ProPublica

by Eric Umansky

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

What Happened: A monitor appointed by a federal court has found that a New York City Police Department unit has been unjustly stopping and searching New Yorkers, almost all of them Black and Hispanic men. The report on the NYPD’s Community Response Team echoes a recent ProPublica investigation that found the unit, championed by Mayor Eric Adams, has been ridden with abuses.

The federal monitor found that while the CRT was initially created in the early days of the Adams’ administration to focus on so-called quality-of-life issues such as illegal motorbikes, its officers have more recently been “stopping, frisking, and searching unconstitutionally.”

What They Said: In a sample of body-worn camera footage, the monitor found that 41% of stops, searches, and frisks by CRT officers were unlawful, a far higher percentage than with other NYPD units. What’s more, while officers are required to document such stops, which the department then releases as public data, the report found that officers often failed to do so, and even when they did there was a “lack of meaningful review” by supervisors.

As ProPublica previously reported, that behavior goes back to at least 2023, when an NYPD audit found officers were wrongfully stopping New Yorkers and failing to log the incidents. Soon after the audit, the mayor took to Instagram. “Turning out with the team,” he wrote, showing a photo of him wearing the CRT’s signature khaki pants.

The federal monitor had other striking findings. For instance, it found that “97% of the individuals stopped, frisked, and searched were Black or Hispanic men.”

It also found, as ProPublica previously reported, that the NYPD had not been straightforward about the CRT with the monitor itself. Department officials had initially told the monitor that the CRT was just a “pilot program” that already ended, only for the monitor to later learn the team was here to stay and actually expanding.

Background: Our March investigation detailed a wide range of troubling behavior by CRT officers that alarmed NYPD leaders. In the fall of 2022, department lawyers and others warned that highlight videos of the CRT that the team posted on social media showed problematic conduct. Other incidents included a CRT commander who punched a driver, another commander who shoved a pedestrian into a car window and a third officer who drove into a motorbiker, ultimately killing him.

Over the past two years, New Yorkers have filed at least 200 complaints alleging improper use of force by CRT members, according to Civilian Complaint Review Board records. Another NYPD team with a similar size and mandate has had about half as many complaints.

Adams’ connection to CRT has been so close, former officials said, that the mayor was given private access to a live feed of the unit’s body-worn cameras. This year, he chose one of the team’s leaders, Kaz Daughtry, to be deputy mayor of public safety.

Why It Matters: The federal monitor for the NYPD was created a dozen years ago after a court found that the department had been engaging in widespread unconstitutional stop-and-frisks, a practice overwhelmingly focused on Black and Hispanic men. The seminal ruling imposed court oversight — the creation of the monitor’s office — of the country’s largest police department. The monitor in turn files regular progress reports.

The monitor’s latest report was filed with Judge Analisa Torres, who oversees the case and has the power to impose fixes. But whatever Torres does, the monitor’s findings make clear that the problems identified by the court all those years ago still persist.

Former NYPD Chief Matthew Pontillo, who wrote the 2023 audit of the CRT, said that the conduct of the team may actually be worse than what’s described in the monitor’s report, noting that the recent investigation relied on body-worn camera footage to examine officers’ conduct. In his own review, Pontillo had found that CRT officers were often not turning on their cameras to fully capture incidents.

Lawmakers and civil rights advocates have called for the CRT to be disbanded.

Response: The mayor’s office declined to answer ProPublica’s questions and instead suggested contacting the NYPD. The department has not replied to our questions.

Adams has previously defended the CRT. Asked about the unit at a mayoral press conference this spring, Adams said: “CRT is here. I support all my units. And if they don’t all stand up and do the job the way they’re supposed to do, those who don’t will be held accountable.”

The NYPD has also defended the CRT’s work and touted the unit’s confiscation of illegal motorbikes and ATVs.

by Tony Schick, Oregon Public Broadcasting

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

Less than two years ago, the administration of President Joe Biden announced what tribal leaders hailed as an unprecedented commitment to the Native tribes whose ways of life had been devastated by federal dam-building along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

The deal, which took two years to negotiate, halted decades of lawsuits over the harm federal dams had caused to the salmon that had sustained those tribes culturally and economically for thousands of years. To enable the removal of four hydroelectric dams considered especially harmful to salmon, the government promised to invest billions of dollars in alternative energy sources to be created by the tribes.

It was a remarkable step following repeated failures by the government to uphold the tribal fishing rights it swore in treaties to preserve.

The agreement is now just another of those broken promises.

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Thursday pulling the federal government out of the deal. Trump’s decision halted a government-wide initiative to restore abundant salmon runs in the Columbia and Snake rivers and signaled an end to the government’s willingness to consider removing dams that blocked their free flow.

Thursday’s move drew immediate condemnation from tribes and from environmental groups that have fought to protect salmon.

“The Administration’s decision to terminate these commitments echoes the federal government’s historic pattern of broken promises to tribes,” Yakama Nation Tribal Council Chair Gerald Lewis said in a statement. “This termination will severely disrupt vital fisheries restoration efforts, eliminate certainty for hydro operations, and likely result in increased energy costs and regional instability.”

The government’s commitment to tribes, however, had been unraveling since almost when the deal was inked.

Key provisions were already languishing under Biden. After Trump won the presidency, his administration spiked most of the studies called for in the agreement, held up millions of dollars in funding and cut most of the staff working to implement salmon recovery. Biden’s promise to seriously consider the removal of dams gained little traction before it was replaced by what Trump’s energy secretary, Chris Wright, called “passionate support” for keeping them in place.

The chair of the White House task force to implement the agreement quit in April because of what he saw as Trump’s efforts to eliminate nearly everything he was working on.

“Federal agencies who were on the hook to do the work were being destroyed through untargeted, inefficient and costly purges of federal employees,” Nik Blosser, the former Columbia River Task Force chair, told ProPublica and OPB. “When I left, most things were on hold or paused — even signed contracts were on hold, which is a disgrace.”

Trump’s White House announcement called the Biden administration’s commitments “onerous” and said the president “continues to deliver on his promise to end the previous administration’s misplaced priorities and protect the livelihoods of the American people.”

“President Trump is committed to unleashing American energy dominance, reversing all executive actions that impose undue burdens on energy production and use,” the announcement read.

But the decision could also have some unintended consequences, experts say.

Trump signed an executive order in April to “restore American seafood competitiveness” but in revoking the Columbia River agreement has canceled millions of dollars to support the programs that seed the ocean with fish to catch. He signed a separate executive order on his first day in office to “unleash American energy dominance” but has now reversed a commitment, made under the Biden salmon deal, to build new sources of domestic energy. This week’s action has sent federal agencies back to court, where judges have repeatedly shackled power production at hydroelectric dams because of its impact on the endangered fish.

“It’s tempting to comment at length on the absurdity of the President’s order, including the fact that what he says he wants — stability for power generation — is in fact put more at risk by this action,” Blosser wrote in a post on LinkedIn. “Instead, I’ll look for inspiration to the mighty salmon, who don’t stop swimming upstream when they get to a waterfall.”

Back to Court

Before they began negotiating the Columbia River Basin agreement in 2021, federal agencies had been losing in court over the hydropower system for more than 20 years. Judge after judge ordered the federal government to use less water for making electricity and instead let more of the river spill through the dams’ floodgates so that fish could more safely ride the current past them.

The accord with states and tribes guaranteed up to a decade without those lawsuits. Trump canceled that.

The Bonneville Power Administration, which sells the hydroelectricity from federal dams, had more at stake than the rest of the agencies in the deal. When the government signed it, Bonneville Administrator John Hairston said it provided “operational certainty and reliability while avoiding costly, unpredictable litigation in support of our mission to provide a reliable, affordable power supply to the Pacific Northwest.”

In its most recent annual report, Bonneville credited the agreement for giving it the flexibility to increase hydropower production during times of high electricity demand, which helped stem the losses in an otherwise difficult financial year.

A major component of the agreement was the acknowledgment of the region’s dependence on hydropower and the need to build new sources of energy before removing the dams. It offered no guarantee of dam removal.

The Biden White House had pledged to help tribes develop enough renewable energy sources to replace the output of four dams on the Snake River, which salmon advocates have long wanted to remove. The administration also planned an analysis of how to meet the region’s energy needs without sacrificing salmon.

The Biden administration never followed through. Even tribally backed energy projects that were already in progress ran into bureaucratic quagmires. When Trump took office and slashed thousands of jobs from the Department of Energy, the commitment for new energy sources died too.

Proponents of Columbia River dams, including the publicly owned utilities that buy federal hydroelectricity, criticized the Biden administration for leaving them out of the negotiations that led to the agreement.

“I want to thank the President (Trump) for his decisive action to protect our dams,” Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Republican from Central Washington, said in a statement on Thursday. He said the Biden administration and “extreme environmental activists” would have threatened the reliability of the power grid and raised energy prices with dam removal.

Even critics of the Biden deal, however, acknowledge they do not want the issue to return to court, where judges’ orders have driven up electricity rates. When Bonneville can’t generate as much hydropower to sell, but still has to pay for hatcheries and habitat fixes for salmon, it has to charge utilities more for its electricity.

“I’m hoping that we avoid dam operations by injunction, because that doesn’t help anybody in the region,” said Scott Simms, executive director of the Public Power Council, a nonprofit representing utilities that purchase federal hydropower.

Earthjustice attorney Amanda Goodin, who represents the environmental advocates who signed the agreement, said the Trump administration’s actions would force a return to courts.

“The agreement formed the basis for the stay of litigation,” Goodin said, “so without the agreement there is no longer any basis for a stay.”

More Fish Will Die

The White House said that Trump’s revoking of the Columbia River deal shows that he “continues to prioritize our Nation’s energy infrastructure and use of natural resources to lower the cost of living for all Americans over speculative climate change concerns.”

Shannon Wheeler, chair of the Nez Perce Tribe, said the damage on the Columbia River is anything but speculative.

“This action tries to hide from the truth,” Wheeler said in a statement. “The Nez Perce Tribe holds a duty to speak the truth for the salmon, and the truth is that extinction of salmon populations is happening now.”

Wild salmon populations on the Columbia and its largest tributary, the Snake River, have been so sparse for decades that commercial, recreational and tribal subsistence fishing are only possible because of fish hatcheries, which raise millions of baby salmon in pens and release them into the wild when they’re old enough to swim to the ocean.

In some years, an estimated half of all the Chinook salmon commercial fishermen catch in Southeast Alaska are from Columbia River hatcheries, making them critical for “restoring American seafood competitiveness” as Trump aimed to do.

But some Columbia River hatcheries are nearly a century old. Others have been so badly underfunded that equipment failures have killed thousands of baby fish.

As ProPublica and OPB previously reported, the number of hatchery salmon surviving to adulthood is now so low that hatcheries have struggled to collect enough fish for breeding, putting future fishing seasons in jeopardy.

The Biden administration promised roughly $500 million to improve hatcheries across the Northwest. His administration never delivered it, and Trump halted all the funds before eventually canceling them with this week’s order.

Mary Lou Soscia, former Columbia River coordinator at the Environmental Protection Agency, said the administration’s dismantling of salmon recovery programs amounts to “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“We’re losing decades of accomplishments,” said Soscia, who spent more than 30 years at the agency.

“When the fish managers aren’t there to make real time river decisions, more fish will die,” she said. “Or the watershed restoration work will take a lot longer to happen because you won’t have funding and more fish will die.”

by Mila Koumpilova, Chalkbeat, and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica

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. To keep up with the latest education news, sign up for Chalkbeat Chicago’s free daily newsletter.

More than 4,000 students once crowded DuSable High School, then an all-Black academic powerhouse on Chicago’s South Side. Its three-story Art Deco building drew students with a full lineup of honors classes, a nationally known music program and standout sports teams.

Nat King Cole played the piano in his classroom as a DuSable student. Harold Washington, Chicago’s first Black mayor, studied there. On Friday nights, teenagers zipped through its hallways on roller skates and danced in the gymnasium.

But at the turn of the millennium, enrollment plunged as Chicago closed a massive public housing complex nearby and a growing number of Black families left the city. Amid a national infatuation with smaller high schools 20 years ago, Chicago Public Schools conducted a grant-funded experiment to chop DuSable into three separate schools sharing a campus. What remains today, after that grant money ran out, is an enormous building and, inside, two tiny schools clinging to life.

One has about 115 students and claims the north corridors. The other, with only 70 students, takes the south wings. The inoperable pool is off-limits.

Hundreds of unneeded hallway lockers hide behind decorative paper and student posters of Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and former first lady Michelle Obama, whose father attended in the 1950s.

The two little high schools in Bronzeville share the same entrance and sports teams, but other things are doubled: two main offices, two principals, two assistant principals, two school counselors. Even though there’s a teacher for roughly every five students, the course offerings are limited.

Chicago Public Schools operates more than 500 schools and spends about $18,700 per student to run buildings that it considers well-utilized. At the DuSable schools, the cost is closer to $50,000 a student.

The DuSable schools are emblematic of an unyielding predicament facing the district. Enrollment has shrunk. Three of every 10 of its schools sit at least half-empty, and they are costly to run.

More critically, there are 47 schools, including those inside DuSable, operating at less than one-third capacity, by the district’s measure. That’s almost twice as many severely underenrolled buildings as Chicago had in 2013, when it carried out the largest mass school closings in the country’s history, Chalkbeat and ProPublica found. The most extreme example is Frederick Douglass Academy High School, which has 28 students this year and a per-student cost of $93,000.

Many of those schools are in historic buildings that need millions of dollars in repairs.

The costs are not only financial. Students in the city’s smallest schools have fewer courses to choose from and often miss out on clubs, extracurricular activities and sports. Chicago’s underenrolled high schools are more likely to have lower graduation and college enrollment rates. They tend to struggle with chronic truancy and higher dropout rates, a ProPublica and Chalkbeat analysis found.

But officials in Chicago have chosen not to confront the problem of the city’s tiny schools. The teachers union and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who used to be an organizer and legislative liaison for the union, are quick to shut down discussion of downsizing. Widespread anger over the 2013 closures helped fuel the union’s rise to political power over the past decade; the union has also wielded the radioactive closure issue to undermine opponents, notably outgoing district CEO Pedro Martinez.

Union leaders, many community activists and some researchers say closures disrupt displaced students’ learning and harm the city’s predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, which were disproportionately affected by that earlier wave of closures. They argue the district needs to do much more to try revitalizing these campuses before it considers shuttering or merging them.

Helping to delay a reckoning: Since 2013, the district has operated under a series of moratoriums on closing schools, including one state lawmakers enacted with strong support from the teachers union. And a statewide school finance overhaul under former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner increases or at least holds funding steady for districts even if enrollment declines.

Chicago has too many schools for the number of students it serves today, Martinez said in an interview with ProPublica and Chalkbeat. The district is spending too much on aging buildings, and it’s not providing a rich experience for students in many of its tiny schools, he said, adding: “They’re not having joy in that environment.”

But he said he inherited a closure moratorium and worked with school boards that had no appetite for closing or merging schools. “Our footprint is too large,” said Martinez, who leaves the district this month. “Every time somebody wants to address this issue, you see at all levels of politics, nobody wants to do it.”

He said he hopes a fully elected school board that will take over in 2027 will tackle the issue head-on, working closely with the communities it serves.

In a statement, the district noted its building utilization formula is “just one measure,” and it could overestimate available space.

The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

With public school enrollment declining across the country, a growing number of cities — Milwaukee; Denver; Flint, Michigan; Boston; San Francisco; Philadelphia — are grappling with the issue of underenrollment. Some plan to close schools.

But Chicago, the country’s fourth-largest district, operates on a larger scale: It has more students and more buildings than most other cities. The city’s school-age population, meanwhile, is on a downward trajectory, federal COVID-19 aid ran out this year and the district faces a budget deficit of more than $500 million.

And yet, Chicago “doesn’t seem to be having an honest conversation about the challenges it’s facing,” said Carrie Hahnel, a school finance researcher with the nonprofit Bellwether.

The DuSable High School building houses two smaller schools, the Bronzeville Scholastic Institute and Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine. Unused lockers are covered with posters and decorative crafts. (Akilah Townsend for ProPublica) “A Lack of Political Courage”

The 2013 closings of 49 Chicago elementary schools and one small high school were more than controversial. Families there felt that their communities were being torn apart as the city moved to shutter schools with long and rich histories. After protests and angry meetings, students were displaced to schools that were farther away from home. Neighborhood hubs were mothballed.

Deep distrust of Chicago Public Schools after the mass closures lingers, especially in Black neighborhoods like DuSable’s Bronzeville. University of Chicago research showed those closures set students back academically, though a small number who moved to high-performing campuses fared better. Some community groups and the teachers union in Chicago see schools as a public good; shuttering them is another mark of disinvestment.

That was the backdrop when a group of DuSable High School alumni grew concerned about dwindling enrollment at their beloved school and worried the district might target the building for closure. They approached CPS just before the pandemic with an alternative idea: Consolidate the two tiny schools at DuSable and focus classes on STEM careers.

The Bronzeville Scholastic Institute and the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine would unite and revert to the name DuSable.

The alumni had no illusions that they could fully restore DuSable to what it once was. Compared to the school’s heyday, a much smaller number of school-age children live in Bronzeville today. But the alumni wanted more for the school.

The group met repeatedly with school and district leaders in DuSable’s wood-paneled social room, where trophies mark decades of athletic and musical excellence.

Officials told the group to get more input from current families at both schools — a daunting task given that the district would not provide their names or contact information. The plan fizzled out.

Hal Woods, now a policy director with the parent advocacy nonprofit Kids First Chicago, worked as the district’s school development director at the time and sat in on those meetings. He said the bottom line was that the plan smacked too much of a closure.

“We didn’t want to be seen with our fingerprints on this,” he said.

The Robert Taylor Homes — at one time the largest public housing project in the United States — once loomed over DuSable High School, as seen in these images from 1966. The complex was demolished by 2007, and DuSable High School never recovered from the loss of that student population. (Chicago Sun-Times Collection/Chicago History Museum)

Former school board President Jianan Shi, a Johnson appointee who served from 2023 to 2024, said rebuilding trust and planning for schools’ future with local communities at the helm takes time; it must begin now.

But, he said, “There’s a lack of political courage to have this conversation, and yet it’s often weaponized.”

Amid the uproar over the 2013 closings, Chicago’s then-mayor, Rahm Emanuel, vowed that his appointed school board would not close schools for five years. The state legislature then imposed a 2021 moratorium on closing Chicago schools until January of this year, part of a bill that changed the Chicago Board of Education to an elected, rather than mayor-appointed, body.

Today, Chicago has 634 schools, including 119 charter and contract schools run by outside entities, and a teachers union ally holds the mayor’s office. Last September, amid a power struggle between Johnson and Martinez, the Chicago Teachers Union publicized a facilities analysis that the district had done in late 2023, which included hypothetical scenarios for consolidating 75 schools, including Williams and Bronzeville. The union argued that even entertaining that idea was cause to fire Martinez immediately.

As the CTU pounced, Martinez pushed back, saying the district had concluded that no school would be closed while he was in charge — which he now says was really the school board’s decision. At the next school board meeting, he presented a new resolution that got unanimous support: CPS would not close any schools until 2027.

But the city’s demographic realities are not on hold. About 325,000 students enrolled this year, a drop of more than 70,000 from a decade ago. District officials project that three school years from now, there could be as few as 300,000 or, in a best-case scenario, as many as 334,000 students. Those estimates are based in part on the city’s sharply falling birth rates. Citywide, from 2011 to 2021, the number of births dropped by more than 43%.

Still, CTU leaders insist that the city is actually poised for a population turnaround. During President Donald Trump’s second administration, Chicago under Johnson can bill itself as a progressive refuge — a place that protects immigrants, abortion care, LGBTQ+ rights and access to gender-affirming care for transgender youth and adults, said Jackson Potter, vice president of the CTU.

“We are going to need to be a citadel of protection,” he said, adding that the last thing the city wants is to shutter some of its schools, then see families arriving in these neighborhoods en masse only to find limited classroom seats.

The union’s real issue with school closures, Potter said, is that Chicago has done them without enough educator and community input and has rushed them, destabilizing other nearby schools.

An influx of immigrant families allowed CPS to stabilize its enrollment and the city to notch modest population increases in the past two years after a lengthy decline. But some demographers think the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown might mean these gains are short-lived.

Jim Lewis, a senior researcher at the Great Cities Institute, a research hub at the University of Illinois Chicago, is skeptical about the possibility of an influx of school-age children in areas with shrinking schools. Some gentrifying Chicago neighborhoods have drawn new residents, but they tend to be higher earners who generally have fewer kids.

Lewis cautions that people tend to overestimate the power of schools to attract residents. Studies have shown that crumbling schools can deter families, he said. But research also suggests new programs and attractive campuses can only do so much to draw them — unless those schools come with a complete package of job opportunities, safe neighborhoods, affordable housing and more.

“I’m all for beautiful new schools,” Lewis said. “Do I think by itself it changes the demography of a place? I don’t think so.”

What to do about underenrolled schools and Chicago’s diminished school-age population is a decision for Chicago’s school board. Currently, 10 members are elected and 11 are appointed by the mayor. Next year, all will be up for election.

Some members, who said they could only speak candidly if they aren’t named, said the board must discuss solutions for tiny schools, including consolidation. But being branded “school closers” is a concern ahead of elections. Others said they’re open to discussing alternatives to school closings, including bringing health clinics or other family services into vacant parts of underenrolled schools.

“I think we have to talk about small schools as a result of historic racism, underfunding, neglect and inequity,” said member Debby Pope, a former CTU employee. A conversation is going to be essential, she said, but with a moratorium on closings in place and the possibility that the board could extend it, “I don’t think this is the moment for that conversation.”

Dozens of Chicago schools are operating at less than one-third capacity. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica) Small Enrollment, Limited Opportunities

About 5 miles southeast of DuSable is Hirsch High School, which was one of the district’s largest school building projects when it opened in the 1920s and once dealt with severe overcrowding. It’s gotten so small now that M’Kya Craig had taken all the electives the school offered by her junior year.

She was one of roughly 100 students at Hirsch, which could enroll 1,000. She browsed the school’s limited courses and decided to take yearbook for a second time. She was bracing to take the course a third time her senior year, but Hirsch added an African American literature class.

Craig appreciated that staff at the small school got to know her well, including a counselor who helped her get into Chicago State University. But she often felt frustrated by the school’s slim course offerings and scarce extracurriculars over the years.

“We lost a lot over the years due to being a small school,” she said.

Most of the district’s underenrolled schools serve students who do not participate in Chicago’s expansive system of school choice, where high-performing students test into selective schools ranked the best in the state, and other students find their way to magnets, charters or strong neighborhood schools, often in wealthier parts of Chicago.

Many of the district’s small schools serve Chicago’s highest-needs students.

Hirsch High School on Chicago’s South Side opened in 1926 and has the capacity for 1,000 students. It currently has around 100. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)

At the Daniel Hale Williams Preparatory School of Medicine, one of the schools inside DuSable, junior Georgia Deaye was drawn to the school’s medical career program and loves the close-knit feel.

“The connection with teachers is way deeper than if I was at another school,” she said.

She participated in a summer internship program that Williams accesses through one of the larger district high schools and recently got her CPR certification. The most recent graduation rate at Williams was 93%, among the highest in the district. The graduating class was 14 students. There are a total of 70 students enrolled there, at a cost of $54,000 per student.

“Small schools are not always painted in a positive light,” said Williams Principal Leonetta Sanders, but the smaller environment is ideal for some students. In part because of its size, the campus hasn’t had to deal with gang problems or violence, she said.

“Safety,” she said, “is always money well spent.”

Some research has suggested that students tend to do better in smaller schools, notes Bruce Fuller, an expert at the University of California, Berkeley. But those findings apply to small-by-design campuses with healthy enrollments, not schools that have shrunk dramatically as families have moved away.

Fuller doesn’t think that student outcomes at those underenrolled schools have been studied rigorously because it would be too hard to control for factors such as the high needs of the students they tend to serve. “There’s consistent evidence that smaller can be better,” Fuller said. “But small in this lifecycle of decline is a totally different story.”

In Chicago’s tiny schools, the limitations, even at a high per-student cost, are substantial. Bronzeville Scholastic Institute, the other school inside DuSable, used to be able to teach Spanish and French but now offers Spanish only. The school once offered Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses but realized it could not continue to offer both; it kept the IB program.

The schools have tried to make up for the limited course offerings by encouraging students to take online courses and dual-enrollment classes that local community colleges offer to high school students.

“You’ve got 12 kids in a class. The board is not going to pay for a calculus teacher,” Grace Dawson, who leads DuSable’s robust alumni group, said of the school district. Students are being “robbed” of opportunity, said Dawson, a former Chicago school principal.

Flush with federal COVID aid, the district added more than 7,500 new positions over the past four years even as enrollment kept declining. It also recently started guaranteeing a certain number of staff, including 10 teachers, at each school regardless of enrollment. Williams and Bronzeville, which used to share an assistant principal and a gym teacher, each hired their own. Douglass High School on the city’s West Side now has 27 employees for 28 students.

That includes six regular education teachers, six special education teachers, a school counselor, a college and career coach, a conflict resolution specialist, a restorative justice coordinator, and an assistant principal and principal. The cost to run the school is $93,000 per student.

“Is a Douglass student getting a $93,000-a-year experience? No,” said Woods of Kids First Chicago. “We can confidently say that. CPS pumps extra dollars into these schools so they can offer the bare minimum."

The district, which handles requests for comment about individual schools, did not dispute the high per-pupil price tag at Douglass. It has said its new budgeting approach gives all schools a fiscal boost regardless of size.

David Narain, who was principal at Hirsch until 2023, said the school’s smaller size allowed his staff to focus intensely on a highly mobile student body, where many students came in reading at the third or fourth grade level. But it was challenging to build a school culture on a campus with so few students.

“You try to have a homecoming, but there’s no football team,” he said. “There’s nothing to come home to.”

And Narain understands the financial tension the district faces. “The writing is on the wall,” he said. “You can’t continue to run these schools and give them all of these resources.”

Williams Preparatory School, one of the schools inside DuSable, offers students a medical career program. (Akilah Townsend for ProPublica) Old Buildings, Big Expenses

In a district with a $10 billion budget, the overall spending on staff and programs at small schools can seem negligible. But keeping aging campuses running is costly no matter how many students are there. The average Chicago school building is 85 years old; dozens of them were built before 1900.

Analysis of capital spending data by ProPublica and Chalkbeat found that since 2017, the district’s 47 severely underenrolled schools — ones that sit more than two-thirds empty — have cost more than $213 million to maintain and renovate.

The emptiest buildings account for $400 million of the district’s estimated $3.1 billion in needed critical repairs. The DuSable building alone needs $21 million in urgent repairs.

Adding to the financial uncertainty at CPS is the Trump administration’s threat to withhold federal funding from districts such as Chicago that have maintained their diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Education policy researcher Chad Aldeman, the former policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, said some closures or consolidations seem inevitable on the heels of Chicago’s massive enrollment losses. If the district doesn’t make a plan now — with community input and help to ease the transition for students — it could find itself scrambling later to reorganize in crisis mode.

“A lot of places that are closing schools are in financial distress,” Aldeman said. “They are trying to save money rather than thinking holistically.”

Closing schools can also carry steep costs. In 2013, the district spent big to add staff at schools that took in students, spruce up those schools and move furniture out of the closed buildings.

Then there’s what to do with vacant buildings. The district is still trying to sell 20 vacant schools from the 2013 closures, which it pays to maintain.

CTU leaders, who pushed to add thousands of new school staff positions in recent contract talks, have long advocated spending more to breathe new life into underenrolled schools — an invest-and-they’ll-come theory.

Potter, the CTU vice president, holds up Dyett High School — which the district closed but later reopened after a CTU-supported hunger strike in protest — as an example of a “phoenix rising from the ashes.” Its basketball team won a state title this year. Though the school is still at 58% capacity, enrollment has stabilized at roughly 500 students, a benchmark CPS has used to weigh whether a high school is big enough.

“Why would you start with a question about consolidations when you can start with a question about support?” he said.

But recent years have tested the power of added investments to boost enrollment.

In 2018, the district and teachers union jointly launched an initiative to target 20 high-poverty campuses, including Dyett, with an additional $500,000 a year. They’ve used the money to partner with a local nonprofit to offer more services for students and families.

Some of these schools have since reported parent and student engagement gains. But with a few exceptions, they have steadily lost enrollment since then, in some cases dramatically.

by ProPublica

ProPublica announced on Thursday that Adriana Pera has been hired as an engagement and tips coordinator, where she’ll work to ensure that the tips that flow into our newsroom remain secure and are routed to the appropriate reporters.

Pera was most recently an engagement producer at KPCC/LAist, where she worked on projects related to civics, democracy and education.

“Reader tips are the lifeblood of our newsroom, and we’re fortunate to have a journalist as seasoned and thoughtful as Adriana at the helm,” said Tyson Evans, chief product and brand officer.

“I’m a firm believer that journalism is better when we hear from sources and community members with direct knowledge of what’s happening,” Pera said. “I am beyond ecstatic to join ProPublica’s impressive engagement team and to uphold the accessibility, security and impact of their tips line.”

by Annie Waldman, Asia Fields and Ashley Clarke, design by Zisiga Mukulu, and photography by Bethany Mollenkof 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.

The National Institutes of Health is responsible for more than 80% of the world’s grant investment in biomedical research. Its funding has sparked countless medical breakthroughs — on cancer, diabetes, strokes — and plays a fundamental role in the development of pharmaceutical drugs.

Scientists compete vigorously for a slice of the more than $30 billion that the agency doles out annually; they can spend years assembling grant applications that stretch thousands of pages in hopes of convincing peer reviewers of the promise of their projects. Only 1 in 5 gets chosen.

The NIH has rarely revoked funding once it has been awarded. Out of the tens of thousands of grants overseen by the institution since 2012, it terminated fewer than five for violations of the agency’s terms and conditions.

Then Donald Trump was reelected.

Since his January inauguration, his administration has terminated more than 1,450 grants, withholding more than $750 million in funds; officials have said they are curbing wasteful spending and “unscientific” research. The Department of Government Efficiency gave the agency direction on what to cut and why, ProPublica has previously found, bypassing the NIH’s established review process.

“The decision to terminate certain grants is part of a deliberate effort to ensure taxpayer dollars prioritize high-impact, urgent science,” said Andrew G. Nixon, the director of communications for the Department of Health and Human Services. He did not respond to questions about the terminated grants or how patients may be impacted, but he said, “Many discontinued projects were duplicative or misaligned with NIH’s core mission. NIH remains focused on supporting rigorous biomedical research that delivers real results — not radical ideology.”

Targeted projects, however, were seeking cures for future pandemics, examining the causes of dementia and trying to prevent HIV transmission.

The mass cancellation of grants in response to political policy shifts has no precedent, former and current NIH officials told ProPublica. It threatens the stability of the institution and the scientific enterprise of the nation at large. Hundreds of current and former NIH staffers published a declaration this week — cosigned by thousands of scientists across the world, including more than 20 Nobel laureates — decrying the politicization of science at the agency and urging its director to reinstate the canceled grants. Many researchers have appealed the terminations, and several lawsuits are underway challenging the cuts.

It has been difficult for scientists and journalists to convey the enormity of what has happened these past few months and what it portends for the years and decades to come. News organizations have chronicled cuts to individual projects and sought to quantify the effects of lost spending on broad fields of study. To gain a deeper understanding of the toll, ProPublica reached out to more than 500 researchers, scientists and investigators whose grants were terminated.

More than 150 responded to share their experiences, which reveal consequences that experts say run counter to scientific logic and even common sense.

They spoke of the tremendous waste generated by an effort intended to save money — years of government-funded research that may never be published, blood samples in danger of spoiling before they can be analyzed.

Work to address disparities in health, once considered so critical to medical advancement that it was mandated by Congress, is now being cut if the administration determines it has any connection to “diversity,” “equity” or “gender ideology.” Caught in this culling were projects to curb stillbirths, child suicides and infant brain damage.

Researchers catalogued many fears — about the questions they won’t get to answer, the cures they will fail to find and the colleagues they will lose to more supportive countries. But most of all, they said they worried about the people who, because of these cuts, will die.

Research Frozen

The NIH often awards funding in multiyear grants, giving scientists the time and intellectual freedom to pursue their work uninterrupted. They plan experiments, hire staff and make equipment purchases on long timelines.

Now, studies can’t be completed. Papers can’t be published. Years of research may be lost and millions of dollars wasted.

Grants Terminated:

A project to improve recruitment of participants in Alzheimer’s clinical trials.

A study to increase vaccine uptake in underserved populations.

A study investigating in-utero exposure to contaminants in public drinking water.

An examination of the consequences of abortion restrictions.

Diana Greene Foster, a reproductive health researcher and professor at the University of California, San Francisco

After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion, demographer Diana Greene Foster set out to study the outcomes of pregnant patients who showed up in emergency departments. She wanted to know whether state restrictions were causing delays in care.

“This needs to be answered for courts to consider the evidence,” said Foster, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. “Every day that goes by, people are potentially at risk.”

Less than one year into a five-year NIH grant, she had arrived at some early findings: “Abortion bans don’t stop very many people from getting abortions,” she said. “Bans actually cause people to have their abortions later in pregnancy.” For those who live in states with bans, she found, second-trimester abortions increased from 8% of procedures to 17%, requiring more complex interventions to end their pregnancies and increasing their risk of complications.

But before the data could be published, the NIH informed her on March 21 that the grant was terminated. It was no longer in line with agency priorities, a letter stated, specifying that studies on “gender identity” “ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities.”

The termination left Foster confused. “They are wrong that studying gender minority populations is not important,” she said. “But my study is not about gender identity. It is relevant to anyone who is pregnant, regardless of how they identify.”

Foster had to pause her research while she searched for other funding. “This was clearly a politically motivated cut,” she said.

ProPublica heard from more than 70 researchers who said that they were unable to continue their projects due to the terminations.

“Two and a half years into a three-year grant, and to all of a sudden stop and not fully be able to answer the original questions, it’s just a waste.” —Ethan Moitra, associate professor at Brown University, who was researching whether brief therapy can improve mental health for LGBTQ+ people

“We are now scrambling to figure out if there are parts we can continue or salvage.” —Julia Marcus, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who was researching whether HIV prevention medicine can be made available over the counter

“To build trust between health care providers, health researchers in communities takes decades of work, and scientists have already done the work. Now this is going to be depleted.” —Jesus Ramirez-Valles, professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was examining how HIV impacts the physical and mental health of gay men as they age

Patient Studies Interrupted

Thousands of studies supported by the NIH involve human subjects. Some include clinical trials, in which researchers recruit participants, often with grave conditions from cancer to HIV, to test the value of novel treatments and protocols.

In addition to jeopardizing data, terminating a grant in the middle of an active study may worsen participants’ conditions and put them at higher risk of death.

Grants Terminated:

A study to prevent sexually transmitted infections with common antibiotics.

A study to increase access to kidney transplant evaluations.

A clinical trial to understand the effectiveness of flu and COVID-19 vaccine text message reminders.

A study to test a protocol to prevent HIV transmission.

Amy Nunn and Dr. Philip Chan, behavioral and social science professors at Brown University

A single daily pill can nearly eliminate the risk of contracting HIV — but only when taken as prescribed. Black and Latino men who have sex with men have more than a 1-in-4 chance of contracting HIV but sometimes struggle to get or stay in care.

Working with community clinics across Mississippi, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island, Brown University professors Amy Nunn and Dr. Philip Chan set out to examine what happens when people are provided wraparound clinical services before they contract the disease. “This is about preventing people from getting HIV,” Nunn said.

The study provides aggressive case management to help patients navigate the health care system and stay on the treatment, known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or PrEP, which is available in both oral and injectable forms. Workers provide patients with reminders, help them get coverage and even pick up their medicine.

In 2023, the researchers received about $3.7 million in NIH funding for five years of work. Their team was just starting to gather data that showed the program’s efficacy when the grant was terminated. “This is science that had really great chances of having a huge impact, and all of a sudden, it’s cut off at the knee,” Nunn said.

Chan told ProPublica that he worries that the patients in their study could be harmed by the cut. “There’s no doubt that some of them are going to not stay on PrEP,” said Chan, “and that some of them are going to get HIV.”

At least 30 researchers told ProPublica that the termination of their grant forced them to end clinical research or a trial abruptly, leaving participants in limbo.

“We cannot assay the blood samples that we have collected and paid participants for. A total waste of the money and resources that went into collecting the data.” —Sarah Whitton, professor at the University of Cincinnati, who was identifying risk factors for mental illness and suicidality for young LGBTQ+ women

“We have also had to quickly scramble to keep the study going unfunded to avoid having to stop the treatment and clinical trial for those already enrolled.” —Tiffany Brown, assistant professor at Auburn University, who was developing an eating disorder treatment for LGBTQ+ patients

“With a clinical trial, if you can’t follow participants to the end, you have no information, because the whole point is to see whether there’s change from beginning to end.” —Katie Biello, professor and chair of epidemiology at Brown University’s School of Public Health, who was trying to improve adherence to medication protocols for adolescents with HIV in Brazil

Disparities Disregarded

(Edwin Tan/Getty Images)

The Trump administration has banned the NIH from funding grants with a perceived connection to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” alleging that such projects may be discriminatory.

Caught up in the wave of terminations is work seeking to understand why some populations — including women and sexual, racial or ethnic minorities — may be more at risk of certain disorders or diseases.

Grants Terminated:

A study investigating how discrimination affects the mental health of Latino youth.

Research examining maternal behavioral health conditions of Black women.

An examination of the effects of structural racism on people at risk of kidney disease.

A study investigating why women of color disproportionately die from cervical cancer.

Adana Llanos, an epidemiologist and health equity scholar at Columbia University

Despite preventative vaccines and improved screening, more than 4,000 women die every year from cervical cancer. Black and Hispanic women are more likely than their white peers to be diagnosed, and often at later stages.

After more than a decade of studying cancer care disparities, epidemiologist Adana Llanos found that the ZIP code in which a woman received care often plays a pivotal role in how she fares. And in 2023, Llanos and her colleagues were awarded a multiyear NIH grant to further examine inequities, specifically in cervical cancer care and who survives it.

Even though their work targets the women most at risk, Llanos said their research, like most health equity research, will increase our understanding of cervical cancer more broadly. “This work has the potential to improve cancer outcomes for everyone, no matter what you identify as, no matter what your characteristics are,” she said.

Last year, her team began to recruit a cohort of 960 women who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer to track their patterns of care and outcomes. But in March, after the researchers had enrolled about 200 participants, the NIH terminated the funding. Llanos paused enrollment.

The cancellation felt like a betrayal of her study’s participants, she said. Llanos had spent years developing relationships with community groups and cancer patients, gaining their trust so they would feel comfortable sharing their treatment experiences.

“We’ve made commitments to them,” she said.

More than 550 of the terminated grants were focused on health disparities or inequities, attempting to understand why some groups have different health outcomes.

“If you cannot identify groups that are higher risk, it seems like just really bad science. That’s sort of the basics of how you try to conquer a disease.” —Carl Latkin, professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health, who was analyzing the comorbidities of people who have HIV and those at risk for getting it

“Health disparities are just going to get larger, and real folks are going to die.” —Marguerita Lightfoot, professor at the Oregon Health & Science University-Portland State University School of Public Health, who was studying the value of guaranteed income and financial mentoring to Black youth

“It’s a major principle of epidemiology to target work towards the people who are being disproportionately affected. Now we’re being told that we cannot mention them in our research.” —Dr. Matthew Spinelli, assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who was working to prevent sexually transmitted infections with common antibiotics

LGBTQ+ People Targeted

(Jason Koxvold for ProPublica)

One of Trump’s first executive orders was a directive banning federal funds from being used to support or promote so-called “gender ideology.” Hundreds of grants focused on the health of LGBTQ+ populations have been terminated, including many studies focused on young people and those at risk of contracting HIV.

In response to a lawsuit, a federal judge issued an injunction barring the administration from fully enforcing the orders. It canceled the grants anyway, citing agency policy and scientific priorities.

Grants Terminated:

A study to improve the delivery of behavioral health care to LGBTQ+ youth.

Research to address substance use in young men who are at risk for or living with HIV.

An evaluation of disparities in mpox vaccination rates among men who have sex with men.

An investigation of why LGBTQ+ adults are dying by suicide.

Lauren Forrest, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon (Jason Koxvold for ProPublica)

Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults are over three times more likely to consider suicide than their heterosexual peers. Few studies have aimed to figure out how to prevent this.

Last year, Lauren Forrest, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Oregon, received a multiyear grant to do so, focusing on LGBTQ+ people who live in rural areas where access to specialized care may be more limited.

She was planning to recruit dozens of participants. But on March 21, she received a notification from the NIH that her grant was terminated because it did not “effectuate” the agency’s priorities, citing its connection to “gender identity.”

“The way they’re going about deciding which grants will or won’t be terminated, it’s not about scientific rigor,” she said. “It’s about literally actively discriminating against health-disparity populations.”

Forrest has been forced to reduce the hours of her research staff, and she now risks losing key lab personnel who may have to seek other employment due to the cuts. “There is no way to recover the lost time, research continuity or training value once disrupted,” she said.

She worries most about the deaths that could have been prevented. “People are going to be harmed because of this,” she said.

More than 300 of the grants terminated by the NIH were focused on LGBTQ+ health care. About 40 of those grants were researching ways to prevent suicide in adults and youth.

“We have a paper that’s ready to go out that shows lesbian women are almost 3 times as likely to have a stillbirth compared to their heterosexual peers. That’s such an avoidable, horrible outcome to happen, and that paper may never be published.” —Brittany Charlton, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who was quantifying obstetrical outcomes for lesbian, gay and bisexual women

“It is devastating to have state-sanctioned dehumanization and exclusion. I am afraid for what these messages will do to the mental health of youth who are told they don’t matter or, for some, that they don’t even exist by parts of society.” —Dr. Sarah Goff, professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, who was studying how to improve the delivery of mental health care to LGBTQ+ youth

“I honestly burst into tears. The evidence we would have gained from this work will not exist.” —Kirsty Clark, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University, who was finding best practices for preventing suicide in LGBTQ+ preteens

Losing a Generation

The grant terminations and subsequent instability have created a lost generation of scientists, dozens of researchers told ProPublica — cutting off an established pipeline at all stages of researchers’ careers.

Universities are trimming the number of openings in postdoctoral and graduate programs.

Young researchers are struggling to find funding to initiate studies or open new laboratories.

And some scientists are opting to pursue opportunities abroad.

Grants Terminated:

A grant to train researchers and public health professionals on HIV science.

A program to support the development of early-career scientists and researchers.

A grant to support Ph.D. students from historically underrepresented groups.

A program to train the next generation of pediatric research scientists.

Dr. Lauren Harasymiw, a scholar in the NIH’s Pediatric Scientist Development Program

Dr. Lauren Harasymiw was a medical resident in a neonatal intensive care unit when an infant took a turn for the worse. Born at only 23 weeks gestation — the edge of viability — the baby girl experienced a hemorrhage within the ventricles of her brain.

“What does this mean for her?” Harasymiw recalls asking her attending physician. The supervisor didn’t know. “The field of neonatology has made incredible strides over the last decades in helping our babies survive,” Harasymiw said. “But we’ve made less progress in protecting their neurodevelopmental outcomes.”

If doctors could better assess infants’ outcomes after a brain injury, they could target interventions sooner and provide families with better resources. To advance this area of medicine, Harasymiw pursued NIH-funded training to become a pediatric scientist.

But in March, the NIH terminated funding for the Pediatric Scientist Development Program, which funded Harasymiw’s salary and research, claiming that the program was connected to “DEI.”

“This is just ripping out the foundation of my career,” Harasymiw said.

In a statement about the grant terminations, Nixon, the HHS spokesperson, said that the NIH “continues to invest robustly in training and career development opportunities that produce measurable contributions to biomedical science and patient care.” However, he added that “while fostering the next generation of scientists is essential, effective leadership requires clear focus: prioritizing research that is impactful and results-driven over duplicative or low-yield programs.”

Dr. Sallie Permar, who runs the program and is chair of pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine, was perplexed by the cut; the program seemed to be in line with the administration’s focus on combating chronic disease in children.

“That’s exactly what we’re training these scholars to do,” she said.

More than 50 researchers told ProPublica that the funding cuts would harm the next generation of scholars, discouraging them from practicing in the United States.

“We have a generation of researchers that were planning to focus on these questions that are now either scared or don’t have funding to continue their training, or both.” —Mandi Pratt-Chapman, associate center director for community outreach, engagement and equity at the George Washington Cancer Center, who was identifying best practices for collecting data about LGBTQ+ people at small and rural cancer centers

“Admissions for graduate school have been downsized to a point where prospective students are giving up on pursuing a Ph.D.” —Tigist Tamir, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who received a career development grant and was studying how oxidative stress is regulated in breast cancer and obesity

“I already know several researchers on the job search who ended up taking faculty positions in Canada instead of the U.S.” —Dr. Benjamin Solomon, instructor of immunology and allergy in the department of pediatrics at Stanford Medical School, who received a career development grant and was examining rare genetic immune diseases in children

How We Reported the Story

Shortly after the public became aware of the termination of hundreds of grants at the National Institutes of Health, ProPublica published a call for tips in March, requesting that researchers with canceled grants share their experiences. ProPublica heard from more than 150 researchers and scientists and interviewed more than 70 about how the grant terminations were affecting their projects, their careers and the field of biomedical science at large. The story relies on the personal opinions of the researchers and does not reflect the views of their institutions. To understand the universe of NIH grant terminations, ProPublica relied on two main data sources: spreadsheets of terminated health grants released by the federal government to comply with Trump’s “Radical Transparency About Wasteful Spending” order, and data from Grant Watch, a private initiative tracking the terminations, led by researchers Noam Ross, Scott Delaney, Anthony Barente and Emma Mairson. They have used crowdsourcing and federal sources to create their dataset.

Were you involved in a clinical trial, participating in research or receiving services that have ended, been paused or been delayed because of canceled federal funding? Our reporters want to hear from you.

To share your experience, contact our reporting team at healthfunding@propublica.org.

Melody Kramer and Agnel Philip contributed research.

by T. Christian Miller and Sebastian Rotella

Leer en español.

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

In mid-April, President Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to celebrate a new partnership. They had recently negotiated an extraordinary deal in which El Salvador agreed to incarcerate in a maximum security prison hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration had labeled as violent criminals, though few had been convicted of such crimes. The U.S. also sent back accused members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13 — which both the U.S. and El Salvador have designated as a terrorist organization.

Bukele’s presidency has been defined by his successful crackdown against MS-13. He has jailed tens of thousands of alleged gang members, transforming one of the hemisphere’s most dangerous nations into one of its safest. Although human rights groups have criticized his tactics, Bukele remains extremely popular in El Salvador.

During their meeting at the White House, Trump praised his guest as “one hell of a president.” He shook Bukele’s hand, saying, “We appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime and so do we.”

A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter. The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.

New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica shows that senior officials in Bukele’s government repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. task force as it pursued evidence of possible wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inner circle.

Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.

In a previously unreported development, federal agents came to suspect that Bukele and members of his inner circle had diverted U.S. aid funds to the gang as part of the alleged deal to provide it with money and power in exchange for votes and reduced homicide rates. In 2021, agents drew up a request to review U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to look for evidence of money laundering related to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds. The list of names assembled by the agents included Bukele, senior officials and their relatives, according to documents viewed by ProPublica.

“Information obtained through investigation has revealed that the individuals contained within this submission are heavily engaged with MS-13 and are laundering funds from illicit business where MS-13 are involved,” the agents wrote. The people on the list “are also believed to have been funding MS-13 to support political campaigns and MS-13 have received political funds.”

The outcome of the request is not known, but its existence shows that the U.S. investigation had widened to examine suspected corruption at high levels of the Bukele government.

The investigation was led by Joint Task Force Vulcan, a multiagency law enforcement team created at Trump’s request in 2019. Agents found evidence that the Bukele government tried to cover up the pact by preventing the extraditions of gang leaders who faced U.S. charges that include ordering the murders of U.S. citizens and plotting to assassinate an FBI agent.

In addition, U.S. officials helped at least eight of their counterparts in Salvadoran law enforcement flee the country and resettle in the United States or elsewhere because they feared retaliation by their own government, current and former U.S. officials said.

It has been clear from the beginning what Trump wants from El Salvador: an ally who would accept, and even imprison, deportees. Less clear has been what Bukele might want from the United States. In striking the deal with the Salvadoran president, Trump has effectively undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from further scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials said.

Veterans of the Vulcan team are “concerned that all their work, the millions of dollars that were spent, going all over the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, that it will be weakened for political reasons,” said a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.

The task force worked closely with the Salvadoran attorney general’s office, whose prosecutors shared evidence from their own investigation of the gang negotiations and suspected graft in the Bukele government, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.

“There was good information on corruption between the gang and the Bukele administration,” Christopher Musto, a former senior official at Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, who worked on Vulcan, said about the Salvadoran investigation. “It was a great case.”

In May 2021, Bukele’s legislative majority in Congress ousted the attorney general and justices of the Supreme Court, which oversees extradition requests. Within seven months, newly installed justices reversed or halted six requests for senior gang leaders wanted in the U.S., according to interviews and documents.

“Bukele’s people were coming to the Supreme Court and saying under no circumstances are we extraditing the MS-13 leaders,” said the U.S. official familiar with the investigation. “‘Delay, interfere, undermine, do what you have to do.’”

Senior Bukele officials helped an MS-13 leader with a pending extradition order escape from prison, according to court records, U.S. officials and Salvadoran news reports. At least three other top gang leaders were released from Salvadoran custody after the U.S. filed extradition requests for them, according to Justice Department documents.

Published accounts in the United States and El Salvador have reported allegations that Bukele also pushed for the return of MS-13 leaders to prevent them from testifying in U.S. courts about the pact. Despite his government’s refusal to extradite gang bosses to the United States, the Trump administration in March deported one MS-13 leader accused of terrorism. The Justice Department is now seeking to dismiss charges against a second leader, which would allow him to be sent back to El Salvador, according to recent court filings.

The Justice Department declined to comment in response to questions sent by ProPublica. The State Department referred questions to the Justice Department.

A White House spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions.

“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people and removing dangerous criminals and terrorist illegals who pose a threat to the American public,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “We are grateful for President Bukele’s partnership.”

Bukele, the Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Salvadoran Supreme Court did not respond to lists of questions. Bukele has repeatedly denied making any agreement with MS-13. The Trump administration’s deportation of MS-13 members to El Salvador, he said in a post on X, will enable security forces to dismantle the gang.

“This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors,” the post said.

President Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, during a meeting in the Oval Office in April 2025. Trump has praised Bukele as “one hell of a president.” (Al Drago/The Washington Post/Getty Images) “Just Fear”

Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in February 2019, promising to fight the country’s ingrained political corruption and pervasive gang violence, which he called “one of the greatest challenges” facing the nation.

During his first term, Trump also made MS-13 a high-profile foe, calling it “probably the meanest, worst gang in the world.” In August 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr created the Vulcan task force, teaming federal prosecutors with agents of the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies. The goal: Eradicate MS-13.

For decades, MS-13 has bedeviled law enforcement in the Americas with its vast reach, extreme violence and complex culture. The initials stand for “Mara Salvatrucha.” “Mara” means a swarm, while “salvatrucha” has been said to refer to a clever Salvadoran, according to interviews and an academic study. The number represents the 13th letter of the alphabet, M, in homage to the Mexican Mafia, the powerful Southern California prison gang.

MS-13 emerged in the 1980s in Los Angeles among Salvadoran youths whose families had fled a bloody civil war. The gang expanded throughout the diaspora and, as the U.S. deported planeloads of ex-convicts starting in the 1990s, took root in El Salvador. Although most of the leaders were serving sentences in El Salvador, a jailhouse council of 14 bosses, known as the “Ranfla,” used cellphones to micromanage criminal activities in U.S. cities thousands of miles away.

The gang developed a reputation for torturing, brutalizing and dismembering its victims. Barr has called it “a death cult” in which violence is more important than riches.

“It was like a very violent mom-and-pop operation where the cousins and second cousins all want to be a part of it,” said Carlos Ortiz, who served as the HSI attaché in El Salvador from 2018 to 2024. “Minimal money, compared to others. Even though it’s an organization, a lot of it is just fear. Fear of the high-ranking bosses among the rest of the gang, that’s what drives it.”

Trained with military weapons, MS-13 warred with security forces in El Salvador, took over neighborhoods and generated one of the world’s worst homicide rates, driving an exodus of immigrants reminiscent of the 1980s. The Salvadoran Supreme Court designated the gang as a terrorist organization in 2015.

The Vulcan task force had about 30 members, including prosecutors, agents and analysts. Its director, John J. Durham, was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York who had spent a decade pursuing MS-13 cliques on Long Island. Members of the task force worked from bases around the country and traveled to Mexico and Central America.

One of the founding investigators, Newark FBI agent Daniel Brunner, spoke fluent Spanish and had worked gangs for seven years. He became a roving specialist providing expertise, communications intelligence and court transcripts, sometimes in person and sometimes from a distance.

“Our idea was that Vulcan was like a SEAL Team 6, going in to help the different districts build cases,” Brunner, who is now retired, said in an interview.

Vulcan built on the longtime U.S. presence and extensive influence in El Salvador, where the embassy has long funded and trained law enforcement agencies. FBI agents and others were embedded as advisers in police anti-gang and homicide units and worked with prosecution teams led by Attorney General Raúl Melara.

The U.S. task force modeled its strategy on the ones used against Mexican cartels and Colombian narcoguerrillas: Break the power of the MS-13 bosses by extraditing them to face trial and prison in the United States.

On Jan. 14, 2021, six days before the end of the Trump administration, Durham and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray joined acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen when he announced “the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history.”

Prosecutors charged the 14 members of the leadership council with major crimes including conspiracy to support and finance narcoterrorism. For more than two decades, the Ranfla ran a criminal network in the United States, Mexico and Central America that sanctioned the murders of Americans and trafficked drugs and arms, the indictment alleged.

The indictment contained a stunning charge: MS-13 bosses had taken the extraordinary step of giving an order, or “green light,” to assassinate an FBI agent working with local investigators in El Salvador. Embassy officials learned of the threat and evacuated the agent, according to interviews.

It is highly unusual for Latin American criminal groups to target a U.S. agent — they have learned that it invites an overwhelming law enforcement response. The assassination plot was a sign that the U.S. crackdown had rattled the gang chiefs, current and former officials said.

Family and friends attend the burial of Justin Llivicura in 2017 on Long Island, New York. Justin, a 16-year-old high school student, was one of four teenagers murdered in a park by members of MS-13. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images) Vulcan on the Hunt

In conversations with American officials as president-elect, Bukele promised cooperation and welcomed their support against gangs and graft, even in his own Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. officials.

At a press event about the Vulcan task force in 2020, Trump asserted that in the past El Salvador “did not cooperate with the United States at all,” but now it had become a strong law enforcement partner.

Already, though, there had been news accounts alleging that Bukele had cut deals with gangs when he was mayor of San Salvador. Vulcan investigators quickly found evidence that top aides to the new president were negotiating a new pact with gang chiefs, according to interviews.

For more than a decade, MS-13’s control of the streets had made it a political force. It could deliver votes, ignite mayhem or impose order. A series of politicians had held talks with gang leaders to seek electoral support and reductions in violence in return for improved prison conditions and perks such as prostitutes and big-screen televisions.

The Bukele government adopted a more sophisticated bargaining strategy, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. During secret meetings in prisons and other sites, the president’s emissaries offered MS-13 leaders political power and financial incentives if they lowered the homicide rate and marshaled support for the Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and court documents.

The chief negotiator was Carlos Marroquín, a former rap artist and confidant of the president. Bukele had appointed him the director of a new Justice Ministry program known as “Reconstruction of the Social Fabric” that operated in impoverished communities.

Marroquín promised the Ranfla a central role in developing the program, control of neighborhood youth centers, power over urban turf and other financial and political benefits, according to current and former U.S. officials, court documents and Treasury Department sanctions. Informants and communications intercepts indicated that some of the resources going to MS-13 came from U.S. government aid, a violation of U.S. law, according to interviews and documents.

“Money was going from us, from USAID, through to this social fabric group,” a former federal law enforcement official said. “They’re supposed to be building things and getting skills and learning. It was funding the gangs.”

Vulcan also gained information from two highly placed Salvadoran officials involved in the talks with MS-13. The officials provided inside information to U.S. agents about the negotiations, which they said Bukele directed, according to interviews.

The accumulating evidence about the gang pact and the suspected misuse of U.S. funds spurred the task force to broaden its initial focus and target alleged corruption in the Bukele government, current and former U.S. officials said.

In April 2021, federal agents prepared a list of powerful Salvadorans for a financial review by the U.S. Treasury Department. Bukele was one of the 15 names. So were Marroquín; Osiris Luna, the director of the national prison system and another alleged organizer of the gang talks; Martha Carolina Recinos, the president’s chief of staff; and other political figures and their relatives. The request asked the Treasury Department to search for possible illicit transactions in any bank accounts held in the United States by those on the list, according to documents seen by ProPublica.

The Vulcan task force was seeking evidence in U.S. banks of money laundering tied to the diversion of USAID funding through the gang pact, the documents showed. Agents explained that the task force had “uncovered information that MS-13 members are in close contact with politically exposed persons in El Salvador,” referring to prominent government figures.

“The USAID funding is believed to have been laundered by the individuals submitted in this request,” who were suspected of “facilitating, supporting and promoting MS-13 through their official positions,” said the request, which was viewed by ProPublica.

Made under section 314A of the USA Patriot Act, the request for a canvass of U.S. banks requires that investigators show reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, which is a higher standard. The outcome of the request is unknown. The Treasury Department declined to comment. U.S. prosecutors have not publicly accused Bukele and the others of crimes related to USAID funds.

As U.S. investigators advanced in this political direction, they gained valuable information from the Salvadoran prosecutors who were pressing their own investigation of the gangs and the Bukele administration.

Known in English as Operation Cathedral, their probe was as ambitious and sensitive as the U.S. one. Investigators had documented the secret jailhouse deals with MS-13 and the official attempts to cover them up. They also pursued leads that revealed alleged widespread corruption involving the country’s COVID-19 relief programs, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and documents. Political tensions increased as the Salvadoran prosecutors targeted the president’s inner circle and raided government offices, clashing with police who tried to stop them from searching the Health Ministry in one incident.

April 2021 was also when a delegation led by Attorney General Melara came to Washington to meet with leaders of Vulcan and other senior U.S. officials. The prosecutors laid out their case against prominent figures in the Bukele government. The “impressive” presentation, a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said, cited videos, phone intercepts and other evidence showing that Marroquín, prisons director Luna and others had clandestinely arranged for government negotiators and gang leaders to enter and leave prisons, smuggled in phones and destroyed logs of prison visits.

“Melara was very nervous because of the very high level of the people he was investigating,” a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said.

Melara declined to comment, saying he does not discuss his work as attorney general.

The Salvadoran director of prisons, Osiris Luna, right, speaks at a police facility in San Salvador, El Salvador, in November 2021. (Rodrigo Sura/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) Interference

On May 1, 2021 — soon after Melara and his team met with U.S. investigators — the Salvadoran Legislature, controlled by Bukele, voted to expel the attorney general and five justices on the Supreme Court.

The purge was a decisive step by Bukele to centralize power. It drew international condemnation. In El Salvador, critics denounced the president’s actions as a “self-coup.” On his Twitter page, Bukele began calling himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”

For Vulcan, the expulsions marked a dramatic shift in its investigation. The Supreme Court justices had signaled their willingness to sign off on some extraditions. Melara had been a helpful ally who reportedly pledged to do “everything necessary” to extradite the Ranfla members, many of whom were in custody in El Salvador. But it soon became clear that the government was no longer interested in handing over senior gang leaders.

“The next prosecutors were not willing to work with us,” said Musto, the former HSI official. “We were not closed out, but all these things that we had in place that we were moving to getting people back here slowed down to a snail’s pace.”

The first clash came over Armando Melgar Diaz, an alleged MS-13 leader who acted as a middleman between gangs in the United States and senior leaders in El Salvador. Melgar, known as “Blue,” had ordered the kidnapping of a family in Oklahoma that owed the gangs $145,000, collected money from a drug ring operating out of restaurants in Maryland and Virginia and was involved with killings in the U.S., according to an indictment and interviews with U.S. officials. He was the first MS-13 member to be accused under terrorism laws.

The newly constituted Supreme Court voted to approve Melgar’s extradition but then reversed its decision, announcing that the matter needed further study. Later, Bukele’s new attorney general asked for a halt to the extradition. The reason: The United States had failed to guarantee that it would not seek the death penalty or life in prison, sentences not allowed under Salvadoran law.

The rationale made no sense to Vulcan prosecutors. The Justice Department had already promised that it would not pursue such punishments against Melgar, according to records and interviews. U.S. and Salvadoran officials attributed the sudden reversal to fear that Melgar could link Bukele and his government to the pact with MS-13.

“Melgar Diaz was going to be the test case,” Musto said. “It was going to be an easy win for Vulcan.”

Information obtained by U.S. agents included allegations that Bukele’s judicial adviser, Conan Castro-Ramírez, had called one of the new Supreme Court justices and told him to find ways to stop the extradition of Melgar, according to interviews. When the justice objected, saying that the extradition had already been approved, Castro allegedly ordered him to reverse it. “That’s why we put you there,” he said, according to the interviews.

The State Department sanctioned Castro for his role in assisting in the “inappropriate removal” of the Supreme Court justices and the attorney general. Castro did not respond to attempts to contact him.

A Salvadoran court sentenced Melgar to 39 years in prison for conspiracy to commit homicide, among other crimes. He was the first MS-13 leader whose extradition was blocked. Soon after, the U.S. extradition requests for other gang chiefs ran into opposition.

“Bukele and his government are using the entire state apparatus to prevent these people from being extradited,” a person with knowledge of the Salvadoran judicial system said in a recent interview.

Miguel Ángel Flores Durel, a newly appointed Supreme Court justice who reportedly had served as a lawyer for a top MS-13 leader, made sure that the requests were never granted, according to the person with knowledge of El Salvador’s judicial system. Flores instructed colleagues “do not work on extraditions at all,” the person said.

In July 2022, El Salvador agreed to extradite two lower-ranking MS-13 members charged with the murders of Salvadoran immigrants in Long Island in 2016 and 2017 in which victims were butchered with axes and machetes. The Supreme Court also approved the return of Salvadorans not affiliated with the gang who were accused in the U.S. of crimes such as murder.

This was a deliberate strategy, the person said. Flores said that El Salvador needed to continue some extraditions in order to “calm” U.S. officials, who were complaining about the lack of cooperation with Vulcan, the person said. (Flores died in 2023.)

It didn’t work. The extradition of other criminals by the Bukele-aligned Supreme Court only emphasized the lack of cooperation on requests for the senior MS-13 leaders.

“We were never told officially that it wouldn’t happen, but it became impossible,” said Brunner, the former FBI agent.

In October 2022, Bukele’s new attorney general announced that criminals would first have to serve their sentence in El Salvador before being sent to the U.S. — an interpretation of the country’s extradition treaty that differed from the previous Supreme Court.

“We aren’t going to be sending Salvadorans without them first paying for the crimes they have committed” in El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgado said.

Threats and Roadblocks

The Bukele government’s interference with the U.S. investigation went beyond blocking extraditions, U.S. officials said.

Senior Bukele allies also waged a campaign of harassment and intimidation against the Salvadoran officials who had investigated corruption and assisted the Vulcan task force, according to interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.

The government threatened officials with arrest and sent police patrols to their homes, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. At least eight senior Salvadoran law enforcement and judicial officials fled El Salvador for the United States and elsewhere. Vulcan provided them with travel money, language classes, housing and help gaining legal immigration status and finding jobs. In one instance, a U.S. Embassy official escorted a Salvadoran prosecutor out of the country because American officials believed his life was in danger, according to an official familiar with the incident.

The Salvadoran government also weakened special “vetted units” of the police that had worked with the FBI and other U.S. agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.

Bukele’s allies didn’t stop there. They allegedly helped the escape or release from prison of at least four members of the MS-13 leadership council sought by Vulcan for alleged crimes in the U.S., according to interviews, court documents and press reports.

Elmer Canales-Rivera, alias “Crook de Hollywood,” was one of the most wanted of the Ranfla members. He had been imprisoned for several murders in El Salvador, including a case in which he reportedly helped suffocate and drown in insecticide a gang member who violated orders. In the United States, prosecutors had accused him of orchestrating murders and kidnapping across the nation for more than 20 years.

In November 2021, Canales escaped from prison. El Faro, a prominent investigative news outlet, and other Salvadoran media published stories that detailed how Marroquín had escorted Canales from the prison. The articles featured taped calls between gang members and a person identified as Marroquín discussing his role in the escape, along with photos of officials apparently attempting to remove jail logs to conceal their presence at the prison.

Canales was caught in Mexico and turned over to U.S. authorities. Currently in prison awaiting trial, he has pleaded not guilty.

Leaders of the MS-13 street gang read the newspaper after a press conference at La Esperanza jail in San Salvador in 2013. Elmer Canales-Rivera, known as “Crook de Hollywood,” right, allegedly escaped from prison with the help of senior Salvadoran officials in 2021. (Jose Cabezas/AFP via Getty Images)

Over the next several months, three other MS-13 leaders disappeared from Salvadoran prisons, causing Durham, the head of the task force, to express his concern in a letter to the judge in New York overseeing the cases. At the time the Bukele administration had received extradition requests and Interpol notices, he wrote, the leaders had been in custody. Salvadoran media later reported that the country’s Supreme Court had formally denied the extradition requests for the three men.

The purge of the Supreme Court and prosecutors, the blocked extraditions and the disappearance of the MS-13 gang members marked a significant deterioration in relations between Bukele and the administration of President Joe Biden. Agencies across the government began looking for ways to push El Salvador to cooperate.

Acting U.S. Ambassador Jean Manes announced a “pause” in relations with El Salvador and left the country. A veteran diplomat who had previously served in El Salvador, Manes had pressured Bukele in public and private, criticizing the extradition delays and his increasingly authoritarian rule, according to State Department officials.

“What are we seeing now? It is a decline in democracy,” Manes said shortly before her departure.

In December 2021, the Treasury Department issued sanctions against Bukele aides Luna, Marroquín and Recinos, blocking them from conducting financial transactions in the United States because of alleged corruption. None of them responded to questions sent to a Bukele spokesperson.

Nonetheless, former members of the task force said they felt that the Biden administration treated Vulcan as a lower priority and cut its resources. They said Biden officials saw the task force as a Trump initiative and wanted to focus on other law enforcement targets, such as human trafficking.

“As soon as the Biden administration came in, we were slowed down,” Brunner said. “There was a lot more red tape we had to go through.” Former Biden officials denied this was the case.

Whatever truce had existed between the Salvadoran government and MS-13 collapsed in March 2022. The country descended into chaos. Over one three-day period, some 80 people were killed in gang-related violence.

Bukele reacted forcefully. He declared a nationwide “state of exception” that suspended constitutional protections. Police began rounding up thousands of accused gang members and others. He announced the construction of the megaprison known as CECOT.

The policies proved tremendously popular. Murder rates dropped dramatically, though human rights advocates criticized the loss of civil liberties. Bukele dismissed their complaints.

“Some say we have put thousands in prison, but the reality is that we have set millions free,” he has said, an assertion he repeated to Trump in the Oval Office.

The Turnaround

Despite the harsh treatment of gang members — an estimated 14,500 people are now held in CECOT — one thing did not change: The Bukele government continued to refuse to extradite senior MS-13 leaders to the United States.

The reasons for Bukele’s alleged protection of the gang leadership versus his relentless pursuit of the rank and file are the subject of speculation in both the United States and El Salvador. One possible explanation, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials: Bukele is aware that Vulcan was gathering evidence that could lead to criminal charges and political damage. The imprisoned leaders are potential witnesses to his alleged deal with MS-13, while El Salvador’s street-level gangsters are not.

Police escort accused Venezuelans and Salvadorans after their deportation from the United States to be held in the CECOT megaprison in El Salvador. (El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images)

In February 2023, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment for another group of leaders, most of whom operated a tier below the Ranfla, relaying its directives to gangsters on the streets. The 13 defendants were accused of terrorism and drug smuggling, among other charges.

The U.S. announced it would “explore options for their extradition with the government of El Salvador.” The Justice Department declined to say whether any such requests had been made.

In filing the charges, prosecutors made their strongest public accusations yet about deals between the Bukele government and the gangs. Without naming the president or his allies, prosecutors alleged that MS-13 leaders agreed to use their vast political influence to turn out votes for candidates belonging to Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party in legislative elections in 2021.

The gang bosses also “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefited the government of El Salvador, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate,” the indictment said.

As part of the arrangement, the senior MS-13 leaders demanded that the Bukele government refuse to extradite them, the indictment said. The alleged condition appears to be in effect. To date, none of the extradition requests for more than a dozen high-ranking gang members has been approved.

In the face of obstacles, Vulcan relied increasingly on the Mexican government for help. During the past four years, Mexican authorities have captured nine of the 27 MS-13 leaders named in the indictments and deported them to the United States, where they were arrested. This year, prosecutors obtained guilty pleas to terrorism charges from two lower-ranking bosses, including one who prosecutors said had helped implement the deal between the Bukele administration and the gang. Sentencing for the men is pending.

Since Trump took office this year, his administration has redirected Vulcan’s mission to also target Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the president has put in the spotlight.

There has been a remarkable recent development related to MS-13, however. After more than five years leading the Vulcan task force, Durham wrote letters asking the judge overseeing the cases to dismiss charges against two gang leaders in U.S. custody, allowing them to be deported to El Salvador. The letters were dated March 11 and April 1, weeks after the Trump administration began negotiating the mass deportation deal with Bukele’s government.

César Humberto López Larios, a member of the Ranfla known as “Greñas,” had his charges dismissed and was returned to El Salvador with more than 250 Venezuelans and Salvadorans sent to CECOT as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation of migrants on March 15. López, identified in media reports, is featured in a slickly produced video posted by Bukele on X, kneeling in the prison, his head shaved. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Then, in April, Durham asked for the dismissal of terrorism charges against a lower-ranking MS-13 prisoner, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, alias “Vampiro,” according to recently unsealed court records. His defense lawyers are seeking to stall the request to give them time to fight his deportation to El Salvador. He has pleaded not guilty.

Durham acknowledged in his letters to the judge that the evidence against the two men is “strong.” After millions spent on an operation involving investigators and prosecutors from the U.S., El Salvador and other countries, Vulcan had amassed a trove of evidence aimed at incarcerating the MS-13 leaders who had overseen the killings, rapes and beatings of Americans. Prosecutors told defense attorneys they had more than 92,903 pages of discovery, including 600 pages of transcribed phone intercepts, 21 boxes of documents from prosecutors in El Salvador and 11 gigabytes of audio files.

Durham said prosecutors were dropping their pursuit of the cases “due to geopolitical and national security concerns.”

It was like a reverse extradition. Trump was giving Bukele the kind of high-level criminals that the United States had never received from El Salvador.

During the negotiations over the use of El Salvador’s prison, Trump officials agreed to pay some $6 million to house the deported men and acceded to an additional demand.

Bukele had one specific request, according to Milena Mayorga, his ambassador to the United States.

“I want you to send me the gang leaders who are in the United States,” she quoted Bukele as telling U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

For Bukele, she said in a broadcast interview, it was “a matter of honor.”

Mica Rosenberg contributed reporting, and Doris Burke contributed research.

by ProPublica

ProPublica announced on Wednesday a new call for proposals to select the next five partners in its Local Reporting Network. These newsrooms will be chosen to be part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to partnering with one newsroom from each state by 2029. The deadline for applications is July 21 at 5 p.m. Eastern. Reporters selected for the one-year program will begin work on Oct. 1, 2025.

Through this partnership, ProPublica will reimburse news organizations for the salary of the selected reporter (up to $75,000 plus a benefits stipend) so they can spend a year working full time on an accountability journalism project of importance to their communities. Additionally, ProPublica provides editing support, along with our data, research, visual storytelling, graphics, design, audience and engagement expertise.

More information about how to apply and the application for prospective newsrooms have just been posted. Newsrooms from 35 states are eligible to apply for this round. Please see our eligibility map for details.

As part of the 50 State Initiative, ProPublica is currently working with newsrooms from the first 10 states; another five newsrooms will start in July. Reporting with The Connecticut Mirror on car towing in the state sparked legislative reforms to overhaul century-old towing laws that favored tow companies at the expense of drivers. In Georgia, we have documented how the state’s Medicaid work requirement, which is being heralded as a model for the rest of the country, has fallen short and cost millions. And in Tennessee, we’ve shown how one company has vastly expanded the use of a unique high-interest loan — and then gone on to sue more than 100,000 borrowers.

“It’s thrilling to see ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network reach newsrooms in all regions of the country,” said Sarah Blustain, an assistant managing editor at ProPublica. “With each additional state, we are able to bring urgent local issues to readers nationwide.”

The 50 State Initiative expands the scope of ProPublica’s work at the local and regional level, which includes a growing team of journalists reporting from communities across the country and groundbreaking partnerships with local news organizations through the LRN program.

The initiative broadens our support for local journalism, which now includes the LRN alongside dedicated reporting hubs in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, as well as an investigative unit in Texas in partnership with The Texas Tribune. ProPublica has more than 25 staff reporters and more than 20 reporting partnerships around the country contributing to regional and local accountability reporting, ensuring people can benefit from world-class journalism that can drive measurable change in their communities.

The LRN began in January 2018 in an effort to help remedy the lack of investigative reporting at the local level. It has since led to partnerships with some 80 news organizations across the country.

by Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman

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

What Happened: A trio of lawmakers demanded transparency from the Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday, saying the Trump administration continues to “stonewall” requests for details on the agency’s recent cancellation of hundreds of service contracts.

The group, which included Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Angus King, as well as Rep. Mark Takano, said that despite repeated requests, the agency has disclosed incomplete and inaccurate lists that failed to specify exactly which contracts have been canceled. Blumenthal and Takano are Democrats, and King is an independent. They made their comments at a special forum in Washington.

A review by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs identified 655 contracts canceled by the VA, where previous lists disclosed by the agency included dozens less and contained significant errors.

The lawmakers cited a recent ProPublica investigation into the agency’s use of a flawed artificial intelligence tool to assess VA contracts. That analysis was conducted by a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency with no health care or government experience. The VA uses contractors for a range of services, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

What They Said: Lists of contracts previously disclosed to the committee are “gobbledygook” and filled with errors, the lawmakers said. “This hearing shouldn’t even be necessary,” said King, who sits on the VA oversight committee. “The simplest thing is to send us a list.”

Senators highlighted the harm caused by canceling the contracts, including one that resolved glitches between VA systems preventing veterans from receiving benefits. Without this contract, said Benjamin Ambrose, whose job it was to resolve these errors, there is nobody left at VA to do this work. “In this case veterans are being locked out forever,” he said.

Scott Amey, general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government Oversight, said: “There’s a lot of fallout. There’s a lot of dominoes that go with canceling just one contract.”

Amey expressed doubt that the necessary work was done to ensure canceled contracts were duplicative or wasteful. “From the stonewalling that we’ve heard from the VA, you can’t have any confidence that that work was done,” he said.

The lawmakers also questioned the VA’s use of AI to assess contracts for possible cancellation, referring to ProPublica’s investigation. Blumenthal said AI holds promise, but it “has to be used thoughtfully.”

Background: ProPublica reported on Friday that the VA used an error-prone AI tool to identify contracts for possible cancellation. The tool, written by former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia, used outdated AI models to “munch” contracts based on conflicting instructions and produced glaring mistakes, a ProPublica analysis found.

Experts in AI and government procurement agreed that the DOGE analysis of VA contracts was flawed, with one calling it “deeply problematic.” Lavingia acknowledged that there were problems. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

ProPublica identified at least two dozen contracts on DOGE’s list that have been canceled so far. Among them is a service agreement to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was with Columbia University for blood sample analysis to support a VA research project. Others still were related to addressing nursing issues, including one to develop social media tools to recruit nursing staff and another to help assess and improve the care they provide.

Democrats in Congress have been seeking more information from the VA on the canceled contracts in an attempt to assess whether the cuts have put veterans’ well-being in jeopardy.

Response: VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz has defended DOGE’s work on reviewing contracts, saying that the vetting sets a “commonsense precedent.” He and Lavingia have said that VA staffers reviewed everything on the DOGE “munchable” list before deciding which contracts to cut.

In a statement on Tuesday, Kasperowicz said that the agency’s contract review has been a careful process aimed at benefiting veterans and using taxpayer money efficiently. “Decisions to keep, cut or descope contracts are based on careful and methodical multilevel reviews by VA employees, including career subject-matter experts who are responsible for the contracts, as well as VA senior leaders and contracting officials,” he said.

He disputed any suggestion from legislators that the contract review might diminish essential services. “Terminating or not renewing these contracts will not negatively affect veteran care, benefits or services,” he said. “In fact, these decisions will allow VA to redirect billions of dollars back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.”

Why It Matters: Over 9 million veterans across the U.S. rely on the VA for health care through its network of 170 hospitals and 1,200 clinics. One of the nation’s largest health care providers, it is a training ground for doctors and nurses and an engine for medical research. Since returning to office in January, the Trump administration has set about a massive overhaul of the agency, seeking an increase in its overall budget while announcing layoffs that could claim the jobs of around 80,000 employees.

The VA is examining all of its estimated 76,000 contracts as part of that overhaul and in accordance with the Trump administration’s push towards tech. ProPublica’s analysis identified over 2,000 contracts flagged by AI for termination. It’s unclear how many more from that list are on track for cancellation. The Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box.

by K. Rambo, Street Roots

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

As the city of Portland, Oregon, clawed its way out of the pandemic, it faced a new set of crises: The city’s homeless population was growing. Tents lined some city blocks. High-powered business associations held press conferences demanding the city remove homeless people and touted self-funded surveys saying that without action, businesses and residents would flee the city.

By late spring 2021, the city committed to a new strategy that then-Mayor Ted Wheeler said would “reprioritize public health and safety among homeless Portlanders,” ultimately allocating $1.3 billion by the end of 2024.

But although the city spent roughly $200,000 per homeless resident throughout that time, deaths of homeless people recorded in the county quadrupled, climbing from 113 in 2019 to more than 450 in 2023, according to the most recent data from the Multnomah County Health Department. The rise in deaths far outpaces the growth in the homeless population, which was recorded at 6,300 by a 2023 county census, a number most agree is an undercount. The county began including newly available state death records in its 2022 report, which added about 60 deaths to the yearly tolls.

Homeless residents of Multnomah County now die at a higher rate than in any major West Coast county with available homeless mortality data: more than twice the rate of those in Los Angeles County and the Washington state county containing Seattle. Almost all the homeless population in Multnomah County lives within Portland city limits.

These deaths came during the same period that Portland began a two-pronged response to public pressure over homelessness. City leaders began moving homeless people out of public view by removing tents at a rate far surpassing those of its West Coast peers. Since 2021, it carried out 19,000 sweeps, and it dismantled over 20 encampments per day in 2024, according to city records.

At the same time, the city reduced money for stable permanent housing while dramatically increasing its investment in temporary shelters. The city spent $19.4 million to house formerly homeless Portlanders in 2019, according to the city budget. By 2024, the city budgeted $4.3 million, which housed 391 people.

These moves have been echoed in Trump administration policy, which has prioritized the forced removal of homeless people from encampments and public spaces. For decades prior, the federal government’s position emphasized stable housing.

Researchers from four universities told Street Roots and ProPublica that sweep-heavy tactics like Portland’s damage safety rather than improve it, placing homeless people at greater risk of harm or death. Current and former staff members at six local service providers, like Rose Haven Executive Director Katie O’Brien, say the city’s approach failed to do what was promised.

O’Brien said more people are in crisis when they arrive at Rose Haven, a daytime shelter serving women and transgender people.

“It is adding to the complexities and the challenges that they are already dealing with, mentally, physically, safety-wise,” said O’Brien.

Katie O’Brien, right, executive director of Rose Haven, has lunch with guest Leslie and her dog, Norma. Leslie is a sixth-generation Oregonian. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

Cody Bowman, a spokesperson for the city, called the increase in deaths during the most recent efforts “heartbreaking and deeply concerning.”

He told the news organizations the city takes “a multifaceted approach to saving lives and supporting individuals in crisis.” The steps the city has taken include providing new shelter beds, investing in outreach, sweeping encampments in areas with accidents and floods, and dispatching emergency personnel as part of the city’s life-saving measures, he said. Bowman also said the city trained sweep crews to use medication that can save someone who is overdosing.

Increased Risk From Sweeps

Homeless residents in Multnomah County die, on average, more than 30 years earlier than the average U.S. life expectancy of 78, according to the most recent Multnomah County homeless fatality report.

Some 1,200 homeless people died in Multnomah County from 2019 through 2023, according to the Multnomah County Health Department. Of those, 659 died of drug- and alcohol-related causes, 323 died of natural causes, and 142 died of homicide or suicide — a rate about 18 times higher than among the general population in Portland.

Multnomah County Had a Higher Death Rate of Homeless Residents Than Other West Coast Counties

The Oregon county, which encompasses Portland and surrounding towns, also saw the biggest death rate increase between 2019 and 2023.

Note: Homeless population estimates are based on point-in-time counts. Data does not include natural deaths in hospitals because it was not available in all counties. The San Francisco Department of Public Health did not respond to requests for data. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

Forcibly moving homeless people can increase overdoses, according to a 2023 peer-reviewed study published in the American Medical Association’s journal JAMA. The authors estimated that among homeless people who inject drugs, those who face repeated sweeps are 10% to 22% more likely to die from an overdose than those who don’t. They were also far less likely to obtain medication for opioid use disorder.

“We know that the more people are swept, the more they lose access to their medications,” said Dr. Josh Barocas, a physician and co-author of the study. “They lose access to their community. And they lose access to hope, and therefore they actually are at increased risk of overdose and death.”

Perhaps no one knows the risks to Portland’s homeless population better than Dr. William Toepper, a volunteer physician working to reduce Portland’s rising homeless mortality for the past seven years. And since the surge in sweeps after 2020, Toepper sees an increasingly scattered population.

“I don’t know why they’re spending this money on destabilizing people and displacing them,” Toepper said of the city of Portland. “I don’t know why anyone thinks that would help. It’s not like they’re being swept to services.”

Toepper leads one of four crews at Portland Street Medicine, a nonprofit he co-founded in 2018, each crew covering a different part of the city. Toepper’s team makes weekly rounds in North Portland in and around Delta Park, where industrial districts and strip malls converge on one of the city’s largest parks. The team goes from tent to tent — along bike paths, sidewalks, waterways and freeway overpasses — treating wounds, infections and post-operative incisions, and helping people monitor and manage chronic health conditions. While they can’t dispense prescription medication, they write prescriptions and help coordinate pharmacy trips.

First image: Dr. William Toepper, co-founder of Portland Street Medicine, shares supplies during a street round in Portland, Oregon. Second image: Patient Duane, who lives in his car, receives treatment from Mary Sorteberg, a nurse and volunteer with Portland Street Medicine. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

Toepper said medically vulnerable and disabled people are especially at risk of severe outcomes from sweeps. That was the case with one of Toepper’s patients, Debby Beaver, 57, who died in 2019. Beaver had seizures, high blood pressure and diabetes. She lived in an encampment at the intersection of Southeast 35th Avenue and Yamhill Street, a residential area one block removed from a bustling shopping district, when city contractors dismantled the encampment and took her medications, according to a wrongful death suit filed by her family.

John Mayer, former executive director of a homeless services nonprofit across the street from where Beaver slept, described her as a “very sweet, kind of elderly stateswoman of the place.”

Beaver died a week after the sweep as a result of losing her medication, according to the lawsuit. In court, the private, for-profit company hired to remove homeless people living in the area said it never swept Beaver’s encampment or took her medication. The company maintains its workers did not seize Beaver’s medication, but it settled the lawsuit for $45,000 in July 2024, without admitting any wrongdoing.

“It was a little bit of a sense of, you know, this was bound to happen to somebody, and here it is,” Toepper said of Beaver’s death. “Even with this story and with the publicity it gained, and a pretty decent amount of witnesses to it, as far as I can tell, well, nothing’s changed.”

In an email to Street Roots and ProPublica, the city acknowledged sweeps can be traumatic or harmful but said it works to minimize the risks. Bowman said the city worked in consultation with Oregon Justice Resource Center, a civil rights law firm, to minimize harm.

The firm said it represented homeless plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the city and agreed to a settlement. While the city posts notices saying its contractors will sweep an area in the next three to 10 days, the settlement required the city to give additional notice the day before a sweep and provide more precise sweep locations and descriptions of items it would discard or save.

“Sweeps in and of themselves are traumatic, harmful experiences for those experiencing them and are simply not necessary to solve homelessness,” said Alice Lundell, the firm’s communications director. The group “does not endorse or support the city’s current sweep policies,” she added.

When asked if sweeps led to more deaths, the city said the relationship needed more study.

“We keep detailed records and make our camp removal data publicly available,” Bowman said. “We would welcome research using that data as part of a comprehensive analysis exploring this question.”

Neglecting Housing

The other prong of the city’s approach to homelessness was a pivot toward shelters and away from long-term housing — another move each of the four experts said could contribute to the increasing death rate among homeless people. Case narratives from the county report on homeless deaths often cite a lack of stable housing as a factor.

Matthew Fowle, a University of Pennsylvania researcher who’s studied homeless mortality, said data shows cities with robust shelter systems like New York City and Boston still have high homeless mortality rates, but they are considerably lower than Portland’s.

“All solutions to homeless deaths begin and end with housing — with safe, stable and affordable housing,” Fowle said, adding that supportive services sometimes need to accompany that housing. “It’s an absolutely necessary condition to reduce homeless deaths.”

An encampment in Portland. Experts say stable housing can reduce deaths of homeless people. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

In Portland, the decision to focus on short-term shelter came after Wheeler wanted to enforce a public sleeping ban in the city. A federal court had ruled cities could not fine or arrest homeless people for public sleeping if the city could not offer shelter. Although the Supreme Court has since reversed it, at the time, the federal court ruling meant Portland needed thousands of shelter beds to enforce its ban on public sleeping. The city more than quadrupled its annual sweep and shelter spending — from $16.3 million in 2021 to $72.5 million in 2025 — adding up to nearly a quarter of a billion dollars across the five years. It added 826 shelter beds since 2021.

Multnomah County’s local public shelter system now has approximately 3,000 beds and operates near capacity each night, according to the county. Although the county homeless census shows 6,300 homeless people on any given day, as many as 15,245 use homeless services in a month. Some may be temporarily homeless.

The city says emergency shelters are an important tool for connecting homeless people with services like addiction treatment, but critics say shelter restrictions push people back to the streets. Shelters are often first-come, first-served, and may prohibit or limit pets, romantic partners and belongings. Strict in-and-out times may also preclude homeless Portlanders with jobs.

The city has also placed 651 shed-sized single-person pods with heat and electricity in several parts of the city away from the downtown core. The pod cities are managed by contractors, some of which have faced criticism for heavy-handed management, overly strict security protocols and a confusing referral process.

Bowman said the city does not view the effort to address homelessness as a choice between shelter and permanent housing. In an email to Street Roots and ProPublica, he referenced the city’s affordable housing program as evidence of a continued investment in permanent housing. The city spent more than $1 billion since 2019 to increase affordable housing supply to low- and medium-income people via the city’s Inclusionary Housing program.

Much of that housing is out of reach for homeless people. City records show landlords could charge at least $1,229 per month for 95% of the units created under the program in 2024, which local and federal standards deem affordable only to people earning $49,560 or more.

The lack of available permanent housing for homeless Portlanders is cited in the county’s annual report on homeless deaths.

Of the 17 narratives published in the last five reports about individuals who died, 10 include some reference to a lack of consistent access to housing, shelter, services or some combination of the three. Multiple narratives discuss emergency shelter not providing long-term solutions.

Nancy Lee Charlotte Hill, 35, grew up in foster care with physical and learning disabilities. Hill worked hard to get through high school with good grades while working a job, her sister Loraine said. It was around that time Hill began using drugs and alcohol. She applied her penchant for hard work to sobriety, accessing treatment on multiple occasions. But without housing, she had nowhere but the streets when she left treatment and struggled to stay sober, her sister told the county.

She died on a sidewalk July 5, 2023, in downtown Portland near the Tom McCall Waterfront Park after taking a combination of fentanyl and methamphetamine.

“Nancy had a strong desire to live her own path,” her sister said in a narrative. “But she was only in her 30s when she died. She had a whole life left to live.”

John Ellstrom, 54, was another resident who needed stability he never found, said his sister Tamara. Ellstrom first became homeless as a kid after running away from abusive foster homes. He spent years with addiction and tried to get help. He managed a year of sobriety and began renting a place and going to school for engineering. He and Tamara were close, and she did everything she could to support him. But he relapsed and was back on the streets. A driver in an SUV struck and killed Ellstrom while he walked across the Morrison Bridge on Mother’s Day, May 8, 2022.

“He needed a place where he could’ve stayed and gotten help,” Tamara told the county in a narrative.

A memorial to homeless people who have died in Portland hangs on the wall of Portland Street Medicine’s office. (Leah Nash for ProPublica)

Data sources for graphic: Multnomah County Medical Examiner’s Office, Multnomah County Homeless Services Division, San Diego County Medical Examiner’s Office, San Diego Regional Task Force on Homelessness, Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, Public Health — Seattle & King County, All Home — Seattle/King County, Santa Clara County Medical Examiner, Santa Clara County Homeless Census and Survey, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Correction

June 11, 2025: This story originally misidentified Tacoma as belonging to the same Washington state county as Seattle. Seattle and Tacoma are in different counties.

by María Inés Zamudio, Invisible Institute

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Invisible Institute and co-published with the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A former Chicago police officer pleaded guilty on Tuesday to felony charges in connection with two incidents of sexual misconduct involving female colleagues — one that occurred while at the police training academy and one at a police precinct.

The case against Eric Tabb was highlighted in an Invisible Institute-ProPublica investigation that found that Chicago police officials have frequently failed to vigorously investigate allegations of sexual misconduct made against city officers.

Tabb, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated battery in a public place, a Class 3 felony, and was sentenced to 30 months of probation. As part of a plea agreement, some of Tabb’s charges were dropped and he was required to enroll in a sex offender program.

Tabb, who was arrested in December 2023 and fired, is one of 14 officers accused of sexual assault in the past decade who we found had been accused at least once before of sexual misconduct. Investigative files show that five of 17 women in his academy class have given similar accounts of inappropriate sexual contact involving Tabb.

A team of Invisible Institute reporters reviewed more than 300 sexual misconduct and assault complaints against Chicago officers. The complaints were often downplayed or ignored, sometimes allowing officers to abuse again and again. The Chicago Police Department said in a statement for that story that it “takes all allegations of sexual assault seriously, including allegations against CPD members.”

During a hearing before Cook County Judge James B. Novy, Tabb’s two victims, both of whom are police officers, read impact statements in court.

“The women I speak for today, including myself, were women that trusted Eric Tabb, spending eight months with him forming that trust in a police academy. As of today, there is hope that all us women affected can put this in the past,” one of the officers read from a prepared statement.

The judge said he agreed to the plea deal to allow the women to put the cases behind them.

“The only reason I went along with this deal is because of the victims,” said Novy, who warned Tabb that he will send him to prison if he doesn’t follow the terms of his probation. “Everyone wants closure. They want to put this behind them. I’m going to keep a close eye on this.”

The Cook County state’s attorney’s office, in a statement Tuesday, noted the courage of the survivors to come forward after “a horrific betrayal of trust.”

“Despite the trauma they endured, these women stood firm in their pursuit of justice, and it is because of their strength and resolve that prosecutors were able to secure this conviction,” the prosecutors’ office said. “As a result, Eric Tabb is prohibited from ever serving as police officer again.”

The charges stemmed from two incidents. At a birthday party in August 2023 at a Wrigleyville bar, Tabb allegedly approached a fellow female recruit on the dance floor, whispered to her that he wanted to have sex with her, touched her breast, buttock and crotch, and then grabbed her face and tried to kiss her. Tabb was charged with two counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse from that incident.

The second incident took place after roll call inside a police precinct in December 2023. Tabb allegedly touched a fellow probationary police officer’s crotch several times when she stood up to adjust her duty belt, according to court records. She had attended the training academy with him.

At an earlier hearing, prosecutors had asked Novy to include two additional incidents that were not charged but were described as part of a pattern of behavior by Tabb. Tabb attended a “star party,” an unofficial celebration for graduating recruits receiving their badge number. At the party, a witness told investigators he saw Tabb grabbing another female recruit’s crotch. That same night, Tabb touched a second recruit’s buttocks, according to interviews with police investigators and court records.

Alexus Byrd-Maxey was the first recruit to report Tabb a few months after she and Tabb started at the academy, but her accusation never became part of the prosecution’s case. According to Byrd-Maxey, she was leaning over a classmate’s computer in March 2023 when Tabb walked behind her. She said she felt his hands on her waist and his body pressed up against her.

Byrd-Maxey tried to report Tabb several times but was unsuccessful. Investigative files obtained by the Invisible Institute and ProPublica show that Tabb told other recruits that Byrd-Maxey overreacted and that he had only tapped her on the shoulder to get to his seat. Other recruits supported his story. Almost three weeks later, there was a confrontation in class in which she allegedly told Tabb to “shut your bitch ass up” and supposedly used gang-related language. Byrd-Maxey denied those allegations but was fired.

Tabb and his attorney, Dan Herbert, declined to comment, but Herbert had previously said Tabb was innocent and blamed Byrd-Maxey for the claims by the other women.

While Byrd-Maxey couldn’t attend the hearing, her mom, Jauntaunne Byrd-Horne, was in the courtroom and later told her daughter about the plea agreement. Byrd-Maxey said she was disappointed.

“He’s been given grace, time and time again. They let him be a free man,” she said. “I feel like it’s still not being taken seriously, again.”

Sebastián Hidalgo contributed reporting.

Update, June 11, 2025: This story has been updated to include a comment from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, which handled the case. It also clarifies how charges were handled in the plea agreement.

by William Turton, Christopher Bing, Avi Asher-Schapiro, Al Shaw and Jake Pearson

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

In an effort launched shortly after DOGE’s creation, ProPublica has now identified more than 100 private-sector executives, engineers and investors from Silicon Valley, big American banks and tech startups enlisted to help President Donald Trump dramatically downsize the U.S. government.

While Elon Musk has departed the Department of Government Efficiency, the world’s richest man is leaving a network of acolytes embedded inside nearly every federal agency.

At least 38 DOGE members currently work or have worked for businesses run by Musk, ProPublica found in an examination of their resumes and other records. At least nine have invested in Musk companies or own stock in them, a review of available financial disclosure forms shows.

ProPublica found that at least 23 DOGE officials are making cuts at federal agencies that regulate the industries that employed them, potentially posing significant conflicts of interest. One DOGE member tasked with overseeing mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for instance, did so while owning stock in companies the agency regulated.

At least 12 remain, on paper, employees or advisers of the companies they worked at before DOGE, a review of financial disclosure forms shows. And at least nine continue to receive corporate benefits from their private-sector employers, including health insurance, stock vesting plans or retirement savings programs. These employment agreements could create a situation in which a DOGE staffer would be shaping federal policies that affect their employer.

The people behind DOGE are largely men in their 20s and 30s, most of whom bring no government experience to the task. Many of them previously worked in finance.

ProPublica’s list — the largest of its kind by any news organization — allows readers to gain a comprehensive understanding of the backgrounds of the people assigned to one of the Trump administration’s signature efforts. It comes at a crucial moment, as some of the first-generation DOGE members are leaving the government and a new crop is joining.

“Even though Elon Musk and some of his top officials are shifting their attention to other issues, I see no indication that the DOGE team members who remain will slow down their work to test the legal and ethical boundaries of using technology in the name of improving government services,” said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.

While the Trump administration asserts it is the most transparent in history, DOGE operates shrouded by the shadows of bureaucracy.

Many of its staffers have deleted their public profiles, have wiped the internet of their professional backgrounds or were encouraged by leadership not to discuss their work with friends. At the behest of the Trump administration, the Supreme Court halted a court order Friday that would have required DOGE to turn over information to a government watchdog — challenging whether the group will ever be subject to public records requests. The Trump administration has banned DOGE staffers from speaking publicly without approval.

To cast a light on this secretive group, ProPublica began reporting in February on Musk’s influence inside the Trump administration, cataloging who was part of DOGE and how associates of the billionaire tech mogul were taking up senior posts across agencies. Our DOGE tracker, the first such list published by media outlets, is the culmination of hundreds of conversations with sources across government.

Today, we are adding 23 staffers to our tracker, taking the total to 109. They are spread throughout the government, from the Department of Defense to the General Services Administration to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And we are revealing the makeup of the DOGE team at the Defense Department, a group made up primarily of tech startup founders. They are led by former Special Forces soldier turned tech entrepreneur Yinon Weiss, according to a former senior Pentagon official familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Weiss has repeatedly appeared on Fox News pushing the U.S. to do more to support Israeli military operations in Gaza. He did not respond to a request for comment.

A White House official praised DOGE in an interview, saying that “bringing people in from the outside is precisely what this federal government needed after decades of stagnant bureaucrats who allowed the status quo to continue while the American people got screwed.”

The White House official said there is “no need” for the public to know who’s in DOGE and asserted that there have been no conflict-of-interest violations.

“For decades, we’ve been able to operate without these people's names,” the official said. “There’s no need to know the palace intrigue of who’s working in the building.”

Musk has defended DOGE’s work as “common sense” and “not draconian or radical.” He did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk’s retreat from Washington comes after his electric vehicle company Tesla sputtered amid economic turmoil — caused by a mixture of his own declining favorability and some shareholders reportedly losing confidence in his leadership. His relationship with Trump has fractured, with the billionaire blasting the president’s budget, Trump threatening to cancel Musk’s government deals and Musk then calling for the president’s impeachment.

How that fissure affects DOGE is yet to be seen, but the White House has already requested $45 million in funding for the group’s operations next year, an Office of Management and Budget document shows.

One of Musk’s top DOGE lieutenants, Steve Davis, who ProPublica reported has operated as the group’s de facto leader, is also departing government. Davis ran DOGE from the commissioner’s suite on the sixth floor of the GSA. Some believe Trump loyalist and OMB Director Russell Vought, a Project 2025 architect who once said he wanted to put federal workers “in trauma,” will take the DOGE reins.

Questioned Results

Whether DOGE has accomplished its mission — to downsize the federal bureaucracy into a more streamlined and effective workforce — is far from clear.

Musk initially said the initiative would save taxpayers $2 trillion. He later amended that figure, suggesting in April that DOGE would cut $150 billion from the national debt this year. The $180 billion in savings that DOGE claims on its website has come under scrutiny by media fact-checkers who have cast doubt on its accuracy after finding errors in DOGE’s accounting of canceled contracts.

Still, DOGE has fired tens of thousands of federal workers and gutted humanitarian aid programs domestically and abroad. This includes pushing out some critical government employees in health, science and safety offices.

To compile our list, ProPublica tracked the industries where DOGE employees previously worked. We looked at the professional experience they brought to government and whether their assignments in DOGE could pose conflicts of interest. ProPublica pored through archived resumes, federal financial disclosures forms, online databases and other documents. We interviewed more than two dozen federal workers, some of whom shared internal agency emails, calendar invites and other material mapping DOGE’s activities. We sought comment from everyone listed in our tracker. Most declined our requests.

With DOGE entering a post-Musk chapter, here are our core findings:

Potential conflicts of interest are increasing.

One 25-year-old software engineer helped DOGE shrink the agency’s staff even after he was warned by ethics attorneys not to do anything that could boost the value of as much as $715,000 in stocks he owned in companies regulated by the agency. The White House has said the aide, who has since left the CFPB, “did not even manage” the layoffs and called the allegations “another attempt to diminish DOGE’s critical mission.” Another DOGE staffer, a political adviser to Musk, was paid between $100,001 and $1 million by one of his billionaire boss’ companies while simultaneously overseeing staff cuts at the CFPB. Neither staffer responded to requests for comment.

These and other instances of DOGE staffers overseeing government operations that could benefit their financial interests have prompted three Democratic lawmakers to ask the Department of Justice, government ethics officials and inspectors general to investigate.

The administration has made assessing such financial arrangements difficult. So far, federal agencies have released only 22 financial disclosure forms for the more than 100 DOGE members requested by ProPublica.

DOGE’s image as a group of computer engineers isn’t quite right. Many DOGE Members Came From Financial or Science-Related Industries

The DOGE 100-plus come from a variety of professions: 29 were executive managers, 28 were engineers, 16 were investors and 12 came from legal backgrounds. A scattered few others previously worked in cybersecurity, design and science.

More staffers come from finance backgrounds than any other area. Private equity investor Michael Cole, the founder of Shareholder Capital LLC, has worked at the Department of Agriculture, for example. Cole did not respond to a request for comment.

DOGE staffers are mostly young men with limited government experience.

Under Trump and Musk, DOGE has become a largely male entity. Of the 109 staff members ProPublica has identified, 90 are men and 19 are women, making the group 83% male. That’s a far higher percentage of men than work in the executive branch as a whole, where 54% of staffers are male, according to 2024 data from the Office of Personnel Management.

Many are young and inexperienced. More than 60% of the DOGE staffers are in their 20s or 30s. One was 19 when he joined. As a percentage, the number of staffers under 30 in DOGE is about three times as high as in the executive branch as a whole.

Of staffers for whom ProPublica has identified ages, 28 are 29 or younger, 35 are 30 to 39, and 36 are 40 or older. The oldest is 67.

The DOGE Wrecking Crew: Executives, Engineers, Investors, Lawyers

Few had experience working in state or federal government. ProPublica identified 21 DOGE staffers with previous government roles, including stints at the DOJ and NASA. That means more than 80% joined the government dismantling effort without previously working in government.

Those staffers continue to fire longtime federal employees, cut budgets and choke off government programs while protected by an administration that has pushed to keep their maneuverings out of the public spotlight.

DOGE’s secrecy has been part of its overall strategy, some experts believe, allowing it to obscure its work from government watchdogs and the courts.

“It’s harder to stop what they’re doing if you don’t know what they’re doing or who’s doing it,” said Faith Williams, director of the Effective and Accountable Government Program at the nonpartisan, nonprofit Project on Government Oversight. “It’s not inherently a bad thing these people come from outside the government. It’s that they lack any experience in the methods used to uncover waste and inefficiency.”

by Sharon Lerner and Lisa Song

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

The Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn a legal complaint filed last year against the GEO Group, a major donor to President Donald Trump that has more than $1 billion in contracts with the administration to run private prisons and ICE detention facilities.

The administrative complaint, which the EPA filed last June under the Biden administration, involved the GEO Group’s use of a disinfectant called Halt at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in California. The EPA regulates the product, which causes irreversible eye damage and skin burns, according to its label. By law, users are supposed to use goggles or a face shield, chemical resistant gloves and protective clothing.

But on more than 1,000 occasions in 2022 and 2023, the GEO group had its employees use the disinfectant without proper protections, the EPA complaint alleged. The agency alleged that GEO Group’s employees wore nitrile exam gloves that were labeled “extra soft” and “not intended for use as a general chemical barrier.” In a separate, pending lawsuit, people who were detained at the detention center alleged they were sickened by the company’s liberal use of a different disinfectant.

A hearing had yet to be scheduled before an administrative law judge. The maximum penalty for the company’s alleged misuse of Halt is more than $4 million. But a notice filed on Friday by Matthew Salazar, a manager in the EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division, stated that the EPA’s case against the GEO Group would be dropped. The notice did not provide an explanation.

“This is a complete surrender,” said Gary Jonesi, an attorney who worked at the EPA for almost 40 years. “If this is not due to political intervention on behalf of an early and large Trump donor who stands to gain from managing ICE detention facilities and private prisons, then surely it is at least partly due to the intimidation that career staff feel in an environment when federal employees are being fired and reassigned to undesirable tasks and locations.”

A spokesperson for the White House said that the GEO Group has “provided services to the Federal Bureau of Prisons for several decades” and has been a major federal contractor for many years. The spokesperson did not say whether the White House played a role in the decision to withdraw the complaint but referred ProPublica to the EPA.

The EPA said in an email that, “As a matter of longstanding practice, EPA does not comment on litigation.” The GEO Group didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica. In a filing in response to the EPA’s complaint, the GEO Group admitted that its employees used Halt but said that the disinfectant “was applied in a manner consistent with its label at all times and locations.” The company also wrote in its court filing that the gloves its employees used are chemically resistant and offered appropriate protection.

The GEO Group has had close ties to the Trump administration. Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, was a lobbyist for the company in 2019. The attorney general “is in full compliance with all ethical guidance,” a spokesperson for the Department of Justice said in an email.

The firm was the first corporation whose political action committee “maxed out” on contributions to Trump’s presidential campaign. A subsidiary company, GEO Acquisition II, also gave $1 million to the pro-Trump PAC Make America Great Again. The GEO Group, its PAC and individuals affiliated with the company collectively contributed $3.7 million to candidates and political committees in the 2024 election cycle, compared with $2.7 million in 2020, according to OpenSecrets, an independent group that tracks money in politics. They donated overwhelmingly to Republicans: In every election cycle since 2016, at least 87% of their donations to federal candidates went to Republicans.

Data from the Federal Election Commission shows that George C. Zoley, the founder of the GEO Group, donated $50,000 in 2023 to a joint fundraising committee to support Republican efforts to maintain a majority in the House of Representatives. Zoley gave the maximum amount allowed for an individual per election at the time, $3,300, to Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson’s primary and general election campaigns in 2024.

The GEO group regularly and liberally sprayed disinfectants in the ICE facility, according to both the EPA complaint and a separate civil suit filed on behalf of Adelanto detainees. The EPA complaint did not state whether employees were harmed by the pesticide; it accused the company of inappropriately handling the pesticide.

The separate lawsuit, filed by the Social Justice Legal Foundation, alleges that Adelanto detainees were sickened by the use of a different disinfectant product, HDQ Neutral, made by the same company. “Various Plaintiffs had nosebleeds or found blood in their mouth and saliva. Others had debilitating headaches or felt dizzy and lightheaded,” the lawsuit stated. “GEO staff sprayed when people were eating, and the chemical mist would fall on their food. GEO staff sprayed at night, on or around the bunk beds and cells where people slept. And on at least one occasion, GEO staff sprayed individuals as a disciplinary measure.”

That lawsuit is still pending. The allegations echo a warning letter the EPA previously sent the company accusing the GEO Group of improperly using HDQ Neutral. That letter cited complaints from detainees at Adelanto who suffered “difficulty breathing,” “lung pain” and skin rashes from the disinfectant. The pesticide was sprayed onto bedding and inside microwaves, the EPA said. The GEO Group has told reporters that it rejects allegations that it’s using harmful chemicals, and that it follows the manufacturer’s instructions. In a court filing, the company said any problems alleged by the EPA “were the result of the declared national emergency concerning COVID-19.” A judge ordered ICE to stop using HDQ Neutral in 2020. The GEO Group began using Halt “on or about” March 2022, according to the EPA complaint.

Pratheek Rebala contributed reporting.

by Aliyya Swaby

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.

New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students — or anyone else — who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others.

ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how a 2024 Tennessee law that made threats of mass violence at school a felony has led to students being arrested based on rumors and for noncredible threats. In one case, a Hamilton County deputy arrested an autistic 13-year-old in August for saying his backpack would blow up, though the teen later said he just wanted to protect the stuffed bunny inside.

In the same county almost two months later, a deputy tracked down and arrested an 11-year-old student at a family birthday party. The child later explained he had overheard one student asking if another was going to shoot up the school tomorrow, and that he answered “yes” for him. Last month, the public charter school agreed to pay the student’s family $100,000 to settle a federal lawsuit claiming school officials wrongly reported him to police. The school also agreed to implement training on how to handle these types of incidents, including reporting only “valid” threats to police.

Tennessee requires schools to assess whether threats of mass violence are valid before expelling students. But the felony law does not hold police to the same standard, which has led to the arrests of students who had no intent to disrupt school or carry out a threat.

In Tennessee’s recent legislative session, civil and disability rights advocates unsuccessfully pushed to change the law to specify that police could arrest only students who make credible threats. They argued that very young students and students who act disruptively as a result of a disability should be excluded from felony charges.

Several Tennessee lawmakers from both parties also voiced their dissatisfaction with the school threats law during the session, citing the harm done to children who did not pose real danger. “I’m still struggling through the unintended consequences because I’m still not entirely happy with what we did before,” Sen. Kerry Roberts, a Republican, said at a committee hearing in April. “We’re still struggling to get that right.”

But Greg Mays, the deputy commissioner of the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, told a committee of lawmakers in March that in his “informed opinion,” the law was having a “deterrent effect” on students who make threats. Mays told ProPublica that the number of threats his office was tracking had decreased since the law went into effect. His office did not immediately release that number and previously denied requests for the number of threats it has tracked, calling the information “confidential.”

According to data ProPublica obtained through a records request, the number of students criminally charged is growing, not shrinking. This past school year through the end of March, the number of charges for threats of mass violence in juvenile court has jumped to 652, compared to 519 the entire previous school year, when it was classified as a misdemeanor. Both years, students were rarely found “delinquent,” which is equivalent to guilty in adult court. The youngest child charged so far this year is 6.

Rather than tempering its approach, Tennessee toughened it this year. The Legislature added another, higher-level felony to the books for anyone who “knowingly” makes a school threat against four or more people if others “reasonably” believe the threat will be carried out. Legal and disability rights advocates told lawmakers they worried the new law would result in even more confusion among police and school officials who handle threats.

Despite the outcry over increased arrests in Tennessee, two states followed its lead by passing laws that will crack down harder on hoax threats.

In New Mexico, lawmakers increased the charge for a shooting threat from a misdemeanor to a felony, in response to the wave of school threats over the previous year. To be charged with a felony, a person must “intentionally and maliciously” communicate the threat to terrorize others, cause the evacuation of a public building or prompt a police response.

Critics of the bill warned that even with the requirement to prove intent, it was written too vaguely and could harm students.

“This broad definition could criminalize what is described as ‘thought crimes’ or ‘idle threats,’ with implications for statements made by children or juveniles without a full appreciation of the consequences,” the public defenders’ office argued, according to a state analysis of an earlier, similar version of the legislation.

After a 14-year-old shot and killed four people at Apalachee High School in Georgia last September, the state’s House Speaker Jon Burns vowed to take tougher action against students who make threats.

He sponsored legislation that makes it a felony to issue a death threat against a person at a school that terrorizes people or causes an evacuation. The law, which went into effect in April, says someone can be charged either if they intend to cause such harm or if they make a threat “in reckless disregard of the risk” of that harm.

Neither Burns nor the sponsor of the New Mexico bill responded to requests for comment.

Georgia also considered a bill that would treat any 13- to 17-year-old who makes a terroristic threat at school as an adult in court. But after pushback from advocates, the bill’s author, Sen. Greg Dolezal, a Republican, removed threats from the list of offenses that could result in transfer to adult court.

During a March committee hearing, Dolezal acknowledged advocates’ concerns with the original bill language. “We recognize that there is actually a difference between people who actually commit these crimes and minors who are unwisely threatening but perhaps without an intent to ever actually follow through on it,” he said.

Other states also considered passing harsher penalties for school threats.

In Alabama, Rep. Alan Baker, a Republican, sponsored a bill that removes the requirement that a threat be “credible and imminent” to result in a criminal charge. The bill passed easily in both chambers but did not go through the final steps necessary to make it through the Legislature.

Baker said the broader version of the penalty was intended to target hoax threats that cause panic at schools. A first offense would be a misdemeanor; any threats after that would be a felony. “You’re just talking about a very disruptive type of scenario, even though it may be determined that it was just a hoax,” Baker said. “That’s why there needed to be something that would be a little bit more harsh.”

Baker told ProPublica that he plans to reintroduce the bill next session.

Pennsylvania is considering legislation that would make threats against schools a felony, regardless of credibility. The bill would also require offenders to pay restitution, including the cost of supplies and compensation for employees’ time spent responding to the threat.

In a memo last December, state Sen. Michele Brooks, a Republican, cited the “cruel and extremely depraved hoax” threats following Nashville’s Covenant School shooting as the reason for the proposal. “These calls triggered a massive emergency response, creating perilous conditions for students, teachers and public safety agencies alike,” she wrote.

The ACLU of Pennsylvania opposes the legislation, calling it a “broad expansion” of current law that could lead to “excessive” costs for children.

Pennsylvania’s Legislature adjourns at the end of December.

Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed reporting.

by Nicole Santa Cruz, ProPublica, and Dave Biscobing, ABC15 Arizona

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.

Watch ABC15 Arizona's series "Seeking Death," based on our joint investigation into Maricopa County's handling of death penalty cases.

In 2010, Vikki Valencia’s 24-year-old brother, Triny Rey Lozano, died in an almost unimaginably brutal way. He was shot in the head multiple times, dumped on a remote road outside Phoenix and set on fire.

Valencia saw only one way prosecutors could bring her family justice: The killer should get the death penalty.

Maricopa County prosecutors built a capital murder case against the man they say killed Lozano, Victor Hernandez.

Valencia knew it would take a long time but believed it would be worth it. Over nearly 10 years, she visited the courthouse hundreds of times, frequently missing work to attend hearings where she revisited traumatic images of the crime scene.

“The death penalty was the thing that we wanted most because we thought it was going to give us justice,” she said in a recent interview.

During jury selection, the case stalled because of a potential conflict of interest involving a prosecutor who had previously represented Hernandez. Years later, a second trial followed. As that jury was deliberating, prosecutors dropped the death penalty. Nine years after he was charged with killing Lozano, Hernandez was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

Although the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office has historically pursued the death penalty at high rates, its efforts rarely result in a death sentence.

ProPublica and ABC15 Arizona reviewed nearly 350 cases over a 20-year period in which Maricopa County prosecutors decided the crimes warranted the death penalty, and found that 13% ended in a death sentence. In most of the cases, defendants either pleaded guilty and received a lesser sentence or prosecutors changed course, ending their pursuit of the death penalty.

In 76 trials in which Maricopa County juries deliberated a death sentence, 41, or 54%, yielded one.

By comparison, an analysis of death penalty cases initiated in Harris County, Texas, from 2004 through 2023, found prosecutors took fewer cases, 24, to trial and were more successful, obtaining a death sentence 75% of the time, according to figures provided by a local advocacy group. Data over a longer time period also shows that federal prosecutors nationwide have obtained death sentences at a higher rate than in Maricopa County, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project.

Pursuing the death penalty is among the most consequential decisions that prosecutors make. Each case can be litigated across the tenures of multiple county attorneys and can cost more than a million dollars. In the hundreds of Maricopa County death penalty cases that prosecutors have pursued since 2007, the cost of furnishing the accused with an adequate defense has totaled $289 million. But the outcomes in the county raise questions about the office’s judgment in its pursuit of the ultimate punishment, according to court records and interviews with more than three dozen people including lawyers, former prosecutors, family members of victims and defendants, jurors and experts.

Former County Attorney Rick Romley said there should be a review of capital charging decisions after ProPublica and ABC15 shared the newsrooms’ findings with him. Romley wondered whether prosecutors are seeking death “in the appropriate cases.”

“The jury is kind of a barometer of whether or not you’re doing a good job,” he said. “And quite frankly … if it was a school grade, that’s called an F.”

The office, now headed by Rachel Mitchell, a Republican, declined our request for an interview. A spokesperson responded to written questions, emphasizing that “only one” person in Maricopa County — Mitchell — makes the decision to seek the death penalty and that each case is reviewed throughout the process, as information changes.

Maricopa County’s and the state of Arizona’s handling of the death penalty have been questioned for years. A 2016 report by the now-defunct Fair Punishment Project, a legal and educational research group at Harvard University, cited the county, among other places, as having a history of “overzealous prosecutors, inadequate defense and a pattern of racial bias and exclusion.”

In addition, defense attorneys for a death row prisoner in 2018 petitioned unsuccessfully to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that Arizona’s statute was overly broad because almost every murder can be charged as a capital case. And two former prosecutors and appeals court judges wrote in a 2022 law journal article that state officials, rather than individual counties, should make all death penalty decisions to ensure the process is “less arbitrary.”

Maricopa County prosecutors’ handling of death penalty cases is newly relevant as Arizona has resumed executions after a two-year pause. The state, which has 111 people on death row, halted executions in 2014, after Joseph Wood was injected repeatedly over two hours, gasping more than 600 times before dying, according to a reporter’s account. The state executed three people in 2022 but paused after the newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered a review of the lethal injection process. Hobbs dismissed the retired federal magistrate she had appointed to conduct the review after he concluded there is no humane way to execute people.

Valencia and her family felt the case had put their lives on hold. Looking back, she said it seemed odd that the prosecution, which had pursued death for so long, decided not to once the outcome was close. (Prosecutors declined to comment on the case.)

But as Valencia learned, there’s little transparency around the process in Maricopa County. Although the final decision to seek death is made by the county attorney, each case is vetted by a little known panel, the Capital Review Committee. The county attorney’s office refused to disclose to ProPublica and ABC15 who sits on the panel, how they vote on the cases being considered for the death penalty or even which cases they review.

The office said in a statement that the process ends not with the county attorney’s office but with a trial, which is “all done in public, in an open courtroom.” The office also said that it is successful in prosecuting capital cases and comparisons to Harris County could be misleading because they ignore the “details and intricacies of individual cases.”

Establishing a committee is generally better than individual judgments, but the quality of the decisions depends on the individuals involved, said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Policy Project, which conducts research and analysis on death penalty issues.

“Anyone who says that they have a fair process and is unwilling to say what that process is, is somebody who doesn’t have a fair process,” Dunham said.

Vikki Valencia and her family waited nearly nine years for her brother’s killer to be convicted. Near the end, prosecutors stopped seeking the death penalty. (Ash Ponders for ProPublica) “I Have to Run It by The Man”

When Romley, a Republican, was first elected Maricopa County attorney in 1989, deputy prosecutors in one of the nation’s largest counties decided whether to seek the death penalty on their own.

Among the first changes Romley made was to foster more deliberation. He created the Capital Review Committee to evaluate cases and recommend whether to pursue the death penalty. He still had the final say, but he believed that a group of veteran prosecutors would apply the law more consistently and recommend only cases that warranted the ultimate punishment.

“Seeking the death penalty is a momentous decision that you’ve got to make,” Romley said. “I wanted to make sure that we were ferreting out all the facts, that we made sure that judgment wasn’t being skewed by personal biases.”

Romley served four terms and decided not to seek a fifth, leaving office in 2004. His successor was Andrew Thomas, a Republican attorney and author, who ran as a law-and-order conservative vowing to crack down on illegal immigration and impose tougher sentences. After two years, Thomas had nearly doubled the number of death penalty prosecutions, earning Maricopa County the distinction of seeking death more than almost any other jurisdiction in the nation.

Critics said Thomas sought the death penalty for crimes that didn’t warrant it — including a case of vehicular homicide. The defendant in that case, David Szymanski, had a blood-alcohol content nearly twice the legal limit and cocaine in his system when he drove the wrong way on a freeway and killed a 22-year-old man.

A police review found that officers had violated department policy while pursuing Szymanski. Thomas relented more than a year later, and the Capital Review Committee recommended the capital charge be withdrawn. Szymanski pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 22 years in prison.

The victim’s mother told the Arizona Republic, “We’ve never wanted the death penalty.”

Kenneth Everett, who was a defense attorney on capital cases for the Maricopa County Office of the Legal Advocate during Thomas’ tenure, told the American Bar Association’s ABA Journal in 2010 that it was clear decisions on the cases were made solely by Thomas. “When I begged for a deal, all of the prosecutors would say, ‘I have to run it by the man,’” he said. “Thomas certainly had the ultimate power. And if he said no, you were going to trial. And he usually said no.”

The Arizona Supreme Court convened a task force to address case delays amid a shortage of qualified capital defense attorneys.

Thomas responded to criticism of the delays by blaming defense attorneys for drawing out proceedings and the courts for failing to enforce speedy trial rules. He wrote in an Arizona Republic opinion piece, “I’ve sought the death penalty in appropriate cases knowing juries make the ultimate decision and believing they should have this option.”

Thomas won a second term but resigned in 2010 to pursue an unsuccessful bid for state attorney general. He was later disbarred for misconduct and political prosecutions of county officials. Thomas, who did not respond to requests for comment, said at the time that he was “working to fight corruption.”

After Thomas’ resignation, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors appointed Romley to serve out the term. Back in his old job, Romley reviewed the 120 capital cases the office was pursuing at the time. He decided not to seek the death penalty in 11 of them, including a case in which a 4-month-old child was found dead at an in-home day care. The medical examiner had concluded the child died of blunt force trauma, but Romley said he brought in medical experts who disputed that and found the injuries the child suffered could have been caused by an illness.

In court minutes of a hearing to drop the death penalty in the case, the Capital Review Committee is noted as having voted 8-0 to dismiss the case, which was never refiled. But the weight of the charge on the defendant, Lisa Randall, is evident in court documents. Over the three years she was in and out of jail, her marriage fell apart and she lost her house, according to court documents. Randall couldn’t be reached for comment.

“Once you allege death, the whole game changes,” Romley said. “So many more resources go into that particular case.”

Former County Attorney Rick Romley created the Capital Review Committee in the early 1990s to evaluate potential death penalty cases. (Gerard Watson/ABC15) “They Should Show Some of the Bravery That They Expect Us to Show”

Once a prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty, the stakes rise. The courts and victims’ families face a lengthier process, and jurors can face intense scrutiny.

The court appoints two defense lawyers, along with an investigator and a mitigation specialist. (In other cases, defendants have only one lawyer.) The defense is also given more time to prepare, to allow for an examination of the defendant’s background to find sympathetic factors that could mitigate a death sentence.

Capital trials consume more time because they consist of three parts: A jury first decides if the defendant is guilty; then jurors consider aggravating circumstances that could make the defendant eligible or ineligible for a death sentence. Finally, the jury decides if the sentence should be death or life in prison.

It’s unclear how much the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office spends prosecuting capital cases. When ProPublica and ABC15 asked the office for a breakdown, a spokesperson said that the office doesn’t track spending on death penalty cases.

But since 2007, the county has spent nearly $289 million on defense for capital cases. Last year, the county spent $26 million, more than any year since 2007, according to the Maricopa County Office of Public Defense Services.

In Oklahoma, a study released in 2017 found that capital cases cost, on average, three times more than noncapital cases.

Jodi Arias made headlines in 2013 when she was convicted of killing her ex-boyfriend. Prosecutors sought the death penalty twice, and jurors deadlocked both times. Arias was ultimately sentenced to life in prison. The two trials cost $3.2 million, including the defense and prosecution, according to officials at the time.

During the 20 years examined by ProPublica and ABC15, juries in 35 cases either voted for life, deadlocked, determined the cases didn’t qualify for death or found the defendant not guilty. In 41 cases, jurors recommended the death penalty.

Frank Baumgartner, a University of North Carolina political science professor, was surprised Maricopa County juries disagreed with prosecutors 46% of the time in capital cases. Prosecutors would save taxpayers money by exercising more discretion over which cases they pursue, Baumgartner said. They also appear to be out of step with public opinion in the county, given that juries disagree with them so frequently on the death penalty. “They’re not in sync with their local community,” he said.

People who served on capital juries in the county told ProPublica and ABC15 that they had traumatic experiences. During the selection process, potential jurors are asked personal questions in open court, making them feel vulnerable. Some have had their identities revealed by jurors who disagree with them.

A juror in a high-profile Maricopa County murder case who asked not to be named because of safety concerns called the experience “one of the worst of my life.” Once the juror learned it was a death penalty case, the stress triggered intense stomach pain. “It’s the highest penalty in the land, and I don’t think that it should be applied lightly,” the former juror said.

Given what jurors go through, prosecutors should be transparent about their decision-making, the juror said.

“They should show some of the bravery that they expect us to show,” the former juror said of the secretive committee. “You ask us to do this, to put our life on hold, to go through this, not share it with anybody. Then show some of the bravery that you hold us to, and be accountable like we would be accountable if we were caught not following any of the rules.”

In 2019, Myla Fairchild served as a juror in a case against the man accused of murdering Gilbert police Lt. Eric Shuhandler, who was killed after pulling over a pickup truck. Christopher Redondo, a passenger in the truck, shot Shuhandler in the face, setting off a 50-mile chase, prosecutors said. Fairchild said she voted against the death penalty because of Redondo’s mental capacity and long history of mental illness. Redondo was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. Afterwards, frustrated jurors told the media Fairchild’s name.

She wasn’t afforded the same privacy as the prosecutors on the review committee who recommended the death penalty in the first place, she said.

“You’re not protected,” she said.

The Maricopa County Superior Court in downtown Phoenix where capital cases are tried (Gerard Watson/ABC15) “A Total Disservice”

ProPublica and ABC15 asked the largest prosecutorial offices in Arizona and across the nation how they decide whether to seek the death penalty. The newsrooms found that no two counties handle decision-making the same way, but Maricopa County is an outlier for obscuring nearly every aspect of its committee’s work.

The ACLU sued the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office in 2019 for access to the committee’s membership and other records. Jared Keenan, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona’s legal director, said the organization considered the records important to the public’s understanding of the death penalty.

“Prosecuting agencies have an incredible amount of power, and that power is at its height when they make life-and-death decisions,” Keenan said. “The public needs to know who is involved in making those decisions to be able to ensure that those decisions are made responsibly, constitutionally, ethically.”

The county opposed releasing the information. “They were fighting to keep this specific information from the public for years and years,” Keenan said. A judge did not order the county to release the committee records to the public.

At ProPublica and ABC15’s request, the county attorney’s office shared a policy document listing the composition of the Capital Review Committee but said the document is “significantly out of date.” It listed as committee members: the deputy chief of the Criminal Division; the division chiefs from the Capital Litigation Bureau, Major Offenders Division and Special Victims Division; and the Community Based Prosecution Division chiefs. The policy allows the county attorney to designate other committee members.

In a statement, the county attorney’s office reiterated that Mitchell makes the final decision after considering a wide range of information.

Still, the decision can feel opaque to victims’ family members.

Sherry Spooney visits the graves of her relatives in Phoenix. Spooney wondered why prosecutors sought the death penalty for their mother in the 2016 killings of the children. (Ash Ponders for ProPublica)

When prosecutors sought the death penalty against Octavia Rogers in the killing of her three young children in the summer of 2016, they went against the family’s wishes, according to Rogers’ aunt, Sherry Spooney. Spooney and her family had lost three young relatives in the killing and didn’t want to lose Rogers to the death penalty, too. “What would it solve? How would it help the situation?” she said.

Prosecutors never spoke to the family about how they arrived at their decision, Spooney said.

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office said it reached out to the family.

Spooney called their secrecy “disheartening” and said it caused her to wonder if the office had its own agenda in pursuing the death penalty. “It’s a total disservice, to not just the family, but the victims of the family. And in this case, we’re both, we’re one and the same, and if they’re going to make decisions for someone else, it should be known.”

Last year, after Rogers was found incompetent to stand trial, she pleaded “guilty except insane,” meaning she did not know at the time of her crime that the act was wrong. Rogers is being held at the Arizona State Hospital.

Valencia recalled that when the case against her brother’s killer was delayed, she initially blamed defense attorneys for dragging out the proceedings, but the committee’s secrecy was also contributing to the delay. Attorneys for Hernandez, the defendant, had discovered a member of the Capital Review Committee had a potential conflict of interest: A former defense attorney for Hernandez in an unrelated case had since become a prosecutor and was on the committee that voted to reject a plea deal for Hernandez. (The plea deal included the noncapital case as well.)

Prosecutors fought for nearly three years to keep the committee’s membership and its votes secret in a case that reached the Arizona Supreme Court. A judge eventually determined there was no conflict of interest in the Hernandez case.

Years later, when prosecutors withdrew the death penalty charge against Hernandez, Valencia said she agreed with the decision even though she’d once thought it would be the only just outcome.

“It took such a toll on our family, at that point, I was just ready for it to be done,” she said.

Clarification, June 10, 2025: This article was updated to clarify that Robert Dunham’s current job is as director of the Death Penalty Policy Project.

by Mary Steurer and Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor

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

Ever since North Dakota voters created an ethics watchdog agency seven years ago, dubious lawmakers have pushed back against giving it power to actually keep an eye on state officials.

That was true in the session that just ended, as legislators shut down many requests from the Ethics Commission, keeping the agency on a modest budget and rebuffing measures that would have given it more latitude in its investigations.

The offices of the governor and attorney general also argued during the session that the state constitution does not permit the commission to create or impose penalties for ethics-related violations.

“I was hopeful that the tide was turning,” said Rep. Karla Rose Hanson, a Democrat from Fargo and member of the Appropriations Committee, which worked on the commission’s budget. “But my general perspective is that the legislative body as a whole, specifically the majority party, is very hostile to the Ethics Commission and their work.”

North Dakotans, fed up with what they saw as ethical lapses by public officials, voted in 2018 to amend the state constitution and create the Ethics Commission. The amendment set rules for public officials and empowered the commission to both create more rules and investigate alleged violations related to corruption, elections, lobbying and transparency.

North Dakota was one of the last states to establish an ethics agency and since then, the commission has struggled to fulfill its mission, the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica reported this year. The amendment left some ambiguity about the commission’s role and whether it can enforce ethics laws, leading to ongoing disagreements about how it operates.

State leaders’ actions this year further hamstrung the agency at a time when public officials across the country have been working, in various ways, to reverse or rein in policies created through citizen-led ballot initiatives, including those related to abortion and employee benefits.

Danielle Caputo of the national nonprofit Campaign Legal Center said several state governments have worked to undermine ethics initiatives in particular. North Dakota leaders’ assertions this year that the ethics agency cannot punish officials for wrongdoing is another example of that, she said.

“We have seen what appears to be a concerted effort in those states to overturn ballot initiatives or to twist their language in a way that’s most beneficial to those who want less enforcement,” said Caputo, whose organization has studied the issue. She said North Dakota is “one of the more egregious examples of that that I’ve seen.”

In an email to the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, the governor’s office called Caputo’s take a “gross mischaracterization” and said the governor does not oppose the Ethics Commission. In a separate email, Chief Deputy Attorney General Claire Ness called the notion that the attorney general’s office is undermining the intent of voters “unimaginable.”

As government officials debate the commission’s authority, North Dakotans have reported more concerns about ethics violations to the agency this year than in any other. The commission as of late May had received 72 complaints this year. There were 41 complaints filed in all of 2024.

By the end of last month, the commission had 63 pending complaints, some of which date back to 2022. The agency — which has three full-time staff members and five commissioners who receive a small stipend to oversee the work — has yet to disclose whether it has substantiated a complaint. (State law requires that the commission keep complaints confidential until the end of the process, so little is known about the nature of the filings.)

The Ethics Commission supported legislation this session that it said would have overhauled its process to speed up investigations and allow it to close cases sooner.

Under the measure, sponsored by eight Republicans and two Democrats, the commission would have been able to settle and dismiss complaints at any time instead of at only certain stages in the complaint process. It also would have been allowed to investigate alleged ethics violations without someone filing an official complaint. The agency currently cannot investigate some North Dakotans’ tips because they must be submitted as formal complaints, which some complainants are uncomfortable doing, agency staff have said.

Staff from the offices of Gov. Kelly Armstrong and Attorney General Drew Wrigley, both Republicans, testified against the bill because they said it would have given the commission too much power.

Faced with strong opposition from state leaders and their own reluctance to give the agency more authority, the House voted overwhelmingly to reject the legislation. Most of the House sponsors voted against it.

Rep. Austen Schauer, a West Fargo Republican who chaired the committee that worked on the legislation, acknowledged tension between the Ethics Commission and the legislature and oppositional testimony from the executive branch.

“The bill was basically DOA, and we just had to move on,” Schauer said.

Lawmakers instead settled on tweaks to the existing process; one requires the commission to develop time management standards and another allows it to informally settle ethics complaints with the accused. Those settlements would only be made public if all parties to the agreement consent.

“There’s people that for years have been sitting with this complaint over their head, which is absolutely unfair,” said Rep. Mike Nathe, a Bismarck Republican who has criticized the commission and proposed some of the changes. He also said he thinks the commission’s caseload includes fake complaints submitted by North Dakotans who want to “weaponize” the system against their political opponents. (Because state law requires that the commission keep complaints confidential, this claim cannot be verified.)

Rebecca Binstock, the Ethics Commission’s executive director, said the agency will look for ways to work around the hurdles that continue to slow down the investigation process. “The Commission must now consider how to fix the process absent legislation,” Binstock wrote in an email.

Rebecca Binstock, executive director of the North Dakota Ethics Commission, said the agency will seek ways to overcome hurdles slowing its work without legislation. (Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

The legislature also approved a measure that protects its members from prosecution for voting on something that would provide them with a financial benefit as long as they disclose their conflicts.

Lawmakers, some of whom said they want to keep the commission small out of consideration to taxpayers, also turned down the agency’s request for $250,000 over the next two years for a fourth staff member who would conduct training and education for the public. That would have allowed current employees to spend more time investigating complaints, agency staff said.

“I don’t recall a discussion with the public being, ‘We’re gonna have a multimillion-dollar branch of government,’” Rep. Scott Louser, a Minot Republican, said during a legislative hearing in April.

State leaders also argued the legislature is the only entity that can create penalties for ethics violations and delegate enforcement of those penalties to state agencies. The commission can only punish officials for wrongdoing if the legislature gives it that authority, they said.

Chris Joseph, the governor’s general counsel, testified this year that if the commission were given the power to both create and enforce penalties, it would be “defining, executing and interpreting its own rules” without oversight from other parts of state government.

The commission, however, says its enforcement authority is implicit in the constitutional amendment. That interpretation could soon be tested. Binstock indicated in an email that commission staff members have wrapped up investigating several cases and are waiting on commissioners to take action, which could include imposing penalties.

Ellen Chaffee, part of a group called the Badass Grandmas that organized the ballot initiative and drafted the amendment, said voters intended for the Ethics Commission to impose punishments for wrongdoing.

“The people who worked on the amendment had understood that the only way to have unbiased follow-up on any violations of ethics rules was for the Ethics Commission to have that responsibility,” she said.

Mike Nowatzki, the governor’s spokesperson, said if the amendment does not reflect what the advocates wanted, “they can always seek to clarify it with another constitutional amendment.”

by Rafael Carranza, Arizona Luminaria, and Gabriel Sandoval, ProPublica

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

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, U.S. immigration officials have deputized a record number of local police to function as deportation agents, despite repeated warnings from government watchdogs since 2018 that the program does not adequately train and oversee officers.

This expansion of the 287(g) Program is being driven by the administration’s resurrection of a previously abandoned task force model empowering local officers to question individuals’ immigration status during traffic stops and other routine policing. At least 315 departments have signed on to the more aggressive approach, which Immigration and Customs Enforcement abandoned in 2012 amid racial profiling problems and lawsuits.

Overall, ICE initiated 514 new agreements with local law enforcement agencies across 40 states since January. Among the new partners are highway patrol troopers in Tennessee and officers with about 20 Florida agencies, who in recent weeks assisted ICE with the arrest of more than 1,300 people.

“It has been wonderful to see people jump in and be a part of it to make sure that we have not just the authorities that we need to go out there and to work, but also to have the local knowledge and the people in the community that really want to be a part of the solution,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.

ICE officials tout the expansion of the 287(g) Program — named for the section of law that allows the delegation of limited powers to local officers — as a “force multiplier” to accelerate deportations and counter sanctuary policies that limit local cooperation with immigration agents.

But civil liberties experts and immigrant advocates warn such agreements come at a high cost to communities. Bringing on local partners at such a fast pace compounds the concerns, voiced by ICE’s own internal watchdog, that the agency is unable to adequately train and supervise local officers to execute often complex immigration laws. Advocates say police are more likely to engage in racial profiling under these agreements, damaging community trust in local law enforcement.

“Local law enforcement in these jurisdictions have more authority to enforce immigration laws, but they don’t necessarily know just by looking at someone walking down the street or pulling someone over whether they’re an immigrant or not,” said Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University who has tracked the 287(g) Program for 15 years. “There are a lot of people in this country who are going to be affected by this expanded police power, maybe even who aren’t immigrants, but who might get caught up in the system just because police think they’re an immigrant or because they’re conducting enforcement operations in places that affect U.S. citizens.”

As of June 6, local and state police departments had signed 649 agreements to participate in the program, compared to the 135 agreements that were in place in January, according to ICE. An additional 79 applications were pending. A local police or sheriff’s department may have multiple agreements with ICE.

Over several days last month, the Tennessee Highway Patrol sent a surge of cruisers along the streets of south Nashville, pulling over drivers as ICE agents in unmarked vehicles with flashing lights waited next to them. They quickly drew the attention of passersby and activists who recorded video of the arrests.

Local leaders and immigrant advocates alleged the operation violated the civil rights of Nashville residents, noting it focused on areas where Latino immigrants live and involved far more traffic stops in a few hours than officers would typically do in an entire day.

A majority of the 196 people arrested did not have prior criminal records, according to information released by ICE. The agency said 95 had criminal convictions or pending charges. Thirty-one had committed a felony by reentering the country illegally after being previously deported.

“What’s clear today is that people who do not share our values of safety and community have the authority to cause deep community harm,” Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell said. O’Connell pressed ICE to release the names of everyone who had been arrested, prompting House Republicans to launch two congressional investigations into the mayor for allegedly creating a chilling effect on ICE’s work in the city.

Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said the action traumatized immigrant families. “This operation — which was focused on a neighborhood with an established, vibrant immigrant population — reeks of racial profiling and unconstitutional discrimination,” said Sherman Luna, who fled Guatemala to the U.S. with her family following the kidnapping of her sister. Nashville and Davidson County governments, along with community nonprofits, launched a fund to provide emergency support for immigrants “during moments of crisis.”

But federal officials defended the operation and lambasted critics. DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a news release, “You would think all public officials would unite around DHS bringing violent criminal illegal aliens to justice and removing them from American communities. However, pro-open borders politicians — like Mayor O’Connell — would rather protect illegal aliens than American citizens.” DHS had included Nashville in a now-deleted list titled “Sanctuary Jurisdictions Defying Federal Immigration Law.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers detain a man stopped by Tennessee Highway Patrol at a gas station in south Nashville, Tennessee, in May. The state agency is among the latest to sign a cooperation agreement with ICE. (Seth Herald/Reuters)

It’s unclear how many immigration-related arrests can be attributed to the 287(g) Program since Trump took office. ICE officials did not respond to Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica’s request for those numbers. The agency issues monthly reports that selectively highlight arrests for violent crimes but don’t provide arrest totals involving local police partners.

Politics and power are driving the 287(g) Program’s rapid expansion, according to Kocher. Republican-led states, including Florida, are passing laws requiring local police to sign on to the program. In conservative counties, it’s popular to aid Trump’s mass deportation effort. As a result, a large portion of new agencies signing 287(g) agreements are sheriff’s offices, which run county jails.

“Sheriff’s offices are elected,” Kocher said. “Many of them are more than happy to do this, right? But regardless, it’s also a public visibility electoral thing.”

The expansion is not, however, driven by money. In fact, many expenses associated with the federal partnership, such as officer salaries, overtime and transportation, are covered by local agencies and taxpayers, per the agreements.

Local departments can participate in three ways. The jail enforcement and warrant service officer models limit local agencies’ immigration powers to people already being held in local jails and state prisons for other charges. The task force model extends that authority to community policing.

The Obama administration abandoned the task force agreements, deeming other enforcement programs, specifically those allowing local officers to share information with ICE, to be more efficient.

The Trump administration’s decision to resurrect them has drawn sharp criticism. Immigration advocates say it erodes communities’ trust in police, violates constitutional rights and shifts the focus of enforcement from immigrants charged with violent crimes to those who’ve committed minor offenses. They also note it comes as the Trump administration has dismissed civil rights investigations into several local police departments and gutted offices at the Homeland Security and Justice departments that probe police misconduct.

None of the agreements allow local officers to act on their own. They must be supervised or directed by ICE. Local officers are also supposed to receive 40 hours of online training to participate in task force agreements.

However, a 2021 Government Accountability Office report found the program lacked meaningful oversight policies, resulting in police departments violating the agreements and ICE policy.

Participation in the 287(g) Program is strongest in the Southeast, where entire states like Florida are mandating full cooperation with ICE. There were 277 agreements in Florida alone as of June 6, according to ICE’s online database.

But as quickly as it has taken hold in the Southeast, the expansion has so far missed the country’s biggest cities and counties, home to large immigrant populations.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, first row center, stands behind ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan at a press conference where she speaks about a multiagency immigration enforcement operation that ICE says resulted in the arrest of 1,120 individuals and included participation by state and local law enforcement through the 287(g) Program. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Doris Marie Provine, an emeritus professor at Arizona State University and lead author of “Policing Immigrants: Local Law Enforcement on the Front Lines,” attributed big cities’ reluctance, in part, to concerns about the costs to police departments and taxpayers.

“From local law enforcement’s perspective, it’s an unfunded mandate,” Provine said. “There has been much more interest in community policing than there was 20 years ago, and that is very directly in conflict with turning local police into immigration officers.”

Since the 287(g) Program first ramped up nearly 20 years ago, it has faced repeated accusations of racial profiling and of creating a chilling effect among immigrant communities, who may be reluctant to report crimes.

Two Justice Department investigations alleged that enforcement under 287(g) agreements led to constitutional violations in North Carolina and Arizona. ICE subsequently pulled their agreements.

In North Carolina’s Alamance County, the DOJ found in 2012, six years after the sheriff signed a 287(g) agreement, that the sheriff’s office engaged “in a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing against Latinos.” A federal judge dismissed the case in 2015, following a bench trial, ruling that the DOJ failed to support its claim. A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said the department doesn’t comment on past litigation. The sheriff signed an agreement with ICE in 2020 for enforcement in its jail, which remains in effect despite concerns that discriminatory policing practices continue.

In 2013, a federal judge in Arizona reaffirmed the DOJ’s findings and ruled separately that then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies had used race to target Latino drivers and Latino-majority areas with traffic stops and sweeps. The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona had filed the lawsuit on behalf of citizens and legal residents caught in the sweeps less than a year after the sheriff signed a 287(g) agreement.

Trump pardoned Arpaio in 2017 of federal contempt charges for disregarding the judge’s ruling.

New Maricopa County Sheriff Jerry Sheridan has declined to pursue new 287(g) agreements, citing the court’s ongoing scrutiny of the department to ensure officers comply with the 2013 ruling. The cost to taxpayers for the ongoing effort to root out racial profiling in the department had surpassed $300 million as of March.

Sheridan said he values the 287(g) Program but agreed with the judge’s finding that community enforcement under the county’s agreement was “racially biased.”

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about its monitoring of local agencies for potential civil rights violations.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said: “ICE’s 287(g) Program is playing a critical role in fulfilling President Trump’s promise to deport criminal illegal aliens and keep America safe. Dangerous criminal illegals with lengthy criminal records who pose a risk to the American people are detained all the time thanks to partnerships with local law enforcement officers.”

In an April speech to the Arizona Legislature, Tom Homan, Trump’s pick to lead the administration’s mass deportation efforts and a former ICE director, praised Arpaio’s work with ICE. The former sheriff was seated in the front row.

In highlighting ICE’s push for greater collaboration with local law enforcement, Homan rebuffed a common criticism of the 287(g) Program — that allowing police to enforce immigration laws erodes trust between communities and local officers.

“I’m sick and tired of hearing the talking point, ‘Well, we’re a welcoming community, we’re a sanctuary city because we want victims and witnesses of a crime that live in the immigrant community to feel safe coming to law enforcement to report that crime,’” Homan told Arizona lawmakers. “That is a bunch of garbage. A victim and witness of crime don’t want the bad guy back out there either.”

ICE is seeking more funding to expand 287(g) agreements and its detention and deportation capacity. During an appropriations hearing in May, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said the agency would reduce its reliance on private prisons.

“We would much rather partner with a sheriff’s department or a state corrections agency, someone that’s in a state where an individual is arrested that we don’t have to transport all around the country due to lack of bed space,” Lyons said.

by Paige Pfleger, WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, and Mariam Elba, ProPublica

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WPLN/Nashville Public Radio, a 2023-2024 LRN partner. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

For half a century, through scandals, investigations, failed state inspections and even the illegal use of seclusion to punish children, Richard L. Bean remained in his perch of power as the superintendent of the juvenile detention center that bears his name.

Throughout nearly all of his tenure, there was only one body that could remove him from his post: a board of trustees unlike any other in the state. New reporting by WPLN News and ProPublica shows that for decades the voting members of that board were close friends and allies of Bean’s.

Even for Knoxville, Tennessee, a city known for its old-school politics, the relationship Bean has had with board members past and present stands out. His former secretary, his personal lawyer, the judge for whom he served as a campaign treasurer and a pallbearer of his wife’s casket all sat on the board over time as voting members.

“He’s just been allowed to go unchecked,” said Democratic state Rep. Sam McKenzie of Knoxville, a critic of Bean’s. “It was just a bad situation compounded by a rubber-stamp board that really was trying to protect him and not protect our children.”

Bean, who did not respond to requests for comment, abruptly announced last week that he is resigning in the wake of a new scandal. Had he not chosen to leave himself, McKenzie said, the board never would have unseated him.

“Watchdogs Over Richard”

Tennessee has 16 other county juvenile detention facilities similar to the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. Oversight of all of those falls to county agencies, like the sheriff’s department, juvenile court or commissioners. And a few are run by private companies.

In 1972, when Bean started as superintendent, the juvenile detention home in Knoxville was a city-run facility. In the mid ’70s, it became a regional facility that had 40 beds and has since grown to three times that. The creation of the board, through a legislative act, was a way for both city and county officials to maintain some say in the facility’s functioning.

The board’s mandate, as laid out in the Knox County code, is to have “administrative control” over the center, its budget and its superintendent. Though it was constituted to include 10 members, only three have voting power. The county commission appoints two of the voting members. The county juvenile court judge, who also sits on the board as a nonvoting member, appoints the third.

None of the current board members responded to a request for comment. Neither did six current commissioners who helped appoint the voting members now on the board. The juvenile court judge, Tim Irwin, declined to comment.

Knox County lawyer Chris Coffey was a voting board member from 1999 to 2020, according to the Knoxville city website. He remembers the quarterly meetings as small — usually attended by a handful of board members, the juvenile court judge and Bean, plus occasional staff members from the facility.

A cell in the Richard L. Bean Juvenile Service Center. Tennessee has 16 other county juvenile detention facilities similar to the Bean Center. (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

The board only knew what Bean told them about the facility, he said. The superintendent would give a presentation during each meeting about how many kids were in the facility, what kinds of meals they served or how many books were donated.

Coffey does not recall any serious discussions about issues at the detention center or with Bean’s leadership.

“It just never really dawned on me that we were watchdogs over Richard,” Coffey said. “It never really was explained to me that way.”

“Friends of Richard’s”

Local lawyers John Valliant, Billy Stokes and Sherry Mahar are the current voting members of the center’s board. When Bean’s wife, Lillian, died last year, Valliant and Stokes were listed as her pallbearers. The latter was also an officiant at her funeral.

Stokes worked for Bean at the center for three years, calling some of the children there “dangerous thugs” in a 1991 letter to the editor defending Bean against The Knoxville News Sentinel’s criticism of his leadership. Later, Stokes represented Bean as his personal lawyer when he was sued in his capacity as superintendent of the center in 2003.

Valliant, appointed to his seat on the board by the county commissioners, has represented county commissioners as their lawyer. After WPLN and ProPublica reported on Bean’s documented illegal use of seclusion at the facility in 2023, lawmakers called for his resignation. But Valliant told a local TV news station that he thought the Bean Center was “the best facility in the state of Tennessee.”

Mahar is a longtime lawyer in Knox County representing kids in juvenile court. On New Year’s Day 2025, screenshots provided to WPLN show that she wrote to Bean on Facebook, “Just wanting to say Happy New Year and I love you” with a red heart emoji.

Bean’s close relationships with the voting members of his board go back years, said Betty Bean, a longtime political journalist in Knox County who said she’s a distant relative of the superintendent.

“Richard made his own rules back in the day, and it hasn’t changed a lot,” she said. “Most of the board are good people. But they’re all friends of Richard’s.”

One former board member was Bean’s secretary, who had donated money to his wife’s campaigns for Knox County circuit, general sessions and juvenile court clerk, according to Betty Bean and local news reports at the time. And for decades, another voting board member was Gail Jarvis, a lawyer and former Knox County General Sessions Court judge. Richard Bean was campaign treasurer for Jarvis when she was running to become the criminal court judge in 1998.

Jarvis did not respond to a voicemail seeking comment.

“He had a lot of political influence in town,” former board member Coffey said. “Back in those days, almost anybody that ran for anything — whether it was judicial or political — wanted his blessing and endorsement.”

Photos of people posing with Bean blanket the wall of his office. (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

Some of the people listed as appointees to the center’s board didn’t know they were members until receiving a call from WPLN and ProPublica for this story.

At least two people listed on a Knoxville city website as being nonvoting appointees from 1999-2020 said they had no idea they had been members. And the East Tennessee Development District Law Enforcement Advisory Committee, which is listed as having appointed the pair, has not existed for at least 15 years, according to the head of the development district.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it,” said Terry Frank, who is now the mayor of neighboring Anderson County. “Something definitely as important as a juvenile board, I would definitely appear if I knew that I was a sitting member.” Bill Brittain, the former mayor of Hamblen County, said the same.

According to the public list, the board has also had a Knox County GOP appointee, but it has had a vacancy for a Democratic appointee since at least 1999.

U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett was also a nonvoting member of the board, listed from 1999 to 2017 as the city mayor’s appointee. When reached by phone he estimated he only attended two meetings during that time.

“Somebody Was Going to Die in There”

It would have been hard for the board to miss that the Bean Center was troubled.

A 1991 grand jury said the facility had rat problems and no toilet paper. A 2000 grand jury called the detention center a “disgrace” to the county, citing that the facility was dirty to the point of stinking.

In 2003, allegations of sexual harassment and assault by an employee at the center made the papers. The Department of Children’s Services said it was investigating the employee and considering a probe of the center. Three female staffers, and one of their husbands who also worked at the center, filed a lawsuit — later dismissed — against Bean, Knox County and the employee. The county later settled with the husband, who claimed he was demoted when his wife threatened legal action.

A 2023 investigation by WPLN and ProPublica found the facility was illegally using seclusion as punishment and was consistently out of compliance with DCS, according to public records.

Stephani Clowers, the nurse whose firing set in motion Bean’s resignation, said she never considered going to the board for help. She said Bean openly told people they were his “best friends.”

“Absolutely not. Because they would have told him,” she said. “It would’ve made things much harder.”

Clowers reported the alleged mishandling of medication by the staff to Bean, but nothing changed, she said. She hit her breaking point in 2024 when a child at the center was clearly in need of medical attention “and that child was hidden from me,” Clowers said. When she was able to see him, she called and consulted a doctor who determined that the boy should be transferred to the emergency room. Clowers said the child was never taken there. She reported these incidents to the DCS workers assigned to those children and then to the state comptroller’s office.

“I knew then that if something did not change, somebody was going to die in there,” she said.

Teenagers watch a movie at the Bean Center. (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

WPLN and ProPublica reached out to board members and the detention center for comment about Clower’s allegations. Irwin, the juvenile court judge who is also on the board, declined to comment. The others did not respond.

Bean’s decision to fire Clowers was the apparent last straw for Irwin. He went to Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs.

Irwin, a former NFL player, and Jacobs, a former professional wrestler, wrote a letter to the 84-year-old superintendent demanding he reinstate the nurse and another fired employee. And Jacobs looped in the governor and called for the facility to be taken out from under Bean and the board.

A day later, Bean announced that he plans to leave on Aug. 1. He didn’t reply to requests for comment, but in 2023 he told WPLN and ProPublica that he would stay in his position as “long as Judge and my board put up with me.” He predicted that Irwin would “run him out” for bad publicity.

“I am dismayed and disappointed by the rush to judgement by the Mayor, Judge Irwin, and other county leaders,” Bean wrote in his resignation letter to board member Valliant.

Clowers said she was surprised that Bean decided to resign.

“I thought he was gonna get away with it. This whole time I knew it would be me or him,” Clowers said. “And when it was me it was kind of devastating. I was like, wow, he wins again.”

The Board’s Unknown Future

Even with Bean’s departure, the question of the board remains.

Jacobs is asking the commissioners to pass an emergency ordinance dismantling the board. He wants them to delete sections of the Knox County code about the board, its meetings and duties and replace them with a new section that would give operation and control to the Knox County sheriff.

Commissioners who came into office after the last board was appointed told WPLN they want an investigation before they reassign control of the center to anyone. That includes the sheriff, who told WPLN in a statement that he was willing to work with the mayor and the state “to find solutions in the best interest of the juveniles in custody.”

McKenzie, the Democratic state representative, said he doesn’t think giving the detention center to the sheriff’s office is the answer. He pointed to a recent incident in which sheriff’s office SWAT deputies shot and killed a Black high school student during a raid.

“I don’t think that office is built or equipped to handle juvenile justice,” he said.

The sheriff’s office said it takes “the safety and security of juveniles in our care very seriously,” but it declined to comment further on McKenzie’s statements.

McKenzie said giving the facility to the sheriff would be like saying “we want to sweep this under the carpet,” keeping “Knox County business inside Knox County.”

That type of insular “good old boys” attitude, he said, created this problem in the first place.

Bean in his office in 2023. He plans to leave on Aug. 1. (William DeShazer for ProPublica)

by Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune

This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Texas state legislators dropped efforts to spend millions of dollars to buy what experts call ineffective child identification kits weeks after ProPublica and The Texas Tribune reported that lawmakers were again trying to fund the program.

This is the second consecutive budget cycle in which the Legislature considered purchasing the products, which promise to help find missing children, only to reverse course after the news organizations documented the lack of evidence that the kits work.

ProPublica and the Tribune originally published their findings in a 2023 investigation that revealed the state had spent millions of dollars on child identification kits made by a Waco-based company called the National Child Identification Program, run by former NFL player Kenny Hansmire. He had a history of legal and business troubles, according to public records, and although less expensive alternatives were available to lawmakers, Hansmire used outdated and exaggerated statistics about missing children to help boost sales.

He also managed to develop connections with powerful Texas legislators who supported his initiatives. In 2021, Republican state Sen. Donna Campbell authored a bill that created a Texas child safety program. The measure all but guaranteed any state funding would go to Hansmire’s business whenever lawmakers allotted money for child identification kits. That year, the state awarded his company about $5.7 million for the kits.

Two years later, both the House and the Senate proposed spending millions more on the program. But when the final budget was published, about a month after the newsrooms’ investigation, legislators had pulled the funding. They declined to answer questions about why.

Funding for the program appeared again in this year’s House budget. State Rep. Armando Martinez, a Democratic member of the lower chamber’s budget committee, suggested allotting $2 million to buy the kits for students in kindergarten through the second grade. The Senate, however, didn’t include that funding in its version of the budget.

The newsrooms published a story in early May about the proposed spending plan. The final version of the budget that lawmakers passed this week again had no designated funding for the identification kits.

Campbell, Martinez and the leaders of the House and Senate budget committees did not respond to the newsrooms’ interview requests for this story or written questions about why the funding didn’t make the final cut.

Hansmire did not reply to an interview request this week. In a prior response, he told the newsrooms he’d resolved his financial troubles and said that his company’s kits have helped identify missing children, though he did not provide any concrete examples. Hansmire told reporters to reach out to “any policeman,” naming several departments specifically. The newsrooms contacted a number of them. Of the dozen Texas law enforcement agencies that responded to the queries, none could identify one case where the kits helped find a runaway or kidnapped child.

Stacey Pearson, a child safety consultant who previously oversaw the Louisiana Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children, said legislators made the correct decision to eliminate the identification kits from the budget because there is no data proving they actually help improve kids’ safety. She remains disappointed that Texas lawmakers continue to give the program any attention and hopes they won’t contemplate the funding in the future.

“Every dollar and every minute, every hour that you spend on a program like this, is a dollar and a minute and an hour that you can’t spend on something that is more promising or more sound,” said Pearson.

by Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman

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

When an AI script written by a Department of Government Efficiency employee came across a contract for internet service, it flagged it as cancelable. Not because it was waste, fraud or abuse — the Department of Veterans Affairs needs internet connectivity after all — but because the model was given unclear and conflicting instructions.

Sahil Lavingia, who wrote the code, told it to cancel, or in his words “munch,” anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” Unfortunately, neither Lavingia nor the model had the knowledge required to make such determinations.

Sahil Lavingia at his office in Brooklyn (Ben Sklar for ProPublica)

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months, in an interview with ProPublica. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made.”

It turns out, a lot of mistakes were made as DOGE and the VA rushed to implement President Donald Trump’s February executive order mandating all of the VA’s contracts be reviewed within 30 days.

ProPublica obtained the code and prompts — the instructions given to the AI model — used to review the contracts and interviewed Lavingia and experts in both AI and government procurement. We are publishing an analysis of those prompts to help the public understand how this technology is being deployed in the federal government.

The experts found numerous and troubling flaws: the code relied on older, general-purpose models not suited for the task; the model hallucinated contract amounts, deciding around 1,100 of the agreements were each worth $34 million when they were sometimes worth thousands; and the AI did not analyze the entire text of contracts. Most experts said that, in addition to the technical issues, using off-the-shelf AI models for the task — with little context on how the VA works — should have been a nonstarter.

Lavingia, a software engineer enlisted by DOGE, acknowledged there were flaws in what he created and blamed, in part, a lack of time and proper tools. He also stressed that he knew his list of what he called “MUNCHABLE” contracts would be vetted by others before a final decision was made.

Portions of the prompt are pasted below along with commentary from experts we interviewed. Lavingia published a complete version of it on his personal GitHub account.

Problems with how the model was constructed can be detected from the very opening lines of code, where the DOGE employee instructs the model how to behave:

You are an AI assistant that analyzes government contracts. Always provide comprehensive few-sentence descriptions that explain WHO the contract is with, WHAT specific services/products are provided, and WHO benefits from these services. Remember that contracts for EMR systems and healthcare IT infrastructure directly supporting patient care should be classified as NOT munchable. Contracts related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives or services that could be easily handled by in-house W2 employees should be classified as MUNCHABLE. Consider 'soft services' like healthcare technology management, data management, administrative consulting, portfolio management, case management, and product catalog management as MUNCHABLE. For contract modifications, mark the munchable status as 'N/A'. For IDIQ contracts, be more aggressive about termination unless they are for core medical services or benefits processing.

This part of the prompt, known as a system prompt, is intended to shape the overall behavior of the large language model, or LLM, the technology behind AI bots like ChatGPT. In this case, it was used before both steps of the process: first, before Lavingia used it to obtain information like contract amounts; then, before determining if a contract should be canceled.

Including information not related to the task at hand can confuse AI. At this point, it’s only being asked to gather information from the text of the contract. Everything related to “munchable status,” “soft-services” or “DEI” is irrelevant. Experts told ProPublica that trying to fix issues by adding more instructions can actually have the opposite effect — especially if they’re irrelevant.

Analyze the following contract text and extract the basic information below. If you can't find specific information, write "Not found".

CONTRACT TEXT: {text[:10000]} # Using first 10000 chars to stay within token limits

The models were only shown the first 10,000 characters from each document, or approximately 2,500 words. Experts were confused by this, noting that OpenAI models support inputs over 50 times that size. Lavingia said that he had to use an older AI model that the VA had already signed a contract for.

Please extract the following information: 1. Contract Number/PIID 2. Parent Contract Number (if this is a child contract) 3. Contract Description - IMPORTANT: Provide a DETAILED 1-2 sentence description that clearly explains what the contract is for. Include WHO the vendor is, WHAT specific products or services they provide, and WHO the end recipients or beneficiaries are. For example, instead of "Custom powered wheelchair", write "Contract with XYZ Medical Equipment Provider to supply custom-powered wheelchairs and related maintenance services to veteran patients at VA medical centers." 4. Vendor Name 5. Total Contract Value (in USD) 6. FY 25 Value (in USD) 7. Remaining Obligations (in USD) 8. Contracting Officer Name 9. Is this an IDIQ contract? (true/false) 10. Is this a modification? (true/false)

This portion of the prompt instructs the AI to extract the contract number and other key details of a contract, such as the “total contract value.”

This was error-prone and not necessary, as accurate contract information can already be found in publicly available databases like USASpending. In some cases, this led to the AI system being given an outdated version of a contract, which led to it reporting a misleadingly large contract amount. In other cases, the model mistakenly pulled an irrelevant number from the page instead of the contract value.

“They are looking for information where it’s easy to get, rather than where it’s correct,” said Waldo Jaquith, a former Obama appointee who oversaw IT contracting at the Treasury Department. “This is the lazy approach to gathering the information that they want. It’s faster, but it’s less accurate.”

Lavingia acknowledged that this approach led to errors but said that those errors were later corrected by VA staff.

Once the program extracted this information, it ran a second pass to determine if the contract was “munchable.”

Based on the following contract information, determine if this contract is "munchable" based on these criteria:

CONTRACT INFORMATION: {text[:10000]} # Using first 10000 chars to stay within token limits

Again, only the first 10,000 characters were shown to the model. As a result, the munchable determination was based purely on the first few pages of the contract document.

Then, evaluate if this contract is "munchable" based on these criteria: - If this is a contract modification, mark it as "N/A" for munchable status - If this is an IDIQ contract:   * For medical devices/equipment: NOT MUNCHABLE   * For recruiting/staffing: MUNCHABLE   * For other services: Consider termination if not core medical/benefits - Level 0: Direct patient care (e.g., bedside nurse) - NOT MUNCHABLE - Level 1: Necessary consultants that can't be insourced - NOT MUNCHABLE

The above prompt section is the first set of instructions telling the AI how to flag contracts. The prompt provides little explanation of what it’s looking for, failing to define what qualifies as “core medical/benefits” and lacking information about what a “necessary consultant” is.

For the types of models the DOGE analysis used, including all the necessary information to make an accurate determination is critical.

Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies the governmental use of artificial intelligence, said that knowing which jobs could be done in-house “calls for a very sophisticated understanding of medical care, of institutional management, of availability of human resources” that the model does not have.

- Contracts related to "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) initiatives - MUNCHABLE

The prompt above tries to implement a fundamental policy of the Trump administration: killing all DEI programs. But the prompt fails to include a definition of what DEI is, leaving the model to decide.

Despite the instruction to cancel DEI-related contracts, very few were flagged for this reason. Procurement experts noted that it’s very unlikely for information like this to be found in the first few pages of a contract.

- Level 2+: Multiple layers removed from veterans care - MUNCHABLE - Services that could easily be replaced by in-house W2 employees - MUNCHABLE

These two lines — which experts say were poorly defined — carried the most weight in the DOGE analysis. The response from the AI frequently cited these reasons as the justification for munchability. Nearly every justification included a form of the phrase “direct patient care,” and in a third of cases the model flagged contracts because it stated the services could be handled in-house.

The poorly defined requirements led to several contracts for VA office internet services being flagged for cancellation. In one justification, the model had this to say:

The contract provides data services for internet connectivity, which is an IT infrastructure service that is multiple layers removed from direct clinical patient care and could likely be performed in-house, making it classified as munchable.

IMPORTANT EXCEPTIONS - These are NOT MUNCHABLE: - Third-party financial audits and compliance reviews - Medical equipment audits and certifications (e.g., MRI, CT scan, nuclear medicine equipment) - Nuclear physics and radiation safety audits for medical equipment - Medical device safety and compliance audits - Healthcare facility accreditation reviews - Clinical trial audits and monitoring - Medical billing and coding compliance audits - Healthcare fraud and abuse investigations - Medical records privacy and security audits - Healthcare quality assurance reviews - Community Living Center (CLC) surveys and inspections - State Veterans Home surveys and inspections - Long-term care facility quality surveys - Nursing home resident safety and care quality reviews - Assisted living facility compliance surveys - Veteran housing quality and safety inspections - Residential care facility accreditation reviews

Despite these instructions, AI flagged many audit- and compliance-related contracts as “munchable,” labeling them as “soft services.”

In one case, the model even acknowledged the importance of compliance while flagging a contract for cancellation, stating: “Although essential to ensuring accurate medical records and billing, these services are an administrative support function (a ‘soft service’) rather than direct patient care.”

Key considerations: - Direct patient care involves: physical examinations, medical procedures, medication administration - Distinguish between medical/clinical and psychosocial support

Shobita Parthasarathy, professor of public policy and director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at University of Michigan, told ProPublica that this piece of the prompt was notable in that it instructs the model to “distinguish” between the two types of services without instructing the model what to save and what to kill.

The emphasis on “direct patient care” is reflected in how often the AI cited it in its recommendations, even when the model did not have any information about a contract. In one instance where it labeled every field “not found,” it still decided the contract was munchable. It gave this reason:

Without evidence that it involves essential medical procedures or direct clinical support, and assuming the contract is for administrative or related support services, it meets the criteria for being classified as munchable.

In reality, this contract was for the preventative maintenance of important safety devices known as ceiling lifts at VA medical centers, including three sites in Maryland. The contract itself stated:

Ceiling Lifts are used by employees to reposition patients during their care. They are critical safety devices for employees and patients, and must be maintained and inspected appropriately.

Specific services that should be classified as MUNCHABLE (these are "soft services" or consulting-type services): - Healthcare technology management (HTM) services - Data Commons Software as a Service (SaaS) - Administrative management and consulting services - Data management and analytics services - Product catalog or listing management - Planning and transition support services - Portfolio management services - Operational management review - Technology guides and alerts services - Case management administrative services - Case abstracts, casefinding, follow-up services - Enterprise-level portfolio management - Support for specific initiatives (like PACT Act) - Administrative updates to product information - Research data management platforms or repositories - Drug/pharmaceutical lifecycle management and pricing analysis - Backup Contracting Officer's Representatives (CORs) or administrative oversight roles - Modernization and renovation extensions not directly tied to patient care - DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion) initiatives - Climate & Sustainability programs - Consulting & Research Services - Non-Performing/Non-Essential Contracts - Recruitment Services

This portion of the prompt attempts to define “soft services.” It uses many highly specific examples but also throws in vague categories without definitions like “non-performing/non-essential contracts.”

Experts said that in order for a model to properly determine this, it would need to be given information about the essential activities and what’s required to support them.

Important clarifications based on past analysis errors: 2. Lifecycle management of drugs/pharmaceuticals IS MUNCHABLE (different from direct supply) 3. Backup administrative roles (like alternate CORs) ARE MUNCHABLE as they create duplicative work 4. Contract extensions for renovations/modernization ARE MUNCHABLE unless directly tied to patient care

This section of the prompt was the result of analysis by Lavingia and other DOGE staff, Lavingia explained. “This is probably from a session where I ran a prior version of the script that most likely a DOGE person was like, ‘It’s not being aggressive enough.’ I don’t know why it starts with a 2. I guess I disagreed with one of them, and so we only put 2, 3 and 4 here.”

Notably, our review found that the only clarifications related to past errors were related to scenarios where the model wasn’t flagging enough contracts for cancellation.

Direct patient care that is NOT MUNCHABLE includes: - Conducting physical examinations - Administering medications and treatments - Performing medical procedures and interventions - Monitoring and assessing patient responses - Supply of actual medical products (pharmaceuticals, medical equipment) - Maintenance of critical medical equipment - Custom medical devices (wheelchairs, prosthetics) - Essential therapeutic services with proven efficacy

For maintenance contracts, consider whether pricing appears reasonable. If maintenance costs seem excessive, flag them as potentially over-priced despite being necessary.

This section of the prompt provides the most detail about what constitutes “direct patient care.” While it does cover many aspects of care, it still leaves a lot of ambiguity and forces the model to make its own judgements about what constitutes “proven efficacy” and “critical” medical equipment.

In addition to the limited information given on what constitutes direct patient care, there is no information about how to determine if a price is “reasonable,” especially since the LLM only sees the first few pages of the document. The models lack knowledge about what’s normal for government contracts.

“I just do not understand how it would be possible. This is hard for a human to figure out,” Jaquith said about whether AI could accurately determine if a contract was reasonably priced. “I don’t see any way that an LLM could know this without a lot of really specialized training.”

Services that can be easily insourced (MUNCHABLE): - Video production and multimedia services - Customer support/call centers - PowerPoint/presentation creation - Recruiting and outreach services - Public affairs and communications - Administrative support - Basic IT support (non-specialized) - Content creation and writing - Training services (non-specialized) - Event planning and coordination

This section explicitly lists which tasks could be “easily insourced” by VA staff, and more than 500 different contracts were flagged as “munchable” for this reason.

“A larger issue with all of this is there seems to be an assumption here that contracts are almost inherently wasteful,” Coglianese said when shown this section of the prompt. “Other services, like the kinds that are here, are cheaper to contract for. In fact, these are exactly the sorts of things that we would not want to treat as ‘munchable.’” He went on to explain that insourcing some of these tasks could also “siphon human sources away from direct primary patient care.”

In an interview, Lavingia acknowledged some of these jobs might be better handled externally. “We don’t want to cut the ones that would make the VA less efficient or cause us to hire a bunch of people in-house,” Lavingia explained. “Which currently they can’t do because there’s a hiring freeze.”

The VA is standing behind its use of AI to examine contracts, calling it “a commonsense precedent.” And documents obtained by ProPublica suggest the VA is looking at additional ways AI can be deployed. A March email from a top VA official to DOGE stated:

Today, VA receives over 2 million disability claims per year, and the average time for a decision is 130 days. We believe that key technical improvements (including AI and other automation), combined with Veteran-first process/culture changes pushed from our Secretary’s office could dramatically improve this. A small existing pilot in this space has resulted in 3% of recent claims being processed in less than 30 days. Our mission is to figure out how to grow from 3% to 30% and then upwards such that only the most complex claims take more than a few days.

If you have any information about the misuse or abuse of AI within government agencies, reach out to us via our Signal or SecureDrop channels.

If you’d like to talk to someone specific, Brandon Roberts is an investigative journalist on the news applications team and has a wealth of experience using and dissecting artificial intelligence. He can be reached on Signal @brandonrobertz.01 or by email brandon.roberts@propublica.org.

by Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman and Eric Umansky

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

As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.

The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

The DOGE AI tool flagged more than 2,000 contracts for “munching.” It’s unclear how many have been or are on track to be canceled — the Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box. The VA uses contractors for many reasons, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.

VA officials have said they’ve killed nearly 600 contracts overall. Congressional Democrats have been pressing VA leaders for specific details of what’s been canceled without success.

We identified at least two dozen on the DOGE list that have been canceled so far. Among the canceled contracts was one to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was for blood sample analysis in support of a VA research project. Another was to provide additional tools to measure and improve the care nurses provide.

ProPublica obtained the code and the contracts it flagged from a source and shared them with a half dozen AI and procurement experts. All said the script was flawed. Many criticized the concept of using AI to guide budgetary cuts at the VA, with one calling it “deeply problematic.”

Cary Coglianese, professor of law and of political science at the University of Pennsylvania who studies the governmental use and regulation of artificial intelligence, said he was troubled by the use of these general-purpose large language models, or LLMs. “I don’t think off-the-shelf LLMs have a great deal of reliability for something as complex and involved as this,” he said.

Sahil Lavingia, the programmer enlisted by DOGE, which was then run by Elon Musk, acknowledged flaws in the code.

“I think that mistakes were made,” said Lavingia, who worked at DOGE for nearly two months. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”

Though Lavingia has talked about his time at DOGE previously, this is the first time his work has been examined in detail and the first time he’s publicly explained his process, down to specific lines of code.

Lavingia has nearly 15 years of experience as a software engineer and entrepreneur but no formal training in AI. He briefly worked at Pinterest before starting Gumroad, a small e-commerce company that nearly collapsed in 2015. “I laid off 75% of my company — including many of my best friends. It really sucked,” he said. Lavingia kept the company afloat by “replacing every manual process with an automated one,” according to a post on his personal blog.

Sahil Lavingia at his office in Brooklyn (Ben Sklar for ProPublica)

Lavingia did not have much time to immerse himself in how the VA handles veterans’ care between starting on March 17 and writing the tool on the following day. Yet his experience with his own company aligned with the direction of the Trump administration, which has embraced the use of AI across government to streamline operations and save money.

Lavingia said the quick timeline of Trump’s February executive order, which gave agencies 30 days to complete a review of contracts and grants, was too short to do the job manually. “That’s not possible — you have 90,000 contracts,” he said. “Unless you write some code. But even then it’s not really possible.”

Under a time crunch, Lavingia said he finished the first version of his contract-munching tool on his second day on the job — using AI to help write the code for him. He told ProPublica he then spent his first week downloading VA contracts to his laptop and analyzing them.

VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz lauded DOGE’s work on vetting contracts in a statement to ProPublica. “As far as we know, this sort of review has never been done before, but we are happy to set this commonsense precedent,” he said.

The VA is reviewing all of its 76,000 contracts to ensure each of them benefits veterans and is a good use of taxpayer money, he said. Decisions to cancel or reduce the size of contracts are made after multiple reviews by VA employees, including agency contracting experts and senior staff, he wrote.

Kasperowicz said that the VA will not cancel contracts for work that provides services to veterans or that the agency cannot do itself without a contingency plan in place. He added that contracts that are “wasteful, duplicative or involve services VA has the ability to perform itself” will typically be terminated.

Trump officials have said they are working toward a “goal” of cutting around 80,000 people from the VA’s workforce of nearly 500,000. Most employees work in one of the VA’s 170 hospitals and nearly 1,200 clinics.

The VA has said it would avoid cutting contracts that directly impact care out of fear that it would cause harm to veterans. ProPublica recently reported that relatively small cuts at the agency have already been jeopardizing veterans’ care.

The VA has not explained how it plans to simultaneously move services in-house, as Lavingia’s code suggested was the plan, while also slashing staff.

Many inside the VA told ProPublica the process for reviewing contracts was so opaque they couldn’t even see who made the ultimate decisions to kill specific contracts. Once the “munching” script had selected a list of contracts, Lavingia said he would pass it off to others who would decide what to cancel and what to keep. No contracts, he said, were terminated “without human review.”

“I just delivered the [list of contracts] to the VA employees,” he said. “I basically put munchable at the top and then the others below.”

VA staffers told ProPublica that when DOGE identified contracts to be canceled early this year — before Lavingia was brought on — employees sometimes were given little time to justify retaining the service. One recalled being given just a few hours. The staffers asked not to be named because they feared losing their jobs for talking to reporters.

According to one internal email that predated Lavingia’s AI analysis, staff members had to respond in 255 characters or fewer — just shy of the 280 character limit on Musk’s X social media platform.

A VA email tells staffers that the justification of contracts targeted by DOGE must be limited to 255 characters. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Once he started on DOGE’s contract analysis, Lavingia said he was confronted with technological limitations. At least some of the errors produced by his code can be traced to using older versions of OpenAI models available through the VA — models not capable of solving complex tasks, according to the experts consulted by ProPublica.

Moreover, the tool’s underlying instructions were deeply flawed. Records show Lavingia programmed the AI system to make intricate judgments based on the first few pages of each contract — about the first 2,500 words — which contain only sparse summary information.

“AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” said Waldo Jaquith, a former Obama appointee who oversaw IT contracting at the Treasury Department. “AI gives convincing looking answers that are frequently wrong. There needs to be humans whose job it is to do this work.”

Lavingia’s prompts did not include context about how the VA operates, what contracts are essential or which ones are required by federal law. This led AI to determine a core piece of the agency’s own contract procurement system was “munchable.”

At the core of Lavingia’s prompt is the direction to spare contracts involved in “direct patient care.”

Then, evaluate if this contract is "munchable" based on these criteria: … - Level 0: Direct patient care (e.g., bedside nurse) - NOT MUNCHABLE - Level 1: Necessary consultants that can't be insourced - NOT MUNCHABLE - Level 2+: Multiple layers removed from veterans care - MUNCHABLE - Contracts related to "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI) initiatives - MUNCHABLE - Services that could easily be replaced by in-house W2 employees - MUNCHABLE

Such an approach, experts said, doesn’t grapple with the reality that the work done by doctors and nurses to care for veterans in hospitals is only possible with significant support around them.

Lavingia’s system also used AI to extract details like the contract number and “total contract value.” This led to avoidable errors, where AI returned the wrong dollar value when multiple were found in a contract. Experts said the correct information was readily available from public databases.

Lavingia acknowledged that errors resulted from this approach but said those errors were later corrected by VA staff.

In late March, Lavingia published a version of the “munchable” script on his GitHub account to invite others to use and improve it, he told ProPublica. “It would have been cool if the entire federal government used this script and anyone in the public could see that this is how the VA is thinking about cutting contracts.”

According to a post on his blog, this was done with the approval of Musk before he left DOGE. “When he asked the room about improving DOGE’s public perception, I asked if I could open-source the code I’d been writing,” Lavingia said. “He said yes — it aligned with DOGE’s goal of maximum transparency.”

That openness may have eventually led to Lavingia’s dismissal. Lavingia confirmed he was terminated from DOGE after giving an interview to Fast Company magazine about his work with the department. A VA spokesperson declined to comment on Lavingia’s dismissal.

VA officials have declined to say whether they will continue to use the “munchable” tool moving forward. But the administration may deploy AI to help the agency replace employees. Documents previously obtained by ProPublica show DOGE officials proposed in March consolidating the benefits claims department by relying more on AI.

And the government’s contractors are paying attention. After Lavingia posted his code, he said he heard from people trying to understand how to keep the money flowing.

“I got a couple DMs from VA contractors who had questions when they saw this code,” he said. “They were trying to make sure that their contracts don’t get cut. Or learn why they got cut.

“At the end of the day, humans are the ones terminating the contracts, but it is helpful for them to see how DOGE or Trump or the agency heads are thinking about what contracts they are going to munch. Transparency is a good thing.”

If you have any information about the misuse or abuse of AI within government agencies, Brandon Roberts is an investigative journalist on the news applications team and has a wealth of experience using and dissecting artificial intelligence. He can be reached on Signal @brandonrobertz.01 or by email brandon.roberts@propublica.org.

If you have information about the VA that we should know about, contact reporter Vernal Coleman on Signal, vcoleman91.99, or via email, vernal.coleman@propublica.org, and Eric Umansky on Signal, Ericumansky.04, or via email, eric.umansky@propublica.org.