that it had been denied permission by the Florida Department of Management Services to hold an outdoor rally on the steps of the Old Capitol in Tallahassee under a new DeSantis administration rule requiring groups to first get sponsorship from a sympathetic state agency.

The rule took effect March 1 and says the requested use of the space must be “consistent with the Agency’s official purposes.” Its stated purpose is to ensure that demonstrations are “conducted in a manner that protects public health and safety and ensures that state employees and officials can fulfill their responsibilities.”

A department spokesperson did not answer specific questions about the matter, saying in an email to ProPublica: “DMS routinely examines all of its rules in accordance with Florida Law. This rule was updated as part of the DMS annual regulatory plan to clarify procedures and requirements for public use of the Capitol.”

Capitalizing on a loophole that allows for news conferences, the league on Wednesday set up a podium in a nearby plaza, where it publicly addressed what it sees as the state’s crackdown on civil rights, including free speech. At one point, league members applied red tape over their mouths, symbolizing what they say is the muzzling of people whose opinions are at odds with the government. (DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica.)

ProPublica talked to the league’s Florida president, attorney Cecile Scoon, about the increasingly difficult environment the 103-year-old group faces in Florida in trying to promote civic discourse, freedom of academic thought and ready access to the ballot box. Scoon called the rule limiting rallies a “radical change” and said she is aware that some First Amendment groups are considering litigation. The league is already embroiled in an ongoing suit against the DeSantis administration over a 2021 voting law. A federal judge struck down several provisions that he ruled were designed to discriminate against Black people to reduce turnout for Democrats. The state has appealed.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Cecile Scoon (Courtesy of League of Women Voters Florida) You and your members were in Tallahassee for two days to meet with lawmakers and attend committee hearings and witness the government in action. What was the goal of the rally you planned to hold and what happened?

We have a lot of new members, and we want to expose them to all the different tools that we have — holding up signs and getting excited and being informed by my statements as president and our allies. That’s what we like to do.

We were told the rally space was already taken up. And then we asked for any other space and we were told that we had to get an agency to sponsor the paperwork and basically authenticate whatever we were trying to do, and our statement needed to be in accord with that agency’s policies. And that didn’t make any sense because sometimes you want to complain about the government itself, you want to say, “Hey you can do better here, please consider this and that.”

Do you feel this is part of a larger backlash against the league?

It’s hard to judge what’s in their minds. But when you say you’ve got to get permission from a state agency and we’ve been known to criticize and sue the governor and state agencies, you have to think that they were looking at us and other like-minded civic groups. You have to believe that. Because why would they require you to get someone to agree with you first?

What does this mean for your organization?

Oh, it’s very damaging. The league doesn’t expect everybody to agree with us. We are very capable and open and welcome debate and different points of view. That is not a problem. Let the citizens make up their minds of what they want to do and believe and who they want to vote for, but when you also take books off library shelves, when you also threaten teachers if they want to have academic freedom — K-12 and now the universities — that looks a lot like some of the other governmental regimes that wanted to stop the citizens from even being informed about what is going on.

How is the league changing? I understand you recently had a successful community forum in Sarasota about school choice that included views from across the political spectrum.

We got a lot of positive feedback from all sides. We’re going to have additional community conversations. We, again, are not going to be silenced. We’re not going to be muzzled. We’re going to create opportunities. We are continuing to double down on our outreach with many organizations that want more free speech and support these foundational American values. This morning nine of my members attended a conference and prayer breakfast set up by Pastors for Florida Children. … There were representatives from the Islamic faith, Christian representatives of different denominations, there were Jewish representatives there and many civic organizations. And we all plan to work together to make sure everybody feels safe and everybody can be heard. People are outraged, they’re upset and they just want fundamental American values returned to us. So it’s not just voting rights organizations.

Do you see a link between the rule regarding demonstrations and the DeSantis administration’s more well-known efforts, such as the so-called “Don’t say gay” law (which restricts classroom discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity)?

It involves very similar treatment, basically, with regards to what a lot of organizations are saying — “You don’t have a right to say X or Y in your classrooms, you don’t have a right to have these books in your library for anybody.” So there’s a lot of consternation and a lot of fear.

by Sharon Lerner

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Last month, Brenda Foster stood on the railroad tracks at the edge of her yard in East Palestine, Ohio, and watched a smoky inferno billow from the wreckage of a derailed train. The chemicals it was carrying — and the fire that consumed them — were so toxic that the entire area had to evacuate. Foster packed up her 87-year-old mother, and they fled to stay with relatives.

With a headache, sore throat, burning eyes and a cough, Foster returned home five days later — as soon as authorities allowed. So when she saw on TV that there was a hotline for residents with health concerns, she dialed as soon as the number popped up on the screen.

The people who arrived offered to test the air inside her home for free. She was so eager to learn the results, she didn’t look closely at the paper they asked her to sign. Within minutes of taking measurements with a hand-held machine, one of them told her they hadn’t detected any harmful chemicals. Foster moved her mother back the same day.

What she didn’t realize is that the page of test results that put her mind at ease didn’t come from the government or an independent watchdog. CTEH, the contractor that provided them, was hired by Norfolk Southern, the operator of the freight train that derailed.

And, according to several independent experts consulted by ProPublica in collaboration with the Guardian, the air testing results did not prove their homes were truly safe. Erin Haynes, a professor of environmental health at the University of Kentucky, said the air tests were inadequate in two ways: They were not designed to detect the full range of dangerous chemicals the derailment may have unleashed, and they did not sample the air long enough to accurately capture the levels of chemicals they were testing for.

“It’s almost like if you want to find nothing, you run in and run out,” Haynes said.

First image: Market Street in East Palestine in March. Second image: A warning sign along Sulphur Run in East Palestine. (Justin Merriman for ProPublica)

About a quarter century ago, the Center for Toxicology and Environmental Health was founded by four scientists who all had done consulting work for tobacco companies or lawyers defending them. Now known by its acronym, CTEH quickly became a go-to contractor for corporations responsible for industrial disasters. Its bread and butter is train crashes and derailments. The company has been accused repeatedly of downplaying health risks.

In since-deleted marketing on its website, CTEH once explained how the data it gathers about toxic chemicals can be used later to shield its clients from liability in cases brought by people who say they were harmed: “A carrier of chemicals may be subjected to legal claims as a result of a real or imagined release. Should this happen, appropriate meteorological and chemical data, recorded and saved ... may be presented as powerful evidence to assist in the litigation or potentially preclude litigation.”

Despite this track record, this company has been put in charge of allaying residents’ concerns about health risks and has publicly presented a rosy assessment.

It was CTEH, not the Environmental Protection Agency, that designed the testing protocol for the indoor air tests.

And it is CTEH, not the government, that runs the hotline residents are directed to call with concerns about odors, fumes or health problems. Local and federal officials, including the EPA, funnel the scared and sick to company representatives.

First image: A train passing through East Palestine in March. Second image: A marquee in East Palestine advertises a hotline that is run by CTEH. (Justin Merriman for ProPublica)

In a statement, Paul Nony, CTEH’s principal toxicologist and senior vice president, said the company has responded to thousands of incidents, and its environmental monitoring and sampling follows plans approved and directed by the incident commanders of each response. “Our highly skilled, certified specialists include Ph.D. toxicologists, masters in public health, industrial hygienists and safety professionals, as well as hazardous materials and registered environmental managers,” he wrote.

He added that CTEH has been “working side-by-side” with the EPA in East Palestine “and comparing data collected in the community and in people’s homes to ensure that we are all working with the most accurate data.” Hotline callers receive information, Nony wrote, that is “based on the latest data collected by CTEH and EPA, vetted together to ensure the accuracy of the public health information provided.”

The circumstances of the testing are unclear. The EPA said its representatives have, indeed, accompanied CTEH to residents’ homes, overseen the company’s indoor air tests and performed side-by-side testing with their own equipment. But some residents told ProPublica that even though multiple people came to their doors, only one person had measuring equipment. An agency spokesperson said CTEH’s testing protocol “was reviewed and commented on by EPA and state and federal health agencies.”

Stephen Lester, a toxicologist who has helped communities respond to environmental crises since the Love Canal disaster in upstate New York in the 1970s, said he was concerned about Norfolk Southern’s role in deciding how environmental testing is done in East Palestine. “The company is responsible for the costs of cleaning up this accident,” Lester said. “And if they limit the extent of how we understand its impact, their liability will be less.”

A Norfolk Southern contractor works in Sulphur Run in March. (Justin Merriman for ProPublica)

An EPA spokesperson said that the federal blueprint for responding to such emergencies requires responsible parties, in this case Norfolk Southern, to do the work — not just pay for it. But the agency has the authority to perform or require its own testing.

The relationship between CTEH and Norfolk Southern wasn’t clear to several residents ProPublica interviewed. Before testing begins, people are asked to sign a form authorizing the “Monitoring Team,” which the document says includes Norfolk Southern, “its contractors, environmental professionals, including CTEH LLC, and assisting local, state, and federal agencies.” An earlier version of the form included a confusing sentence that suggested that whoever signed was waiving their right to sue. Norfolk Southern said that was a mistake and pulled those forms.

In a written response to questions, Norfolk Southern said it “has been transparent about representing CTEH as a contractor for Norfolk Southern from day one of our response to the incident.” The company also pointed to a map on its website displaying CTEH’s outdoor air-monitoring results that says “Client: Norfolk Southern” in tiny type in the corner. “We are committed to working with the community and the EPA to do what is right for the residents of East Palestine,” a Norfolk Southern spokesperson wrote in an email.

When told by a reporter that the contractor, CTEH, was hired by the rail company, Foster’s face fell. “I had no clue,” she said. Looking back, she said, the people who came to her door never said anything about Norfolk Southern. They didn’t give her a copy of the paper that she had signed.

Before the derailment, East Palestine offered its 4,700 residents some of the best in small-town life. Its streets are lined with trees and charming houses. After school, kids played in the street, in the well-maintained park or in its affordable swimming pool. At Sprinklz on Top, a diner in the center of town, you can get a full dinner for less than $10.

Everything changed after the Feb. 3 derailment and the subsequent decision to purposefully ignite the chemicals, sending a toxic mushroom cloud over the town. Dead fish floated in local waterways, and “Pray for EP” signs appeared in many windows. Furniture is piled up on the curbs. Foster said some of her neighbors are replacing theirs because of concerns about contamination. But the 57-year-old, who works shifts painting firebrick, says she doesn’t have the money to do that. So she has come up with a solution she hopes will reduce her exposure: She sits in a single chair.

A black plume rises over East Palestine after chemicals were purposefully ignited on Feb. 6. (Gene J. Puskar/AP Photo) Tests May Miss Some Dangers

From the earliest days of the disaster, CTEH’s work has been at the center of the rail company’s reassuring messages about safety. Norfolk Southern’s “Making it Right” website cites CTEH data when stating that local air and drinking water are safe. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency has not “signed off” on any of Norfolk Southern’s statements “with regard to health risks based on results of sampling.”)

A video posted on Norfolk Southern’s YouTube account shows footage of a man in a CTEH baseball cap looking carefully at testing machinery. “All of our air monitoring and sampling data collectively do not indicate any short- or long-term risks,” a CTEH toxicologist says.

According to the EPA, CTEH’s indoor air testing in East Palestine consists of a one-time measurement of what is known as volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. These airborne chemicals can cause dizziness and nausea, and, over the long term, some VOCs can cause cancer. Vinyl chloride, a VOC that was carried by the derailed train and later ignited, can cause dizziness and headaches and increase the incidence of a rare form of liver cancer, according to the EPA. The machine that CTEH uses in East Palestine captures VOCs if they’re above 0.1 parts per million, but it doesn’t say which specific compounds are present.

CTEH said that when VOCs are detected, the company then tests for vinyl chloride. According to the EPA, the indoor testing has detected VOCs in 108 buildings before Feb. 21 and 12 buildings after that. Follow-up tests found no vinyl chloride, according to CTEH and the EPA. CTEH’s Nony said, “CTEH has not considered conducting long-term VOC air sampling in the homes because real-time air monitoring results do not indicate a significant impact of VOCs related to the derailment in the homes.”

But five experts on the health effects of chemicals consulted for this story said that the failure to detect VOCs should not be interpreted to mean that people’s homes are necessarily safe.

“VOCs are not the only chemicals that could have been in the air,” said Haynes, the environmental health professor. Haynes also said that because the testing was a snapshot — as opposed to an assessment made over several days — it would not be expected to detect VOCs at most household levels.

Many of the toxic chemicals that were airborne in the early days after the derailment, including pollutants that can cause cancer and other serious problems, may have settled out of the air and onto furniture and into crevices in houses, Haynes said. So she also recommended testing surfaces for compounds that could have been created by the burning of vinyl chloride, such as aromatic hydrocarbons, including the carcinogen benzene. Young children who play on the floor are especially vulnerable, Haynes added.

Two couches were left outside of an apartment in March in East Palestine. (Courtesy of Justin Merriman)

Even a week after the derailment, Haynes said VOCs likely would have dissipated. “To keep the focus on the air is almost smoke and mirrors,” she said. “Like, ‘Hey, the air is fine!’ Of course it’s going to be fine. Now you should be looking for where those chemicals went. They did not disappear. They are still in the environment.”

In addition, Dr. Ted Schettler, science director at the Science and Environmental Health Network, noted that some VOCs can cause symptoms at levels below 0.1 parts per million, which CTEH’s tests wouldn’t capture. Schettler gave the example of butyl acrylate, one of the chemicals that was carried by the derailed train. “The symptoms are irritation of the eyes and throats, headaches and nausea,” he said.

In its statement, Nony acknowledged that some homes in East Palestine had the odor of butyl acrylate, but he said that “current testing results do not indicate levels that would be associated with health effects.”

Health experts are particularly concerned about dioxins in East Palestine because the compounds can cause health problems, including cancer. The combustion of vinyl chloride and polyvinyl chloride, two of the chemicals that were on the train and burned after it derailed, have been known to produce dioxins.

But, in his statement, Nony dismissed the idea that the incident could have created dioxins “at a significant concentration” and said testing for the compounds was unwarranted. The company based that assessment on air monitoring it did with the EPA when the chemicals were purposefully set on fire; they were looking for two other chemicals that are produced by burning vinyl chloride.

Last week, the EPA said it would require Norfolk Southern to test for dioxins in the soil in East Palestine. And the agency has since released a plan for soil sampling to be carried out by another Norfolk Southern contractor. But some are arguing that the EPA should do the testing itself — and should have done it much earlier.

Results Used to Deny Relief

The results of CTEH’s tests in East Palestine were used at one point to deny a family’s reimbursement for hotel and relocation costs. Zsuzsa Gyenes, who lives about a mile from the derailment site, said she began to feel ill a few hours after the accident. “It felt like my brain was smacking into my skull. I got very disoriented, nauseous. And my skin started tingling,” she said. Her 9-year-old son also became sick. “He was projectile puking and shaking violently,” said Gyenes, who was especially concerned about his breathing because he has been hospitalized several times for asthma. “He was gasping for air.”

Zsuzsa Gyenes and her partner, Brian Crossmon. Behind them are containers used to haul away debris in East Palestine in February. (Courtesy of Justin Merriman)

Gyenes, her partner and son left for a hotel. At first, Norfolk Southern reimbursed the family for the stay, food and other expenses. The company even covered the cost of a remote-controlled car that Gyenes bought to cheer up her son, who was devastated because he was unable to attend school and missed the Valentine’s Day party.

But the reimbursements stopped after Gyenes got her air tested by CTEH. Gyenes was handed a piece of paper with a CTEH logo showing that the company did not detect any VOCs.

The next time Gyenes brought her receipts to the emergency assistance center, she said she was told that no expenses incurred after her air had been tested would be reimbursed because the air was safe.

A post office clerk, Gyenes described her financial situation as “bleeding out.” Nevertheless, she continued to foot the hotel bill. “I still feel sick every time I go back into town,” she said.

When she called the hotline, she got upset when she said a CTEH toxicologist told her that there was no way her headache, chest pain, tingling or nausea could be related to the derailment.

ProPublica asked Norfolk Southern about Gyenes’ situation. A spokesperson said the company reimbursed her $5,000, including some lodging and food expenses, after the initial air tests even though the company said her home is outside the evacuation zone. It noted that Gyenes used “abusive language” when questioning the toxicologist. (Gyenes acknowledged that she called her a “liar.”)

Norfolk Southern said it is working with local and federal authorities to arrange another test of the air in her home. “We’ll continue to work with every affected community member toward being comfortable back in their homes, including this resident,” a Norfolk Southern spokesperson said in an email.

After ProPublica asked about the family, Norfolk Southern restarted payments.

On Wednesday, when Gyenes returned to the emergency assistance center, she said that she was given $1,000 on a prepaid card to cover lodging, food and gas.

Do Blocked Railroad Crossings Endanger Your Community? Tell Us More.

Kirsten Berg contributed research.

by Brittany Freeman, Rocky Mountain PBS, data analysis by Sophie Chou, ProPublica

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

Last year, when the Colorado legislature passed a bill aimed at protecting residents in disputes with their homeowners associations, lawmakers had one key goal in mind: reducing the number of foreclosures filed by HOAs.

So far, the reform appears to have had its intended effect. An analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica shows that HOAs filed 47 foreclosure cases in the nearly six months between Aug. 10, when the law took effect, and the end of January. That’s a significant drop from the same period for the previous four years, when an average of 281 cases per year were filed.

During the 10 weeks between the reform bill’s signing and its implementation, HOAs appear to have been in a rush to start foreclosure motions, filing 151 cases, compared to an average of 98 cases per year in the same 10-week period for the previous four years.

“We see that this is working. It’s preventing people from being foreclosed on, and people are being able to stay in their homes,” said Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat who cosponsored the bill.

But advocates and some lawmakers say more needs to be done to address lingering problems with how HOAs are run in Colorado. For one thing, the drop in foreclosure filings might be only temporary. HOA attorneys told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that the drop may be due to HOAs restarting their collection efforts — the law requires most HOAs to update their collection policies, provide homeowners with several notifications about delinquencies and offer longer payment plans. Once they’ve complied with the new rules, HOAs may decide to restart their foreclosure efforts.

Ricks said she plans to introduce a number of fixes during the current legislative session aimed at undoing some “unintended consequences” of last year’s reform bill. She said the changes would primarily be focused on the aspects of the law that dictated how HOAs can enforce violations of their community rules with fines. The law, for instance, required HOAs to give homeowners more time to fix violations before fining them, but Ricks is considering a proposal that allows HOAs to impose more immediate penalties for acute problems, such as noise nuisances.

“I think the covenant violation side of [the new law] was mangled. … It didn’t appreciate the many different types of violations that could exist,” HOA attorney David Graf said. “I think we need to streamline some of the procedural aspects of it while trying to retain as much owner protection as we can.”

To study if other HOA reforms may be needed, Rep. Brianna Titone, an Arvada Democrat, cosponsored a bill to create an HOA task force that would take a deeper look at issues like foreclosure, fines and communications practices, taking into account the perspective of homeowners. Titone said she hopes the task force can also explore ways to keep HOA disputes out of court.

“What we’re really after here is just trying to figure out the fairest way of keeping efficiency in the process of HOAs, but giving people who are in HOAs relief when they need it,” Titone said. “I think this is something we should have done a long time ago.”

by Brittany Freeman, Rocky Mountain PBS, data analysis by Sophie Chou, ProPublica

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

Karl Paymah was on the clock.

A certified letter from the Rock Ridge Condominium Association in the Denver suburb of Aurora said he had 30 days to pay $1,515.45 in unpaid homeowners association dues and penalties — or face foreclosure.

After receiving the letter on Dec. 23, 2021, Paymah said he tried to pay the balance through the HOA’s website, as he had done in the past. But his account had been locked because it was turned over to the HOA’s collections attorney, Tammy Alcock. Next, he called Rock Ridge’s management company, which he said told him to discuss the matter with Alcock. But there was no answer when he called her office three times that afternoon. The office of Alcock Law Group was closed for the holiday.

“I can’t pay. I can’t pay through the portal. I can’t pay with the management company. I can’t pay with this attorney that they’re telling me to go through,” Paymah, a retired NFL cornerback, recalled thinking. “So I’m just sitting there.”

Watch Rocky Mountain PBS’s Report (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

Turning the account over to Alcock meant that the association was asserting its right under Colorado law to charge him for the attorney fees it was incurring, causing his debt to grow rapidly.

By early February, when Rock Ridge began moving forward with foreclosure, the legal process of taking the home from its owner, Paymah’s debt had more than tripled to about $5,000, mostly because of legal costs.

Paymah’s experience is a case study in how even a small dispute can quickly escalate into an expensive legal fight in Colorado, where state law empowers HOAs to initiate foreclosure proceedings against homeowners who owe money to them. As Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica have reported, HOAs have filed thousands of foreclosure cases in recent years, in disputes stemming from as little as a $308 lien.

To file foreclosure cases, HOAs in Colorado often turn to the expertise of seven law firms that specialize in handling disputes with homeowners. From January 2018 through February 2022, each of the law firms filed at least 100 foreclosure cases on behalf of HOAs in Colorado, according to an analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. One of the law firms with the highest number of filings is the Alcock Law Group.

Seven Law Firms Each Filed More Than 100 Foreclosure Cases on Behalf of Colorado HOAs Over Four Years

Cases filed between January 2018 and the end of February 2022

Note: Foreclosure cases filed by HOAs were identified using a list of all relevant foreclosure cases in the state, which the news organizations searched for plaintiff names containing HOA-related keywords before manually reviewing the results. For more details, see our methodology. (Source: Analysis of state court data by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica)

Foreclosure litigation can be a lucrative business for law firms, which can reap thousands of dollars in attorney fees from each foreclosure case they help file. Critics say this system creates a perverse incentive for attorneys to advise the HOAs to file more foreclosure cases, rather than to find less expensive solutions.

Alcock Law Group said in a court filing that it represented about 50 HOAs and that a typical uncontested HOA foreclosure case generates between $4,000 and $6,000 in attorney fees. Alcock has filed more than 300 foreclosure cases since 2018, the analysis shows. Rock Ridge’s financial documents obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica show that the HOA has billed more than $76,000 in attorney fees and legal costs to delinquent residents — including Paymah — since January 2021.

State Rep. Brianna Titone, an Arvada Democrat, has long argued that the state needs to do more to keep HOA disputes out of court, pointing out that, in these cases, attorneys always win.

“Whatever dispute happens, the HOA attorneys are the ones that are always reaping the benefit,” Titone said. “They get paid by both parties, basically.”

Representatives from four of the seven law firms that collectively filed hundreds of foreclosure cases told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that foreclosure is typically a remedy of last resort and represents just a fraction of debt-related matters that they handle on behalf of HOAs.

The Rock Ridge Condominium Association has filed five foreclosure cases since the summer of 2021. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

Jeffrey B. Smith of Altitude Community Law said his firm, which represents about 3,000 HOAs, doesn’t “push associations towards foreclosures except in those few cases where other options have proved futile.”

Hal Kyles of Orten Cavanagh Holmes & Hunt said profit motives do not play a part in how his firm handles HOA-related cases. “Issues of monetary return are no factor in recommendations to foreclose and would be a violation of my ethical obligation to act in the best interests of my client,” he said.

Two other law firms, Alcock Law Group and Vial Fotheringham, did not respond to questions for this story. Tobey & Johnston declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Paymah, who has lived in Colorado since being drafted by the Denver Broncos in 2005, decided to do what other homeowners facing foreclosure rarely do: fight the HOA.

Paymah’s legal strategy centered on challenging attorney fees that he considered exorbitant and unjustifiable. “I felt bamboozled,” Paymah said, noting how quickly his debt grew. “I felt like somebody was trying to take advantage of me.”

When the case went to trial in August, the HOA defended its action, casting the whole dispute as being of Paymah’s own making.

“The facts here are absolutely undisputed that Mr. Paymah was delinquent in payment of assessments,” said Alcock, who presented the mounds of correspondence that the HOA’s management company had sent to Paymah notifying him of his delinquencies.

Alcock also noted that, if a series of unpaid dues like Paymah’s were allowed to go uncollected, it could ultimately lead to serious harm to the neighborhood.

“There are many, many … examples where associations have large delinquencies, don’t collect assessments, and aren’t able to properly take care of the community and ensure safety of the residents,” Alcock said.

In his testimony, Paymah, whose company bought the Rock Ridge condo in 2018 as an investment and has since rented it out, admitted that he had not been as attentive to property-related matters as he should have been for several years, as he dealt with a custody dispute over his son.

But Paymah said he had already caught up on his unpaid dues and penalties before trial, paying about $3,600. What was keeping the case from being resolved, he said, was attorney fees.

In the end, Judge Paul King ruled in favor of Paymah’s main argument, agreeing that the court should review the reasonableness of attorney fees, which ballooned to about $50,000 after the trial concluded.

But it was a pyrrhic victory for Paymah. After reviewing attorney fees and legal costs, King ordered Paymah to pay $25,774 to avoid foreclosure — far more than he would have paid had he never mounted a legal challenge in the first place.

Paymah said homeowners like him face a “lose-lose situation” in a dispute with their HOA. “It’s almost like you have to lay down … and just let them do whatever they want. I can’t really advise anybody to do that,” he said. “And then your latter alternative is what? Get a lawyer and spend a bunch of money.”

When Nicole Plybon moved to Rock Ridge in 2004, the community was brand new. Then came what she called a “slow dilapidation.”

“Shingles were blowing off the roofs, the stone was falling down, the sidewalks were all cracked up, the gutters are pretty much smashed,” Plybon said. “Just a lot of problems starting to accumulate on one another.”

This common infrastructure is the responsibility of the HOA, and its upkeep is funded by the monthly dues paid by every owner in the community.

When the pandemic hit in 2020 and residents were staying home more, they began asking questions to the management company, which had run the community for more than 13 years, and to the HOA board, which they said rarely held meetings.

A group of residents decided to organize and eventually voted out the board and brought in a new group, which included Plybon. The new board quickly replaced its management company and started taking on projects to improve the community.

Soon Plybon and other board members realized that their predecessors hadn’t built up enough savings to cover future maintenance needs. This led to their decision to raise the community’s monthly dues by 48% last year, making payments that used to be as little as $178 to jump to $264.

“Unfortunately, we had to be the bad guys on the board,” Plybon said. “We had to start thinking about a five-, 10-, 15-year plan, where that was never done in the past.”

Nicole Plybon, a former member of the Rock Ridge HOA board, said the community needed to build up enough savings to cover future maintenance needs. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

In addition to raising dues, the HOA began cracking down on delinquent homeowners, filing five foreclosure cases starting in the summer of 2021.

All five cases reached resolutions that allowed homeowners to avoid foreclosure, and they were resolved without much delay — except for one: Paymah’s case.

That legal contest stretched on for about a year, and all the while the HOA’s board members assumed that Paymah would eventually be held responsible for paying attorney fees and legal costs.

But King reduced what Paymah owed the HOA in attorney fees and legal costs by more than $30,000 on several grounds, finding that Alcock had charged for some tasks that could have been handled by a paralegal and billed more time than was likely necessary for certain tasks. He also struck some of the fees resulting from Alcock’s work on the HOA’s allegation that Paymah had put his property under his business’ name in an attempt to defraud the association, ruling that the association did not prove its case.

The attorney fees that Paymah didn’t have to pay are now being shouldered by Rock Ridge residents. Current and former HOA board members told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that they felt caught off guard by King’s ruling.

“You get people who just want to help their community on a board. But most of the time, we’re not educated about bylaws and all that stuff, much less the implications of laws,” current board member Trish Westin said.

Former board member Erik Elisary said he found it frustrating that the HOAs have few options. “What other avenues does the HOA have to get the homeowner to pay?” he said. “Any time the homeowner is causing the HOA to have to spend attorney’s fees, they should be the responsibility of the homeowner.”

For his part, Paymah pointed out during the trial that there was another way to solve a dispute like this, citing a lawsuit filed against him by a different HOA for $1,438.85 in unpaid dues and late fees.

In that case, court records show that attorney fees and legal costs were kept to a minimum — about $815 — in part because the other HOA had opted for the less expensive tactic of seeking a judgment in county court, rather than seeking foreclosure in district court.

Paymah testified he was able to work with the HOA to keep the dispute from escalating. “I called and explained it,” he said. “So I made it current. … [A] similar situation, but that was just handled a different way.”

Rock Ridge’s HOA has billed more than $76,000 in attorney fees and legal costs to delinquent residents since January 2021, according to financial documents obtained by Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. (Jeremy Moore/Rocky Mountain PBS)

Advocates for homeowners in HOAs have also been backing a number of other ideas for keeping housing disputes from resulting in exorbitant legal bills.

During last year’s legislative session, lawmakers considered one such idea as part of an HOA foreclosure reform measure. The measure, which prevents certain types of HOA foreclosures and requires more notification and longer payment plan before initiating a case, passed in May.

But a provision that would have limited the amount of attorney fees that HOAs could recover was dropped before the measure’s approval.

State Rep. Naquetta Ricks, an Aurora Democrat, said the move was a concession made during negotiations with HOA industry representatives. She acknowledged that unchecked attorney fees remain a problem for homeowners but has not offered any bill during the current legislative session to address the issue.

“It is like a blank check, in my mind, that’s been given to these HOA lawyers,” Ricks said. “There’s no dispute resolution process for homeowners. The only way to do this is to go to court.”

HOA homeowner advocate Stan Hrincevich, who runs Colorado HOA Forum, an online resource for homeowners, said his top priority for many years has been to empower a state agency to resolve disputes between homeowners and their associations, with a goal of keeping them from going to the court in the first place.

“Folks, don’t go to court. It’s not a great place for justice,” Hrincevich said. “Can you imagine how much this is costing homeowners every year?”

Titone, the state representative, said an out-of-court dispute resolution process is also one of her top priorities, but she has no current proposals to create such a process. She said the HOA industry’s lobbying has prevented such efforts from moving forward in the past.

“You need to have somebody be able to say, ‘Why do we need to go to expensive court here? You owe $2,000,’” Titone said. “There should be a more civil way to do it than doing it this way.”

HOA attorney David Graf said he supports the intent of Hrincevich and Titone’s proposal, but he is concerned about the costs that HOAs could still incur in such a process.

“I love the idea of having someone who can resolve these complaints without having to go to court, but I'm not sure if substituting a state officer as the judge of this issue is any better than where we are now,” Graf said.

Rock Ridge board members said they think a dispute resolution process would be helpful in avoiding what they’ve experienced — both in their efforts to catch up on overdue maintenance in 2020 and their efforts to collect delinquent debts since.

“There have to be other states we can model something better around to protect the homeowners,” Rock Ridge board member Nick Losito said.

by Vianna Davila, Melissa Sanchez, Liz Sharp and Myron Avant

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

ProPublica is committed to increasing the diversity of our workplace as well as the journalism community more broadly, and each year we publish a report on those efforts. This is the report for 2023; here are all our past reports.

Our Commitment

We believe that it is imperative to staff our newsroom and business operations with people from a broad range of backgrounds, ages and perspectives. We are committed to recruiting and retaining people from communities that have long been underrepresented, in journalism broadly and in investigative journalism especially. That includes African Americans, Latinos, other people of color, women, LGBTQ people and people with disabilities.

ProPublica has continued to expand, growing from 160 full-time employees at the start of 2022 to 172 in 2023, due in part to the launch of our global public health team and additions to our visuals, audience, development, finance and talent teams. In addition to recruiting talent and awarding financial stipends for students to attend journalism conferences, ProPublica’s diversity efforts last year included our largest presence yet at journalism affinity conferences and the development of an investigative editor training program.

We also worked to formalize some of our previously volunteer-run diversity efforts and have included some of our broader diversity goals in ProPublica’s first strategic plan.

The Diversity Committee comprises more than 50 ProPublicans who volunteer their time to work on initiatives that are pitched and run by the staff. The current co-chairs are Vianna Davila, Melissa Sanchez and Liz Sharp.

Breakdown of Our Staff

As with last year, we tracked candidates through the application and interview process. Out of 30 positions filled in 2022, 55% of the candidates we interviewed identified as women and 42% identified as being part of a racial/ethnic group other than solely non-Hispanic white. Of those we hired, 40% identified as women and 47% as being part of a racial/ethnic group other than solely non-Hispanic white.

The percentage of all ProPublica staff members who identified as solely non-Hispanic white was 59%, the same as last year. In editorial positions, the percentage of staff members who identified as solely non-Hispanic white was 59%, the same as in the two prior years.

For the fifth year in a row, more women than men work at ProPublica. In editorial positions, women represented 49% of the staff.

Last year we began collecting demographic information about our board of directors. Half of the 14 people on the board identified as women, and 71% of the directors identified as non-Hispanic white.

As we’ve said since 2015, part of our commitment to diversity means being transparent about our own numbers. Here’s how our staff breaks down:

Race and Ethnicity: All of ProPublica (Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.) Race and Ethnicity: Editorial (Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.) Race and Ethnicity: Managers (Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.) Gender: All of ProPublica (Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.) Gender: Editorial (Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.) Gender: Managers (Note: Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.)

Note: The data is based on employees’ self-reported information. Recognizing that some people may identify as more than one race but not identify as a person of color, last year we began stating numbers in terms of people who “solely identify as non-Hispanic white.” We hope this will provide more specificity and accuracy. The employee information is as of Jan. 1 of each year. Managers are defined as staff members who supervise other people and that group does not include all editors. Percentages may not add up to 100 because of rounding. Fellows, time-limited employees and part-time employees are not included in this analysis.

New Initiatives

Investigative editor training: ProPublica in December announced its new Investigative Editor Training Program for applicants who want to learn how to manage, edit and elevate investigative projects that expose harm and create impact. This initiative, led by Talia Buford and Ginger Thompson, was designed to increase diversity in the next generation of investigative editors. The program will launch this spring with an internal training for ProPublica staffers interested in becoming editors. In June 2023, we will welcome the first external cohort of the yearlong program with an in-person editor training in New York. After that, participants will be paired with ProPublica senior staff as mentors and receive additional virtual training for the rest of the year. (Apply here.)

Sensitivity subcommittee: Led by Andrea Wise, Colleen Barry and Maya Eliahou, this group formed in 2022 after numerous internal conversations about concerns that regularly surfaced when reporters were working on stories touching on sensitive topics, particularly suicide and sexual assault. Volunteers created a standing Slack channel to create a space for the staff to leverage and share its collective knowledge and experience on these and other topics that require a careful and thoughtful approach.

Strategic plan: Leading the journalism industry on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts is one of the priorities ProPublica staffers and leaders are including in our five-year (2023-2027) strategic plan. The plan outlines the organization’s progress and initiatives over the past 15 years while acknowledging that there is more work to do. We plan to dedicate more resources to making investigative journalism careers accessible and sustainable for journalists from underrepresented backgrounds.

Our Ongoing Efforts

We think about our efforts in the following ways: building the pipeline (for us and for all of investigative journalism); recruiting talent and improving our hiring process; and inclusion and retention. Last year, as travel and in-person diversity initiatives became more feasible after the initial years of the coronavirus pandemic, ProPublica increased its presence at conferences and continued to offer virtual training and development opportunities.

Building the Pipeline

Conference stipends: ProPublica offers funding to help student journalists attend conferences. This effort is coordinated by Mollie Simon, Ash Ngu and Adriana Gallardo. In the seventh year of the program, we teamed up with The Pudding to award 25 stipends of $750 each. Because of the pandemic, we gave students the option to use the money for either journalism-related expenses or conference expenses. This year, following feedback from our 2022 stipend cohort, we are working to focus this initiative on supporting journalists from diverse backgrounds who have a distinct desire to pursue investigative journalism.

Emerging Reporters Program: The program provides financial assistance and mentorship to eight students for whom investigative journalism might otherwise be inaccessible so they can pursue early career opportunities in the field. The program includes a $9,000 stipend, virtual programming and admission to a journalism conference. This is the program’s eighth year, and it is coordinated by Talia Buford. Check out our most recent class and find out more about the program.

ONA (Online News Association) Diversity Breakfast: A breakfast at the ONA conference, facilitated by Ruth Baron and Steve Myers, paired managing editors, executive editors and other leading professionals in the industry with journalists from historically underrepresented communities. Nearly 40 journalists participated in the event. We have hosted both virtual and in-person breakfasts at the conference since 2015. In 2023, we will be shifting our efforts to other investigative mentorship opportunities.

Chicago external mentorships: Mentorship sessions with Free Spirit Media, which provides teens and young adults in communities of color on Chicago’s West and South sides with media literacy and media production opportunities. Led by Duaa Eldeib, workshops include sessions on the art of pitching stories and conceptualizing data.

Data Institute: ProPublica, in partnership with The Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting and OpenNews, held a workshop for journalists on how to use data, design and code. Twelve journalism students, professors and working journalists participated in the weeklong online training last summer. The Data Institute started in 2016, founded by ProPublica journalists to make high-quality technical training accessible to more journalists.

Mentorship: Working with the Journalism Mentors program, a group of ProPublica journalists had one-on-one mentoring sessions with 17 people last year. This mentorship opportunity, which can include general advice or portfolio reviews, can be arranged as an in-person session during affinity conferences. The sessions can also be arranged outside of the traditional conference season. Melissa Sanchez, Rui Kaneya and Max Blau coordinated these efforts last year. (Interested? Sign up for a session.)

Recruiting and Hiring

Affinity conferences: Newsroom staff and masthead members from ProPublica and three other nonprofit newsrooms (The Marshall Project, The Texas Tribune and The Trace) came together at the Asian American Journalists Association and the joint National Association of Black Journalists/National Association of Hispanic Journalists conference to host mixers and other professional development opportunities. ProPublica staff also attended the Native American Journalists Association conference and conducted resume reviews. This work was led by Maya Miller and Irena Hwang.

Salary transparency: Starting last fall, in advance of a new law that affects postings for jobs based in New York City, ProPublica began publishing salary ranges for all posted job openings, regardless of geography. Management also shared salary ranges internally for positions in which four or more people hold that job. This was done to ensure transparency about pay among staff and potential applicants in an effort to achieve equity in the newsroom.

Salary equity: ProPublica management annually analyzes salaries in job categories where there are at least four employees and, when necessary, adjusts those salaries to ensure equity by race and gender in each job and location group, while taking into account years of experience. This analysis started in 2021. We do this because we want to try to eliminate the effects of any unconscious bias in setting salaries.

Rooney Rule: We require that hiring managers interview at least one person who does not self-identify as solely non-Hispanic white. In addition, every application must be read by at least two people.

Freelancer guide: Last fall, ProPublica published a guide for freelancers interested in pitching an investigation to ProPublica. We designed the guide to formalize the pitch process and level the playing field for how freelance projects are presented and considered. Submissions will be reviewed by editors on a rotating basis. ProPublica will respond to anyone who completes the form, even if their proposal is not accepted.

LRN candidate outreach: Editors with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network started offering office hours to potential applicants. They also offered more intensive mentoring to a select number of applicants who weren’t accepted in order to develop promising proposals over time. Finally, LRN editors were present at affinity journalism conferences, where they met with interested applicants in an effort to help them with the project-development and application process.

Inclusion and Retention

Unconscious bias training: In 2021, ProPublica hired Paradigm Reach to conduct ongoing diversity, equity and inclusion training with staff. The training is required of all new managers.

ProPublica Peer Partnership Program: This is an internal program organized by Jodi Cohen and Lisa Song that matches ProPublicans with a mentor or peer partner to meet each other, develop new skills and have someone to turn to for help navigating workplace or career questions.

Welcoming new hires and focusing on internal culture: A subcommittee led by Michael Grabell and Ariana Tobin continued to meet last year to consider ways to make the newsroom more inclusive and equitable, including how to prevent burnout, how to build community while working remotely and ways to make the organization’s expense policy welcoming to people who come from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Diversity Committee office hours: We have continued to offer a casual hangout on Zoom twice a month where ProPublicans can chat with the Diversity Committee co-chairs to brainstorm about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, ask questions about ProPublica’s ongoing DEI programs or chat about diversity-related concerns in a more intimate setting outside of the monthly committee meetings.

Interested in Working Here?

Here is our jobs page, where we post new full-time positions, and here’s our fellowships page. At the bottom of either page, you can sign up to be automatically notified when we have a job or fellowship available.

by Eli Hager

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The New Mexico Corrections Department has lost track of nearly two dozen prisoners in its custody who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed as children, an error that could keep these “juvenile lifers” from getting a chance at freedom under a bill likely to be passed by the state Legislature within days.

As the legislation was being drafted, ProPublica asked the department for a list of all state prisoners who were sentenced to life as juveniles. Using court records, the news organization then identified at least 21 such individuals not on the state’s list. Many of them had been locked up for decades.

Denali Wilson, a staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico who helped discover the problem, said such carelessness on the part of the state government makes it plain that “when you throw away kids in adult prison, they are lost.”

Or as one of the forgotten prisoners, Sigmundr Odhinnson, told ProPublica in an email from behind bars, “We are, quite literally, missing children.”

This is not just a philosophical issue. The New Mexico Legislature is on the cusp of passing a bill that would give a new shot at parole to all state prisoners serving life or lengthy sentences for crimes they committed when they were juveniles, provided that they have served at least 15 to 25 years of their time, depending on their offense.

But to do that, the corrections department will first need to identify all of these individuals to help schedule their parole hearings.

“When the entity that is imprisoning people isn’t a reliable source for who it is imprisoning, how do we know the people exist?” said Wilson.

Wilson started advocating for juveniles serving decadeslong sentences in adult prison when she was still in law school. (Minesh Bacrania, special to ProPublica)

The New Mexico legislation is premised on multiple recent Supreme Court decisions and studies of brain science finding that kids are impulsive, prone to risk-taking, bad at understanding the consequences of their actions and highly susceptible to peer pressure (often committing their offenses among groups of friends), all of which make them less culpable than adults when they commit crimes. They are also, according to the high court, more capable of redemption.

The brain doesn’t fully develop until around age 25, extensive research shows, and most people are likely to “age out” of criminality.

The bill wouldn’t guarantee freedom to juvenile lifers in New Mexico, but it would provide them a chance to articulate to the state parole board how they have changed, including whether they’ve taken accountability for their actions, followed prison rules and completed educational programming.

Prosecutors opposed the legislation in previous years but dropped their opposition after changes were made to account for the seriousness of certain offenses.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s office has indicated that she will likely sign the legislation, if it is passed, by early April; it would go into effect this summer. In the meantime, officials in her administration could not answer basic questions about the number of prisoners affected and were unclear about which office is responsible for maintaining that information.

Carmelina Hart, spokesperson for the corrections department, initially sent ProPublica the names of 13 people in New Mexico’s prison system who were sentenced to life as children, which she said was the extent of the cohort.

But a disclaimer below the list read, “Due to inconsistencies and mistakes over decades of data entry, as well as ensuing attempts of varying success to fix previous inaccuracies over that time, it is virtually impossible to conclude that all of these data are entirely correct.”

When challenged about whether there are in fact many more New Mexico juvenile lifers, Hart said there possibly had been a miscommunication with her information technology team. She added that some people who had committed their crimes as kids (thus making them eligible for relief under the new legislation) might have turned 18 before they entered NMCD custody from local jails or juvenile detention facilities, causing the record-keeping confusion.

Asked for the names of all prisoners who would be affected by the bill, Hart said that only the state court system could provide such a list.

That caught Barry Massey, spokesperson for the New Mexico administrative office of the courts, off guard. “I am surprised that the Corrections Department claims it has no such records, given that the agency has to know the sentences imposed on someone in order to track their incarceration,” he said.

Massey said the courts do not maintain a database of individuals in prison, nor any records his team is capable of searching by prisoners’ ages at the time of their offenses. “Only the Corrections Department would have that,” he said.

Because these kids were prosecuted as adults, he added, their cases can look the same as adult ones in court data.

To that, Hart, the corrections department spokesperson, emailed back, “LOL! Now I’m confused too!”

She later said on a phone call, “Come on now, people don’t just fall out of our dataset.”

Then she said the department doesn’t need to identify those affected by the legislation until the governor signs it. “We’re not going to look for people who are not defined in the law,” she said. “You can’t put the cart before the horse.”

Hart emphasized that the agency does have records of every person serving in its facilities, and that if the bill becomes law, NMCD will take the appropriate steps to ensure that it is in compliance.

“There Are People We Still Don’t Know About”

The problem of the missing juvenile lifers would not have come to light if not for the efforts of Wilson, the ACLU of New Mexico’s lead attorney on the issue of children sentenced to decades in adult prison.

Back when she was still a law student at the University of New Mexico in 2017, Wilson and a group of colleagues started asking the corrections department for information on everyone in its custody serving long sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles. It was alarming, she said, to learn of the prisoners’ ages at the time they went in — 15, 16, 17 — and then see their ages now — 40, 45, 50.

She knew these people had been responsible for real harm: in many cases, a loss of life.

But, she said, she still felt a sense of indignation that hasn’t left her.

According to a 2012 Sentencing Project survey, Wilson learned, 79% of those serving life sentences for crimes committed as juveniles nationally had witnessed regular violence in their homes growing up, and 47% were victims of physical abuse. In many cases, they had committed their offenses while caught up in gang activity that they’d long since renounced, or had been getaway drivers during armed robberies gone wrong.

Meanwhile, just 1% of former juvenile lifers who are given a second chance at a free life end up committing another crime, according to a 2020 study in Philadelphia.

Wilson also learned that New Mexico, despite having banned the death penalty for children three decades before the Supreme Court did, had not yet addressed extreme juvenile sentencing. (Twenty-six other states and Washington, D.C., have done so.)

Using the list of juvenile lifers identified for her by the corrections department, she and the incarcerated people’s family members started sending them a regular newsletter, sharing updates from her team’s advocacy at the state Capitol for legislation just then starting to be considered. She also relied on the names provided by NMCD to find individuals she might be able to help in court, in some cases challenging their decadeslong prison terms as cruel and unusual punishment.

Several years into this work, Wilson got a call from the father of one juvenile lifer who hadn’t been named in the department’s data. But she had already learned of the case on her own, so she didn’t think much of it.

What came as a shock to Wilson was when, last spring, she clicked on an email listserv for New Mexico attorneys and read about a case involving a middle-aged prisoner who’d been behind bars since he was a teenager.

She had never heard of this man.

“I had the initial thought, ‘Oh shit, what have I been doing wrong?’” she said. “I just couldn’t figure out how I didn’t know about him.”

Still a relatively young attorney, Wilson experienced a bout of impostor syndrome, she said, noting that the people she advocates for “have been in prison longer than I’ve been alive.”

She had to scramble, given that by this point she was considered a legislative expert on extreme youth sentencing — and one of the main questions she always got from lawmakers assessing the proposed legislation that she was working on was “How many people will this impact?” Still using the list provided by the corrections department, she had been repeating a specific number of prisoners she believed would become eligible for parole under the bill.

But now she was realizing that there might be more who the department had never identified to her.

Sometimes prison systems misspell prisoners’ names on paperwork and in other contexts, so Wilson searched NMCD data using alternate spellings. “But they’re just not there,” she said.

The most disconcerting part, she said, is that she discovered the problem by chance.

“I feel certain that there are people we still don’t know about,” she said. “I don’t know, and I don’t know how to know.”

“I Want to Do Something Good Instead of Bad”

One subset of New Mexico’s juvenile lifers who seem to have been disproportionately forgotten are those serving their time in out-of-state prisons.

Jerry Torres and Juan Meraz, for example, are both in the custody of the New Mexico Corrections Department for crimes they committed as juveniles in the state, yet they are locked up in Arizona — in a for-profit prison operated by the company CoreCivic.

Neither has appeared on the department’s lists of juvenile lifers, even though they too should be getting a parole hearing (by Zoom, that is) under the upcoming legislation.

Torres is serving a life sentence for a murder he went to jail for as a 17-year-old in 1996. He emphasized in a phone interview that he didn’t want to cause additional pain to his victim’s family by speaking about the legislative issue.

Torres said that because he is not in New Mexico, he feels even more unknown than the other juvenile lifers.

“I’m not surrounded by as many people possibly affected by this,” he said, given that he is watching the bill’s progress from a state away.

If he is located by the department and given the parole hearing that the law should provide, and if he is then actually paroled, Torres said, he just wants to do “everything I missed out on because of the decisions I made,” like simply going to a store, playing baseball at the park with his family and getting a commercial driver’s license to be a truck driver. “It’s as simple as that,” he said. “I want to be productive. I want to do something good instead of bad.”

Meraz, also in his mid-40s, shot someone when he was 15.

While insisting on not minimizing the harm he caused, he said he has done nearly every educational program there is to do while locked up, including parenting classes even though he doesn’t have any kids.

Meraz recently had major colon surgery. “Fifteen or 20 years of good health out there, I can’t ask for anything more,” he said of what he dreams of if he gets this parole opportunity.

Wilson, the lawyer, said that if the law is passed, she will be specifically asking the department to review all out-of-state prisoners for their ages at the time of their offenses.

Her one solace is that whenever a juvenile lifer materializes whom she hadn’t known about — which continues to happen — they often know about her and about the legislation, sometimes down to which New Mexico state representatives are and are not voting for it.

“And I’m like, oh right, this is people’s lives — they are paying attention,” Wilson said. “We will find them.”

Help Us Identify New Mexico Juvenile Lifers Who May Qualify for Parole Hearings

If you are aware of someone who committed a crime as a juvenile (under the age of 18) in New Mexico and who has since served more than 15 years in prison for that offense, please let us know. As we continue to cover this issue, we will routinely ask the New Mexico Corrections Department if they are aware of the individuals we learn of who may be eligible for a parole hearing if proposed legislation passes. Please enter their information below. If you would prefer to talk to a reporter before you share, please email Eli Hager at Eli.Hager@propublica.org. We appreciate you sharing your story and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering this information for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of what you tell us.

window.jQuery || document.write('') This form requires JavaScript to complete. Powered by CityBase Screendoor. // Uncomment this line and set it to the CSS class that your website uses for buttons: // FormRenderer.BUTTON_CLASS = ''; new FormRenderer({"project_id":"oPxLzVmdz7qI9jb1"});

by Melissa Sanchez and Maryam Jameel

Leer en español.

Learn how to help us investigate the dairy industry. Haz click aquí para aprender cómo ayudarnos a investigar la industria lechera.

State and local officials in Wisconsin said they were horrified to learn of the conditions leading up to the 2019 death of an 8-year-old Nicaraguan boy on a dairy farm, as well as the flawed law enforcement investigation that followed. Now they say they want to address some of the issues highlighted by a ProPublica investigation, published last month, into Jefferson Rodríguez’s death.

“What happened should never have happened,” said state Rep. Sylvia Ortiz-Velez, a Milwaukee Democrat whose mother’s family worked as migrant farm laborers in Wisconsin in the 1960s.

Jefferson was run over late one summer night in 2019 by a worker operating a skid steer on a farm in rural Dane County, about a half-hour north of Madison, the state capital. It was the worker’s first day on the job, and he told us that he had received only a few hours of training. Our investigation showed how the authorities who investigated Jefferson’s death wrongly concluded that his father had run him over.

The failure was due in large part to a language barrier between the boy’s father, José María Rodríguez Uriarte, and the Dane County sheriff’s deputy who interviewed him. Rodríguez does not speak English; the deputy considered herself proficient in Spanish, but not fluent. When we interviewed the deputy, we learned that when she questioned Rodríguez in Spanish about what happened, her words didn’t mean what she thought and would likely be confusing to a Spanish speaker.

Jefferson’s death was ruled an accident. Nobody was charged criminally.

“Proficiency in a crisis isn’t good enough,” said Dana Pellebon, who sits on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. “Unfortunately, until a situation like this happens, sometimes we don’t see the gaps in service.”

Pellebon and several other supervisors told ProPublica they were looking into measures that could improve language access for non-English speakers who interact with the sheriff’s office. According to estimates from the U.S. census, more than 10% of Dane County residents speak a language other than English at home.

“This theme of language barriers for people to exercise and enforce their rights — from law enforcement to human services to our court system — it is widespread,” said county Supervisor Heidi Wegleitner. “There really needs to be a thorough examination countywide into these barriers, because it’s not fair.”

The Board of Supervisors sets the budget for and can make recommendations to the sheriff’s office. But it is limited in its ability to set policy.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said the agency has a skilled and diverse staff that’s equipped with the tools it needs, including “unfettered access” to language translation services. The department “is always looking for ways to improve the services provided to the community which include the evaluation of current practices and consideration [of] received recommendations,” the spokesperson said.

At the state level, Ortiz-Velez pointed to a bill that would allow DACA recipients to become police officers or sheriff’s deputies. (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals is a federal program that gives some undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children temporary protections from deportation.) Currently, only U.S. citizens can work as police officers or sheriff’s deputies in Wisconsin. “For us to have officers that are fluent, that were born in other countries and can speak the language, I think that could be a great help,” Ortiz-Velez said.

Our story on Jefferson’s death is the first in our series, America’s Dairyland, that intends to explore work, housing and other conditions for immigrant dairy workers in Wisconsin and across the Midwest. Here are three takeaways from our reporting efforts so far:

1. Across Wisconsin, law enforcement officials face language barriers when responding to incidents on dairy farms.

Under the Civil Rights Act, agencies that receive federal funding are required to ensure that their services are accessible to people who speak limited English. The Department of Justice, which drafted guidelines for law enforcement agencies on this issue nearly two decades ago, occasionally investigates departments that fail to meet this requirement.

Last year, we began requesting records of law enforcement agencies’ responses to incidents ranging from work-related injuries to assaults on dairy farms across Wisconsin. What those records show us is that officials routinely encounter language barriers when interacting with dairy workers. Frequently they rely on farm supervisors or employees to serve as interpreters; sometimes they turn to Google Translate or to children.

The Dane County Sheriff’s Office has no written policy about how deputies should respond to incidents involving people who do not speak English, or on when to bring in an interpreter. The department does not assess the language skills of employees, who instead self-report their proficiency. But as a general practice, department officials have said, when deputies need to communicate with residents who speak a language other than English, they are supposed to put out a call to ask if any of their colleagues speak that language and, if none are available, ask for help from other nearby agencies.

2. It is an open secret that Wisconsin’s dairy industry relies on undocumented immigrant labor.

Because workers are undocumented, they often have a harder time speaking up about unfair or unsafe conditions.

Rodríguez and his son immigrated to the U.S. from Nicaragua in early 2019 in search of economic opportunity. As an asylum-seeker, Rodríguez did not have a work permit. He used fake papers to get a job at D&K Dairy. (In a deposition, the farm’s owner said he was not aware of Rodríguez’s citizenship status.)

Rodríguez earned $9.50 an hour and, like other workers, routinely worked 70 to 80 hours a week. Agricultural work is excluded from many of America’s labor protections, so there was no overtime pay for working more than 40 hours. Like many Wisconsin dairy farms, D&K Dairy provided free housing. But the housing Rodríguez and his son used was not in a house; they lived in an apartment above the milking parlor, the barn where hundreds of cows were brought day and night to be milked by heavy, loud machinery.

For years the dairy industry, complaining of labor shortages, has lobbied unsuccessfully to access the federal H-2A guest worker program, which allows employers to temporarily bring in foreign employees when they can’t find local workers. Currently, the program is limited to seasonal agricultural work; dairy is a year-round job.

Critics say the guest-worker program lends itself to abuse and exploitation, as immigrants’ ability to remain in the U.S. is tied to a single employer, which has led to several high-profile cases of forced labor, wage theft, substandard housing and high recruitment fees, among other problems.

3. Small farms don’t always get a safety inspection after a death or injury.

When Jefferson died, an investigator with the Dane County Medical Examiner’s Office alerted the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for workplace safety. But OSHA did not investigate because the boy was not a farm employee.

Even when workers die or are injured on small farms, OSHA is limited in its ability to respond. Farms with fewer than 11 workers are often exempt from oversight. (Some states with their own OSHA plans do more, but Wisconsin isn’t one of them.) And the federal agency has few safety standards for agricultural work sites.

In recent years, OSHA has attempted to inspect fewer than a dozen of the thousands of dairy farms in Wisconsin each year. The year Jefferson died, six of the nine inspections that OSHA initiated ultimately were not done because the farms were too small to fall under the agency’s jurisdiction; three of those six involved fatalities.

“Dairy operations these days are big factories, basically,” said Michael Engelberger, a Dane County supervisor. “They should not be exempt from any OSHA regulations or special agriculture labor laws. To me that’s just wrong.”

Wegleitner said she hopes to convene a group of supervisors, community advocates, county staff and others to talk about next steps in the coming weeks.

“Language access is one piece,” she said. “We have unsafe housing, lack of inspections and oversight, and all those things may not be things the county can legislate. But if we are talking to and advocating with state and federal policymakers and groups and working in coalition, I think this needs to be addressed on multiple levels.”

We plan to keep reporting on issues affecting immigrant dairy workers across the Midwest. Among those issues: traffic stops of undocumented immigrants who drive without a license; access to medical care or workers’ compensation after injuries on the job; and employer-provided housing.

Do you have ideas or tips for us to look into? Please reach out using this form.

And if you know a Spanish speaker who might be interested in this topic, please share with them a translated version of the story about Jefferson’s death — which also includes an audio version — or this note about how to get in touch with us.

Aquí está nuestra investigación — y una versión en audio — en español, así como una carta explicando cómo usted se puede comunicar con nosotros si quiere compartir información sobre la industria lechera de Wisconsin y estados cercanos.

Help ProPublica Journalists Investigate the Dairy Industry

by Kristen Doerer for ProPublica

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

You’ve figured out your deductions or credits, calculated how much you owed in taxes and successfully filed your return. If you’re sitting around wondering where your money is, you’re not alone. Lucky for you, the IRS offers several ways to track your tax return.

How Do I Track My Tax Return?

Once you have filed your tax return, there are three options for tracking your refund:

• Online: You can check your refund status on the IRS website. See below for the information you’ll need to have handy.
• App: The IRS2Go app is available for both iPhone (iOS) and Android users. You can download it using:
  • Google Play
  • Apple App Store
  • Amazon for Android
• Phone: The IRS refund hotline is 800-829-1954. This option is especially useful for those who do not have internet access.

What information do I need to track my tax return?

To track your tax return, there are three things you need:

1. Your Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN).
2. Your filing status: single filer, married filing jointly, married filing separately, head of household or qualifying widow or widower. Find out what these mean here.
3. Your exact refund amount.

When Can I Check on My Tax Refund?

If you e-filed: You can check on your refund after 24 hours, unless you applied for the earned income tax credit before mid-February. The IRS recommends getting in touch if you haven’t received your tax refund after 21 days.

If you filed by mail: You usually aren’t able to check your status for four weeks if you mailed in your taxes, but you may have already received your refund by that time. The IRS is warning of weekslong and even monthslong delays in 2023 for mailed-in taxes. If you mailed in your taxes and are waiting for your refund, the IRS says not to file a second time and not to call.

What is the tax refund schedule?

The IRS refuses to guarantee a day you’ll get your refund. Timing also depends on how you file and whether you get your return via direct deposit or check. For most people who file electronically though, the IRS issues refunds within 21 days of filing.

What are the tax return statuses?

When you check on your return, there are three statuses you might get:

• Your return has been received.
• Your refund has been approved.
• Your refund has been sent.

Why Am I Not Getting My Tax Refund?

There are a number of reasons why your refund may be held up. There might be a delay if:

• You filed by snail mail. Due to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRS has a severe paperwork backlog.
• Your return includes any errors or is incomplete.
• You filed for the earned income tax credit or the additional child tax credit. By law, the IRS cannot issue your refund before mid-February.
• You’ve been the victim of identity theft, fraud or a scam.
• You’ve been audited.
• You owe back taxes, state taxes, student loan payments or child support. In some cases, the Treasury Department will put your refund toward the money you owe. You will receive a letter from the Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service explaining if your refund was used to pay another debt you owe.
• Your return includes Form 8379, Injured Spouse Allocation, which can take as many as 14 weeks to process.

Can I Get My Tax Refund Early?

Short answer: No.

No one can give you immediate access to your tax refund — not the IRS, a bank or anyone else. That said, some tax-preparation companies do offer options to effectively give you access to money sooner, either through a refund anticipation check or a refund advance loan.

I need money now. What are refund advance loans and refund anticipation checks?

Some tax preparation services offer ways to get you money before your refund is issued.

With a refund advance loan — also referred to as a refund anticipation loan or RAL — your tax preparer will give you a loan that will be repaid with your tax refund. The loan amount is usually a portion of your estimated tax refund minus tax preparation service charges and other fees. Sometimes, the money will be deposited on a prepaid card that comes with additional fees. When the IRS issues your refund, your tax preparer will take money out of your tax refund as repayment for the loan.

These days, there are two types of RALs:

• “No Fee” or “Advance” RALs are often called a “refund advance” and claim to have “no fees.” However, in order to apply for and receive the loan, you have to use the company's tax-prep service, which may have significant costs. This can route eligible people away from free tax filing alternatives with no guarantee that a loan of any amount will be approved by the bank. There may also be hidden fees for these loans.

• Interest-bearing RALs are another option where lenders offer much larger loans. The catch? You pay more in interest and fees.

A refund anticipation check, or RAC, lets you put off paying for the tax-preparation service you use to file your taxes. Typically, you’ll agree to pay an additional fee to have the cost of tax preparation deducted from your refund amount. Once the IRS issues your refund, the preparer deducts this fee and the cost of preparing your taxes and then gives the rest of the money to you.

Keep in mind that if you don’t have the money to use a paid tax service, you may be able to file completely for free without worrying about any of these fees.

It’s not always clearly explained, but both refund advance loans and refund anticipation checks usually involve a temporary bank account being set up in your name, which is how the preparer takes out their portion of your refund.

Before agreeing to use a tax-preparation service in exchange for an advance, read the terms carefully and make sure you understand the total cost to you.

About this guide: ProPublica has reported on the IRS, the Free File program and other tax topics for years. ProPublica’s tax guide is not personalized tax advice. Speak to a tax professional about your specific tax situation.

Kristen Doerer is a reporter in Washington, D.C. Her writing has appeared in PBS NewsHour, The Guardian and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Follow her on Twitter at @k2doe.

by Andy Kroll and Andrea Bernstein, ProPublica, and Nick Surgey, Documented

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A few months ago, Leonard Leo laid out his next audacious project.

Ever since the longtime Federalist Society leader helped create a conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, and then received more than a billion dollars from a wealthy Chicago business owner to disburse to conservative causes, Leo’s next moves had been the subject of speculation.

Now, Leo declared in a slick but private video to potential donors, he planned to “crush liberal dominance” across American life. The country was plagued by “woke-ism” in corporations and education, “one-sided journalism” and “entertainment that’s really corrupting our youth,” said Leo amid snippets of cheery music and shots of sunsets and American flags.

Sitting tucked into a couch, with wire-rimmed glasses and hair gone to gray, Leo conveyed his inspiration and intentions: “I just said to myself, ‘Well, if this can work for law, why can’t it work for lots of other areas of American culture and American life where things are really messed up right now?’”

Leo revealed his latest battle plan in the previously unreported video for the Teneo Network, a little-known group he called “a tremendously important resource for the future of our country.”

Teneo is building what Leo called in the video “networks of conservatives that can roll back” liberal influence in Wall Street and Silicon Valley, among authors and academics, with pro athletes and Hollywood producers. A Federalist Society for everything.

Despite its linchpin role in Leo’s plans, Teneo (which is not the similarly named consulting firm associated with former officials in the Bill Clinton administration) has kept a low public profile. Its one-page website includes bland slogans — “Timeless ideas. Fresh approach” — and scant details. Its co-founder described Teneo as “private and confidential” in one presentation, and the group doesn’t disclose the vast majority of its members or its funders.

But ProPublica and Documented have obtained more than 50 hours of internal Teneo videos and hundreds of pages of documents that reveal the organization’s ambitious agenda, influential membership and burgeoning clout. We have also interviewed Teneo members and people familiar with the group’s activities. The videos, documents and interviews provide an unfiltered look at the lens through which the group views the power of the left — and how it plans to combat it.

In response to questions for this story, Leo said in a statement: “Teneo’s young membership proves that the conservative movement is poised to be even more talented, driven, and successful in the future. This is a group that knows how to build winning teams.”

The records show Teneo’s members have included a host of prominent names from the conservative vanguard, including such elected officials as U.S. Sens. J.D. Vance of Ohio and Missouri’s Josh Hawley, a co-founder of the group. Other members have included Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, now the fourth-ranking House Republican, as well as Nebraska’s attorney general and Virginia’s solicitor general. Three senior aides to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, are members. Another is the federal judge who struck down a Biden administration mask mandate. The heads of the Republican Attorneys General Association, Republican State Leadership Committee and Turning Point USA — all key cogs in the world of national conservative politics — have been listed as Teneo members.

Conservative media figures like Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire, several pro athletes and dozens of executives and senior figures in the worlds of finance, energy and beyond have also been members.

Leo joined Teneo’s board of directors as chairman in 2021 and has since become a driving force.

Watch Leonard Leo Talk About Teneo (Teneo)

Watch video ➜

Teneo co-founder Evan Baehr, a tech entrepreneur and veteran of conservative activism, said in a 2019 video for new members that Teneo had “many, many, many dozens” of members working in the Trump administration, including in the White House, State Department, Justice Department and Pentagon. “They’re everywhere.”

The goal, Baehr said in another video, was “a world in which Teneans serve in the House and the Senate, as governors — one might be elected president.”

Teneo Has Ambitious Plans (Teneo)

Watch video ➜

Here’s how “the Left” works in America, according to Baehr.

“Imagine a group of four people sitting at the Harvard Club for lunch in midtown Manhattan,” he said in a 2020 Teneo video: “a billionaire hedge funder,” “a film producer,” “a Harvard professor” and “a New York Times writer.”

“The billionaire says: ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if middle school kids had free access to sex-change therapy paid for by the federal government?’” Baehr continued. “Well, the filmmaker says, ‘I’d love to do a documentary on that; it will be a major motion film.’ The Harvard professor says, ‘We can do studies on that to say that’s absolutely biologically sound and safe.’ And the New York Times person says, ‘I’ll profile people who feel trapped in the wrong gender.’ ”

After a single lunch, Baehr concluded, elite liberals can “put different kinds of capital together” and “go out into the world” and “basically wreck shop."

In a recorded video “town hall” held for incoming members, Baehr, a graduate of three Ivy League universities and a serial entrepreneur fluent in tech startup lingo, recalled the moment when he had the epiphany to create a conservative counter-effort.

It happened a decade earlier when he was eating lunch at a “fairly uninviting” Baja Fresh in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., with his then-boss Peter Thiel, the iconoclastic venture capitalist.

Baehr explained in the video that he had become frustrated as he kicked around right-of-center politics and activism for a few years, working on Capitol Hill, in the George W. Bush White House and for right-of-center groups including the American Enterprise Institute and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

Evan Baehr Explains Teneo’s Origin (Teneo)

Watch video ➜

Baehr and Thiel lamented what they saw as the fragmented state of conservative networks, with their hidebound think tanks and intellectual centers that hold sway over right-of-center politics. A rare bright spot on their side, Baehr and Thiel agreed, was the Federalist Society. Thiel had, in fact, served as president of the Stanford Federalist Society. What if there were a group similar to the Federalist Society for venture capitalists or corporate CEOs or members of the media? (Thiel did not respond to a request for comment.)

In 2008, Baehr, Hawley and others launched Teneo — Latin for “I grasp" or “I endure.” Hawley, then an associate lawyer in private practice, authored Teneo’s founding principles, according to the new member talk hosted by Baehr, and served on the group’s board. Its core beliefs align with the broader conservative establishment’s: limited government, individual liberty, free enterprise, strong national defense and civil society and belief in a “transcendent order” that is “founded in tradition, philosophy, or theology.”

For a long time, the group didn’t live up to expectations. In its first year, Teneo raised a paltry $77,000, according to its tax filing. From 2009 to 2017, the group, based first in Washington, D.C., and later in Austin, Texas, never raised more than $750,000 in a single year, tax records show. One member described in an interview Teneo’s early days as little more than a run-of-the-mill dinner club with partisan overtones: “Instead of being an organization about ideas, it was all about being a Republican.”

Enter Leo. In the early years of the Trump administration, he and the Federalist Society had remarkable influence within the new government. The Federalist Society had brought the legal doctrines of originalism and textualism — close readings of laws and the Constitution to adhere to the intent and words of the authors — into the mainstream. Leo had taken a leave of absence from the group to advise President Trump on judicial appointments, helping shepherd the appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and helping to fill more than 200 other positions in federal district and appellate courts. By the time Trump left office, he had put on the bench 28% of all federal judges in America.

In the town hall video, Baehr explained how he modeled Teneo on the Federalist Society. Leo’s “secret sauce,” he said, was to identify an “inner core” group of people within the Federalist Society’s 60,000 members. Leo was “identifying them and recruiting them for either specific roles to serve as judges or to spin up and launch critical projects often which you would have no idea about.”

Soon after Leo took an interest in Teneo, the group’s finances soared. Annual revenue reached $2.3 million in 2020 and nearly $5 million in 2021, according to tax records. In 2021, the bulk of Teneo’s income — more than $3 million — came from one source: DonorsTrust, a clearinghouse for conservative, libertarian and other charitable gifts that masks the original source of the money. In 2020, the Leo-run group that received the Chicago business owner’s $1.6 billion donation gave $41 million to DonorsTrust, which had $1.5 billion in assets as of 2021.

Teneo’s other funders have included marquee conservative donors: hedge fund investor Paul Singer, Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, the Charles Koch Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, and the DeVos family, according to Baehr.

As the group’s finances improved, its videos became much more professionally produced, and its website underwent a dramatic upgrade from previous iterations. All of this was part of what Baehr called “Teneo 2.0,” a major leap forward for the group, driven in part by Leo’s guidance and involvement.

Baehr declined an interview request. He said in a statement: “Since Teneo began, I've been building hundreds of friendships among diverse leaders who have a deep love for this country and are working on innovative solutions to drive human flourishing for all. Teneo has made me a better husband, father, and leader.”

Teneo aims to help members find jobs, write books, meet spouses, secure start-up financing or nonprofit donors and learn about public service. As described in a “Community Vision” report from 2019, Teneo seeks to distinguish itself by acting as “the Silicon Valley of Conservatism — a powerful network of communities where the most influential young leaders, the biggest ideas, and the most leveraged resources come together to launch key projects that advance our shared belief that the conservative worldview drives human flourishing.”

Many of the connections happen at Teneo’s annual retreat, which brings together hundreds of members and their spouses, plus allies including politicians like Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and DeSantis as well as business leaders and prominent academics. Speakers at past Teneo retreats have included luminaries spanning politics, culture, business and the law: New York Times columnist David Brooks, federal judge Trevor McFadden, Blackwater founder Erik Prince, “Woke, Inc.” author and 2024 presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, former Trump cabinet official and 2024 presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, ultrawealthy donors and activists Dick and Betsy DeVos, and Chick-fil-A board chair Dan Cathy.

But the group’s internal documents and videos also show the widening sprawl of its other activities. Teneo currently has 20 regional chapters nationwide, plus industry working groups focused, most recently, on media, corporate America, finance and law. In April, the group is hosting a “finance summit” in South Beach that its invitation says will “convene rising conservative talent from major financial institutions, funds, and family offices to connect and discuss key industry issues fundamental to the future of our country.”

Teneo members represent different facets of the conservative movement writ large. Some Teneo members were “very strong Trump defenders,” Baehr said in the 2019 town hall video, while others have opposed Trump vehemently. Baehr said there were clear divisions within the group’s members about immigration and trade policy. “Hopefully other ones, maybe Green New Deal, I hope that’s more like 99 to 1” in opposition, he said.

It’s in the town hall video that Baehr assured new members that Teneo “is private and confidential.” He said the group will never reveal the names of its members without their permission, though they are free to disclose their membership if they want to. Members must be in their 40s or younger to join.

Baehr said Teneo’s website is crafted so as not to pique the interest of Senate staffers who might look up the group if one of its members mentions Teneo during a confirmation process for a judgeship or a cabinet position. “We think a lot about that to protect your current and future leadership opportunities,” Baehr explained.

This strategy appears to have worked. A spokesperson for Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., a critic of Leo’s who has spoken extensively about dark money and the courts, said the senator’s staff was “not familiar with Teneo.” During the confirmation process of Ryan Holte, a Trump appointee to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, Holte was asked several written questions by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Cal., about his membership in Teneo, but Feinstein spelled the group’s name wrong each time. (Asked what the mission of the group was, Holte responded that Teneo was a “nonpartisan, and nonprofit, organization that gathers members from a variety of professional backgrounds for dinners and social activities to discuss current events.”)

A recent Teneo fundraising email laid out how the group can bring its members' influence together in service of a cause.

To “confront” what he dubbed “woke capitalism,” Jonathan Bunch, a longtime Leo deputy and now Teneo board member, wrote that the group had brought together a coalition of Teneans “working with (or serving as) state attorneys general, state financial officers, state legislators, journalists, media executives and best-in-class public affairs professionals” to launch investigations, hold hearings, pull state investment funds and publish op-eds and news stories in response to so-called environmental, social and governance, or ESG, policies at the corporate level.

“Our members were in the rooms where it happened,” Bunch wrote.

Another project underway, Baehr explained in a 2020 presentation, was a “surreptitious and exciting” effort to map key institutions in major cities — private schools, country clubs, newspapers, Rotary and so on — and find ways to get Teneo members inside those institutions and help members connect with each other. The initiative has begun by mapping Atlanta and several cities in Texas.

For those Teneo members who run for elected office, the network offers easy access to a large pool of donors and allies. A Leo acolyte and member of Teneo’s Midwest membership committee, Will Scharf, is now running for Missouri attorney general. Campaign finance records show that dozens of Teneo members made substantial early contributions to Scharf’s campaign, including Leo, Baehr and other members of Teneo’s leadership, who last year each gave the maximum allowable donation of $2,650.

In an email, Scharf said many of his “dearest friends are members of Teneo, and it has been a privilege to be involved with such an extraordinarily talented and committed group of young conservatives.”

Leo’s own statements about Teneo suggest that his plan for the group extends well beyond achieving near-term political victories.

“When you’re fighting a battle for the heart and soul of our culture, you want to know you’re in the trenches with someone you can trust, someone you know, and someone who will have your back,” Teneo’s “Community Vision” report quotes Leo as saying. “We don’t win unless we build friendship and fellowship with other people — and that’s what you’re doing here with Teneo.”

Help ProPublica Investigate Threats to U.S. Democracy

Do you have information about Leonard Leo or the Teneo Network that we should know? Reporter Andy Kroll can be reached via email at andy.kroll@propublica.org or via Signal at 202-215-6203.

Clarification, March 9, 2023: The subheadline with this story was updated to clarify that Leonard Leo is now the chairman of Teneo Network.

by J. David McSwane and Ryan Gabrielson

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Joe Guarino rescued an entire industry with help from what some called “divine” intervention.

A little-known lobbyist from Virginia, Guarino was hired in 2007 by the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, the trade association for nonprofit alternatives to medical insurance founded on Christian principles. Health care sharing ministries take fees from members, which are then used to pay other members’ health bills.

At the time, the industry had been tainted by a scandal involving one of the largest ministries in the country, the Christian Brotherhood Newsletter, based outside Canton, Ohio. State authorities won $14 million in civil judgments against two of its top leaders for enriching themselves instead of paying the medical bills of its members. A ProPublica investigation last month revealed that many of the Brotherhood’s executives, including Daniel J. Beers, were involved years later in the launch of a second scandal-plagued ministry, Liberty HealthShare.

The Washington-based alliance was looking to Guarino to repair the industry’s reputation and pass laws to fend off a looming movement to regulate the business. The lobbying effort is an example of how the ministries have quietly worked over the years to shield themselves from consumer protection laws and preempt government oversight.

Guarino decided to launch a state-by-state campaign to pass so-called safe harbor laws that exempt health care sharing ministries from insurance regulation. The carve-outs were justified, the alliance argued, because ministries don’t set prices and coverage based on risk calculations or pool people’s money, as insurance companies do. In the United States, many of the rules for health insurance are set by the states in which companies operate.

Guarino met with lawmakers in Virginia, Arkansas and Idaho. “Most of the time I was hiring local lobbyists, training them, and then they got the bill passed for us,” Guarino explained.

Although it did not attract much attention, the campaign was a remarkable success. By 2008, 15 states had passed safe harbor laws. Then, a new threat emerged. In 2009, President Barack Obama proposed his sweeping reform of the health care system. Central to the law was a provision referred to as the “individual mandate,” which required that every American obtain health insurance or face a fine. The mandate presented a direct threat to health care sharing ministries: If members were forced to buy insurance, they would likely leave en masse.

Although Guarino was embarrassingly outgunned by the health insurance lobby, he was determined to slip some version of a safe harbor carve-out into whatever the Democratic-controlled Congress handed the president. “I went and saw 150 congressional staffers during that time,” Guarino said.

The turning point came when Guarino reached out to a GOP state legislator he knew in Iowa and asked if she could put him in touch with Republican Chuck Grassley, the state’s longtime senator who wielded power as a member of the Senate Finance Committee. The lawmaker had known Grassley’s family since childhood and agreed to set up a meeting. “Lo and behold, that happened,” Guarino said. “As a Christian, I look at this and say, ‘Oh, this is God’s way of orchestrating things.’”

Guarino told ProPublica that he and his clients got on the phone with Grassley. Together they crafted an amendment to Obamacare that exempted members of sharing ministries from having to obtain health insurance on religious grounds. Behind the scenes, Grassley got that carve-out into the Senate version of the bill, Guarino said. (Grassley did not return a request for comment.)

The passage of the Affordable Care Act was chaotic and, for ministries, that was fortuitous. The House version, which many Democrats preferred, didn’t include Guarino’s exemption. If the House bill prevailed in negotiations between the two chambers, ministries would be extinct.

But with the sudden death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and could not pass the House version. They were forced to go with the Senate bill that included the carve-out.

The exemption — just 200 words in a 900-page bill — survived tense negotiations between the chambers, going virtually unnoticed. Obama signed the ACA into law in March 2010.

“That’s our language right in the bill,” Guarino told ProPublica.

One friend told him that he’d just saved an entire industry. The larger Christian health share community hailed it as a miracle. “If you’re a person of faith, some of us might say it was kind of divine,” said Tony Meggs, then CEO of Medi-Share, one of the groups that formed the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries.

Meggs estimates membership grew tenfold after 2014, when the individual mandate went into effect. Four years later, the alliance announced that about a million Americans belonged to its member ministries. Some bought into the ministries because they disliked Obama and associated him with the law. Others did it for economic reasons. The ministries offered cheaper plans than insurance sold on the ACA marketplace, which were expensive for anyone who did not qualify for subsidies or Medicaid. Many self-employed people and small business owners fell into this category.

“All of a sudden people started getting religion because they could save $700, $800 a month,” Meggs said.

Both Meggs and Guarino say they believe that most health care sharing ministries do right by their members and the insurance alternative can work when it’s under ethical management. But both acknowledge the industry has been vulnerable to abuse. “Obviously, that kind of growth is going to attract bad actors and people who look for opportunity to enrich themselves,” Meggs said.

One of the people who took advantage of the opportunity is Beers, the patriarch of the family that started Liberty HealthShare just as Obamacare’s individual mandate drove thousands of people to health care sharing ministries. The ProPublica investigation found that Beers acts as a shadow lord over an empire built with money from Liberty HealthShare. Some of the family grew rich while Liberty’s members were left with tens of millions of dollars in unpaid health bills.

Beers’ name does not appear on any official documents related to Liberty, and he denied involvement in family businesses that profited from the ministry. Attorneys representing Beers and members of his family also disputed ProPublica’s finding that they controlled or influenced the sharing ministry or did anything wrong. Liberty is now under new management that does not include Beers or his relatives.

For those in the ministry industry, however, Beers’ involvement has been an open secret for years.

Meggs told of a surprise encounter he had around 2014 with Liberty’s then-CEO, its vice president and Beers, all key figures in the Brotherhood. The group wanted to propose a partnership between Meggs’ ministry and Liberty, which was experiencing explosive growth

At the meeting, Beers was clearly in charge, Meggs remembers, so no matter what they were selling, he wasn’t buying.

Liberty, he said, looked too much like the Brotherhood.

by Doug Bock Clark

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

A week and a half after last November’s vote, members of the Board of Elections in Surry County, North Carolina, gathered in a windowless room to certify the results. It was supposed to be a routine task, marking the end of a controversial season during which election deniers harassed and retaliated against the county’s elections director. Not long into the meeting, however, a staffer distributed a letter from two board members stating that they were refusing to certify.

According to the letter, the two members had decided — “with regard for the sacred blood shed of both my Redeemer and His servants” and “past Patriots who made the ultimate sacrifice”— that they “must not call these election results credible and bow to the perversion of truth.”

In their view, a federal judge who’d struck down a North Carolina voter ID law for discriminating against minorities had transformed the state’s election laws into “a grotesque and perverse sham.” Tim DeHaan, one of the two board members who signed the letter, explained at the meeting, “We feel the election was held according to the law that we have, but that the law is not right.”

This argument failed to win over the three Democratic board members, according to a recording of the meeting. DeHaan eventually agreed to join the three on a technicality, and the board certified the election with a 4-1 vote. Jerry Forestieri, the Republican board secretary who also signed the letter, held out.

DeHaan and Forestieri declined to comment and did not respond to written questions.

Before 2020, local election officials seldom voted against certifying results. But in 2022, conservative officials in North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and New Mexico refused to do so. Some admitted to refusing to certify for political reasons. In all the 2022 cases, the election results eventually were certified, sometimes under a court order.

Election law experts say that these disruptions reveal a weakness in the American electoral system, which relies on thousands of local officials to certify the totals in their counties and municipalities before their results can be aggregated and tallied for state and federal elections.

Local elections officials “could create chaos” all the way up the chain by refusing to certify, said Alice Clapman, a senior counsel in election law at the Brennan Center for Justice. “And in that chaos you have more room for political interference.” Five legal experts described to ProPublica scenarios in which legislatures, courts, secretaries of state or governors could use a failure to certify at the local level to exert partisan influence.

Clapman said that even if refusals to certify don’t affect election outcomes, they can violate state laws and can amplify and validate harmful misinformation that feeds election denialism because of the imprimatur of the officials’ offices.

A ProPublica review of 10 instances of local officials refusing to certify 2022 results in four states found that, for the majority of them, the state election authority did not ultimately pursue official consequences. Two of them have been referred for criminal prosecution, but the attorney general in that state would not comment on whether there is an open investigation. And two — the ones in Surry County — are facing potential removal from their posts by the State Board of Elections.

“There needs to be some sanction when there is lawlessness,” said Richard L. Hasen, an election law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project. “If you allow these things to take place without any sanction, then you invite more serious rule-breaking in the future.”

After the DeHaan and Forestieri letter, Bob Hall, the former executive director of the watchdog group Democracy North Carolina, submitted a complaint to the State Board of Elections to start a disciplinary process, as permitted by North Carolina law if board members commit an alleged breach of duty. An attorney for Hall argued in a subsequent document that “if left unchecked, Forestieri and DeHaan may be the first of many board members throughout the state and across the political spectrum who cannot be trusted to faithfully certify election results.”

That led the state board to summon Forestieri and DeHaan to its headquarters in the capital, a roughly three-hour drive from their rural home, for a hearing last month.

At the beginning of the proceeding, DeHaan argued that the hearing itself was “illegal” because it was supposed to be held in the county the board members are from. The Democratic board chairman agreed and voted with a Republican colleague to move the hearing to Surry County. A date has not yet been set. “The relocation to Surry County shows that this isn’t normal,” said Christopher A. Cooper, a professor specializing in North Carolina politics at Western Carolina University. “There isn’t a long history of examples of this sort of thing to lean on.”

A replica sheriff’s car from “The Andy Griffith Show” drives through downtown Mount Airy, North Carolina, in Surry County. (Cornell Watson for ProPublica)

Experts point out that efforts to hold local officials accountable for not certifying their elections have been of a patchwork nature across the nation. “I think states are trying to figure out what to do and are approaching it differently, like a prosecutor making a judgment on a case-by-case basis whether to bring a case or not,” said Derek T. Muller, a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law who has researched legal options for ensuring that local officials certify elections. “States need to figure out how to bring these cases in a fair, consistent and lawful way.”

In Cochise County, a rural part of Arizona on the Mexican border, a pair of county supervisors refused to certify their November 2022 results despite state officials warning them multiple times that doing so would be illegal under state law. In early December, a court ordered them to certify, but one supervisor, Tom Crosby, still skipped the vote.

The next day, the state elections director, at the urging of a former Republican Arizona attorney general, sent a letter to the state attorney general referring the supervisors for criminal investigation, arguing that they had committed “potential violations of Arizona law.” The letter concluded, “This blatant act of defying Arizona’s election laws risks establishing a dangerous precedent that we must discourage” by taking “all necessary action to hold these public officers accountable.” A spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office wrote that they “cannot confirm or deny any potential investigation” that may have resulted from the letter.

In January, a group of Cochise County voters launched a petition to recall Crosby. As of late February, it had approximately a quarter of the 6,000 signatures it would need by early May to result in a new election, according to Eric Suchodolski, the chairperson of a committee leading the effort. “It’s our best recourse as citizens,” he said. “I didn’t think the authorities would ultimately do something, and even if they did, it can take awhile.”

In response to a request for comment, Crosby said: “If I get into defending myself it will never end. I’ve already answered all this stuff.” In the past, he has disputed the validity of the certification of the county’s voting machines, despite assurances from the state.

While in North Carolina and Arizona there are ongoing efforts to hold accountable local officials who didn’t certify their elections, Nevada and New Mexico decided not to pursue such efforts.

In Nevada, one Republican commissioner in Washoe County and another in Nye County refused to certify, though in both cases the other four commissioners outvoted them. A spokesperson for the Nevada Secretary of State’s Office said that “our office is not aware of any legal consequences for that action” by the commissioners.

In Otero County, New Mexico, the county’s three commissioners initially voted unanimously against certifying the June 2022 primary elections. This followed months of disputes about election security driven by conservative activists who also fueled protests in Surry County.

New Mexico law requires commissioners to approve election results unless they can point to specific problems. The Otero commissioners only raised debunked concerns about hacked voting machines, with one of the officials, Couy Griffin, referencing his “gut feeling.” The New Mexico secretary of state subsequently asked the state’s Supreme Court to step in, and it ordered the commissioners to certify. The secretary of state also sent a letter to the state’s attorney general notifying him of “multiple unlawful actions by the Otero County Commission” and asked for “a prompt investigation.” Faced with this, two of the commissioners switched their votes, certifying the election. Griffin did not. (In Sandoval County, on the other side of the state, one commissioner voted against certification, though the four others on the panel outvoted him.)

Griffin did not respond to a request for comment.

The New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office decided not to further pursue “punitive action” against the officials who did not certify, according to Alex Curtas, its communications director, because “our concern was getting the election certified, so that’s where that ended.”

“Once it became clear that we had that state Supreme Court precedent and this wasn’t really a widespread thing, just two hard-right commissioners, we felt comfortable that this wouldn’t be a major problem in the general election,” he said, “and in our perspective it became a bit of a moot point.”

Griffin eventually was subsequently removed from public office and banned from holding it by a judge’s order as part of sentencing for participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Part of the challenge for states seeking to crack down on officials who refuse to certify elections is that many of the laws that provide recourse were written more than a century ago. “We’re dealing with modern issues with very old statutes,” said Quinn Yeargain, a professor at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Pennsylvania.

Some states recently enacted new regulations. Last year, Colorado legislators passed the Election Security Act, which mandates that the secretary of state certify a county’s results if it misses the deadline to do so. In Michigan, voters passed a wide-ranging voter-protection ballot proposal in November that made certification a “ministerial, clerical, nondiscretionary duty.” This clause was in response to conservative members of a county canvassing board for Detroit refusing to certify the 2020 presidential election for a few hours, momentarily threatening to throw its certification into chaos.

Election legal experts note that holding local election officials accountable for voting against certifying elections will continue to be complicated. Muller, the Iowa law professor, favors what he calls the “least invasive process,” one that would allow courts to replace local officials who refuse to certify elections with other officials who would do their duty.

But he said any process that results in an official being forcibly replaced is likely to carry political risks, including the potential to abuse the system to disempower political opponents.

“We haven’t seen fallout from local election officials being removed yet, because these processes are just beginning,” Muller said. “But we could see that soon.”

Help ProPublica Investigate Threats to U.S. Democracy