ProPublica

by Marek Mazurek, South Bend Tribune

This article was produced by the South Bend Tribune, a member of the ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in 2018. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

A police officer in Elkhart, Indiana, who was seen repeatedly punching a handcuffed man in a 2018 video obtained by the South Bend Tribune and ProPublica pleaded guilty in a federal civil rights case last week.

The plea agreement calls for Cory Newland to be sentenced to 15 months in prison for his role in the incident, in which he and fellow officer Joshua Titus were seen on a security camera video beating Mario Guerrero Ledesma while the man was handcuffed to a chair in a detention area at the city police station.

Newland will also pay a yet-to-be-determined amount to Ledesma in restitution. His plea came less than a month before the case was set to go to trial.

“I knew at the time of the assault that my use of force on M.L. was unjustified and unlawful under the circumstances,” Newland said in his plea agreement, referring to Ledesma by his initials.

Jessica McBrier, a spokesperson for the Elkhart Police Department, said Newland resigned from the force on Aug. 30 — the same day U.S. Magistrate Judge Joshua Kolar accepted his guilty plea.

“The department has no further comment on any plea he entered in federal court,” McBrier said in an email to The Tribune.

Attorneys representing Newland did not respond to an interview request.

Titus has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to go to trial later this month. Both officers were placed on leave in late 2018, and Titus is still on unpaid leave with the department, McBrier said.

Fallout From Video

The Tribune obtained the video of the incident in November 2018 as part of an ongoing investigation with ProPublica into practices within the Elkhart Police Department and Elkhart County Prosecutor’s office that led to wrongful convictions. The investigation also revealed 28 of the police department’s 34 highest-ranking officers had disciplinary records.

The video shows Ledesma, seated and wearing handcuffs, while Newland, Titus and other officers stand nearby.

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At one point Ledesma spits toward Newland. Titus and Newland immediately punch Ledesma in the face, causing him to fall backward onto the floor. Titus and Newland then jump on top of him and punch him repeatedly.

“I placed M.L. in a chair with his hands handcuffed behind his back and behind the back of the chair,” Newland said in his plea deal. "M.L. spat in my direction. I responded by punching him in the face, causing him to fall backwards onto the floor. Another officer, Joshua Titus, and I continued to strike M.L. repeatedly with our fists. M.L. was in handcuffs during the entirety of the time we were punching him.”

Ledesma had initially been arrested on suspicion of domestic battery. He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to one year in jail, with 133 days of that sentence suspended.

Five months after the incident, Elkhart’s then-police chief, Ed Windbigler, gave both Newland and Titus reprimands but did not suspend or demote them. Speaking in 2018 to the city’s police oversight commission, Windbigler said the two officers “just went a little overboard” in subduing a person in custody, but he did not mention the fact the pair had punched a handcuffed suspect.

The Tribune obtained the video of the beating after that meeting, and the discrepancy between the video and Windbigler’s description of the incident was cited by the city in its decision to suspend Windbigler. He later resigned.

Newland and Titus were originally charged with misdemeanor battery in Elkhart County in November 2018. That case was put aside when the pair were indicted on federal civil rights charges in March 2019.

A sentencing date for Newland has not yet been set.

by Renee Dudley

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

Thomas van Ruitenbeek’s life fell apart in 2012, when a psychotic episode and a diagnosis of autism derailed his pursuit of a digital communication degree at a university in Utrecht, the Netherlands. For the better part of a year, the 25-year-old wouldn’t respond when spoken to, his father said, and his blue, wide-set eyes revealed little cognition. He rarely left his parents’ duplex and filled his time studying daily newspapers, convinced they contained secret messages. Sometimes, he worked up the energy to paint miniature figurines from the medieval fantasy-themed board game Warhammer. Mostly, he did nothing.

The psychotic episode and the autism diagnosis locked him into a state of isolation that had been deepening since his childhood, solidifying his long-held belief that he was an outsider. Van Ruitenbeek’s parents took him to appointments with doctors and therapists. When he grew strong enough, they supported his return to work. He did simple tasks — mostly cutting and packaging yarn — at a job he obtained through the local mental health department. That was a far cry from his earlier aspirations of being a video game designer and hardly the life his parents had hoped he would have. They worried about what would happen when they grew old and could no longer look after him.

Then, during a meeting with his coach at the mental health department in 2013, van Ruitenbeek and his parents got an unexpected bit of hope. A short distance away, a first-time entrepreneur named Peter van Hofweegen and his business partner were figuring out how to launch an education and job placement program geared toward autistic young adults who were interested in computers.

The number of people diagnosed with autism is hard to ascertain, but the statistics that are available suggest it’s on the rise. An estimated 100,000 autistic Americans turn 18 every year, according to Drexel University’s Autism Institute, and a growing number of programs in the U.S. and elsewhere aim to employ tech-savvy autistic people.

But van Hofweegen’s program was something different. He and his partner sought primarily to recruit socially isolated, seemingly unemployable dropouts who almost certainly would be passed over even by employers who welcome candidates with neurological differences like autism. They wanted people who couldn’t make it on their own and had been “sitting for years in their parents’ homes,” van Hofweegen said. The number of students in his program would be small, but the stakes were large. If they could be doing meaningful, sophisticated work, what kind of a model might that provide for the uncounted numbers of people with autism around the world seemingly sentenced to constricted, unproductive lives.

The untested model drew skepticism even from other autism advocates, who viewed it as well-intentioned but overly idealistic. But van Ruitenbeek’s coach, Anita de Winter, saw it as a godsend. She had worked with hundreds of autistic adults who struggled to find meaningful work and become independent. De Winter described the program to van Ruitenbeek without betraying her enthusiasm. She didn’t want him to be disappointed if it didn’t work out.

“This might be for someone like you,” she told him.

Van Hofweegen’s path to autism advocacy traces back to 1996, when his first child was born. The boy, named Thijs, sustained an injury during birth and was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Doctors told van Hofweegen and his then-wife that Thijs might never walk or talk. But with the help of specialists, he learned to both move and speak.

Peter van Hofweegen’s son Thijs (Courtesy of Mathilde Dusol)

Thijs went far beyond that. After proclaiming a desire to learn how to swim at age 5, and taking seven years to pass his basic swimming test, Thijs persisted through intermediate and advanced levels alongside much younger classmates. When he swam the 50-meter freestyle test to pass the advanced level, he earned a standing ovation from the other students’ parents. Van Hofweegen never forgot that moment. (He continued to ponder it even as Thijs developed into a competitive swimmer and won a silver medal in the men’s 400-meter freestyle at the Paralympic Games in 2016.) It showed what a person could accomplish with the right support and accommodations.

While helping out at an event in 2012 for people struggling with unemployment, van Hofweegen met Frans de Bie, an IT guru and fellow volunteer. A year earlier, de Bie had sold his 40-person tech company. Like van Hofweegen, de Bie drew inspiration from his personal life. He had grown up alongside foster siblings, and he understood the transformative power of a supportive environment. He also was motivated by his son and daughter, who have dyslexia.

The new friends hit upon an idea. Van Hofweegen had read a survey saying 20,000 Dutch people were not participating in the workforce because of their autism. Perhaps they could start an organization that would help autistic people interested in technology to find work. After more than 25 years in management roles at hotels and at a temporary-job placement agency, van Hofweegen quit his job. A short time later, in late 2013, he and de Bie incorporated an organization they called ITvitae.

Van Hofweegen, left, with Frans de Bie (Thana Faroq for ProPublica)

The Dutch have a saying: “God created the earth, but the Dutch created the Netherlands.” That’s because for centuries, the country’s citizens reclaimed land from the North Sea using their iconic system of dikes, canals and windmills. About a third of the country’s fertile land is below sea level. The Netherlands, half the size of South Carolina, remains among the world’s leading economies in part because its people have maximized its geographical resources.

And so it was culturally ingrained in van Hofweegen and de Bie to maximize the country’s human resources. Partly because de Bie was familiar with the unmet demand for IT jobs in the Netherlands, a gap currently estimated at 100,000, and because the country has a robust tech sector, the co-founders wanted to focus on that area.

The two men saw ITvitae — the name is an amalgam of “information technology” and “curriculum vitae,” which they pronounce ee-tay-vee-tay — as a way to fill tech-sector jobs and strengthen the Dutch economy as much as they considered it a social enterprise to lift up autistic people who felt excluded from the job market.

Common traits found in autistic people often prevent them from being hired or even applying to jobs in the first place. They may struggle to interpret social cues, pause frequently when speaking, exhibit disruptive eccentricities or avoid eye contact. Yet employers have found that other characteristics make them excellent employees. They tend to be thorough and fastidious, have the ability to go deep on specific topics and focus for prolonged periods of time. Those traits lend themselves to careers in technology and cybersecurity, among many other fields.

Van Hofweegen and de Bie envisioned a six-month course focused on preparing students to be software testers — a natural fit for autistic people, who tend to be methodical rule-followers. As the students embarked on coursework, van Hofweegen would find employers by cold-calling IT and software companies as well as by tapping the connections of his board members.

The co-founders believed ITvitae could generate revenue primarily by charging employers a recruiting fee for each hire. De Bie believed employers would be willing to pay because the amount he proposed was less than the typical cost of specialized, third-party technical training for new or existing employees.

The first challenge was finding students. After winding their way through various government agencies, van Hofweegen and de Bie found de Winter, who worked near where they lived. “Do you know these types of people?” van Hofweegen asked her in 2013 after laying out the vision for ITvitae. She replied, “How many do you want?”

As the co-founders prepared to interview about 30 candidates for 11 slots, de Winter explained the potential pitfalls. Autistic people tend to process language literally, she told them, and might be unable to respond to classic prompts. The question “what do you hope to get from your time at ITvitae?” might elicit a blank stare. That’s because, to an autistic person, there’s no basis for what the outcomes of the new program might be. Alternatively, the list of answers could be endless and paralyzing. They needed something concrete and technical to discuss. So de Bie concocted a simple tool that would serve as a discussion topic and gauge applicants’ computer interest: He asked the candidates to draw maps of their home computer networks and be prepared to describe them.

Van Hofweegen and de Bie were full of enthusiasm. But, as they continued to talk with de Winter, they realized how much they still had to learn about the very people they wanted to help. They were, perhaps, in over their heads.

For as long as he could remember, van Ruitenbeek knew he was different but felt that he couldn’t let other people know that. It was as if he were “living undercover,” he said. He was constantly afraid that asking the wrong question would cause him to be bullied, so he never asked questions. While his twin sister played with other children, he withdrew to solitary activities, learning to design his own websites on topics ranging from outer space to dinosaurs. But his life took a darker turn after his psychotic episode in Utrecht.

Van Ruitenbeek had planned to spend the summer day catching up on coursework when suddenly he began to feel that he was outside his own body. His vision narrowed and his mind compelled him to follow what he believed were secret hand signals made by strangers, which eventually directed him to a bar to order a draft Heineken. He then lurched outside the bar in a stupor. Van Ruitenbeek rambled in halting, slurred speech when his sister and father reached him by phone. Frantic with worry, Henk van Ruitenbeek drove through Utrecht and eventually found his son standing on a sidewalk, staring vacantly. He got him in the car and took him home.

In the aftermath, with a new diagnosis of autism, van Ruitenbeek believed his life was over. He had thought it was not rational or even possible to set goals for himself. Then de Winter mentioned ITvitae, and he knew he badly wanted a slot there. The ITvitae interview, he later said, was “like a ticket out of my situation.” More nervous than he had ever been, he told himself: “I have to make it. I have to do my best.”

The interview, which took place in late 2013, was difficult for everyone. Although van Hofweegen and de Bie were pleasant and upbeat, van Ruitenbeek felt he was in “hostile territory.” Then again, everything beyond his parents’ home seemed that way at the time. He stuttered severely when describing his recovery from psychosis, and it took him an uncomfortably long time to utter a single sentence. He was visibly perspiring. “This isn’t working,” de Bie thought.

When de Bie pivoted to the network drawing and other technical questions, the interview shifted. Van Ruitenbeek stuttered less. De Bie, impressed by his remarks about website design, decided before the interview ended that van Ruitenbeek should have a space at ITvitae.

De Bie thought it was obvious that van Ruitenbeek — and most of the other candidates — had raw computer talent. Van Hofweegen welled with tears. “What are these wonderful people doing at home?” he wondered.

Advocates for people with autism in the United States often ask the same question. Parents of autistic teenagers describe the “cliff” of high school or college graduation, marked by the struggle to navigate the transition from years of special education and support to independent working life. Firm data is hard to come by, but some estimates suggest millions of autistic American adults are unemployed or underemployed. Of those who find work, most are in low-wage and part-time jobs, according to Drexel’s Autism Institute.

At the same time, demand for workers with technical skills has far outpaced supply. In the cybersecurity field alone, the U.S. faces a shortfall of more than 225,000 workers, according to CyberSeek, an organization that provides job market data. The number of available tech-related jobs in the U.S. nearly doubled from 2020 to 2021, analytics company Datapeople reported.

Over the past decade, a variety of opportunities for autistic adults in the U.S. — ranging from technical training and job placement programs in various cities, to targeted hiring and retention efforts at large employers — have aimed to bridge the tech workforce gap. But the results so far have been modest, said Michael Bernick, a San Francisco-based attorney who has written two books on employment strategies for the neurodiverse.

That’s partly because many initiatives expect job candidates to have higher education, credentials and the ability to work with minimal support, said Bernick, who was director of the California labor department from 1999 to 2004. “They are looking for people who have significant tech skills,” he said. “Of that group, not all are college graduates, but they’re also not the long-term unemployed, sitting in their parents’ basements.” Someone like van Ruitenbeek wouldn’t have stood a chance.

One widely publicized initiative is the Neurodiversity @ Work Employer Roundtable, a collection of about four dozen private employers — including Microsoft, SAP, Google and more — that foster neurodiversity hiring programs. Participating companies offer screening and interview processes to accommodate autistic candidates; about 1,200 neurodiverse candidates have gotten jobs with Roundtable employers over the past decade, said Neil Barnett of Microsoft, a leader of the group. Barnett, who has discussed the initiative with Bernick, hopes that Roundtable employers will continue to expand their hiring of neurodiverse candidates with a variety of skills, including outside of tech.

Autistic adults who are interested in computers represent just a sliver of autistic job seekers, according to the national advocacy organization Autism Speaks; Bernick puts the figure around 10% to 15%. Due in part to prominent figures such as Elon Musk, who has said he has Asperger’s syndrome, which is now considered a type of autism spectrum disorder, and pop culture caricatures of socially awkward workers in Silicon Valley, the notion that autistic people inherently possess extraordinary tech competencies has become a cliché. Bernick said he once had hopes of a tech career for his own autistic son. But his son had neither uncommon skills nor a deep interest in computers.

While the 10% to 15% estimated by Bernick may seem like a small slice relative to popular perception, efforts to employ that group are nonetheless important, especially given the dramatic need in the tech sector, advocates and researchers said. Bernick said programs in the U.S. should expand their efforts to find autistic job seekers who have computer capabilities but lack the credentials — precisely the types of people van Hofweegen and de Bie recruited for their inaugural class.

In February 2014, after a six-month stint cutting yarn, van Ruitenbeek rode his bicycle to ITvitae’s space for the first day of class. He was nervous. In social settings, he always felt as though he were “from another planet,” he said. Here, though, he was surrounded by people who felt the same way.

Shortly after their arrival, de Bie assigned the students to assemble the furniture they would be using. When he returned several hours later, he found they had put it together flawlessly. He asked how everyone was getting along and discovered that none of the students had bothered with introductions. De Bie was surprised and amused; he was still learning how autistic people function.

Van Ruitenbeek and other students in ITvitae’s first class assemble furniture. (Courtesy of Frans de Bie)

Van Hofweegen and de Bie, who refused to use the word “disability,” told the students they had “different operating systems” than the neurotypical people they grew up with. It helped to reassure them that they belonged in the classroom, and eventually the workplace, as they all began to “learn how to learn again” following what for some was years away from school, van Hofweegen said. De Bie eased the students into a school setting by leading a training on basic Microsoft programming, networking and security. That was followed by a 40-day course on software testing offered by an organization that issues certifications for technical specialties in the Netherlands.

After only a short time, van Ruitenbeek said he began to feel “at home for the first time in my life.” He enjoyed his coursework and excelled at it. He gradually began interacting with other students as he felt more at ease and less afraid of making social mistakes. When he grumbled about commuting by bike, a classmate offered to drive him to and from ITvitae. Van Ruitenbeek gladly accepted.

Yet, for all his progress, van Ruitenbeek continued to face obstacles. Conversation remained difficult due to his stutter, and he lacked the energy to work the 32-hour week that most employers expected of ITvitae’s graduates. Sometimes his father worried it was all too much for him. He was one of three students for whom van Hofweegen struggled to find a job.

When the coursework drew to a close, the students took a formal exam to be certified in software testing. Van Ruitenbeek breezed through the questions, except for one that confounded him: None of the multiple choice answers were technically correct. So he selected the answer that he suspected the test-maker wanted. He picked correctly and scored 100%. “It was my first achievement,” van Ruitenbeek said. “I could do something.”

A short time later, a director from the testing company visited ITvitae and van Hofweegen told him that a student had spotted a mistake in the exam. Van Hofweegen, who has an uncanny ability to sense an opportunity and pounce, suggested that van Ruitenbeek could be a test reviewer. The company invited him to join a small group of volunteers who look over exams for accuracy and clarity. Van Ruitenbeek readily agreed. To prepare, he plowed through a textbook on ethical hacking.

The work led him to his next self-discovery: Ethical hacking was fun. Once unable to set goals for the future, van Ruitenbeek now dreamed of a career in cybersecurity. He would hunt for hidden vulnerabilities in software and networks, and prevent them from falling prey to malicious hackers.

Following the success of their first class, van Hofweegen and de Bie recruited another class, then another, each with a maximum of 14 students. After the first year, with steady revenue generated mainly from fees paid by employers, the co-founders began taking salaries, and they hired additional staff. ITvitae’s mission spread to autistic job seekers and their supporters across the Netherlands.

As the organization grew, van Hofweegen and de Bie relocated ITvitae to a floor in a former monastery, which had been converted into offices. The founders thought its tree-shaded walking paths and seclusion would impart a serenity that the students needed. The organization also began offering new courses in software development, data science and cybersecurity, all specialties in high demand. Students delighted in being able to focus exclusively on topics that fascinated them, a luxury — for many of the students, a necessity — that traditional educational settings couldn’t provide.

Certain similarities emerged among ITvitae’s students. Before joining, nearly half had been sitting at home, unemployed and socially isolated, for longer than two years. Many passed the time playing video games and lost track of whether it was day or night. They told van Hofweegen and de Bie they felt worthless and never fit in; many reported having been bullied and struggling through periods of depression.

ITvitae turned away about two-thirds of applicants, most frequently because of untreated mental health issues. Other candidates simply weren’t ready. One 2022 applicant said he hadn’t left his home for 10 years and spent most of his time gaming. “It was such a big thing for him to be here” for the interview, de Bie said. “But then traveling regularly, studying in a group, doing exams — that would have been too heavy for him. I had to tell him it’s not the right time.”

Male students at ITvitae outnumber female students 10 to 1, both because autism is more prevalent in men and more likely to go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed in women. Many experience sensory challenges, such as headaches if the light is too bright or if there’s too much noise. One student was distracted by the sound of blinking eyelashes. Most struggle to varying degrees with communication.

To help both prospective employers and job candidates work through the inevitable miscommunications, ITvitae staff members accompanied students to job interviews. Saskia Meeuwessen, who was hired as the CEO of ITvitae as it expanded, recalled joining a student at an interview for a cybersecurity job with the Dutch National Police. The interviewer asked the candidate to introduce himself. The student froze: It wasn’t a question he had practiced. Nonetheless, he was later invited for a second meeting with an interviewer who was more experienced in interacting with autistic people.

That interviewer sat down and, with no social niceties, asked, “When I type www.google.nl, what happens?” Meeuwessen thought to herself, “Well, Google shows up, what a silly question.” But the candidate had a completely different reaction, launching into nuanced details about internet servers and connections. For 90 minutes, Meeuwessen “sat there, listening to stuff that I really didn’t understand,” she said. The candidate was hired on the spot.

Thanks in part to its gradually sloped coastline, the Netherlands is a popular landing spot for the underwater fiber optic cables connecting the United States and Europe. Fast, reliable and inexpensive internet connectivity has fostered a flourishing tech sector. But that connectivity has negative consequences, too. Hackers who can’t rely on the fragile internet connections in their home countries use servers in the Netherlands to commit crimes.

To counter these hackers, the Dutch National Police established an elite force called the High Tech Crime Unit, or HTCU. The unit has become renowned both for its success disrupting the operations of cyberattackers and for its innovative culture, which for years has included hiring unconventional candidates, including those with autism.

In 2017, at van Hofweegen’s urging, the HTCU brought on a graduate from ITvitae. He proved to be an open-source intelligence wizard. Another graduate followed. Then the floodgates opened, and about 30 ITvitae graduates were eventually hired to jobs in regional police squads, where they handle data analysis, digital forensics and other technical specialties.

The National Police’s embrace of a neurodiverse workforce extended beyond its partnership with ITvitae. Its most renowned hiring initiative for autistic employees began with a 2016 murder case.

A 50-year-old Turkish man had been shot more than 30 times in the Dutch city of Leiden and died two days later. The National Police collected surveillance camera footage and quickly identified the suspects. Their work also seemed to link the murder to a number of cold cases in Amsterdam. The National Police took over those investigations, inheriting 1,700 hours of camera footage. Watching the tapes was a marathon of drudgery that none of the National Police detectives wanted to take on.

One National Police detective, Jory de Groot, happened upon an idea. De Groot, who has a foster brother with Down syndrome, volunteered with a group that organized trips for young adults with disabilities. On a weekend shortly after the murder, she led a group of people with autism. De Groot, then 26, described her job to one participant on the trip and mentioned the painstaking work of watching security footage. Some autistic people excel at recognizing small details, the woman told de Groot. They might love the very task that neurotypical detectives loathe.

De Groot then contracted four people from AutiTalent, a Dutch job placement organization for autistic people. She prepared her colleagues, advising them against asking typical get-to-know-you questions, and set up a radio-free office in a quiet corner of their building.

When the autistic contractors arrived, the National Police detectives tested their abilities by having them watch the footage collected in the Leiden murder. The detectives had already watched the tapes, which included the days leading up to the shooting, and knew precisely when the suspects would be seen on the day of the shooting.

Before long, one of the contractors spotted a suspect on the tape — but not when the detectives expected. The contractor found the suspect casing the crime scene the day before the attack. The detectives had missed it. “It was really important evidence that we overlooked,” de Groot said. Eventually, the two suspects were convicted in the Leiden murder.

As word of the feat reverberated through the National Police, requests for more AutiTalent contractors flooded in. Eventually, 50 autistic people were working as “camera footage specialists,” a newly created role, across the National Police. De Groot’s original team grew to six people, who increasingly talked with one another and with their police colleagues as they became more comfortable. The contractors joined detectives from the start of investigations, rather than stepping in after they were already in progress, and took part in briefings. Additional contractors from AutiTalent became “audio specialists,” who transcribed interrogations and wiretaps.

Jory de Groot, second from right, with her team of camera specialists (Courtesy of Jory de Groot)

The high profile of the contractors led some members of the National Police force to speak out about their own autism, which they’d previously hidden. The outpouring prompted de Groot to work with those employees and an advocacy organization to establish an “Autism Embassy” at the National Police. Now about a dozen workplace “ambassadors” — employees with autism who volunteer for the role — offer an ear and advice to both autistic colleagues and their managers.

The National Police’s embrace of autistic contractors has been partially driven by government-proposed targets, accompanied by subsidies, for industry and government to hire 125,000 people who have difficulty finding work because of a disability. That sort of government-centric approach is unlikely to occur in the U.S. Still, law enforcement agencies in the U.S. could draw lessons from the Dutch experiment, said Michael Bernick, the attorney who has focused on employment strategies for autistic people.

Amid ITvitae’s successes, van Ruitenbeek was still floundering. He had enjoyed his time as a volunteer test reviewer in 2014, but it didn’t lead to a job. A subsequent internship with a computer security consultancy also didn’t land him permanent employment. Yet another internship, with an organization that maintained supercomputers, failed when he experienced a psychotic episode in late 2016.

It happened when van Ruitenbeek was commuting to the company’s Amsterdam office by train. He knew public transportation was a stressor for him, but he thought he could push through it. He couldn’t. That day, he believed everyone on the train was talking about him. He didn’t fully lose control, as he had in Utrecht. Still, he realized he couldn’t continue to commute and work normally with the organization any longer. He quit.

It had been more than two years since his ITvitae graduation, and van Ruitenbeek was again feeling hopeless. He mostly stayed at his parents’ home, where he tinkered with developing his own video game. He sometimes rode his bike to ITvitae’s offices — “just as a place to go,” he said — where he read books on cybersecurity and tried to ground himself.

Van Ruitenbeek happened to be at ITvitae one day in late 2017 when Pim Takkenberg, then a director at the Dutch cybersecurity firm Northwave and a former leader of the National Police’s High Tech Crime Unit, was there. Earlier that year, Takkenberg had overseen the development of a training program for ITvitae’s cybersecurity students. During the visit, van Hofweegen, ever scouting, made a request: “Pim, I have a person here, who is extremely vulnerable but extremely brilliant. I want you to talk to him.”

After a brief chat, Takkenberg agreed to give van Ruitenbeek a “hack test” to assess his aptitude for penetration testing. The prospect alone was enough to help van Ruitenbeek regain some hope. A few months later, on exam day, Takkenberg instructed him to find vulnerabilities in a piece of software, which hackers could exploit to attack the hypothetical client. Takkenberg jokingly warned him not to cheat. Van Ruitenbeek took him literally, assuming he meant not to research anything on the internet. In reality, using the internet would have been allowed, even expected.

Van Ruitenbeek found the main vulnerabilities. Takkenberg was impressed but remained skeptical. Van Ruitenbeek still had trouble with conversation, and he was able to work only three days a week. Addressing the doubts, van Hofweegen said: “You want a problem solved. He communicates better with computers than with people. In a technical world, it’s not so bad.”

Takkenberg offered him a trial six-month internship. But he needed someone who could work 40 hours a week. They found a compromise. Van Ruitenbeek would start with three days a week, then gradually increase to five days. Northwave also allowed van Ruitenbeek to work from home occasionally, a major concession before the pandemic. He went on a special diet and began exercising to improve his health and boost his energy. He was determined to have a permanent place at Northwave, where he might finally gain the independence and fulfillment he’d long chased.

Over their nearly nine years together as business partners, van Hofweegen and de Bie proved there was space in the labor market for people who had been overlooked by employers and who previously thought themselves to be shut out of the workforce. Since 2014, ITvitae has graduated and placed nearly 500 students in technical jobs spanning sectors from agriculture to chip manufacturing to law enforcement. Bernick called that total “striking” and said, “We don’t have any company in the United States that comes near that number, even over a 10-year period.”

De Bie’s early assessment that employers would be willing to pay a fee to hire ITvitae’s graduates proved to be right. It costs the equivalent of $30,000 to educate, coach and find employment for each student. About a third of that is generated from tuition while the remainder comes from the employer.

As ITvitae’s Meeuwessen points out, autism doesn’t end when students gain employment. That’s why the organization provides regular coaching to help graduates navigate changes — anything from a new manager to a schedule shift — they perceive as disruptive and unsettling. “As soon as something happens, they start to doubt. If there’s doubt, they get unstable and that’s bad,” Meeuwessen said. “Most are doing just fine after many years, but it’s a process.”

For all the success, there have been setbacks. Even with coaching, some students struggle. ITvitae occasionally hears from an employer that a former student has stopped showing up to work and hasn’t responded to messages, sometimes for weeks. “We go to their houses,” van Hofweegen said. “We knock on the door. We call the parents. And we still can’t make them understand why they need to communicate with their employers.”

A few times, the problems have been far more dire than an inability to show up at work. De Bie keeps a photo on his desk of a talented software programmer who specialized in a language called C#. After his graduation, he was hired by a prestigious global corporation. His coach regularly checked in, and, by all appearances, his first few months at the company were successful. Then came word that the student had taken his life, one of three graduates to die by suicide. Even before graduating, the programmer had obtained an illegal drug from China with the intention of overdosing. He waited to take it. He wanted to finish his education and get a job to prove that he was capable of success. “For him, that was enough,” van Hofweegen said.

When van Ruitenbeek started at Northwave in 2018, being in an office with other people scared him. Takkenberg knew that van Ruitenbeek wouldn’t be comfortable speaking to clients or even colleagues right away and tried to smooth the transition. He and his team organized roles that accommodated van Ruitenbeek and other ITvitae graduates “in doing the things they’re good at and not doing the stuff they really hate to do.” So, after van Ruitenbeek rooted out the vulnerabilities in a network, another colleague would meet with the client to explain the findings. Through a government program for people who need work accommodations, de Winter helped van Ruitenbeek borrow a car so he could avoid the stress of public transportation.

Van Ruitenbeek found an accepting culture at Northwave. He began to confide in colleagues, who looked after him. As van Ruitenbeek’s trust in them grew, he started asking questions and giving more than yes and no answers. He successfully pursued a notoriously difficult, globally recognized certification for his line of work, which Takkenberg said was a “big sign” that the intern’s abilities were exceptional. Once the internship ended, Takkenberg gave him a permanent job sniffing out gaps in software that could make it vulnerable to being penetrated by malicious hackers. “He is one of the best pen-testers we have,” Takkenberg said. “Because of his talent to focus and stay focused, he always will find the small details.”

Van Ruitenbeek in Northwave’s offices (Thana Faroq for ProPublica)

Shortly after van Ruitenbeek started in his permanent position, he and Takkenberg discussed his goals for his first year. They decided van Ruitenbeek should find a CVE, short for common vulnerabilities and exposures, security flaws in software that are formally and publicly cataloged. Takkenberg was ecstatic when, by the midyear check-in, van Ruitenbeek had uncovered six. “OK, that goal is done,” Takkenberg said. “For the rest of the year, let’s focus on your social skills.”

A short time later, van Ruitenbeek attended a company golf outing. Takkenberg, who retains the rough-around-the-edges demeanor of an ex-cop, joked that van Ruitenbeek would probably excel despite never having played. “We know you read eight books in a month for fun, Thomas,” he teased. “So you probably read a book about how to golf to prepare for this.” Van Ruitenbeek was able to recognize that Takkenberg was joking, something he’s sure would have eluded him in the past. It was a revelation.

Then, during a weekend retreat with his team, van Ruitenbeek carted along some records and a record player. Music had long been a passion that allowed him to express himself when he lacked the words to do so. One evening, he worked up the courage to play records for about 15 of his colleagues. The airy, electronic music helped everyone relax. Word of his talent spread, and the next day, he found himself DJing a barbecue for Northwave’s entire cyber unit, more than 50 people.

Takkenberg decided to splurge on a DJ booth for Northwave. He dubbed van Ruitenbeek the company’s official DJ and assigned him to play music at its Friday afternoon happy hours. Van Ruitenbeek became the center of Northwave’s social gatherings.

Watch video ➜

When COVID-19 hit, van Ruitenbeek found himself longing for the company of colleagues. “I mostly miss the casual chats,” he said of the days that he works from home, about half his schedule these days. “That is the biggest change of my life since Northwave,” he said. “Social development. Now I am outgoing.”

Van Ruitenbeek has started mentoring a new autistic employee. He also began working with Northwave’s sales team to write proposals and even meet with clients. That’s not to say there aren’t challenges. But now, when the workload feels too heavy, or he senses he’s becoming over-stressed, van Ruitenbeek asks for help. “I used to think I had to shoulder it on my own,” he said.

Van Ruitenbeek with a colleague at Northwave (Thana Faroq for ProPublica)

Now 35, van Ruitenbeek is becoming financially independent. He received a promotion and raise. He leased his own car and, in 2021, with help from his family, van Ruitenbeek purchased a one-bedroom apartment just a short walk from them. Giving a tour of his new home, he showed off the view of a pond beyond the sliding doors of his living room. He had carefully organized scores of records on shelves below his DJ equipment. Tucked away in a corner, he displayed the artifacts of his period of isolation: shelves filled with the Warhammer figurines he painted as he recovered from his psychosis.

If you meet van Ruitenbeek today, you wouldn’t likely guess his history. Compact and ruddy, he makes eye contact when he speaks — in fluent English when he was interviewed for this article — and is often self-deprecating and quick to smile. His easy banter with his father, a reliable source of support, encouragement and protection, was unimaginable in the aftermath of his psychosis a decade ago.

When he entered the working world, van Ruitenbeek had to consciously mimic social behavior and speech that he observed in peers. Over time, though, being social gradually became second nature. He felt like a foreign language student who once had to rehearse sentences in his mind but eventually spoke the new language fluently.

In April, van Ruitenbeek attended the graduation of this year’s cybersecurity class at ITvitae’s monastery, sitting among the new graduates’ families and friends on a drizzly afternoon. An ITvitae manager named Jessica van der Ploeg told the 11 new graduates, who were going on to jobs at global bank ING, consulting giant Deloitte and the Dutch Ministry of Defense, “The job market is waiting for you, for your talent and for who you are.”

Van der Ploeg acknowledged that many incoming ITvitae students feel shut out of society because of their autism, just as van Ruitenbeek once did. Alluding to an analogy ITvitae often uses to describe the communication gap between people with autism and their neurotypical peers, she said, “It’s us Windows users who sometimes don’t know how Linux works.”

Van Ruitenbeek listened intently. At various points in his life, he had been unable to express emotion. Now he had tears streaming down his face.

Van Ruitenbeek with Pim Takkenberg, who brought him on at Northwave, after the ITvitae graduation ceremony (Thana Faroq for ProPublica)

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by Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune

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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.

Update, Sept. 13, 2022: Five days after this story was published, USA Today posted an interview with Col. Steve McCraw, who leads the Texas Department of Public Safety. When asked why none of the 91 state troopers who responded to the Uvalde elementary school shooting took control during the chaotic standoff, McCraw said, “I wish we would have.”

Ever since the Uvalde elementary school shooting left 19 students and two teachers dead, blame for the delayed response has been thrust on local law enforcement. The school police chief was fired and the city’s acting police chief was suspended.

But the only statewide law enforcement agency, the Texas Department of Public Safety, has largely avoided scrutiny even though it had scores of officers on the scene. That’s in part because DPS leaders are controlling which records get released to the public and carefully shaping a narrative that casts local law enforcement as incompetent.

Now, in the wake of a critical legislative report and body camera footage released by local officials, law enforcement experts from across the country are questioning why DPS didn’t take a lead role in the response as it had done before during other mass shootings and public disasters.

The state police agency is tasked with helping all of Texas’ 254 counties respond to emergencies such as mass shootings, but it is particularly important in rural communities where smaller police departments lack the level of training and experience of larger metropolitan law enforcement agencies, experts say. That was the case in Uvalde, where the state agency’s 91 troopers at the scene dwarfed the school district’s five officers, the city police’s 25 emergency responders and the county’s 16 sheriff’s deputies.

The state police agency has been “totally intransparent in pointing out their own failures and inadequacies,” said Charles A. McClelland, who served as Houston police chief for six years before retiring in 2016. “I don’t know how the public, even in the state of Texas, would have confidence in the leadership of DPS after this.”

Instead of taking charge when it became clear that neither the school’s police chief nor the Uvalde Police Department had assumed command, DPS contributed to the 74-minute chaotic response that did not end until a Border Patrol tactical unit that arrived much later entered the classroom and killed the gunman.

“Here’s what DPS should have done as soon as they got there,” said Patrick O’Burke, a law enforcement consultant and former DPS commander who retired in 2008. “They should have contacted [the school police chief] and said: ‘We’re here. We have people.’ They should have just organized everything, said, ‘What are all of our resources?’ And they should have organized the breach.”

DPS has fought the release of records that could provide a more complete picture of the role state troopers played during the mass shooting. Agency officials declined to answer repeated questions from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune for more than three months, citing an ongoing investigation. On Tuesday afternoon, DPS officials said they had referred five responding troopers to the agency’s internal affairs division, the Office of Inspector General, for an investigation into whether they broke any department policies. Two have been suspended, according to DPS.

DPS also released a July email in which its director, Col. Steve McCraw, said the agency would “provide proper training and guidelines for recognizing and overcoming poor command decisions at an active shooter scene.” The agency has refused to share its active shooter policies and training manuals.

The latest moves by DPS come a week after reporters from ProPublica and the Tribune sought comments from the four appointed members of the Public Safety Commission, which oversees the agency, about the response by state troopers.

DPS did not identify which officers were being investigated or detail potential wrongdoing.

Previously, agency officials referred reporters to comments made by the head of DPS during a June legislative hearing in which he largely blamed the Uvalde school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, for the failed response.

During that testimony, McCraw told lawmakers that the time it took for law enforcement to rescue teachers and students at the elementary school was an “abject failure.” He called Arredondo the only obstacle between armed police and the teenage shooter while dismissing the idea that DPS could or should have taken control of the emergency response.

“I’m reluctant to encourage or even think of any situation where you’d want some level of hierarchy where a larger police department gets to come in and take over,” McCraw said.

Col. Steve McCraw, the head of DPS, speaks during a news conference outside Robb Elementary School on May 27. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

Yet, DPS has sprung into action time and again when disaster strikes in Texas, which has proved key during mass shootings and public emergencies, local officials across the state said.

More than three decades ago, for example, state troopers helped local law enforcement confront a gunman after arriving within minutes of a shooting at a Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, about 60 miles north of Austin. The shooter killed himself after a brief exchange of gunfire.

“They knew that people were dying, and so they acted,” said Suzanna Hupp, a former Republican state representative whose parents died during the 1991 Luby’s massacre. She said that didn’t happen in Uvalde, adding that “clearly there was a command breakdown there.”

In a 2013 chemical explosion in West, about 70 miles south of Dallas, state troopers immediately took control of the law enforcement response at the request of the county’s emergency management coordinator. And in the 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School, about 30 miles south of Houston, state troopers quickly fired at the gunman, according to local law enforcement officials who initially responded. The rapid engagement by school police and DPS was key to the gunman surrendering, district and county officials said.

“DPS had a tremendous role in Santa Fe of stopping the killing because they were among the first to arrive and they actually did what they were supposed to,” said Texas City Independent School District trustee Mike Matranga, the district’s security chief at the time of the shooting. He added that, in Uvalde, DPS supervisors “should have essentially asked [Arredondo] to stand down due to his ineffectiveness and taken over.”

Police experts and lawmakers pointed to clear signs that they believe should have alerted emergency responders that no one was in control. Arredondo, who resigned from his elected City Council seat in July and was fired from the school district on Aug. 24, remained inside the hallway on the phone during the shooting. He said he was trying to find a key to the classroom that the gunman was in. Investigators later determined that the door was likely unlocked. The school police chief did not identify himself as the incident commander and told The Texas Tribune he never issued any orders; his lawyer later said his firing was unjust. In a letter, Arredondo’s attorneys said the police chief “could not have served as the incident commander and did not attempt to take that role” because he was on the front lines.

Separately, no command post was set up outside of the school, which lawmakers noted should have been an indicator to responding officers that no one was in charge.

About 45 minutes after the gunman began shooting, a U.S. Border Patrol SWAT team, known as BORTAC, arrived at the scene. The unit typically handles dangerous situations involving migrants. Its responsibilities do not include responding to school shootings, but Paul Guerrero, the team’s acting commander, told the House committee that issued the legislative report that he chose to act after arriving and encountering the disorganized scene.

Guerrero requested surveillance through classroom windows, retrieved a door breaching tool from his car, ordered officers to set up a medical triage for victims and organized an assault team that consisted of several agencies. Eventually, he led about a half-dozen officers into the classroom and a Border Patrol agent killed the gunman at 12:50 p.m. No state troopers or school police were on that team.

Guerrero could not be reached for comment, and a spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection did not answer questions about the agency’s response, saying it was conducting a review.

According to the House committee report released in July, “the attacker fired most of his shots and likely murdered most of his innocent victims before any responder set foot in the building.” But the report said that given the information known about “victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital, it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue.”

The disconnect over who should take charge and when exemplifies a need for detailed planning and frequent training between larger law enforcement agencies and smaller departments, police experts told ProPublica and the Tribune.

People gather at a memorial in front of Robb Elementary School on May 30. (Kaylee Greenlee Beal for The Texas Tribune)

Larger agencies with more personnel, equipment and training should have agreements with school districts that clearly state that they will assume command upon arriving at critical incidents that include active shooters, hostage situations and explosive devices, said Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief and CBP commissioner until 2017. He and other experts said that even if school police are designated as the lead, the role of every law enforcement agency in the region should be specified.

San Antonio, one of the state’s biggest police departments, has such agreements with local school districts and universities that name the bigger city police agency as the incident commander in the event of a mass shooting. After the Uvalde shooting, San Antonio police Chief William McManus met with school officials in his city and reminded them that his agency would take charge in an active shooter situation.

McManus, whose officers arrived in Uvalde after the gunman was killed, said in an interview that because of the confusion at the scene, he felt the need to emphasize how his department would respond to such an incident in San Antonio.

It is unclear what, if any, involvement DPS or another law enforcement agency had with the Uvalde school district’s mass shooting plan because those governmental bodies declined to release such documents or answer questions. The state police did not have a written memorandum of agreement with the school district outlining its role in such situations, according to DPS records.

Alfred Garza III, who lost his only child, 10-year-old Amerie, during the Uvalde shooting, wonders if his daughter could have been saved had law enforcement, including DPS, acted faster. Her death was largely due to blood loss from gunshot wounds to her torso, according to a preliminary autopsy report.

“They can sit there and point fingers at everybody else and say that they weren’t responsible or they don’t have any accountability over what happened,” Garza said of DPS. “They were there, too, and they didn’t do shit.”

Diana Olvedo-Karau, who was a secretary in the Uvalde school district’s transportation department before retiring in June and has three nephews who attended Robb Elementary at the time of the shooting, was shocked when she watched body camera footage and learned for the first time “how many DPS officers were there.”

She said she and others trusted DPS to act more decisively during the city’s worst tragedy. The state agency has a major presence in the city of more than 16,000 residents because of Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, which has deployed thousands of state National Guard members and DPS troopers to the border. (It is separately being investigated by the Department of Justice for alleged civil rights violations. The governor’s office has said arrests and prosecutions under Operation Lone Star are “fully constitutional.”)

Olvedo-Karau said most residents believed McCraw when he placed the blame almost solely on local police. Now, she said, she and other residents feel betrayed after seeing where DPS troopers were in relation to the shooter and how early some arrived.

“To not take any responsibility for the fact that they were there early on, earlier than a lot of the local law enforcement agencies, and to shift the focus and the blame onto the local organizations doesn’t speak very well of them and is in many ways very unethical,” she said.

A group of DPS officers, left, were among other law enforcement personnel at the scene of the shooting. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

Uvalde school police failed to follow their own policies, which outlined that in an active shooter situation, Arredondo would become the “person in control of the efforts of all law enforcement and first responders on the scene,” according to the state House committee report. But the report also stated that school police “were not the only ones expected to supply the leadership needed during this tragedy.”

“Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies — many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police — quickly arrived on the scene. Those other responders, who also had received training on active shooter response and the interrelation of law enforcement agencies, could have helped to address the unfolding chaos. Yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post,” the report states.

While the report was among the first to acknowledge that failures in the response extended beyond local law enforcement, it did not name specific agencies.

National emergency protocols teach that the first officer at a critical scene typically becomes the incident commander because that person has the most knowledge about the developing situation. But often that role will be transferred as officers with higher ranks or from larger agencies who are more equipped to oversee the broader law enforcement response arrive, experts said. Typically that happens when the initial incident commander requests help, but it can also occur if other supervisors or officers with different agencies note that the scene is not under control and speak to the first responder.

Any DPS supervisors should have immediately asked their troopers who was in command, said Bob Harrison, a former California police chief and homeland security researcher at the RAND Corp., a national think tank. If they responded that “he’s inside the building, we can’t get a hold of him, I would say, ‘Let’s send somebody in to get him,’” while organizing the external police presence, Harrison said.

The Texas Rangers, which are part of DPS and report to McCraw, are leading a statewide probe into the flawed reaction by law enforcement. After the state House report last month, DPS announced a separate investigation into the role state police played in the Uvalde response.

But McCraw’s willingness to focus blame primarily on local law enforcement before the results of any investigation has raised questions about the agency’s objectivity. In three news conferences in the days following the shooting, McCraw and a DPS regional commander spoke at length about the response of local police without mentioning the role of state troopers.

Abbott, who appoints the members of the commission that oversees DPS, has largely not mentioned the agency’s actions in the shooting. When the House investigative report was released, he said that its findings were “beyond disturbing” and that critical changes were needed, but he did not single out any person or agency.

McClelland, the former Houston police chief, characterized the fact that the Texas Rangers are investigating the law enforcement response as “a fix from day one.”

The DOJ is also reviewing the response of all law enforcement officers at the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. McLaughlin, who did not respond to phone calls seeking comment, has accused McCraw of continuing to “lie, leak” or otherwise misstate information to “distance his own troopers” from criticism of law enforcement conduct that day. McCraw has denied that his agency leaked information and said he is committed to holding his own troopers accountable.

DPS has declined to explain the whereabouts and actions of the majority of its troopers during the shooting, but agency officials noted that eight entered the school before noon and quickly left when they saw the hallway full of police.

Body camera footage released by the Uvalde Police Department shows that at least one DPS officer was outside of the school within four minutes of the shooting.

At 11:37 a.m., after the gunman fired more than 100 rounds, Uvalde Police Sgt. Eduardo Canales, a commander of the local SWAT team, stumbled outside. With blood on his hands after a bullet fired by the gunman grazed his ear, he encountered DPS Sgt. Juan Maldonado, a 23-year veteran of the state agency and public information officer for the region.

“Dude, we got to get in there,” Canales told Maldonado, who, according to DPS, drove one of his closest friends, Ruben Ruiz, an Uvalde school district police officer, to the campus that morning. Ruiz’s wife was a teacher at the school.

“DPS is sending people,” Maldonado replied.

Emergency responders help students escape through windows at Robb Elementary during the shooting. (Courtesy of Pete Luna/Uvalde Leader-News)

Eleven minutes later, Ruiz told officers that his wife had called him and told him she had been shot. But officers continued to treat the situation as if they were dealing with a barricaded suspect instead of an active shooter. The latter situation requires that the first action by officers, no matter their rank, should be to immediately “stop the killing.”

It’s unclear how many officers from which agencies knew that Ruiz’s wife was still alive in the classroom. Lt. Mariano Pargas, the acting Uvalde police chief, told the House committee that he heard Ruiz say his wife was injured inside as well as a dispatcher say, over the radio, that 911 calls were coming from the classrooms. He said officers did not attempt to enter the rooms because “they were waiting for other personnel to arrive from the Department of Public Safety or BORTAC, with better equipment like rifle-rated shields.” Pargas, who is also an Uvalde County commissioner, is suspended pending an investigation. Pargas did not respond to requests for comment.

In another interaction, DPS Special Agent Luke Williams rushed inside shortly before noon, disregarding a “request that he assist at the perimeter,” according to the state legislative report.

Williams heard someone ask whether there were children inside the classroom with the gunman and interjected: “If there’s kids in there we need to go in.”

An unidentified law enforcement officer responded that “whoever was in charge would figure that out.” Williams then left to evacuate children from other classrooms in the school.

City police body camera footage and information from DPS put at least a dozen troopers, including members of the state police’s most elite squad, the Texas Rangers, outside the school within 30 minutes of the gunman firing. The body camera footage, along with bystander video and photographs, shows troopers mostly helping to evacuate children and assisting local police with preventing residents from entering the school.

County Commissioner Ronald Garza said DPS was the agency with the best resources and most experience that arrived at the school within minutes. Troopers should have taken charge, Garza said.

“I wish they would have stepped up. And that didn’t happen,” he said. “The audio, the video, the pictures, pretty much speak for themselves.”

In fighting the release of records, DPS officials have said that they are following guidance from Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee, who has indicated that disclosure of such information could taint an ongoing investigation.

Busbee told ProPublica and the Tribune that she opposes the public release of information as she evaluates whether crimes were committed by people other than the shooter. But she has noted that, despite her objection, McCraw publicized key details when it suited him or his agency. She did not answer questions about whether she planned to prosecute law enforcement officers.

ProPublica, the Tribune and a consortium of media outlets have filed a lawsuit seeking to compel DPS to release records about the agency’s response. The news organizations argue that DPS is wrongly claiming the ongoing investigation exception to the state’s public records law because the guilt of the gunman, who is dead, is not in dispute, and authorities say the 18-year-old acted alone. The news organizations also sued the city of Uvalde, the school district and the county sheriff’s office, asking a judge to force them to release records including body camera footage, emergency communications and active shooter planning documents.

Both lawsuits are pending.

When Uvalde students this week returned to school for the first time since the shooting, they were joined by more than two dozen DPS troopers. In a news release announcing that troopers will be assigned to the school district, Abbott and McCraw said the assignments came at the request of Uvalde’s school superintendent, Hal Harrell, and were part of an effort to ensure that children and teachers feel safe.

Tina Quintanilla-Taylor, the mother of 9-year-old Mehle, who escaped the shooting at Robb Elementary, said she finds the message from the state offensive given DPS’ role in the failed response.

The mother said she is sending her daughter to online school this semester because Mehle is terrified of returning to class. But Quintanilla-Taylor said she worries about her 6-year-old son, who needs special education, and so must return in person.

She said she doesn’t trust DPS to keep her son safe.

“They were the elite governing force that failed us,” she said.

A DPS officer blocks the road leading to Robb Elementary School. (Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune)

by Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News Illinois, and Molly Parker and Brenden Moore, Lee Enterprises Midwest

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Lee Enterprises, along with Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called patient abuses at the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in rural Anna “awful” and “deeply concerning,” and he said the future of the facility depends on correcting poor conditions.

Pritzker’s comments at a news conference on Tuesday came on the heels of articles published Friday by Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises and ProPublica outlining a history of egregious patient abuses and other employee misconduct at Choate.

At least 26 employees over the past decade have been arrested on felony charges in relation to their work at the facility, and internal investigations have cited dozens of other employees for neglecting, exploiting or humiliating residents, lying to investigators, or failing to report allegations of mistreatment in a timely manner. In some cases, investigations have languished for years as accused employees have continued to receive their full pay while on administrative leave.

At least one advocacy organization called for the state to close Choate in the wake of the reports. Amie Lulinski, executive director of The Arc of Illinois, an advocacy organization for people with developmental disabilities, said the details of abuse and neglect are “appalling” and called on the state to move residents out of the facility and into smaller community-based living arrangements such as group homes.

Pritzker said the state isn’t currently planning to close Choate, but he didn’t rule it out if safety issues aren’t addressed.

“The question is, can we prevent that in the future? And if not, then obviously that’s not a facility that should remain open,” the governor said in response to a reporter’s questions at an unrelated event in downstate Decatur.

Meanwhile, he said, the “state has an obligation to the people that it serves at that facility right now” and is concentrating on upgrades to the facility and ensuring that appropriate services and personnel are in place. In a statement to reporters last week, Marisa Kollias, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Human Services, which runs Choate, said that the problems there are the result of “longstanding, entrenched issues” and that the department has taken “aggressive measures” to address them.

Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center. At least one advocacy organization called for the state to close the facility. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

The push to close facilities like Choate is controversial, and some residents’ parents are advocating for less severe measures to address safety concerns.

In 2017, a Choate employee was arrested on a felony battery charge and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery for punching Rita Burke’s son in the abdomen, breaking two of his ribs. But Burke, who is the president of Friends of Choate, an organization that represents parents, guardians and other supporters, said the fact that the employee was swiftly removed from patient care and prosecuted is a sign that the facility takes cases of abuse seriously.

After researching their options nationwide, Burke said, she and her husband relocated from Georgia to Illinois over 30 years ago to place their son at Choate. At the time, Georgia offered extremely limited support for adults with disabilities, she said. She feels that her son, who is intellectually disabled and has a severe behavior disorder, is better off at Choate than he would be in a privately operated small group home. Abuses, she said, unfortunately happen at facilities of all sizes across the country.

“Our belief is our facility is working to make it safe and to get rid of people who are a danger to our individuals,” she said. “We couldn’t be more in sync with them on that score.”

State Sen. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, agrees that the facility shouldn’t be closed. Her 55-year-old brother lives at Choate. He has profound autism and diabetes that requires constant monitoring. If left unchecked, his blood sugar levels could cause him to have behavioral outbursts, get sick or even die.

Tracy’s brother has tried living in group homes, but his health problems coupled with his autism have made those places a bad fit. At Choate, he gets the close monitoring that he needs and Tracy’s 94-year-old mother, who is his legal guardian, can visit often, Tracy said.

“Yes, there have been horrible instances there, but Choate provides a niche in care,” Tracy said. “Changes do need to be made because these facilities are absolutely necessary, but we need to make them as safe as possible and as nice as possible.”

Choate, a 270-bed facility on the outskirts of Anna, about 120 miles southeast of St. Louis, serves people from across Illinois with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental illnesses or a combination of disorders. Patients can enter voluntarily or be placed there by a guardian, or a judge may order them to Choate for treatment after finding they’re at risk of harming themselves or others. Choate also houses Illinois’ only forensic unit for people with developmental disabilities found unfit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity in criminal proceedings.

The IDHS Office of the Inspector General, which investigates employee misconduct, looked into 1,500 allegations at Choate over a 10 year period ending in 2021. That’s more than at any other facility in the state. Of those, 800 involved physical abuse, 600 involved mental abuse and 100 involved sexual abuse. The inspector general substantiated the allegations in about 5% of the claims, in line with other facilities. But the number of allegations per year has increased, and Choate has faced repeated criticism from the inspector general, the local prosecutor and state police for employees interfering or attempting to derail investigations into wrongdoing.

State Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, whose district includes Choate, blamed some of the issues at the facility on broader failures of the state of Illinois. It can take months for job applicants to navigate the state’s bureaucratic hiring process, and by the time an offer is made, “sometimes what you’re left with is the folks that couldn’t get a job anywhere else,” she said.

The OIG is woefully understaffed, she added, resulting in dozens of employees accused of abuse or neglect unable to work their regular duties for months or years until investigations into their actions are closed and they’re either fired or cleared to return to patient care.

“The (OIG) does not have enough investigators,” she said. “It’s inexcusable.”

In a statement, the OIG said it intends to augment its investigative efforts, specifically looking at the root causes of abuse and neglect at IDHS facilities. The OIG will also identify and address programmatic or systemic concerns needed at a facility.

Even when the OIG has recommended changes at Choate, they have often been slow to happen, if they happen at all. The office recommended that cameras be installed at Choate 21 times over the last six years, internal records show. In response to mounting calls to address safety concerns at Choate, IDHS announced in June that it would install 10 cameras, though later the department clarified they would go outside the facility.

Senior IDHS officials told reporters that they raised the idea of placing them inside in common areas such as hallways and group rooms, but that some parents and guardians rejected the idea, citing privacy concerns.

The news organizations’ reports included emails from the former security chief of Choate seeking to bring troubling conditions to IDHS Secretary Grace Hou’s attention over a year ago. Barry Smoot, who retired in December, asked for a meeting, and Hou initially agreed, but one was never scheduled. Smoot said in a later interview that he felt his concerns were blown off, and that he was troubled by the department’s slow response.

Pritzker said on Tuesday he couldn’t speak to how quickly Hou acted to address concerns at Choate. “I will say that speaking up and speaking out, when you see something that’s wrong, is exactly the right thing to do,” he said. “Making sure that there’s responsive people on the other end, and that again, we have transparency and investigations that take place — that’s the right thing to do, and that’s what we’re going to make sure happens.”

Kollias, the IDHS spokesperson, previously said that the agency determined, “based on information gathered” after the secretary’s initial response to Smoot, “that it was inadvisable for IDHS management staff to communicate with him any further.” The department did not provide more details.

Lulinski, the executive director of The Arc of Illinois, said more than a dozen other states no longer operate institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, opting instead for group homes.

“Only Texas has more of these settings than Illinois. Over 1,600 people remain in institutions and thousands more are on the waiting list for community services,” Lulinski wrote in a statement in response to the stories. “Illinois has an opportunity to do better but it is going to take political will to do so.”

by Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, ProPublica, and Andrew Perez, The Lever

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

This story was co-published with The Lever.

In the mid-2000s, Barre Seid had begun thinking about how to leave a legacy. Riding the personal computer boom, the Chicago-based electronics magnate was on his way to becoming a billionaire. Seid, who considers himself a libertarian, now had the means to pursue a bold project: “attack philanthropy.”

To Seid, that meant looking for ways to place financial bets that had the potential to make epochal change. With little public notice, Seid became one of the most important donors to conservative causes during an era that saw American politics and society shift sharply to the right.

New reporting by ProPublica and The Lever, based on emails and interviews with people who know Seid, sheds light on one of the country’s least-known megadonors, revealing how an intensely private billionaire has secretly used his wealth to try to influence the lives of millions.

Seid has funded climate denialism as well as a national network of state-level think tanks that promote business deregulation and fight Medicaid expansion. He’s also supported efforts to remake the higher education system in a conservative mold, including to turn one of the nation’s most politically influential law schools into a training ground for future generations of right-wing judges and justices.

Last month, The Lever and ProPublica as well as The New York Times detailed how Seid secretly handed a $1.6 billion fortune to a key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority that recently eliminated federal protections for abortion rights.

Steven Baer, a longtime friend and former adviser to Seid, said the businessman has long been “the major patron” for the Heartland Institute, a small Chicago-area think tank which for decades has attacked mainstream climate science. A top executive at Seid’s former company, Tripp Lite, served as the chairman of the group. Among the recent claims on the institute’s website: “US Temperature Readings Are Junk, Negating Climate Science” and “96% of U.S. Climate Data Is Corrupted.”

“Barre did not need the quick win,” explained Baer in a recent interview. “He believes that if you take the long-odds shot and it pays off, it’s huge.” Baer said that Seid summed up his approach as “attack philanthropy.”

Seid, who turned 90 in April, is exceedingly secretive. In one email obtained by ProPublica and The Lever, he described himself as prone to “anonymity paranoia.”

Seid was so insistent on remaining in the shadows that he sometimes went by a pseudonym, variously given as Ebert or Elbert Howell. He and his staff at Tripp Lite would give the Howell name as the CEO of the company to outside salesmen and in business information registries, according to testimony Seid gave in a federal lawsuit.

“I get harassed a lot by telephone calls from security salesmen and the like and the source of it is mailing lists,” Seid said in the testimony, adding: “It’s a way of deflecting salesmen.” Seid did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

It’s impossible to know the full extent and details of Seid’s giving over the years because the law allows many nonprofits to keep their sponsors secret. But tax records previously obtained by ProPublica show that between 1996 and 2018, he made at least $775 million in donations to nonprofit groups. Almost all of that money was given anonymously.

As Seid got older, he knew that he needed a plan for what to do with his vast wealth, according to Baer. Seid, who has no children, knew that donating his billion-plus fortune could have a generational impact if put in the right hands.

“The question was,” Baer said, “how does he try to steer history?”

“He Did Not Want to See and Be Seen”

Forty years ago, Seid was a little-known business executive based in Chicago who was scarcely on the radar of major political operatives and party committees. His electronics company, Tripp Lite, sold surge protectors and other gear from a cramped space in Chicago’s River North area.

As the company flourished at the dawn of the personal computing era, Seid had started to write a few checks to political groups such as the Republican National Committee. He also began donating to a local Republican group that, under Baer’s leadership, had restyled itself as a force to purge the GOP of its more moderate elements.

Baer had never heard of Seid but decided to introduce himself after he noticed the businessman’s donations to his group. Baer brought a copy of Chris Matthews’ memoir “Hardball” to an early meeting. He recalled that Seid kept the book in his office for many years afterward, taking inspiration not from an ideological perspective but as a useful primer on bare-knuckle politics.

Baer described Seid as “this quirky fellow who has a very good sense of humor and is very self-effacing.” But when he’s running his company, Baer added, “he can be terrifying to his subordinates. Not because he’s a bad person or a mean person, but because his mind works so whip-fast smart, you can be hit with a bunch of quick logic and questions, and you might be left stammering.”

According to Baer, Seid took great pains to monitor all aspects of Tripp Lite’s business. Seid would even go line by line through the company’s vast list of products, pen in hand, changing the prices of individual items. “He did not delegate that to anybody,” Baer said.

When it comes to ideology, Baer said the businessman was “a William F. Buckley, National Review, capital-C conservative but with a little tilt toward Cato Institute libertarianism.” Seid himself has referred to the “basic libertarianism” at the core of his politics, according to an email obtained by ProPublica and The Lever.

Even after he had become known in conservative circles as a major donor and an extremely wealthy man, he expressed intense aversion to attending political events.

“Barre would say, ‘I will pay you so I don’t have to go to your black-tie dinner,” Baer recalled. “He did not want to see and be seen. He was not that type of donor.”

Financing Climate Denial

Soon after the turn of the century, Seid began to take an intense interest in combating what he labeled “junk science,” according to Baer.

Baer, who worked as a contractor for Tripp Lite for several years, said Seid funded research and activism against the ban on the chemical insecticide DDT instituted by President Richard Nixon, which critics claimed had led to the death of millions because of the spread of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

Seid also became convinced that leading practitioners of climate science are wrong when they blame global warming on the carbon emissions of human beings. Baer said he had already introduced Seid to Joseph Bast, then the head of the Heartland Institute, which challenged the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Seid became “the major patron” of the organization, according to Baer.

Some donations by Seid to Heartland two decades ago were previously known, but the extent of his ties to the group have not been reported.

About a decade ago, Seid asked his close friend, Tripp Lite chief financial officer Chuck Lang, to join the Heartland Institute’s board of directors, Lang’s wife, Susan, said in an interview. Lang was elevated to chairman of the board shortly before he died in 2018.

“Barre Seid deserves his privacy, but I can say this: He is a very intelligent and generous man,” said Tim Huelskamp, a former U.S. representative from Kansas who served as the Heartland Institute’s president from 2017 to 2019.

The Heartland Institute did not respond to a request for comment.

Seid has also funded the State Policy Network, a group of influential state-level think tanks that push for deregulation and tax cuts, according to an email written by a friend of Seid’s. The head of the group once compared it to IKEA, The New Yorker reported, offering state think tanks a “catalogue” of successful projects, including opposing health care subsidies and imposing new voting restrictions. The network has also opposed efforts to expand Medicaid coverage.

A spokesperson for the State Policy Network declined to comment on the organization’s donors.

Seid, who was raised by Russian Jewish immigrants, has also been a donor to pro-Israel causes. A glimpse of those efforts came in 2010 when Bar-Ilan University in Israel awarded him an honorary degree, citing his “fervent commitment to setting forward a strong case for the State of Israel” and “support for programs which help develop the ability of Israel’s future leaders to persuasively communicate Israel’s positions and concerns.”

Bar-Ilan University also gave Seid’s wife, Barbara, an honorary degree the following year.

While Seid has long funded causes aligned with Republican orthodoxy, his company broke with the Trump administration over its trade war with China. Whether motivated by Seid’s deep libertarianism or simply Tripp Lite’s concern for its bottom line, the company sued the Trump administration in September 2020 after being hit with tariffs on electronic components it imported from China.

The sharply worded complaint attacked the administration for its “prosecution of an unprecedented, unbounded, and unlimited trade war impacting over $500 billion in imports from the People’s Republic of China.” Tripp Lite’s lawyer on the case, Ted Murphy of the firm Sidley Austin, declined to comment. The case is still pending.

At the time of the lawsuit, Seid’s business empire was in flux: He was working to convert his sole ownership of the company in Tripp Lite into what would be the biggest one-time political advocacy donation in U.S. history. He transferred the company to a dark money group created in April 2020 and run by conservative operative Leonard Leo, before it was sold for $1.6 billion in March 2021, as The Lever and ProPublica reported. The structure of the transaction allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes, according to tax experts.

Seid views himself as a libertarian, but he has entrusted his legacy to Leo, a staunch social conservative committed to curtailing reproductive rights. Leo, a longtime executive at the conservative legal group the Federalist Society, helped select five of the six Supreme Court justices who recently struck down federal protections for abortion rights.

Asked about Seid’s decision to give his business empire to Leo, Seid’s friend Baer explained that Seid, like the billionaire donor Charles Koch, understands the need to unite the conservative movement to change the direction of the country.

“A Full-Ride at Scalia Law”

As part of his long-term project, Seid has shown a particular interest in shaping colleges and universities.

Seid has funded Hillsdale College, a small Christian liberal arts school in Michigan, according to Susan Lang, the widow of Seid’s friend and Tripp Lite executive. Hillsdale is known both for its great books curriculum, which is centered on reading the classics of the Western canon, and also for being a feeder of staffers and ideas factory for the Trump administration.

He has forged a particularly close relationship with George Mason University, helping turn the school into an incubator for conservative legal scholars, lawyers and judges.

Activists have long suspected that Seid was the anonymous donor who gave $20 million in 2016 to rename GMU’s law school after the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The donation was brokered by Leo, the Federalist Society executive.

Six Supreme Court justices attended the renaming ceremony, and several have taught courses there in recent years, including Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

The new emails, obtained through a public records request by ProPublica and The Lever, appear to confirm that Seid made the donation. The then-dean of the law school, Henry Butler, emailed Seid in 2019 with a personal update “on progress that we made at Scalia Law since the naming gift,” explaining that it had inspired another, larger donation. “Thank you for your generous support,” Butler added. (Butler and a spokesperson for GMU did not respond to requests for comment.)

In response, Seid said he would “discuss this with Leonard shortly,” apparently a reference to Leonard Leo. He then asked the dean for a personal favor: helping his nephew get into law school.

“Separately, do you still have useful connections at Northwestern Law? I have Nepot with LSAT 167,” Seid wrote, using an archaic term for nephew.

“Happy to try to help at Northwestern. I have several good friends on the faculty at Northwestern,” Butler wrote, then added: “Please tell him that he has a full-ride at Scalia Law where he can take courses from Justices Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanagh [sic]. Onward and Upward!”

A February 2019 email exchange between businessman Barre Seid and Henry Butler, then the dean of the George Mason University law school. (Obtained by ProPublica)

At GMU’s law school, one of Seid’s longtime influences is Frank Buckley, a law professor and conservative columnist, and the two have a long-running breezy email correspondence. In August 2020, Seid wrote to Buckley: “You need to keep being a public intellectual for the U.S.”

This year, Buckley had to take a step back from the public realm, deleting his Twitter account after he referred to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as a “stupid Latina.” (Buckley later apologized, writing, “I regret that my foolish remarks have caused great sadness.”)

Buckley did not respond to a request for comment.

Buckley, who had written Donald Trump Jr.’s 2016 Republican convention speech, confided to Seid in an August 2020 email: “Btw just between us girls I’m writing Don Jr’s convention speech again.” That speech, delivered in the wake of the George Floyd protests, claimed: “Small businesses across America — many of them minority owned — are being torched by mobs.”

In a November 2021 email to Buckley and others, Seid expressed interest in the University of Austin, the education project started by former Times opinion writer Bari Weiss.

Seid wrote a stream-of-consciousness take comparing the new effort to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, and referencing his longtime interest in great books curricula.

“Not U of C, Not enough $$$, High profile names, President from great books,” Seid wrote. “Can it succeed, and make a difference???”

Do you have information about Barre Seid or Leonard Leo? You can reach Andy Kroll at andy.kroll@propublica.org, Justin Elliott at justin@propublica.org and Andrew Perez at aperez@levernews.com.

by Marilyn W. Thompson and Jenny Deam, research by Mollie Simon, illustrations by Kitra Cahana, special to ProPublica

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

Last spring, a year after COVID-19 had first ripped through the United States, Republican lawmakers in Montana doubled down.

They passed the nation’s most extreme anti-vaccination law. Not even nurses in a cancer ward could be required to get the shots.

Less than three months later, the delta wave slammed into Big Sky Country.

Inside one hospital just over a mile from the statehouse, doctors were forced to make the kinds of choices Americans had long feared.

This is a story about what can happen when politics trump public health.

Vicky Rae Byrd had a sinking feeling.

As she scrolled through her phone on election night, her pick for president — Joe Biden — seemed to have a slight edge. Byrd was too stressed to turn on the local news. Her husband sat down with her in their living room, and the couple settled on some sitcom.

Vicky Byrd

Montana had long voted Republican in presidential elections. But it had a Democratic governor for the past 16 years, and that was almost certain to end. Ending with it, Byrd feared, would be the state’s aggressive response to COVID-19.

Byrd, 58, with long silver hair, had been sounding early warnings as director of the Montana Nurses Association, which lobbies for the state’s 18,000 nurses, many of them unionized. She’d been a nurse herself for 33 years, most of them at St. Peter’s Health in Helena, working in pediatric cancer.

“Nurses are really good at foreseeing,” she recalled. “I’m like, shut down before it gets here! Then, one case gets here, and I’m like: ‘Shut down, hold down the state. Keep me safe.’”

By that fall, many voters were fed up with departing Gov. Steve Bullock’s mask mandate and stay-at-home order. Small businesses complained they were suffocating, Montana’s economy was struggling and efforts to control the virus were colliding head-on with the state’s deeply ingrained belief in personal freedom.

As election night wore on, Byrd kept sneaking glances at her phone. She saw votes piling up for the Republican candidate, multimillionaire businessman Greg Gianforte, who was running against Bullock’s lieutenant governor, Mike Cooney. A Donald Trump acolyte who’d gained national attention for pleading guilty to assaulting a reporter on the eve of his 2017 election to Congress, Gianforte had called for the speedy development of COVID-19 vaccines but answered few questions about how he’d fight what he called “this invisible enemy.” He had, however, made it clear he supported personal responsibility over mandates.

The governor’s office in the Montana Capitol

Days after a decisive victory, Gianforte appointed a 21-member panel to guide him on COVID-19. Determined to recharge the economy, his wide-ranging picks included a refinery executive, a local Best Western operator and the owner of a pizza restaurant and casino. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the federal Food and Drug Administration, added national gravitas.

Missing from the long list of names were any officials from the state public health agency who had been running the COVID-19 response. Among them was Jim Murphy, a veteran of almost 33 years at the state’s Department of Health and head of its communicable diseases division.

Under Bullock, Murphy had helped deliver daily COVID-19 updates. But in conference calls with the governor-elect’s office and the new coronavirus panel, he sensed “pretty much instantly” that public health was not the priority. The calls, Murphy remembered, “focused more on the perceived overresponse” to COVID-19.

(Gianforte declined requests for an interview, and his press secretary, Brooke Stroyke, said she wouldn’t respond to “biased, gotcha” questions about the governor’s actions, which she said have been “widely covered.”)

State epidemiologist Jim Murphy felt like he had to defend public health to the governor-elect’s COVID-19 task force.

One conference call turned tense when the head of the task force, a conservative former state senator named Kristin Hansen, questioned Murphy about the validity of state data on COVID-19 infections and deaths.

“Some of us spoke up to offer the public health side of the story,” Murphy recalled. “That wasn’t always well received.”

When Gianforte took office on Jan. 4, 2021, Montana had avoided the worst of the pandemic. About a thousand residents had died, slightly less per capita than the national average. And the state had just started rolling out vaccines under a plan worked out by Murphy and his team.

Almost immediately, Gianforte began rolling back COVID-19 restrictions. He won applause from businesses by lifting Bullock’s order restricting their hours. A month later, amid a lull in the state’s COVID-19 cases, he allowed an indoor mask mandate to expire; state medical officer Dr. Greg Holzman resigned the next day.

Gianforte got his first Pfizer shot the day he opened vaccines to all adults, weathering criticism from some far-right conservatives for calling the shots “safe and effective.” But even as Montana’s vaccination rate began to sputter, Gianforte again emphasized that getting vaccinated was a personal choice.

As Byrd watched Gianforte with concern, she and her small staff were also trying to track Montana’s GOP-controlled Legislature as it considered a flurry of public health measures. One that initially escaped her attention was introduced by a new legislator, Rep. Jennifer Carlson.

Carlson had pressed the Legislature even before COVID-19 to do away with vaccine mandates. The mother of five, who has a biomedical science degree, had given all of her kids the typical childhood vaccinations. But one child, she recalled, had suffered a severe reaction. Soon after she took office, Carlson introduced legislation that she said she got help drafting from the leader of a popular Facebook group, Montanans for Vaccine Choice.

Her legislation gave the unvaccinated standing as a “protected class,” making it illegal to discriminate against them. No employers could require vaccinations of any kind. The language covered all vaccines, including measles, mumps and other standard childhood vaccinations.

There were no exemptions for people working at hospitals.

A mobile vaccination site organized by St. Peter’s Health

The legislation worried Murphy. But he said that the governor’s office told him and other state health officials to stay out of the debate.

“We were told we had to be neutral,” Murphy recalled.

The bill caught fire, particularly after a hospital in Great Falls announced its plan to terminate unvaccinated employees. Gianforte, responding to complaints from alarmed hospitals and other health care providers, sent amendments back to the Legislature that he said “strengthened” the bill. It would at least allow hospitals to ask employees if they were vaccinated so they could make adjustments. But if unvaccinated staffers felt they were being discriminated against, they could sue.

The Old Supreme Court chamber in the Montana Capitol

The amended bill sailed through the GOP-heavy House and Senate in the session’s final days. Gianforte signed HB 702 into law on May 7, the same day he signed another bill restricting the authority of local public health agencies to impose COVID-19 restrictions.

Carlson told ProPublica she was quickly deluged with calls. Legislators in other states asked how she had pulled off a “miracle.” Other callers left messages saying she would be responsible for more deaths.

“Nobody wants to be called anti-vax. Nobody wants to be accused of killing grandma,” she said. “I honestly don’t think the government should be in charge of your lives.”

The Montana Medical Association and others sued in federal court, arguing that health care providers receiving federal funding are required to vaccinate their workers. Byrd’s group joined the suit. She noted in an affidavit that when St. Peter’s hired her, it required proof of vaccination “as a condition of employment.”

Byrd remembers thinking: “I don’t go to the governor’s office for my colonoscopy. Certainly you shouldn’t go to the governor’s office to have him lecture you on what immunizations you should or shouldn’t get.”

Mountains as seen from Helena, the state capital The Surge

By July, less than three months after Carlson’s bill became law, the delta variant began to spread across Montana.

Vaccine hesitancy remained high. Early in the pandemic, residents of the state capital, Helena, stopped at 8 p.m. to howl at the moon in a salute to health care workers. Now staffers faced verbal, even physical abuse, often over intake questions about vaccination status and wearing masks.

St. Peter’s posted a warning in the entryway “Aggressive Behavior Will Not be Tolerated.” Almost overnight, nurses “went from heroes to zeros,” Byrd said.

Gianforte warned that delta was highly contagious and urged citizens to protect themselves, but he again emphasized there would be no mandates.

St. Peter’s doctors and nurses signed a letter on Sept. 1 pleading with Montanans to get vaccinated. One of them was Charlotte Skinner, a nurse and a mother of two who works in the St. Peter’s emergency room and is an officer in the hospital’s nurses union. Earlier in the pandemic, Skinner had volunteered to appear at a press conference with Bullock, where she delivered an impassioned speech calling for an end to “partisan bickering” and urging the state to “embrace science.”

Afterward, a friend warned Skinner not to look at her Facebook messages. She peeked in to find “shocking stuff,” she recalled, including one commenter who “said he wanted to scalp me and my family.”

St. Peter’s

Vaccines remained a flashpoint even among staffers, about a quarter of whom declined to get one. Skinner said word spread quickly nationwide that Montana was a state where unvaccinated medical workers could work with legal protections. Perhaps unintentionally, she said, it became a “recruiting tool.”

By early September, COVID-19 hospitalizations were climbing quickly. Hospitals in Billings and Missoula warned they were overloaded. Non-COVID-19 patients were competing with COVID-19 patients for resources. The critical care units at St. Peter’s were at 100% capacity.

At St. Peter’s request, Gianforte sent National Guard troops to help, detailing 10 guard members to the 99-bed hospital. Among their tasks was helping exhausted nurses flip struggling COVID-19 patients onto their stomachs so they could breathe more easily. Staff scrambled to deliver ICU-level care in other units as beds dwindled.

By then, despite his state’s unfolding calamity, Gianforte had said on Twitter that Montana would take the vaccine fight national by challenging what he called Biden’s “unlawful and un-American” vaccine mandate.

St. Peter’s was so crowded that nurses had little time to spend with patients, even in the ICU. “Turn. Make sure the vents are on. Go on to the next person,” as Byrd described it.

To handle surges, Montana’s state health agency had revised its guidance on when a hospital should declare “crisis standards of care,” a designation that protects overwhelmed facilities from liability when they can no longer offer normal services and must consider rationing care.

A state official announced the directives on Sept. 15, saying he hoped hospitals would never have to use them.

One day later, St. Peter’s president and chief medical officer, Shelly Harkins, called a video press conference. The hospital was already meeting all of the criteria — long emergency room wait times, scarce equipment and medications, and no vacant beds, including in its eight-bed ICU.

Shelly Harkins, St. Peter’s president and chief medical officer

A former Air Force physician, Harkins joined the hospital in 2017 after running a health system in Indiana. Harkins had a light-hearted side. She had played keyboard in a band called Leather Moose. But now, Harkins delivered the blunt reality.

COVID-19 patients filled every available bed, and St. Peter’s was running out of medication to treat them. The hospital was splitting up doses of some medications between patients and using seven times its normal amount of propofol, a sedative that can help ease the agony of the terminally ill.

Harkins was invoking “crisis standards of care,” she said. She was clear about what patients and their families could expect to see. “We are giving our staff permission to not do it all. The hardest thing they will do in their careers is not giving the care they are used to giving, but they simply can’t.”

“JEEZ!” someone in the background exclaimed.

Crisis standards would impact not just COVID-19 patients but anyone needing care. Some decisions would require a kind of battlefield triage, applying standards that had been crafted by a national advisory board in 2009 after the H1N1, or swine flu, epidemic. The guiding principle would be to try to save the greatest number of lives. That could mean giving a scarce resource, like an ICU bed or a ventilator, to a person thought to be most likely to survive.

The prospect of rationing health care has long terrified Americans. Republicans used it as a pillar of an early fear-mongering campaign against President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, when Sarah Palin and then others falsely claimed the legislation would create “death panels.”

Harkins’ work in family medicine and palliative care had prepared her to be direct but reassuring. “We are still very much here to provide care to our community, and we are doing absolutely all we can to keep all services open,” she added during the announcement. “True emergencies will always receive priority.”

A nurse treating COVID-19 patients at St. Peter’s

But the strain on St. Peter’s staff of 1,700 was escalating. Instead of monitoring one or two desperately ill COVID-19 patients, nurses were caring for five or six.

Byrd’s association set up an email inbox for nurses to anonymously vent. “I no longer look forward to what impact I might make every shift. Instead, I steel myself to simply survive another day at the bedside without breaking down in front of the patients,” wrote one.

Harkins said that the hospital had more than 200 staff vacancies at the time. She told ProPublica the hospital was short of staff throughout.

When COVID-19 first began its march across America, the hospital had set up a 13-member Scarce Resources Committee to help doctors wrestle with tough decisions if things ever got bad. It included doctors, administrators and the hospital chaplain.

It was only called twice in nearly a year and a half. After delta hit, the committee convened six times in just over a month.

A COVID-19 patient is transferred from the ER to a private room at St. Peter’s The Call

Around lunchtime one day in the middle of October, Harkins got an urgent text from an emergency room doctor.

“I need help,” the doctor pleaded.

A COVID-19 patient with dangerously low oxygen levels had just arrived by ambulance. The woman was severely obese, which put her at high risk. “As soon as she hit the room, we knew if we don’t act rapidly she will be dead soon,” recalled the ER doctor, who later spoke with ProPublica on the condition of anonymity.

The doctor wanted to transfer the patient to the ICU. But the unit was full.

Harkins quickly convened a video meeting of the Scarce Resources Committee. As doctors began to weigh in, the committee realized the crisis ran deeper. There were an additional four critically ill patients in other parts of the hospital who also should be transferred to the ICU.

The math was brutal: Five patients and zero beds.

A nurse tends to a COVID-19 patient at St. Peter’s

The committee began the process spelled out by an allocation algorithm in Montana’s crisis standards of care guidelines. Factors like age and preexisting conditions were fair to consider, but vaccination status was not.

Harkins quarterbacked as the committee deliberated: How old? Other serious health conditions? How long in the hospital? What is the latest status?

One critically ill non-COVID-19 patient had a serious heart condition. “I feel the heart patient will not survive. How do you feel?” one doctor asked. Everyone agreed that the heart patient would not get an ICU bed and could be treated in another unit.

After about 20 minutes, the committee decided the woman in the emergency room had the most urgent need and should go to the ICU. They could make a bed available by moving a dying patient too ill to survive to another unit. But they had promised the patient’s family they would wait until everyone arrived to say their goodbyes before removing life support. One family member was not there yet. The hospital was running out of time.

Suddenly, a piercing code blue alarm sounded in the emergency room. “Wait a minute, guys,” an attending physician told the committee. “The patient is coding.”

Then, “the patient has died.”

The committee took a moment to absorb the news. Then it began deliberating again. The call lasted an hour. In the end, the terminal ICU patient’s family members were able to gather to say their goodbyes. When that bed was free, another patient discussed during the call was moved into the ICU but died a few days later.

Of the five patients who had been vying for a bed, four ultimately died.

“Under normal circumstances we would have moved all five into the ICU,” Harkins later told ProPublica. “But we just couldn’t.”

Hospital chaplain Kimberly Pepper, a member of the St. Peter’s Scarce Resources Committee

Being forced to make such profound decisions changed Harkins and others on the call.

Kimberly Pepper, the hospital chaplain who served on the committee, described seeking solace in the “thin places,” a Celtic belief that there are spots where the distance between heaven and Earth is at its slimmest. Hers was in the Montana mountains. She noticed her hikes had become longer and longer.

Harkins said hospital staff had found their “cry spots” to deal with the anguish. Hers was in an empty office.

“The human psyche,” she said, ”was not built for this.”

St. Peter’s The Patients

The virus was forcing cracks in the hospital’s usual care.

Nurses at St. Peter’s had to bathe patients and clean rooms to make up for the large number of nursing assistants who had quit. Kari Koehler, who was serving as the acting chief of nursing during the surge, told ProPublica that the exodus had left the hospital with two assistants per shift instead of the desired 10.

Donna Burrell, a 66-year-old grandmother and former Little League president who worked as a clerk for the Helena school district, arrived at St. Peter’s emergency room in early September with COVID-19-related respiratory failure. A doctor called her daughter, Kima Rosling, to explain that ICU space was unavailable and “may be limited elsewhere throughout the state,” according to medical records.

For Rosling, the next days were chaotic. Burrell was transferred to the ICU when her oxygen levels dropped, then transferred back to a step-down unit.

A doctor prescribed a medicine to control Burrell’s high blood sugar, which can lead to stroke, heart attacks or kidney failure. But a doctor’s note in her file said the order “did not go through” at first and the condition escalated.

Burrell was also having trouble keeping on her oxygen mask. A doctor noted in her records that he told her family “we are in no position to ensure that she keeps it on 24 hours a day.” The medical team told the family it would have to step in to help.

Burrell kept asking doctors when she could go home, and the family discussed transferring her to a rehab facility. But her condition took a sudden turn. Burrell told her daughter and husband that she fell and hit her head during the night while trying to walk to the bathroom.

There was no notation of a fall in Burrell’s record, and Rosling said she complained to a head nurse. Nursing notes show that Burrell was placed on a bedpan.

Burrell’s oxygen levels declined and soon she was back in the ICU, her organs failing. Rosling knew her mother wanted to fight to stay alive and gave doctors permission to intubate her.

But Burrell died at 6:24 a.m. on Oct. 7, after a month of treatment.

First image: Kima Rosling holds a photo of her and her mother at a football game. Second image: Rosling lights a candle to commemorate her mother.

Rosling said she realizes that her mother came into St. Peter’s at a terrible time, but she believes her care was lacking and that the medical team should have treated the fall more seriously. Rosling said tracking her mother’s care was a “day-to-day war.”

St. Peter’s administration declined to comment on treatment of individual patients, citing privacy laws. But the hospital said that even amid the chaos, it offered quality care to all patients.

Family members of other patients told ProPublica that it was clear the hospital was under stress. Alarms seemed to be beeping endlessly and medical staff were visibly fatigued. Doctors sometimes told them that drugs and beds were in short supply. The chaos, the family members said, only heightened the anxiety of having a loved one in the hospital and, in some cases, their grief.

St. Peter’s

Jodi Raue said her concern over her 84-year-old mother’s swift decline after a serious fall was made worse by a lack of communication with doctors about their decision to move her mother out of the ICU. While her mother had a do not resuscitate order signed several years earlier, Raue remains upset that her mom’s last days were not more orderly and peaceful.

“I don’t know why they didn’t tell me,” Raue said. “It wouldn’t have changed anything for my mom, but it would have been transparent.”

Harkins said in a statement earlier this year that the hospital tried to keep families in the loop about treatment decisions, but it depended on individual circumstance and situation, especially during the crisis.

“We are confident,” Harkins wrote, “that our actions helped us focus on the most important task at hand: saving lives.”

Helena The Politics

As overwhelmed doctors and nurses struggled to keep their patients alive, Montana’s red state politics pushed their way into the hospital.

On Oct. 10, St. Peter’s admitted 81-year-old Shirley Herrin, an iconic figure in state GOP politics who had supervised secretaries for Republicans in the Montana Senate. St. Peter’s was treating her for COVID-19, but Herrin’s daughter, Susan Williams, objected to the treatment.

Williams wanted her mother sent home where she could take ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, drugs then widely promoted as possible treatments by right-wing media and President Donald Trump. She accused St. Peter’s of declining to discharge her mother and of blocking the paperwork needed to give her medical power of attorney. (The hospital later denied this.)

St. Peter’s refused to prescribe the unproven drugs. But Herrin’s daughter wouldn’t back down.

Williams said she and an aunt got ivermectin tablets, typically used to treat parasites, from an outside physician and dissolved them into a frozen drink — a “Frostie.” A nurse delivered the concoction, not knowing it was spiked, to Herrin’s bedside for five days before discovering it.

Later, after Williams confronted staff about moving her mother to another room without explanation, a doctor called hospital security. Williams was asked to leave the building and retreated to the parking lot, where she called a top official in the Montana attorney general’s office, Kristin Hansen.

Hansen was the same politician who had been head of Gianforte’s COVID-19 task force and questioned the state’s statistics. She jumped into action.

Hansen dispatched a Montana Highway Patrol trooper to the hospital, according to a later state report, and the trooper interviewed Williams. Hansen also called a friend near Herrin’s bedside. The friend put the call on speaker and hospital staff heard Hansen warning that St. Peter’s could face “legal ramifications.” More pressure came from a former Republican state senator, who called the hospital to complain about Herrin’s treatment.

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The attorney general himself, Austin Knudsen, contacted a hospital lobbyist to set up a phone call with St. Peter’s CEO and other top administrators. He texted a hospital board member that he was ready “to send law enforcement in and file an unlawful restraint charge.”

From her hospital bed, Herrin wrote to her doctor asking that Williams be allowed to give emotional comfort. In Herrin’s final hours, her daughter said she rubbed her feet with an ivermectin salve. Herrin died Oct. 26.

After the attorney general’s actions were reported by the Montana State News Bureau, Knudsen’s press secretary issued a statement defending his office. Knudsen told a local reporter the notion that his office had abused its authority was “absolute, utter nonsense.”

A spokesperson from the attorney general’s office told ProPublica a state report “made it clear” that neither Knudsen nor Hansen threatened anyone.

The hospital said in a statement to ProPublica: “These officials have no medical training or experience, yet they were insisting our providers give treatment for COVID-19 that are not authorized, clinically approved, or within the guidelines established by the FDA and the CDC. In addition, they threatened to use their position of power to force our doctors and nurses to provide this care.” (Read the full statement).

It’s not clear what became of the attorney general’s inquiry into St. Peter’s, but the spokesperson said Williams’ complaint about St. Peter’s “is still under review.” Hansen asked an investigator from the fraud division to look into the matter. Williams also said she met with Knudsen in his office in late April. The county sheriff authorized an autopsy of Herrin.

Williams, who gained local attention with a talk radio interview on her mother’s case, insists that St. Peter’s withheld lifesaving treatment — and tried to push her to expensive therapies. She told ProPublica she still blames the hospital for her mother’s death.

Shirley Herrin’s grave in Helena The Lessons

What happened at St. Peter’s fits a broader national pattern that researchers are only beginning to understand as the virus continues to mutate and spread. Americans have died not simply from COVID-19 but also potentially from gaps in care that the pandemic caused.

One study last year found as many as 1 in 4 COVID-19 deaths early in the pandemic may have been due to strained hospital resources rather than the infection itself. One of the study’s authors, National Institutes of Health clinician and researcher Dr. Sameer S. Kadri, noted at the time it was a “truly humbling statistic.”

Kadri told ProPublica recently that, on reflection, the study’s shocking finding is “probably an underestimate.” Avoidable deaths also may have included people hospitalized for other problems, like heart attacks and trauma.

A study from this year found particularly higher mortality rates among those treated in rural hospitals, smaller hospitals and hospitals not affiliated with medical schools.

Experts say part of that can be attributed to overstretched staff and not enough medical resources to go around. “We’ve had increased mortality because of microdecisions,” said Dr. David Scales, a sociologist and practicing physician at Weill Cornell in New York.

A nurse at St. Peter’s preparing to enter a COVID-19 patient’s room

A hospital can often guard against risks because it has many layers of defense, arranged “like Swiss cheese,” said Scales, who studies patient safety. But “sometimes the holes line up” and accidents occur. “If you are admitted to the hospital while it’s overwhelmed, you’re at higher risk.”

Hospitals can lower that risk. The Cambridge Health Alliance, which runs two hospitals north of Boston, has won attention for its proactive approach to handling its own COVID-19 surge in the spring of 2020. It moved rapidly to set up a coordinating COVID-19 Incident Command System, expanded its ICU beds into other hospital wards and redeployed large numbers of staffers.

Dr. Maren Batalden, the hospitals’ chief quality officer, said Republican Gov. Charlie Baker backed them up by issuing an order suspending nonessential services. Later, when vaccines became available, Baker issued an order mandating them — with religious and health exemptions — for all state executive department employees and nursing home staff.

“We had the opposite of anti-vaccination. We had vaccine mandates,” Batalden said.

COVID-19 is a common enemy, but it has struck a divided nation. “Ideally, we would have bound ourselves together to protect ourselves and one another,” Batalden said. “Instead, in many places, the virus illuminated and heightened our divisions, exposing the fact that our lack of social cohesion makes us collectively vulnerable.”

A growing body of research shows that death rates were significantly higher in red states like Montana because of lower vaccination rates.

William Hanage, an epidemiologist and researcher at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, said that “political lean” has emerged as one of the best indicators for COVID-19 death rates — as much as obesity or advanced age.

“Viruses don’t care how you vote,” he said. “If you allow lots of people to become infected at once, it will crash health care.”

One recent study by the Brown University School of Public Health and others estimated that 1,464 Montana COVID-19 deaths — about 1 in 3 — could have been prevented if every eligible adult had been vaccinated.

“Montana is a very good example of a state that has seen consistent undervaccination, and as a result every third life could have been saved,” said the study’s co-author Stefanie Friedhoff, associate professor of health services, policy and practice at the Brown University School of Public Health.

Harkins, the St. Peter’s chief medical officer, is a lifelong Republican. She calls herself “MAGAfan” on Instagram. But she has seen divisions in her own family over the need for vaccines. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking. “It didn’t have to be like this,” she said. “Conservatives are on the wrong side of this.”

Jim Murphy, a former top public health official in Montana, at home The Aftermath

The surge at St. Peter’s hospital has long since receded. But a residue of distrust remains. Some families say they have not fully recovered and blame the hospital for substandard care. There is no evidence that medical care at St. Peter’s was any worse than at any other hospital hit by the delta surge, and data about patient care is still unavailable.

“In retrospect, there is no denying that it was an unprecedented time, the hardest most of us have seen in our careers,” said Harkins in a recent emailed statement in response to questions from ProPublica. “But we cannot understate how our caregivers’ response, sacrifice, and willingness to share their time and talents saved many local lives.”

Meanwhile, Gianforte and his attorney general, Knudsen, have continued fighting the Biden administration’s vaccine policies. Gianforte sent a letter to unvaccinated health care workers in February encouraging them to consider using religious exemptions from vaccine requirements.

Murphy left his state health department job in June 2021 and charged later that Gianforte’s office had nixed an outreach campaign to get teenagers vaccinated. Murphy and other health officials and experts launched a private effort to promote student vaccinations.

“I’m a little frustrated and a little discouraged by what I see in some of our political leadership,” Murphy said. “They’re patronizing people because it’s necessary to get their votes, instead of taking the time and educating the population about why we need to do some of the things we need to do.”

The Montana Capitol at night

Bullock, who lost his 2020 bid for a U.S. Senate seat and now serves as court-appointed monitor over Purdue Pharma, still remembers the days when as governor, he knew the location of every available ventilator in the state, the daily death toll and the number of infections. He talked weekly to anxious governors from both political parties who, despite different leadership styles, were equally desperate for solutions.

He recently watched his parents recover from COVID-19 and knows that the virus is not over. The challenge, he said, is to minimize politics. “Do the best you can, informed by science advisers, and whether you like it or not, that’s what you signed up for,” he said of a governor’s role.

An ongoing federal court case will decide whether unvaccinated Montana health care workers are protected from federal mandates if they work at facilities funded by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Byrd, who just recovered from a mild second bout with COVID-19, and other plaintiffs won a small victory in March when a federal judge enjoined a key provision of Montana’s anti-vaccination law, saying it could do “irreparable harm” to physician’s and provider’s offices.

Vicky Byrd

In a pointed Facebook message, one state lawmaker warned Byrd’s association to drop the lawsuit and “don’t mess with the will of the legislature.”

In June, the head of Montana’s state health agency stepped down, and Gianforte replaced him with a former lobbyist and Republican congressional staffer.

Montana’s vaccination rate remains well below the national average. In the latest CDC data, just under 58% of residents are fully vaccinated, ranking 39th in the nation.

About the Reporting

ProPublica interviewed administrators and staff at St. Peter’s hospital, families of patients who died there, former Montana state officials, current lawmakers, public health experts, medical ethicists, and researchers over the course of 10 months. We also reviewed state documents, research reports, medical records, death reports and 911 call records. St. Peter’s granted interviews in October and November 2021 and issued emailed statements in recent months. Decisions by the hospital’s Scarce Resources Committee were traumatic, some of whom recounted the difficulty in interviews with ProPublica. Citing patient confidentiality, they declined to name the patients involved or the ultimate outcome of their cases. ProPublica pieced together some of the details through death records and interviews. Photographer Kitra Cahana spent a week documenting COVID-19 patient care at St. Peter’s in November 2021 and returned to Helena in July of this year. The resulting photo illustrations are composites of multiple documentary photographs.

We Want to Talk to People Working, Living and Grieving on the Front Lines of the Coronavirus. Help Us Report.

Chris Hendel contributed research. J. David McSwane and Sam Wilson contributed reporting.

Art direction and visual editing by Andrea Wise and Lisa Larson-Walker. Design and development by Lena V. Groeger and Andrea Wise.

by Molly Parker, Lee Enterprises Midwest, and Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News Illinois

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Lee Enterprises, along with Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Over a year ago, the security chief at Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in southern Illinois sent an email to the head of the state agency that operates the facility, warning her of dangerous conditions inside.

“What I am presently seeing occur at Choate and hearing occur at other facilities concerns me more than it has my entire career,” Barry Smoot, a decades-long IDHS employee, wrote to Illinois Department of Human Services Secretary Grace Hou on May 26, 2021. Among the recommendations he wanted to make: that cameras be installed inside the facility.

Hou responded that same day, agreeing to meet.

But no meeting took place. Instead, Hou suggested Smoot start by sharing his concerns with her chief of staff, Ryan Croke, and the director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities, Allison Stark, according to records of the exchange. But those meetings never happened, either. (Stark left the agency in July.)

An excerpt from Smoot’s email (Obtained by Capitol News Illinois and Lee Enterprises Midwest)

It would take more than a year, and some high-profile arrests related to abuse at the facility, before the agency unveiled a plan to address poor conditions at Choate. This June, Hou sent a letter addressed to “stakeholders” in which she publicly acknowledged safety concerns at Choate for the first time. The agency, she said, would be rolling out a series of reforms in response to “serious allegations about resident abuse and neglect” at the facility located at the edge of the small town of Anna.

The reform plan, she wrote, includes hiring four additional security officers, installing 10 surveillance cameras on the facility grounds, having staff undergo new training and increasing the presence of senior IDHS officials inside the residential units. Her letter referenced safety issues that arose “in the last year” but offered no other specifics.

Illinois Department of Human Services Secretary Grace Hou (Jerry Nowicki/Capitol News Illinois)

At least 26 Choate employees have been arrested on felony charges over the past decade, according to reporting published today by Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises and ProPublica. Of those, the local state’s attorney has filed charges against more than a dozen, including three administrators, since 2019, when Hou was appointed IDHS secretary by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. (Charges have been dropped against two of the administrators charged with official misconduct and obstruction of justice.)

Marisa Kollias, a spokesperson for the agency, said the facility is working expediently to implement these reforms, but she cautioned that it will take time to implement all aspects of the plan. Senior IDHS officials told reporters in an interview last week that the enhanced training and monitoring have been underway for months and, to date, the department has hired one of the four new security officers. The department ordered the cameras this summer, but they are on backorder and no date has been set for installation, the department officials said.

In a statement, Kollias said that the agency determined, “based on information gathered” after the secretary’s initial response to Smoot, “that it was inadvisable for IDHS management staff to communicate with him any further.” The department did not provide further details.

Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica) Camera Controversy

Smoot was not the first to raise alarms. The inspector general’s office at IDHS has repeatedly cited the facility for failing to adhere to rules regarding reporting and investigating abuse and neglect allegations.

IDHS’ inspector general recommended the installation of cameras in the course of 21 investigations into abuse and neglect allegations at Choate between fiscal years 2015 and 2021, according to a review of internal records by the news organizations. Each time, Choate officials responded to the inspector general that it was “not an option due to budget concerns.”

This summer, advocates and insiders praised Hou’s announcement that IDHS would finally install cameras.

But in response to reporters’ questions, Kollias, the agency spokesperson, clarified that the cameras would go outside the facility.

One former investigator with the inspector general’s office, when told of the plan to put cameras outside, called it “a waste of money and time.” Almost all abuse and neglect allegations stem from incidents that occur inside.

“This is all being done for show,” said former Office of the Inspector General Supervisor and Choate Unit Director Charles Bingaman, who retired from IDHS in 2013. “I predict that it will have no real impact on patient safety.”

Senior IDHS officials acknowledged to reporters in an interview last week that the inspector general had previously recommended interior cameras.

But placing cameras in interior common areas on a residential unit requires the consent of every resident who lives in that unit, or their guardian, per guidelines from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which partially funds Choate. Placing them outside does not require consent.

Kollias said that officials met virtually this month with organizations led by parents of residents in IDHS’ developmental centers, including Choate, who informed the agency they do not want cameras inside the facilities.

The Office of State Guardian— which handles the personal, financial and legal affairs of people who require a guardian because they are developmentally disabled, elderly or mentally ill — represents 22 patients at Choate. An office spokesperson said the department did not object to cameras inside the facility and continues to have conversations with IDHS regarding their installation. A senior IDHS official, who spoke to reporters on condition that her name not be used, said that the installation of cameras outside Choate is a “pilot program” to try to help with the issue of residents leaving the facility without authorization and improve security on facility grounds.

A Long History of Problems

States across the nation have closed dozens of large facilities like Choate in the past 20 years, following a 1999 U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled it is unconstitutional to segregate people with disabilities from the rest of society. But Illinois has been a holdout. It houses more people with developmental disabilities in large institutions, and spends more to operate those institutions relative to statewide personal income, than almost every other state in the nation, according to a review of data compiled by researchers with the University of Kansas.

For years, the state has also failed to intervene when serious abuse patterns are found inside its institutions. Since the late 1990s, state and federal overseers have told Choate to do more to protect and serve its residents.

In 1992, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of Illinois on behalf of patients, alleging that poor conditions at state-run psychiatric hospitals violated patients’ rights to safety and medical care. Five years later, a report commissioned by the ACLU found that Choate had a culture of staff intimidating and abusing patients. In one case, a patient who had a colostomy as the result of a gang rape was repeatedly punished by staff for urinary and fecal incontinence, according to the report. That same year, the parties settled the case with the state of Illinois, which agreed to enhance staffing and training.

In 2005, after two patients died from neglect at Choate, Equip for Equality, a federally designated legal advocacy organization for people with disabilities, found numerous unsafe conditions and poor treatment of residents. The advocacy group — which had been appointed by the state to monitor conditions at the facility — cited issues such as the way Choate staff used restraints to control residents, tactics that Equip for Equality called “extraordinarily excessive” and said were in violation of state and federal law. In its report, the organization called Choate’s practices “archaic.”

In response to Equip for Equality’s findings, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division launched an investigation and warned the state in 2009 that the Choate staff’s failures to help residents successfully transfer out of the facility into community living arrangements violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. The facility had further failed to protect them from harm and provide adequate health and psychiatric care, the DOJ found.

Excerpt from a DOJ report about Choate issued in 2009 (Department of Justice document)

Stacey Aschemann, a vice president with Equip for Equality, expressed disappointment that so little has changed since her organization’s and the Department of Justice’s investigations.

Equip for Equality began once again monitoring conditions inside Choate in early 2021. Those monitoring activities included stationing employees inside the facility; interviewing staff, residents and their guardians; and reviewing records.

Based on that monitoring, Aschemann said, the abuse and neglect of residents by staff continues to be a “serious concern.” Equip for Equality will continue to monitor the facility to determine whether the changes Hou announced in mid-June adequately address the safety and quality concerns raised by the organization, Aschemann said.

Smoot said leadership’s slow response to the serious issue he encountered left him deeply troubled. But it was not the first time he had sought to bring problems within IDHS to the attention of senior leadership.

Prior to his role at Choate, Smoot worked as an investigator for the IDHS inspector general, probing allegations of abuse and neglect of disabled adults who lived in their homes.

After leaving the OIG, Smoot worked security at IDHS facilities, ending his career at Choate.

Earlier this year, he self-published a book, “Failure to Protect,” outlining many of his concerns about the inspector general office’s weak oversight authority and how he felt the agency had failed the residents at state-run facilities like Choate.

In December, on the last day of his 20-year career with IDHS, he sent Hou an email to let her know that no one had followed up with him.

This time, there wasn’t a response, according to records of the email exchange obtained by reporters. Smoot said he wasn’t expecting one, but he hoped someone would heed his warning and take his advice. “Without any time left, it was a Hail Mary pass,” Smoot said in an interview.

Alex Mierjeski and Gabriel Sandoval contributed research.

by Beth Hundsdorfer, Capitol News Illinois, and Molly Parker, Lee Enterprises Midwest

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Lee Enterprises, along with Capitol News Illinois. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

As Blaine Reichard rose from a breakfast table at the Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in southern Illinois, a worker ordered him to pull up his sagging pants.

A 24-year-old man with developmental disabilities, Reichard was accustomed to workers at the state-run residential facility telling him what to do. But this time he didn’t obey.

“I’m a gangsta! This is how we do it where I am from!” responded Reichard, who, despite his street-tough defiance, still slept with a teddy bear.

Investigators who later came to the scene of the 2014 incident heard various versions of what happened next. But multiple witnesses told the Illinois State Police that shortly after this exchange, Reichard was taken to the floor, held down by four mental health techs and repeatedly punched in the face, according to a 700-page state police investigation obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Reichard cursed and spat, trying to fight back. His resistance was met with more blows, according to witness accounts. Reichard, whose diagnoses include autism, would later tell police it felt like he was hit 100 times.

Multiple employees, including a doctor, told investigators that Reichard’s injuries were the worst they’d ever seen. One tech told police she vomited at the sight of his injured face.

Located about 120 miles southeast of St. Louis, Choate serves people with the most profound disabilities in the state. In 2009, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division had cited Choate for failing to protect residents from physical and psychological abuse and other harm. The federal agency stopped short of suing the state of Illinois — a step it has taken against other states — and closed its investigation in 2013, saying in a report to Congress that Illinois officials had made adequate improvements.

The Reichard beating happened the next year, just before Christmas. While it is one of the most egregious examples of abuse of a Choate resident in a decade, a monthslong investigation by Capitol News Illinois, Lee Enterprises and ProPublica has found that the incident is one of many instances of mistreatment at the rural facility managed by the Illinois Department of Human Services.

Reporters from this team filed more than 50 public records requests, reviewing thousands of pages of internal documents from IDHS and its inspector general; the Illinois State Police; officials in Union County, where the facility is located; and other entities.

The documents and interviews with current and former employees and advocates, and with residents and their guardians, revealed a systemic pattern of patient abuse, neglect, humiliation and exploitation.

Over a 10-year period running through 2021, the state police opened at least 40 criminal investigations into alleged employee misconduct at Choate, more than at any of IDHS’ other facilities in Southern Illinois.

Using court records and Illinois State Police case files, reporters found that at least 26 Choate employees were arrested on felony charges over roughly the same time period, including four who were connected to the Reichard case. Employees have since been accused of whipping, choking, punching and raping residents.

Among the more recent arrestees are four employees who were accused of choking and beating another Choate patient in 2020, leading to felony battery charges. Two have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor battery charges in exchange for probation sentences and two cases are still pending.

In 2020, an employee was charged with felony battery, for allegedly taking off his belt and using it to repeatedly whip a resident. Then, earlier this year, an employee was charged with criminal sexual assault of an intellectually disabled person who lived at the facility. And in another 2022 case, an employee was charged for allegedly grabbing a nonverbal patient with the mental capacity of a 15-month-old by the neck and punching him in the back of the head as a security officer watched, according to court records. These three cases are still pending.

Over the years, advocates have called for the facility to be closed. “It’s a purely political decision to keep Choate open,” said civil rights attorney Thomas Kennedy, who has provided legal services to Choate patients on and off for decades. “It’s not about helping people. It’s not about habilitating or rehabilitating people. It’s about keeping jobs in the community. Period. They have failed miserably at any other mission.”

Choate Mental Health and Developmental Center in rural Anna, Illinois, was built more than 150 years ago. (Whitney Curtis for ProPublica)

In a statement to reporters, IDHS spokesperson Marisa Kollias acknowledged the seriousness of the concerns at Choate. She said that the problems are the “result of longstanding, entrenched issues dating back decades” and that the agency has “taken aggressive measures over the past several years to unravel them.” That includes increasing staffing and training and appointing Equip for Equality, an independent legal advocacy organization, to monitor conditions inside the facility, just as IDHS did in response to troubling conditions there nearly 20 years ago.

A spokesperson for the Justice Department provided the news organizations with the congressional report announcing its official exit from Choate, which included a commitment to continuing to monitor conditions there. She declined to answer additional questions.

Strapped to His Bed for Hours

As the beating of Reichard continued, one of the employees shouted for restraints. Reichard was dragged to his room and bound to his bed with black nylon straps around his ankles, wrists and chest.

An IDHS record included in the police report showed that for almost two hours, mental health tech Mark Allen sat just an arm’s length away from Reichard. Allen had been accused of harming residents on seven previous occasions since he started his employment at Choate in 2011 — and had been cleared to return to work each time.

Blaine Reichard with his dog, Frankie. (Courtesy of Amanda McIntosh, Reichard’s mother)

Colleagues would later tell Illinois State Police investigators that Allen was volatile and moody. He told them he was an Iraq War veteran diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

A fellow resident who walked by the room told police that he saw Allen continue to pummel Reichard’s face even after Reichard was strapped down on his bed. The crime scene photos show blood splattered on the floor and walls of his bedroom.

Allen threatened Reichard with death if he reported that employees had beat him up; made fun of him for not having a girlfriend; and punched him again in the jaw, nose and eyes, Reichard told state police in an interview.

While Reichard was still restrained, Allen sent a text message to a colleague. The text, later obtained by police, read, “we just got done strappin Blaine in… I f***** his world up this morning.” “U guys always do lol…,” she responded.

An image of Reichard’s bed that was included in the police report. Closer images show blood splatter on the floor and the wall. (Illinois State Police report obtained by Capitol News Illinois and Lee Enterprises Midwest)

Fifteen months passed before anyone was arrested. In March 2016, Allen was charged with three felony counts of aggravated battery and intimidation. In October 2016, charges were filed against three other Choate employees, Curt Ellis, Justin Butler and Eric Bittle, who were all accused of helping Allen conceal the abuse and lying to the police.

Within a month of being charged, court records showed Ellis cut a deal, agreeing to plead guilty in exchange for a misdemeanor conviction for failing to report the matter to authorities. Bittle and Butler followed suit within three months.

Nearly seven years to the day after Reichard’s assault, Allen pleaded guilty to a felony, but not for beating Reichard. He pleaded guilty to felony obstruction for destroying evidence by throwing away the bloody towel he’d used to mop up Reichard’s blood. He was sentenced to two years of probation.

Until now, the Reichard case has never been covered in the press. It also did not serve as a deterrent to the alleged mistreatment of residents by employees at Choate.

“The Perfect Victim”

People from across Illinois come to live at the 270-bed facility on the outskirts of the small town of Anna, Illinois. It serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental illnesses or a combination of disorders. Patients can enter voluntarily or be placed there by a guardian, or a judge may order them to Choate for treatment after finding they’re at risk of harming themselves or others. Many end up living at Choate for years.

Nearly 15% of Choate residents with developmental disabilities have diagnoses in the severe or profound range; about 10% are nonverbal.

“In essence, many of these individuals can be ‘the perfect victim’ for a crime because it is easy to cast doubt on someone who has mental challenges or can’t give a statement due to their mental health status,” said Tyler Tripp, the state’s attorney in Union County.

Choate houses the state’s only forensic unit for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities who have been accused of a crime and found either unfit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity. That’s the unit where Reichard, who had been arrested for attacks on his family, police and medical personnel, initially lived; he was moved to the less restrictive “step-down” unit in 2014. Though Choate includes a small psychiatric unit, a review of records shows that most of the alleged mistreatment has involved patients with developmental and intellectual disabilities.

Records from the IDHS inspector general’s office — the internal watchdog charged with investigating wrongdoing at the state’s facilities — show the office investigated more than 1,500 reports to its hotline that alleged patient abuse or neglect by employees at Choate over a 10-year period ending in 2021. That’s more than any of the 12 other facilities operated by IDHS, some of which have more patients than Choate. Those reports include roughly 800 claims of physical abuse, 100 of sexual abuse and 600 of mental abuse, financial exploitation or neglect.

Internal investigators found about 5% of the cases to be substantiated, roughly in line with the statewide substantiation rate. But advocates acknowledge that while residents of the state’s facilities sometimes file false reports, Choate in particular has faced repeated criticisms from the inspector general, prosecutors and state police for interfering in their investigations into alleged wrongdoing.

The number of abuse and neglect allegations from Choate reported annually to the agency’s inspector general has been steadily climbing for a decade. There were more than 200 reports in fiscal year 2021, the latest period for which data was available. That was more than double the number from fiscal year 2012.

In addition to the charges of violence, Choate employees have been the subject of hundreds of other allegations, according to reports from IDHS’ Office of the Inspector General and Union County court files. Among the substantiated allegations are instances when staff tortured and humiliated patients, including one who was marched naked in front of peers as punishment for taking too long in the shower, and another who was forced to drink an entire cup of hot sauce.

The substantiated allegations also include incidents of employees using racial and homophobic slurs, sending sexually inappropriate text messages to a patient, and bribing residents with treats to give the employees foot and shoulder massages, according to OIG reports.

In OIG cases brought between fiscal years 2015 and 2022, employees have also been accused of various forms of neglect, including sleeping on the job and failing on multiple occasions to protect clients with pica, a dangerous disorder that causes people to ingest inedible objects.

In one case, a patient was rushed to a hospital after swallowing a razor blade; while there, under the care of a Choate employee, the patient removed two batteries from a heart monitor and swallowed them. Hospital staff reported that the employee’s feet were propped up, his headphones were on and he was playing on his cellphone.

Kollias, the IDHS spokesperson, said the agency is concerned about the volume of reports of abuse and neglect at Choate, but added that the high number of allegations could also be a sign that staff and residents report potential misconduct at a higher rate than people at its other facilities.

Delayed Consequences

For approximately 48 hours, there was no call to a doctor to treat Reichard’s injuries. There was no call to the OIG hotline to report the abuse, a call that the law dictates must be made within four hours of the discovery of an incident. At least three shifts of workers came and went without raising an alarm, the police report showed.

When security arrived on the unit Monday morning to follow up on an anonymous report, Reichard, his face bruised and swollen, greeted the officer with outstretched arms and said, “Look what they did to me,” according to an employee who was on the unit that day but who is not authorized to speak publicly.

Blaine Reichard’s initial statement, which was given to a Choate security officer, is included in the Illinois State Police investigation file. (Illinois State Police document obtained by Capitol News Illinois and Lee Enterprises Midwest)

In an interview with a reporter, Allen acknowledged that Reichard had been assaulted but maintained he was not the one who did it. He declined to answer further questions. Butler did not respond to calls placed to a phone number provided by a family member, or to messages sent through Facebook. Reporters sent messages to Ellis and Bittle through Facebook and through a union representative seeking comment; the union representative said both men had been made aware of the story and had been provided with contact information for a reporter, though they did not respond.

While the four men were initially charged with felonies, no one was ultimately held criminally responsible for the beating.

The news organizations’ investigation found that this was not the only incident in which consequences were delayed or minimized. The investigation found that employees who abuse residents or engage in other misconduct face few serious consequences. IDHS does not track employee arrests at its mental health and developmental centers.

Court records show that 22 other employees have faced felony charges since the four arrests in the Reichard case. Of those, 11 pleaded guilty in exchange for their charges being reduced to misdemeanors or were sentenced to probation in lieu of charges, seven have cases pending, and four had cases dismissed.

None of those charged have served prison time.

Allen holds the distinction of being the only employee at Choate convicted of a felony related to patient maltreatment in at least a decade.

Yet neither he nor the other three Choate employees convicted in the Reichard case have been fired. Ellis and Butler were almost immediately placed on leave, as was Bittle when the charges were filed. After pleading guilty, the three returned to work at Choate, mowing lawns, cooking or doing laundry. About three years ago, their status returned to administrative leave. They no longer do any work at Choate, but they still receive a state paycheck today. Since the incident, taxpayers have paid the trio more than $1 million combined. Their annual salaries range between $50,000 and $54,000, IDHS records show.

The three are also receiving their scheduled raises, health insurance benefits, vacation time and service credit toward their pensions. Per their plea deals, their court fees amounted to $807 each, $350 of which was a fine.

John “Mike” Dickerson, the unit supervisor on duty the day of the assault, participated in restraining Reichard, according to police records. Though he was not charged in the Reichard beating, Dickerson was reassigned to mow grass at the facility two years later, records show.

Between when the incident occurred in 2014 and when he retired in December 2017, he received $168,000 in salary, plus insurance and credit toward his pension. He receives $39,000 a year in state pension benefits. Dickerson, reached at home, declined to comment.

IDHS senior officials told reporters in an interview that Allen’s coworkers and supervisor were outliers in terms of the amount of time they spent on paid administrative leave. But agency records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act show 26 Choate employees were on paid leave as of the end June, the last month of the state fiscal year. Eleven have been on paid leave for more than a year. Some of these cases involve employees who were charged with crimes or are under criminal investigation.

IDHS’ spokesperson said administrative reviews by its inspector general typically do not proceed until any criminal investigation is concluded.

“Regrettably, some investigations, which can be conducted by the Illinois State Police, the IDHS OIG, or both, and the prosecutorial decision whether to charge an individual have taken years to complete,” IDHS’ statement read.

A supervisor with the OIG’s office wrote in a May 2020 email to Inspector General Peter Neumer that the internal investigation will rule that the abuse charge against Allen is substantiated, as are the charges against the other three for egregious neglect for “not stopping the abuse, colluding and failing to report,” according to emails obtained by the news organizations. His email from more than two years ago asked if it would be possible to proceed with closing out the case because “it has gone on too long already.”

Senior officials within IDHS and its OIG who spoke to reporters declined to elaborate further on the details of the investigation. With Allen’s guilty plea this past December, the investigation is nearing completion, and depending on the results, IDHS will either pursue discipline or return Butler, Bittle and Ellis to work, the agency’s spokesperson said in a statement.

State police said in a statement that abuse cases are challenging to investigate due to a lack of witness cooperation and corroborating evidence.

While Allen was suspended without pay when he was charged in 2016, he remained on the state payroll during the 15-month period between the time of the incident and the time he was charged, collecting nearly $56,000 while on administrative leave, IDHS records show. He received nearly $2,000 in three additional payments between 2016 and 2019. As a part of his plea deal, Allen agreed to pay fines and court fees of $2,874.

Reichard was discharged from Choate after the assault, but he was readmitted three years ago after he attacked his mother. Deemed by a judge to be unfit to stand trial, he lives in the Sycamore Unit, the same building where the assault occurred.

Alex Mierjeski and Gabriel Sandoval contributed research.

by Max Blau, graphics by Shane Loeffler

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By the spring of 2020, the century-old industrial plant on Birmingham’s 35th Avenue was literally falling apart. Chunks of the metal doors fronting several of the 1,800-degree ovens — which heat coal to produce a fuel called coke — had broken off and tumbled to the ground.

With the doors damaged, the toxic chemicals they were supposed to contain within the ovens leaked out at an accelerated rate. The fumes should still have been captured by a giant ventilation hood that had been put in place to suck up emissions. But that system was broken, too, causing plumes of noxious smoke to drift across the city’s historically Black north side, as they had done so many times before.

Months earlier, a regulator with the Jefferson County Department of Health had sent a letter warning the plant’s owners that they could soon be cited for failing to prevent pollution from escaping from the ovens in different ways.

“It seems inevitable,” the letter said.

But in the months that followed, the company that had recently bought the plant told regulators it was unable to make millions of dollars worth of necessary repairs to the oven doors and ventilation hood, records and interviews show. The delays carried a tremendous cost: Nearby residents were once again being exposed to dangerous levels of cancer-causing chemicals.

No Southern city has experienced a longer and more damaging legacy of environmental injustice than Birmingham. As coke production fueled the city’s rise — powering plants that made everything from cast-iron pipes to steel beams — white leaders enacted housing policies that forced Black people to live in the most hazardous communities. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called Birmingham America’s “most thoroughly segregated city,” and the evidence of oppressive pollution was blatant. The air in north Birmingham residents’ lungs and the soil beneath their feet became more contaminated than in nearly any other corner of America.

Generations of business leaders amassed fortunes by cooking coke without regard to the pollution raining down on neighboring communities. With few exceptions, each plant owner left the facility in worse shape than they found it, passing off costly upgrades to the subsequent owner, who then passed them on to the next. This pattern was able to continue, in part, because powerful industry lobbyists fended off the kind of proposals and policies that better protected communities in other states. Nowhere was that more apparent than at one of the country’s worst-polluting plants, on 35th Avenue in Birmingham.

It was here, in an area with one of America’s highest poverty rates, that the ultrawealthy owners of a coal company named Bluestone Coke spotted a financial opportunity. Bluestone belongs to the family of Jim Justice, the coal baron who became West Virginia governor in 2017. The Justices had racked up tens of millions of dollars in unpaid bills with smaller companies it did business with, according to a ProPublica investigation in 2020. (Forbes dubbed Gov. Justice the “deadbeat billionaire” because of these debts.) After a close business associate suddenly had to offload his Birmingham coke plant in 2019, the Justices bought the decrepit facility, which would prove to be a ready-made customer for the coal their company mined in several Appalachian states.

The Justices, like the owners of other remaining coke plants, sought to preserve the plant’s last years of revenues at a time when steel mill owners around the country were replacing coke-fueled furnaces with cleaner electric ones. To do so, they would cut corners on maintenance on creaky ovens, even though that would dramatically heighten the odds of increased pollution.

In July 2020, after the 35th Avenue plant was found to have released excessive levels of toxic emissions on most days that year, Jefferson County inspectors cited Bluestone for a series of violations. The health department was considering a fine of nearly $600,000, a penalty that’s small compared to fines that regulators in other states have issued for similar infractions but large by Jefferson County’s standards. In fact, it would have exceeded the fines issued to all Birmingham-area industrial sources over the previous decade. Instead of finalizing a settlement that would’ve fined Bluestone, though, Jefferson County scrapped it.

Over the course of the next year, Bluestone committed so many more infractions that it could have owed maximum penalties exceeding $60 million, according to legal filings. The violations got so bad that in August 2021, nearly two years after Jefferson County had warned that citations would be “inevitable,” the health department denied Bluestone’s request to renew the site’s permit. The Jefferson County Board of Health sued the company for damages, alleging that its operations were “a menace to the public health.”

Bluestone appealed the decision to deny its permit renewal and was initially able to stay open, releasing toxic chemicals into the surrounding communities well into the fall. But repeated problems with its equipment forced Bluestone to idle its coke ovens last October. Only then did it promise to make the major repairs needed to renew its permit.

ProPublica has learned that the Jefferson County Board of Health and Bluestone recently entered talks to settle the lawsuit. If Bluestone makes overdue repairs to its pollution control equipment and pays a penalty of $850,000 — less than 2% of the maximum possible fine — the company will be able to apply to renew its permit, according to sources who did not want to be named because the settlement is still being negotiated. If the head of the Jefferson County Department of Health approves the permit, Bluestone can resume its production of tens of thousands of pounds of coke each year.

Jordan Damron, a press secretary for Gov. Justice, did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. Bluestone attorney Robert Fowler, who declined to answer ProPublica’s questions, wrote in an email that the company is committed to “achieving compliance with all local, state, and federal environmental laws.” Bluestone said it has spent millions of dollars to improve the plant and told regulators that it has the funding to make additional repairs. Wanda Heard, a spokesperson for the health department and the health board, declined to answer most questions for this story. Jason Howanitz, a senior air pollution control engineer for the department, said in a statement that he and his colleagues “work with residents and industry to ensure violations are handled swiftly and effectively to prevent violations from escalating.”

The chronic problems with the plant have spurred Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin to draft an unprecedented and as-yet-unfunded plan to buy out and relocate hundreds of neighboring residents. But launching the effort could take years — unless industrial companies like Bluestone, and the agencies tasked with regulating such plants, help to right the historic wrongs that plague the city’s north side.

“Bluestone hasn’t been a responsible operator,” Woodfin told ProPublica. “They’ve been blatant. They’ve been disrespectful. Bluestone doesn’t give a damn about people.”

Throughout the 20th century, Birmingham was a hub for iron and steel production, which used coke to fuel smelters.

With that industry came rampant pollution. Nowhere is that more apparent than the neighborhoods surrounding the coke plant on 35th Avenue.

Aerial imagery from 1947 shows emissions billowing from the 35th Avenue site over the adjacent neighborhood of Collegeville.

The toxic air pollution has persisted — ProPublica’s in-depth nationwide analysis of an EPA model shows that industrial plants in recent years have emitted chemicals that raise the risk of cancer.

Residents told the EPA that for decades this plant and others gave away dirt containing toxic chemicals to residents. In 2011, the EPA designated the area a Superfund site and launched a major effort to remove contaminated soil from affected properties.

The toll of this pollution falls disproportionately on Black residents, who were historically forced into these neighborhoods by redlining, or the denial of loans based on location, and other racist housing practices. Pollution has sickened residents and suppressed their homes’ property values.

Residents like Lamar Mabry live with the dread of what the pollution may be doing to them. Mabry fears that letting his grandchildren play in his backyard could harm their health.

(Map by Shane Loeffler. Sources: OpenStreetMap, Mapbox, Maxar, USGS, EPA, University of Richmond's Mapping Inequality project)

On a recent summer afternoon, Lamar Mabry stepped past colorful toys strewn across the living room floor and went into his backyard. He pointed toward the far end of the nearly 1-acre lot containing several homes belonging to his family, at the five-bedroom brick house where he had grown up, just 600 feet from Bluestone’s front gates. From the front yard there, he could see the plant’s smokestack. As the years passed, pollution from the plant stained the house’s white facade a dark charcoal.

Lamar Mabry stands on his back deck. (Octavio Jones for ProPublica)

Since the late 1970s, Mabry has been complaining about the pollution from the coke plant and other sites clustered around his historic Black community of Collegeville. The 71-year-old contractor built his current house on the family land, and he and his late wife raised their younger children there. He now helps out with his grandchildren, who visit him often.

The neighborhood where Mabry once played in the streets and where his family gardened vegetables is now filled with abandoned homes and vacant lots. When the plant was running, the smell of pungent chemicals often killed his appetite and at times made him feel dizzy. In a legal filing before the Bluestone plant idled, Mabry said that the toxic emissions from the coke ovens left him “depressed” because his grandkids couldn’t “go outdoors during the summer months because of the pollution.”

First image: Mabry’s view of the Bluestone coke plant from his family’s property. Second image: A late 1970s Birmingham News article in which Mabry notes pollution covering his home. (Octavio Jones for ProPublica and The Birmingham News)

He also worries his yard is too contaminated for his grandchildren to safely dig in the dirt. The EPA believes dirt that was given away by local industrial companies in the mid-20th century was spread by residents throughout their neighborhoods — and often contained toxic chemicals. Mabry’s older brother, Charles, who had worked at the 35th Avenue coke plant, brought truckloads of that dirt home to level their yard. Mabry said that in the early 2010s, the EPA sampled his soil but only tested the edges of his yard and didn’t find enough pollutants there to excavate it and replace it with clean soil. (The EPA excavated the yards of both of his neighbors, as well as hundreds of other nearby properties.)

Still, no matter how much pollution fell from the sky or lay beneath his feet, Collegeville had always been home. So for a long time, Mabry clung to the idea that he would die in the only community where he’s ever lived, even after he heard more neighbors’ stories of children with asthma and seniors with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. As the years passed, though, seven of his 14 siblings were diagnosed with cancer. “I’ve got a lot of death certificates,” he said. Enough, in fact, that he recently and reluctantly began to weigh the idea of moving, in hopes of finding a safer place for his grandchildren, all under the age of 14.

“My five grandkids, that’s my whole pride and joy,” Mabry said. But it’s still not an easy decision. “It will hurt me. All my memories are here.”

Mabry and other residents of Birmingham’s north side are worried that if Bluestone is allowed to resume operations at the plant, the government officials who had promised to protect them before will fail to do so again. It is a pattern they knew all too well, a pattern as old as the city itself.

James Withers Sloss

The decade after the Civil War ended, a Confederate colonel named James Withers Sloss created a business empire in Birmingham on his belief that nearby coal deposits were vast enough to revive the region. Like many of his contemporaries, he built his companies on a system of racist labor practices. He invested in mines that shipped coal to Sloss Furnaces downtown, where freed Black people worked the city’s most dangerous ironworking jobs for the lowest pay. In 1883, Sloss told lawmakers that he relegated Black people to those positions because they had more of “a fondness for” that kind of work than white people did. Historian W. David Lewis later wrote that Sloss and other post-Civil War industrialists had turned Birmingham into “an iron plantation in an urban setting."

When Sloss cashed out by selling his flagship iron furnace for $2 million — more than $60 million in today’s dollars — the investors who bought it relied on forced labor. They paid sheriffs to lease prisoners — many of them descendants of formerly enslaved Black people who were facing trumped-up charges by white people — to mine coal to pay off their fines.

Sloss Furnaces, Birmingham, 1906 (Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection)

The investors boosted production so much that by the early 20th century the amount of iron forged in Alabama surpassed that of Pennsylvania. To honor Birmingham’s rise, civic boosters paid the Sloss-Sheffield Steel & Iron Company to supply iron for a 56-foot-tall statue of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and forge, that would stand atop nearby Red Mountain. But in the valley below, Birmingham was heavily obscured by smoke from the growing number of iron and steel mills.

In 1913, city commissioners banned companies from firing up their plants more than three minutes an hour. But after a Sloss-Sheffield executive was arrested for defying the ordinance, local industrialists pressured the commissioners into weakening the restriction and convinced state lawmakers to strip the city of its power to limit industrial pollution. Sloss-Sheffield’s lobbying later helped the company land a military contract so large that it decided to build a new coke plant on 35th Avenue.

Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Company’s By Product Coke Ovens delivery truck, parked by Woodrow Wilson Park in downtown Birmingham in an undated photo (Oscar V. Hunt/The Birmingham Public Library)

Though Alabama would end convict leasing in 1928 — abolishing the practice once exploited by Sloss-Sheffield — Black employees worked in fear of white foremen. “They called you a n----- and you did what they told you to do,” a Sloss-Sheffield worker from the 1920s to the 1940s later said in an oral history interview. “It would make you angry and you’d fret over it but you did it anyway because you didn’t have a choice.”

The year after World War II ended, a 22-year-old dockworker named John Powe came home from overseas and headed to Birmingham to find a job that would support his growing family. Like many rural Black southerners, Powe’s search for opportunity beyond tenant farming — the work his father had done in rural central Alabama — drew him to the industrial mecca, which had grown sevenfold since the turn of the century to more than 260,000 people. After briefly working for another company, he followed his older brother to Sloss-Sheffield.

Working as a laborer at Sloss was “rough,” Powe recounted in his own oral history interview, conducted in 1984. “When I first came out there I stayed on the job for 36 hours.” He added: “I feel lucky to be able to walk around.” Each shift presented potential dangers, from the risk of explosions to toxic chemicals. After a decade on the job, Powe lost a portion of his foot in a workplace accident.

John Powe Describes His Work at Sloss-Sheffield (UAB Libraries, The University of Alabama at Birmingham)

By the 1940s, pollution from Sloss-Sheffield facilities and dozens of other plants across Birmingham was becoming hard for some city officials to ignore. Federal aviation officials blocked funding to expand the city’s airport because of excess smoke and dust, and medical leaders refused to build a tuberculosis hospital in Birmingham. In response, Sloss-Sheffield vowed to lower emissions. But those voluntary efforts failed to protect workers, who were found to have “high disease and death rates,” according to a 1946 report published by health officials in Jefferson County.

Redlining and the city’s racial zoning law prohibited Black people from moving into white neighborhoods. Powe — along with three of his brothers, who each worked for Sloss-Sheffield — moved to one of the few places he could: a short walk from the coke plant, in the tightknit neighborhood of Collegeville. His oldest son, John Henry Powe, remembers his dad coming home from work in the 1950s covered in soot from head to toe and handing his dirty work clothes to his wife, Ruby, who washed out the chemical stains by hand. The particles also landed on neighbors’ cars, leaving a fine layer of soot that covered the hoods like pollen in the spring.

John and Ruby Powe (Courtesy of Theresa Powe Pittman)

Julia Powe, one of Powe’s nieces, remembers other, more direct threats to her family, beyond those posed by the coke plants. She felt her house rattle after terrorists bombed the nearby home of Bethel Baptist Church Pastor Fred Shuttlesworth, who organized civil rights demonstrations at his sanctuary. Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor — a notorious public safety commissioner with close ties to the Ku Klux Klan — ordered the arrest of hundreds of Black children, including Powe’s daughter, Queen, during a protest to end segregation.

While Black residents fought to desegregate the city, many white families moved “over the mountain,” to suburbs with safer air. Researchers found that remaining Birmingham residents were exposed to so many pollutants — such as cancer-causing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — that breathing the air was equivalent to smoking two and a half packs of cigarettes a day. From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, the Birmingham area saw emphysema death rates spike by 200 percent, so bad that one federal official declared Birmingham’s air quality to be the worst in the South.

For years, Julia Powe said, her mother wanted to move away from the city’s north side because of its toxic air. But there was nowhere they could afford to go.

“We made do with what we had,” Powe said. “We had to go along to get along.”

By the fall of 1971, Birmingham’s pollution had triggered a full-blown public health crisis. Skyscrapers disappeared behind a hazy blanket of smog. As Marvin Gaye’s environmental anthem “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” was broadcast over radios nationwide (“Where did all the blue skies go? / Poison is the wind that blows”), editors at the Birmingham Post-Herald printed a front-page “pollution count” tracker that told families like the Powes and the Mabrys how much toxic air they would breathe.

Smog in north Birmingham, 1972 (LeRoy Woodson/EPA/National Archives)

Jefferson County officials, stripped of their powers by the state, could only request that plant owners slash emissions. Alabama Gov. George Wallace — best known for proclaiming “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” in response to public school desegregation — delayed naming anyone to a state commission that was supposed to decide how to meet standards set by the Clean Air Act of 1970. That federal law empowered the newly created EPA to improve air quality nationwide.

After Birmingham companies continued to ignore requests that they voluntarily reduce emissions, Jefferson County officials persuaded the EPA to ask a federal judge to shut down 23 industrial sites. The judge agreed, lifting the hazy blanket from the skyline. In the weeks ahead, Wallace’s appointees finally met, and they soon created new pollution regulations.

Over the next five years, the quality of Birmingham’s air dramatically improved. But a pocket of toxic emissions stubbornly remained along the city's north side, in part because of the coke ovens so close to Mabry’s and Powe’s homes.

Child playing in Birmingham, 1972 (LeRoy Woodson/EPA/National Archives)

The thick black smoke that drifted into communities not only contained particulate matter that made it harder to breathe, but also carcinogenic pollutants invisible to the human eye. By the late 1970s, the EPA concluded that “little doubt is left” regarding the cancer risk of emissions from the 60 coke plants then operating in the U.S. Yet each successive presidential administration, facing pressure from steel execs concerned about rising costs, refrained from using its power to protect communities against those emissions. In the mid-1980s, President Ronald Reagan withheld funding for regulators to curb coke plant emissions. In 1990, President George H. W. Bush signed into law an overhaul of the Clean Air Act that mandated stronger emissions controls but granted coke plants three decades to meet the full requirements of the tougher law. And in the final week of President Bill Clinton’s term in 2001, the EPA loosened controls on pollution from coke plants.

“Coke ovens became a classic example of a very old technology that was never forced to modernize,” said Jane Williams, chair of the Sierra Club’s National Clear Air Team, who advises communities impacted by coke oven emissions.

How Toxic Air Escaped Bluestone’s Plant Because of Delayed Repairs

Coke is supposed to be made by heating coal in a sealed oven for many hours with minimal leaks. But when Bluestone didn’t properly maintain its plant, it led to the excessive release of hazardous air pollution.

First image: The orange streak seen from outside the coke oven indicates that its door frame may be warped due to prolonged exposure to high temperatures. Second image: Damaged doors allow toxic gases to leak out of the coke ovens. Sometimes, the gas combusts into flames, a sign that excessive emissions may be escaping from the ovens. Third image: The exhaust hood typically minimizes toxic emissions. Below it, a rail car, which carries hot coke away from ovens, has two broken panels — letting emissions bypass the hood directly above. Fourth image: Plumes of smoke escape from coke ovens as a result of insufficient maintenance of the plant. (Source: Jefferson County Department of Health Inspection Report, OSHA Inspection Records and Max Blau/ProPublica)

By the early 2000s, the EPA acknowledged in a report to Congress that federal regulations alone wouldn’t stop toxic air pollution in Birmingham and other cities considered America’s worst hot spots. A top EPA official informed Jefferson County regulators that their department had lax coke ovens emission standards that fell short of those in other states. But nothing happened. (Howanitz, a Jefferson County regulator, said in a statement that the EPA’s summary of the county’s standards was an “oversimplification” that “does not accurately reflect the rules of Jefferson County.”)

Birmingham’s northern cluster of aging industrial plants, along with the disinvestment and blight accelerated by the pollution they emitted, had spurred an exodus. From the 1970s to the 1990s, Collegeville’s population shrank from 7,000 to under 4,200 residents. Though Powe and his brothers would spend their golden years in Collegeville, most of their children, including John Henry and Julia, moved elsewhere.

John Henry Powe stands on the street where he grew up in Collegeville. (Octavio Jones for ProPublica)

“The businesses moved out, then the people moved out,” said John Henry Powe, who relocated 10 miles northeast to the suburb of Center Point. “People wanted better.”

Residents like Mabry who chose to stay soon learned of another pollution threat. In 2005, the company that then operated the 35th Avenue plant, Sloss Industries Corporation, discovered the presence of cancer-causing contaminants in soil sampled in adjacent neighborhoods. The discovery came on the heels of a 16-year EPA-mandated investigation to determine the extent to which dozens of contaminants had leached out of disposal pits on the roughly 400-acre coke plant site.

It took another four years for the EPA to ask Sloss Industries’ successor, Walter Coke, to sample soil near additional homes and schools. That testing found concerning levels of toxic contaminants, including arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, at roughly two dozen of those sites. The EPA quickly informed school officials that contaminants had elevated cancer risk above what the environmental agency deems acceptable.

Walter Coke voluntarily dispatched bulldozers to several schools to remove the toxic dirt and replaced it with clean soil. But company execs hoped to limit their additional cleanup costs. Chuck Stewart, Walter Coke’s president, told the EPA that assigning blame to his plant alone was “profoundly misleading.” He argued that contamination came from “multiple sources” in a part of town where more than 75 plants had operated since the late 19th century. Given the legacy of the industrial corridor, he urged EPA officials in 2011 to get other companies “to the table to discuss any cleanup.”

Around that time, the EPA declared portions of neighborhoods around the 35th Avenue plant a Superfund site, which allowed the agency to spend millions of dollars to clean up the hazardous pollution. In 2013, the EPA named four more companies — including Walter’s top rival, Drummond — as “potentially responsible” for the remediation costs. Soon after, EPA officials sought to add the area to its National Priorities List, a designation that allows the agency to pool more resources that can accelerate such cleanups.

Residents living in the 35th Avenue Superfund site meet each month with Charlie Powell (right), founder of the community advocacy group People Against Neighborhood Industrial Contamination, to discuss their concerns about the area’s toxic air and soil. (Charity Rachelle for ProPublica)

Fearing a $100 million cleanup bill, Drummond’s vice president convinced Democratic state representative Oliver Robinson to fight the NPL designation. After thousands of dollars were secretly funneled to his foundation by a nonprofit run by the Drummond vice president, Robinson hired a friend to get northside residents to sign a petition expressing concern that being placed on the NPL would lower their property values. A lawyer working with Drummond’s vice president used information collected by Robinson to draft talking points, which Republican officials used to publicly oppose the NPL designation.

The tidal wave of backlash they fomented was successful. The EPA dropped the NPL effort in 2015. EPA spokesperson Brandi Jenkins said in a statement that the agency’s “decisions regarding cleanups are not influenced by lobbying interests.”

Robinson later pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges related to his campaign against the NPL effort. The Drummond vice president was convicted for his role. Hank Asbill, a lawyer representing the Drummond vice president, said in an email that his client “did not get a fair trial and was wrongly convicted.” A lawyer for Robinson did not respond to a request for comment. Drummond representatives also did not respond to a request for comment.

That winter, EPA contractors excavated the soil around a red brick house owned by lifelong Collegeville resident Jimmy Smith. The 82-year-old had worked for U.S. Pipe, which had once owned the 35th Avenue coke plant, for more than four decades. The EPA’s excavation followed its discovery of unsafe levels of arsenic and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in Smith’s front yard. After that, he became convinced that the polluted air and soil had caused the cancer that afflicted his family. His mother died from lung cancer, and he lost his oldest daughter to multiple cancers.

Longtime Collegeville residents Chester Wallace (left) and Jimmy Smith (right) stand in front of the former Carver High School. After the EPA excavates contaminated soil from properties in the Superfund site, the agency stores it under a white tarp until it can be hauled away to a disposal site. (Lynsey Weatherspoon for ProPublica)

It was all but impossible for Smith to know the extent to which the cancer-causing chemicals had contributed to his family members’ illnesses, though federal health officials say that long-term exposure to such chemicals increases cancer risk. By the time a backhoe arrived to dig up the toxic soil, Smith thought, it was time to go.

“Once we realized the severity of the pollution, what it was doing to us, what it had been doing to us, we moved out of there,” Smith said.

Six months after EPA contractors excavated Smith’s yard, Walter Coke's parent company filed for bankruptcy. When a company called ERP Compliant Coke acquired the 35th Avenue plant the following winter, 33-year-old environmentalist Michael Hansen felt what he called a “twinkle of hope.” Hansen, whose nonprofit the Greater-Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution had urged the health department to address residents’ concerns about pollution, believed the plant’s change in ownership could signal a new era. ERP’s owner, Tom Clarke, had vowed to plant millions of trees on old industrial sites he’d bought elsewhere to offset their carbon footprints. Hansen had also heard a rumor that Clarke might decommission the plant and convert the property into a land trust to restore it.

However, as Hansen drove through Collegeville in the ensuing months, he could smell the scent of burning rubber and mothballs, telltale signs of coke oven emissions. The sight of plumes of smoke became so common that GASP staffers sent complaints to the health department. But Jefferson County regulators said they never found enough evidence of violations to fine ERP. The plant kept polluting under ERP’s ownership until Clarke ran into financial trouble. In 2018, he missed a loan payment for another of his properties. Following that, his bankers called the full note due immediately. Clarke, who once volunteered to help the Justices confront their long list of mining violations, sold the Birmingham plant to Bluestone. (Clarke and his attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Jim Justice announces on May 11, 2015, that he is running for governor of West Virginia. (Chris Tilley/AP Photo)

As the Justices folded the Birmingham plant into their business empire’s future plans, they slashed the costs of running the site. In January 2020, Bluestone laid off dozens of employees, leaving the plant with fewer than 100 workers, according to their union president. Yet once COVID-19 swept the nation, the company applied for PPP loans, claiming that it would protect the jobs of more than 150 people. ProPublica’s PPP loan database shows that federal officials approved $4.6 million in loans and eventually forgave the full amount. Fowler, the Bluestone attorney, declined to comment.

The plant’s purchasing manager, meanwhile, said in a deposition that he was told to ask 50 contractors if they would accept reduced payments for services they had already performed. Everyone from coke oven part makers to fire extinguisher distributors sued Bluestone to get their full payments. (As of July, ProPublica had found that judges had ordered Bluestone to pay in nine lawsuits and had dismissed nine others. It’s unclear how many of the dismissals occurred due to settlements. Eight cases were still ongoing.) Bluestone even delayed payments to contract inspectors who compiled emissions data for the Jefferson County Department of Health.

“It takes an incredible amount of maintenance to keep one of these plants running,” said Erik Groth, an environmental specialist who said Bluestone owes him more than $10,000 for emissions monitoring. “When essential services started disappearing, like toilet paper in the bathrooms, I prepared for the worst.”

Hansen, for his part, was alarmed that Bluestone had not paid the taxes needed to get a business license. If the family wouldn’t take care of the most basic of operational obligations, Hansen reasoned, the company was unlikely to invest in fixing the problems that led to the health department violations.

Since Jefferson County was not regularly conducting toxic air monitoring, GASP collected samples of its own. Shortly after Bluestone arrived in Birmingham, Hansen’s group found evidence of two chemicals often released by coke plants, benzene and naphthalene, at levels that elevated cancer risk. In late 2020, GASP partnered with an expert to place air monitoring devices on church windows and at schools less than half a mile from the coke ovens. After three months collecting samples, Wilma Subra, a Louisiana-based environmental health expert who advises the EPA on community concerns, reviewed the results for GASP. She concluded benzene, naphthalene and other toxic chemicals were present at levels high enough to have an “extensive and severe” impact on the health of nearby residents.

Following Jefferson County’s denial of Bluestone’s permit in August 2021, a leader with the economic development nonprofit Birmingham Business Alliance emailed health department regulators on Bluestone’s behalf to find a way to “resolve their problems regarding air quality.” The following month, Jay Justice — Gov. Justice’s son, who is the head of Bluestone — reached out to one of Jefferson County’s top air pollution regulators to schedule an in-person meeting. He wrote that he was looking “to develop a pathway forward that can allow the plant to continue to operate, provide jobs, pay taxes, and be a great environmental steward while doing so,” according to an email obtained by ProPublica. (The health department’s Howanitz said that he and other air pollution regulators never met with BBA employees or Jay Justice because of the pending litigation. Neither the BBA nor Justice responded to multiple requests for comment.)

(Email obtained by ProPublica)

One week later, a Bluestone attorney named Alan Truitt stepped inside a courtroom in downtown Birmingham. Truitt, a seasoned defender of corporate polluters, urged the judge assigned to Bluestone’s appeal to give the company more time to repair the plant. Truitt had warned in an emergency filing that if the plant shuttered — even temporarily — it would be damaged beyond the point of repair. He pleaded for the judge to act in a way that would avoid the “permanent loss” of jobs for hard-working Alabamans.

The judge decided to let Bluestone stay open until the appeal was finished. Less than a month later, however, the company suspended production after most of the plant’s coke ovens had broken down.

When asked by a West Virginia TV reporter at a press conference last November about the violations leading up to the shutdown, Gov. Justice shifted blame to previous owners, noting that the “plant had been bankrupt, for all practical purposes, bankrupt two different times prior to us getting it.”

Gov. Jim Justice Vows “To Do the Right Stuff”

A clip from a November 2021 press conference concerning violations at Bluestone Coke’s 35th Avenue plant

Watch video ➜

Despite Gov. Justice’s vow at the press conference “to do the right stuff,” his family was notorious for amassing huge debts that often went unpaid, according to lawsuits. Plaintiffs including miners and the U.S. Department of Justice have won judgments or forced settlements worth more than $128 million against the family’s companies, according to a 2020 ProPublica investigation. Mounting debts slowed the company’s progress to reopen the Birmingham plant. In the three years since the Justices bought the plant, vendors have sued Bluestone for more than $8 million over unpaid bills for equipment, utilities and services provided.

This past May, at a hearing that concerned nearly $900,000 owed to the city for unpaid business license taxes and fees, Bluestone lawyer James Vercell Seal told the judge that the company is “doing a lot of infrastructure improvements” to get the plant running again. That same day, Seal told another judge that Bluestone was “unable to pay” its $1.8 million water bill because the plant was “not producing” any coke. This double standard frustrated vendors. “I feel like a bill collector,” a water utility attorney told the judge.

When word spread that the Jefferson County Board of Health might settle with Bluestone for less than $1 million, experts familiar with the coke plant’s operations struggled to understand why the penalty was so low. Stan Meiburg, a former EPA Acting Deputy Administrator who now runs Wake Forest University’s Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, said the proposed $850,000 settlement is a “steep discount” from a maximum penalty that exceeds $60 million. (Howanitz said in a statement that the health department “does not comment on specific penalty calculations.”)

If the settlement is finalized, only a few options will remain to protect the people of north Birmingham, according to experts. The head of the Jefferson County Department of Health could deny Bluestone a permit if the company doesn’t fix enough of the problems with its pollution control equipment. If the department fails to do that, Meiburg said, the EPA could intervene by ordering the company to install toxic air monitoring and pay more fines to deter it from repeating its past violations.

Bluestone publicly declared it had spent “tens of millions of dollars” to make the plant “more compliant.” But experts say that figure is far too low: Rebuilding the 35th Avenue plant’s coke ovens, they say, could cost more than $150 million.

“Bluestone should never be given another permit,” said one coke plant expert familiar with the plant’s operations, who did not want to be named out of fear of retribution. “It’s bad for residents. It’s bad for workers. Nobody would win except for Bluestone.”

The temporarily closed Bluestone Coke plant (Octavio Jones for ProPublica)

With each day that passes, the idea of moving away from Collegeville becomes easier for Mabry — but the act itself becomes more difficult. Repeated failures to control emissions from high-polluting plants have contributed to the decimation of his neighborhood’s property values. Homes in Collegeville have sold for as little as $1,000.

Mabry said the four-bedroom house he built with his own hands is worth much less than it should be, effectively trapping him there. That house, along with his childhood home and several other structures on the property, would cost about $350,000 to replace, according to his homeowners insurance policy. But when he recently got an appraisal on his property, it was valued at around $75,000.

Birmingham Mayor Woodfin, who has an ambitious plan to buy out property owners near the plant for a fair price, has seen signs of harm to these communities — Collegeville in particular — throughout his life. He attended elementary school less than a mile from the 35th Avenue plant and as a teenager lived at his aunt’s house, a short walk from Carver High School.

In 2018, during his first year as mayor, Woodfin toured part of the Superfund site near the old Carver High, where EPA officials in recent years have stored mounds of toxic dirt removed from people’s yards. After seeing the neighborhood remain in that condition for that long, Woodfin wanted to do more as mayor. He said his staff has since crafted a $37 million blueprint known as “The Big Ask” to address some of the damage to north Birmingham. The 60-page document, which has not yet been released to the public, calls for more than $19 million to pay for property buyouts within the Superfund site. Another portion would help renters, including those in Collegeville’s public housing complex, relocate. Millions of dollars more would be spent to revitalize the area for those who want to stay.

The map of the portion of north Birmingham where residents would be eligible for buyouts in the leaked “Big Ask” plan. Only owners of the properties shaded light blue would qualify for buyout offers. (City of Birmingham document obtained by ProPublica)

While Woodfin supports Birmingham funding part of The Big Ask, he believes the city should not pay for the buyouts alone. But no other government agencies have come to the table. Heard, the spokesperson for the Jefferson County Board of Health, wouldn’t say if it would devote the fines collected from a Bluestone settlement to help fund the proposal. The EPA said it doesn’t plan to help fund the relocation of residents. The agency pointed out that it has so far spent $45 million on the Superfund cleanup efforts and intends to spend up to $100 million total, covering the full cost of reducing health risks from contaminated soil. President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill is providing $3.5 billion to the EPA for accelerating cleanups at Superfund sites, but agency officials said much of the initial $1 billion installment is meant to clear the backlog of work at previously unfunded sites.

Woodfin said plant owners in north Birmingham should pay their fair share of The Big Ask. Corporations across the country, from Juliette, Georgia, to Murray Acres, New Mexico, have bought out residents after dangerous chemicals leaked out of waste sites. But the odds of Bluestone contributing are slim, considering that the company has told the EPA that it doesn’t even have the money to cover the cost of protecting residents from future harm by cleaning up the legacy waste of the 35th Avenue plant.

But even if Woodfin finds funding for The Big Ask, it only covers buyout offers for a third of the more than 2,100 properties in the Superfund site. When ProPublica pointed out that the plan excludes most property owners in Collegeville, Woodfin acknowledged that everyone in the Superfund site should be eligible. Unless the plan changes, Mabry, whose property is closer to the 35th Avenue plant than almost every other resident, will be left out.

Mabry walks through his hallway lined with family photos. (Octavio Jones for ProPublica)

Alex Mierjeski, Maya Miller, Ken Ward Jr. and Lylla Younes contributed reporting.

by Craig Silverman and Bianca Fortis

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

To his more than 150,000 followers on Instagram, Dr. Martin Jugenburg is Real Dr. 6ix, a well-coiffed Toronto plastic surgeon posting images and video of his work sculpting the decolletage, tucking the tummies and lifting the faces of his primarily female clientele.

Jugenburg’s physician-influencer tendencies led to a six-month suspension of his Ontario medical license in 2021 after he admitted to filming patient interactions and sharing images of procedures without consent. He apologized for the lapse and is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from female patients who say their privacy was violated.

But on Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, and in roughly a dozen sponsored posts scattered across the web, Jugenburg’s career and controversial history was eclipsed by a new identity. On those platforms, he was DJ Dr. 6ix, a house music producer who’s celebrated for his “inherent instinctual ability for music composition” and who “assures his followers that his music is absolutely unique.”

It’s an unconvincing persona — perhaps even less so once his “music” is played. But it was enough to secure what he wanted: a verification badge for his Instagram account.

The coveted blue tick can be difficult to obtain and is supposed to assure that anyone who bears one is who they claim to be. A ProPublica investigation determined that Jugenburg’s dubious alter ego was created as part of what appears to be the largest Instagram account verification scheme ever uncovered. With a generous greasing of cash, the operation transformed hundreds of clients into musical artists in an attempt to trick Meta, the owner of Instagram and Facebook, into verifying their accounts and hopefully paving the way to lucrative endorsements and a coveted social status.

Since at least 2021, at least hundreds of people — including jewelers, crypto entrepreneurs, OnlyFans models and reality show TV stars — were clients of a scheme to get improperly verified as musicians on Instagram, according to the investigation’s findings and information from Meta.

Verified Spotify profiles for MTV “Siesta Key” stars Mike Vazquez and Lexie Salameh were removed after ProPublica reached out. (Screenshots by ProPublica)

In response to information provided by ProPublica and the findings of its own investigation, Meta has so far removed fraudulently applied verification badges from more than 300 Instagram profiles, and continues to review accounts. That includes the accounts of Mike Vazquez and Lexie Salameh, two stars of the MTV reality show “Siesta Key.” Rather than get verified for their TV work, they were falsely branded online as musicians in order to receive verification. They lost their badges approximately two weeks ago and did not respond to requests for comment.

Jugenburg did not respond to a phone message left at his Toronto practice or to emails detailing evidence that he had paid for his Instagram verification. He has told media outlets he intends to vigorously defend himself against the class-action suit.

The scheme, which likely generated millions in revenue for its operators, illustrates how easily major social, search and music platforms can be exploited to create fake personas with real-world consequences, such as monetizing a verified account. It also underscores how Instagram’s growth and cachet combines with poor customer support and lax oversight to create a thriving black market in verification services and account takedowns for hire.

Influencers, socialites, models, businesspeople and all manner of clout chasers rely on Instagram to flaunt their lifestyle, generate income and establish a personal brand. Some influencers and models told ProPublica they face a barrage of impostor accounts trying to run scams to trick their fans. They also run the constant risk of malicious actors fabricating evidence and filing user reports to convince Instagram to ban their accounts. They see a badge as one of few options available that can help them protect their accounts and business. Others covet the blue tick as a status symbol. The result is a steady supply of well-heeled customers willing to pay five figures to get verified. (Meta is reportedly working on enhancing its customer support.)

The verification scheme identified by ProPublica exploited music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music, as well as Google search, to create fake musician profiles. The songs uploaded to client profiles were often nothing more than basic looping beats or, in at least one case, extended periods of dead air. They credited composers with nonsense names such as “rhusgls stadlhvs” and “kukyush fhehjer.” The Meta employees tasked with reviewing the musician verification applications apparently failed to listen to the tracks or look too closely.

The people running the scheme also purchased articles promoting fake artists and their music on websites, including hip-hop publications like The Source and ThisIs50.com, a music and culture site affiliated with rapper 50 Cent. They often bought fake comments and likes for clients’ Instagram posts to make the accounts look popular and purchased fake streams for songs on Spotify, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the operation. One source said some clients were told to rent a recording studio and post photos on Instagram that made it look like they were working on music. (The Source and ThisIs50.com did not respond to emailed requests for comment.)

“You can make a Spotify account or Apple Music account and boost the streams and get fake music press very cheap. It’s quick and easy,” said the source, who asked not to be named due to fear of retaliation.

A Spotify spokesperson said the company identified artificial streams, which are often generated using bots, on many of the 173 profiles provided by ProPublica. The company has removed more than 100 of the artists from its platform.

“Fraud is an industry-wide issue that we take very seriously,” Spotify spokesperson Zachary Kozlak said. “Spotify invests heavily in automated processes and manual reviews to prevent, detect, and mitigate the impact of artificial activity on the platform. We’ve removed the content in question we found to be manipulated.”

Apple Music did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but it has removed music from the profiles of many of the dubious artists identified by ProPublica.

Using domain registration records, corporate and banking documents, information from online platforms, and interviews with clients and people with knowledge of the scheme, ProPublica was able to identify the person at the center of the plot. He is a Miami-based aspiring DJ and would-be crypto entrepreneur named Dillon Shamoun. With little or no interference from Meta, Shamoun built a verification-for-pay juggernaut while also burnishing his own image by using the same digital manipulation techniques he offered to clients.

Shamoun appears to have hawked his Instagram verification services to a cadre of Miami nightlife impresarios, restaurateurs, jewelers, models and others. He also transformed his model-influencer girlfriend and his older brother, a mortgage broker, into musical artists in attempts to secure account verification.

In phone interviews with and text messages to ProPublica, Shamoun, an athletic, bearded 26-year-old, denied any involvement in the scheme and said he does not sell account verification services. He said he works on FanVerse, a crypto startup that enables creators and influencers to sell NFTs of themselves, among other projects.

“People know who I am and my character and what I do for business, and it has nothing to do with Facebook or Instagram,” he said.

After being provided information by ProPublica, Meta confirmed Shamoun’s key involvement in the fake musician verification scheme. It banned him from its platforms and removed his Instagram and Facebook accounts. The company said that Shamoun’s scheme was a sophisticated operation and that Meta works to thwart the sale of fraudulent services to users of its platforms.

“Scammers selling fraudulent services continue to target online platforms across the internet, including ours, and constantly adapt their tactics in response to industry detection methods,” said a Meta spokesperson, who asked not to be identified due to security concerns related to this story’s subject matter. “We urge people to keep vigilant and never pay for verification status because it violates our Terms. Whenever we identify a scheme like this, we take action - and that means not only will someone who’s paid for verification lose their money, they’ll lose their verification status, as well.”

When asked if any Meta employees or contractors were involved in the scheme, the spokesperson said they can’t comment on internal personnel matters or investigations.

A falling out between Shamoun and a business partner, combined with scrutiny from Meta and ProPublica’s investigation, has unleashed a vicious round of finger-pointing that exposed the underworld of social media manipulation and verification services.

In response to questions from ProPublica, Shamoun said the scheme is all the work of Adam Quinn, a prominent Instagram creator who previously worked with mega-influencer and boxer Jake Paul, and who has collaborated with musicians and celebrities for online promotions. Quinn’s Instagram account had more than 2 million followers when it was removed by Meta in June. The company sent him a cease-and-desist letter that month accusing him of selling account verification services, running celebrity giveaways that inauthentically boosted followers for Instagram accounts and offering to reactivate disabled Instagram accounts for a fee.

The Meta spokesperson said the company had collected evidence of Quinn’s involvement in selling verification services before its recent move against Shamoun for the fake musician scheme.

In comments to ProPublica and in a legal letter sent to Meta, Quinn acknowledged he sold account verification in partnership with Shamoun. He denied being personally involved in account reactivation, and he said his giveaways were in line with Meta’s rules and did not result in fake followers. An archived version of his company’s website lists a menu of “Instagram Growth Packages” ranging up to $7,500 and promising to deliver 100,000 followers using the giveaway model.

Quinn said he had used his connections and Instagram account to refer clients to Shamoun and had received a portion of the resulting fees. Clients typically paid $25,000 to verify an account, though Shamoun has at times charged more than $100,000, according to Quinn. He provided ProPublica with a bank document showing wire transfer information for Shamoun’s company, as well as two agreements from this year that said Quinn and Shamoun were partners in a “Social Media Verification” business. One agreement, signed in June, stipulated that Shamoun’s company was responsible for the client work to “ensure successful Verifications.” A source close to Shamoun, who asked not to be named to avoid jeopardizing their current job, verified the authenticity of the agreements but claimed Quinn was the one submitting fake musician verification requests. The language of the agreements appears to dispute this claim, as do Meta’s findings.

ProPublica also obtained a copy of a business proposal from Shamoun’s company, Rumor LLC, that pitched a range of online marketing services, including social media verification.

In his lawyer’s letter to Meta, Quinn denied submitting fake musician accounts to the company for verification. He said Shamoun created and controlled the process and handled the submissions. He also accused Shamoun of supplying information to Meta in an effort to get Quinn’s and Quinn’s girlfriend’s Instagram accounts removed in June.

“I believe that I am a victim of circumstance here, being unjustly attacked by someone not only violating Meta’s terms and conditions, but abusing the system put in place to prevent people like him from doing what they do,” Quinn’s letter said.

The implosion of the scheme has left Quinn and Shamoun banned from Instagram and other Meta platforms and has put an end to their lucrative business partnership. It has also left more than 300 recently de-verified clients angry that they paid tens of thousands of dollars for nothing.

For his part, Shamoun insisted that any information linking him to the scheme was fabricated by Quinn in order to frame him.

“As stated, I’m a very influential individual in Miami, that’s why I’m being framed by someone who’s now a ghost online,” he wrote.

Shamoun said he had over 70 pages of evidence showing Quinn is responsible for the entire scheme, as well as other types of platform and account manipulation. When asked to share that evidence with ProPublica, he said he could not because he is bound by unspecified nondisclosure agreements. Shamoun also said he is working with Netflix on producing a film or series based on the documents.

“I’m going to make something even bigger than ‘The Tinder Swindler,’” he said, citing a recent hit Netflix documentary about a scammer who dated women and made off with their money.

Netflix did not respond to a request for comment.

Battle for the Badge

The criteria determining who is eligible for verification are not always clear-cut, but Instagram says accounts must be authentic, unique, complete and notable.

Besides offering clout, a blue check mark provides social proof that the account holder is who they say they are. Verified account holders may also get access to new features before they’re available to the general public.

Meta’s policies forbid users from selling account verification as a service and from misrepresenting their identity in order to receive a badge. But people have been selling Instagram verifications for years. A 2017 Mashable article reported that people were paying thousands for a blue tick.

As demand for verification rose over the years, Meta developed verification criteria for various categories of people or brands, including music, fashion and entertainment. This scheme shows how those criteria can be used as a road map by people like Shamoun.

Shamoun “had the most volume out of anybody,” said a source who has bought verification for clients and frequents the dark web chats and Telegram channels where people offering the service congregate. The source, who asked not to be named in order to protect their Instagram accounts, said Quinn’s high profile also helped bring a steady flow of clients to the operation.

Among those clients were multiple performers on OnlyFans, a popular platform among adult entertainers who can charge users for access to members-only photos, video and communications. One model, who said she declined an offer from Shamoun to get verified, told ProPublica that OnlyFans performers in particular see value in verification. She said they are often targeted by extortion schemes whereby hackers file false reports and get a model’s Instagram accounts removed, and then offer to reactivate the account for a fee. The OnlyFans model spoke on condition that her name not be used, as she feared reprisals for speaking out.

“A lot of people will impersonate you if you’re an OnlyFans girl and put a link up and pretend to be you” in order to scam fans, she said, adding that she feels Instagram is more strict about content posted by OnlyFans performers, and that losing an account could result in a drop in revenue.

Making a Fake Musician

DJ Dr. 6ix’s Spotify profile was removed after ProPublica reached out to the company. (Screenshot by ProPublica)

Jugenburg’s online profile as DJ Dr. 6ix is typical of the work done by the operation: a raft of paid press articles extolling the DJ’s musical genius, false claims about his popularity and background, profiles on major music platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Deezer, and songs that often consist of a simple looped beat.

“Umbrella”

On Spotify and other music platforms, Jugenburg had five songs with titles such as “Umbrella,” “Mysteries” and “Next Party.” One of the songs showed it had been streamed close to 60,000 times, but included 90 seconds of dead air and credits an apparently made-up writer: “gbfred gtfrde.” The source with direct knowledge of the operation said fake Spotify streams were bought for songs to make clients look convincing if a Meta employee ever checked. Spotify removed DJ Dr. 6ix’s profile after being contacted by ProPublica.

DJ Dr. 6ix’s Spotify bio claimed he was featured in publications such as “EDM.com, The Source, & Billboard.” Jugenburg does not appear on EDM.com or in Billboard, but he was featured in an apparently paid article on The Source. It falsely describes him as a Los Angeles-based artist and says his song “Umbrella” has “firmly established himself as one of the most well-known musicians of his generation.”

Articles about Dr. Martin Jugenburg’s alter ego, DJ Dr. 6ix, were placed on music websites to help get his account verified. (Screenshots by ProPublica)

That same line appears in at least nine other apparently paid articles about other likely Shamoun clients. On those and other occasions documented by ProPublica, his operation apparently reused the same article text and simply swapped in different artist and song names.

The lack of effort put into the paid articles wasn’t an accident. The operation also reused songs for clients. It was an assembly line for Instagram verification. The source with knowledge of the process said the goal was to secure a badge for a client in 30 to 45 days.

.bb-aside p { margin-top: 5px; } .bb-aside h2 { margin-bottom: var(--spacing0); } Anatomy of a False Verification Scheme Step 1

A client creates content showing them in designer clothing, at luxury locations or in a recording studio to make them look like a musician.

Step 2

Spotify and Apple Music profiles are created for the client, basic songs are uploaded with album art, and fake streams are purchased to make their songs appear popular.

Step 3

Paid articles about the client’s songs are published to add further legitimacy.

Step 4

The client posts their lifestyle and music content, spacing it out over time. Engagement in the form of likes, comments and followers are purchased for the posts, providing evidence of popularity.

Step 5

Google’s search engine indexes the client’s music and articles, then automatically generates a “knowledge panel” that brands the person as a musical artist when someone searches for their name.

Step 6

In final preparation for verification, a client edits their Instagram bio, feed and highlights to emphasize their musical career.

Step 7

The client’s Instagram account is submitted to Meta for verification. If everything goes as planned, they’ll receive a blue check and the account protection and status it affords.

Here’s how it worked: The first step is to have a client produce photos in lifestyle poses and situations that made them appear to be an artist or someone with a high cultural status. Client profiles reviewed by ProPublica often showed people posing in front of expensive cars, in designer clothes or near private planes. In some cases they appeared behind or near a DJ booth or in a recording studio.

As clients produced their content, Shamoun and his small team commissioned articles and music for them. Many paid articles featuring fake artists are credited to Lost Boy Entertainment, a PR firm. Cofounder Christian Anderson confirmed that the articles placed for the fake musicians, and for Shamoun, were paid placements, or what he called “advertised press.” He said he wasn’t sure who paid for them because they were likely purchased via his company's account on Fiverr, an online marketplace.

“After this has been brought to our attention we are working on taking many of these articles down already. We weren’t aware of the end goal,” he said in an email.

As for the songs, the source with knowledge of the operation said basic beats can also be purchased on Fiverr. With music in hand, the music and artist profile information was uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music and other platforms.

Clients were then told to start posting their content on Instagram. The operation also purchased fake likes and comments on Instagram posts that featured music content. The source said they were unaware of any instances where Instagram flagged likes or comments as potentially inauthentic.

“If you’re an Instagram employee with a heavy workload, are you really gonna check the comments on every submission?” they said.

The source said they also worked to ensure a client’s Google search results would present them as a musician. Google itself proved helpful in this regard. Once articles and music profiles were indexed by Google’s search engine, the site generated a “knowledge panel” in search results for the person’s name. The box appears next to search main results and identifies the person as a musical artist, offering links to their online profiles and music. In the eyes of Google, the client was now a real musician.

A Google spokesperson said that close to 80% of the 173 people identified by ProPublica as likely Shamoun clients were labeled musicians in these auto-generated knowledge panels. The company said because these individuals had profiles on Spotify and Apple and were the subjects of articles, they met the criteria to be labeled as musical artists. It’s not Google’s responsibility to determine whether the artists are legitimate, according to company spokesperson Lara Levin. As of now, these people remain marked as musical artists when you search for their names on Google.

Google automatically generated musician “knowledge panels” for Vazquez and Salameh. (Screenshots by ProPublica)

The source said Shamoun claimed his actual costs for each verification submission amounted to roughly $1,500. He typically charged clients $25,000 for each verified account, making the operation hugely profitable, they said. Meta kept approving fake musicians, and the clients kept coming.

“Jungle”

One client is Alfredo Troia, who sells custom jewelry out of a Pembroke Pines, Florida, shopping mall and goes by the moniker Goody the Jeweler. His verified Spotify profile had a total of seven songs and 180 monthly listeners prior to being removed by the company. While all of his music is electronic, his profile image shows him sitting next to an upright piano, reading what appears to be sheet music. Writing credits for his music list names such as “wehkuudhs wehdgjg,” “trudbkds prosbhkdfs” and “caddfhjksf probfbksd.” His song “Jungle” also sounds the same as DJ Dr. 6ix’s “Umbrella.” He did not respond to requests for comment. He lost his Instagram badge, and his music was also removed from Apple Music and Deezer.

“Despair”

Akop Torosian, a bakery and gym owner, had four songs on his Spotify page under the name No Limit Boss. One track, “Despair,” which sounds like an audio sample played on loop for more than four minutes, was described as an “opus” in a likely paid March article published by Muzique Magazine. (Muzique did not respond to emailed requests for comment.)

In June, Torosian was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport on a complaint of attempted murder after he allegedly threatened one of his employees with a weapon. He pleaded not guilty in that case. The arrest came days after Torosian was accused of making racist comments about a Mexican juice vendor. In 2015, he was sentenced to three years of probation for a weapons charge related to a triple shooting. His Spotify profile was recently removed, and his Instagram badge was recently revoked by Meta. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Several OnlyFans models were also verified as musicians. Desiree Schlotz, Hannah Palmer and Lauren Blake boast a total of 4.7 million followers on Instagram, and each had songs, music profiles and paid articles presenting them as musicians. All three lost their Instagram badges, and Spotify removed their songs. They did not respond to requests for comment.

Nicky Gathrite and Tara Electra (whose name in corporate records is Tara Niknejad) are the co-founders of Unruly, an LA-based agency representing models and OnlyFans performers. They were also falsely verified as musicians. Both recently lost their badges.

In a phone call, Gathrite denied any knowledge of the paid verification scheme. When asked if he’s really a musician, he said, “If you Google me you can see that I am.” Google searches on his name brought up an automatically generated knowledge panel describing him as a musical artist. Electra did not respond to a request for comment.

Gathrite's company, Unruly, has also had connections with FanVerse, the Shamoun startup that sells NFTs of models and influencers. Shamoun's company, which was then called FansOnly, was listed as a sponsor of Unruly's Halloween party last fall. (Gathrite, through an attorney, denies a personal relationship with FanVerse.) Mike Vazquez, the “Siesta Key” star who lost his badge after being falsely verified as a musician, is a partner in FanVerse.

Gathrite did not respond to follow-up questions sent by email, and Vazquez also declined to comment. Shamoun did not respond to questions about his connections to Vazquez, Gathrite and Unruly.

“From a Sales Guy to a Music Sensation”

Shamoun seemed a natural fit to oversee the manufacturing of dubious musical artists.

He grew up in the Detroit area and has performed as a DJ under the name “Not Dillon.” As early as 2020, he began placing paid articles to promote himself and his ambitions in the music industry. Like those discussing his clients, the articles made exaggerated or false claims about Shamoun’s accomplishments.

“From a sales guy to a music sensation, Dillon is breaking records with his music and has established himself as an emerging name in the industry today,” reads a January 2020 article placed on an Indian news website.

Dillon Shamoun’s verified Spotify profile was removed after ProPublica contacted the company. (Screenshot by ProPublica)

Another apparently paid article from the same month on a different Indian website claimed Shamoun had “over 10 million streams on the music which he has created.” His two songs as Not Dillon on Spotify have less than 200,000 streams, and an old SoundCloud account in his name has six songs with less than 1,000 total plays. ProPublica could not find evidence of significant audience interaction on other platforms.

Over the next two years, his questionable claims of fame and success grew.

Back in 2020, online articles said he had played at a handful of music festivals. Shamoun’s website claimed he was involved in “branding and playing 12 of the world’s most reputable music festivals.” When he spoke to a ProPublica reporter this month, he claimed to have sold a major music festival to Live Nation. He declined to name the festival or provide additional information to back that up. It appears any supposed windfall from that sale may have been minor: Records show that a Dillon Shamoun with an address that matches public records for the aspiring DJ received a Payroll Protection Program loan of $18,540 in April 2021. Loan data lists Shamoun as working in “Marketing Consulting Services.”

Shamoun’s personal site also claimed he has two certified gold records, and that he planned to release music with top artists Tyga and Tory Lanez in 2021. There’s no evidence of any of that. Shamoun did not reply to questions about the PPP loan or his claims about gold records and working with major artists. His website was taken offline after ProPublica reached out. Management for Tyga and Tory Lanez could not be reached for comment.

Shamoun’s musical career exists in a haze of dubious claims, but there’s overwhelming evidence connecting him to the Instagram verification scheme, which he denies all involvement with. Multiple former clients confirmed that he sold verification services, and Shamoun is also listed in Whois records as the owner of close to 200 web domains featuring the names of people who have dubious musician profiles created by the scheme. There’s djdrsixmusic.com for the plastic surgeon, as well as melodymoralesmusic.com, the website of Shamoun’s girlfriend. She recently lost her verification badge as part of Meta’s move against fake musical artists, and her account, @mell, is no longer active. Morales’ three songs were removed by Apple and her account was taken down by Spotify after ProPublica reached out. Her website was also taken down after a reporter contacted Shamoun. In a text message, she declined to comment.

Shamuon also owns the domain name djtylerrumor.com. His older brother Tyler Shamoun, a Detroit mortgage broker, was branded in paid articles and on Spotify and other platforms as DJ Rumor in a failed attempt to receive verification. Tyler Shamoun did not respond to emails or messages containing a detailed list of questions.

In text messages and phone calls, Shamoun kept citing one piece of evidence against his former partner: the fact that lawyers working for Meta sent Quinn a cease-and-desist letter in June. Shamoun said the lack of action by Meta against him showed he was not involved. “If it were true, I’d be in the same predicament Meta put the actual person in,” he said, referring to Quinn.

On Aug. 16, four days after Meta was contacted by ProPublica, the company sent Shamoun a cease-and-desist letter and banned him from its platforms for selling account verification services.

“As a result of our investigation, we’ve sent a cease-and-desist letter and removed related fraudulent verifications on our platform,” said the Meta spokesperson.

Days later, Shamoun messaged a prospective client with an offer: He could get their Instagram account verified for the low price of $15,000.

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Clarification, Sept. 3, 2022: This story was updated to clarify the nature of the connection between Nicky Gathrite’s company, Unruly, an agency representing models and OnlyFans performers, and a startup by Dillon Shamoun, FanVerse, which sells NFTs of models and influencers.

by Topher Sanders

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One year ago this week, the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the Northeast, causing flash floods and laying bare one of the dangers of stormwater drainage systems. In New Jersey alone, at least five people were sucked into open pipes and culverts. Four of them died.

After ProPublica’s story about the long-neglected problem of dangerous storm drains and their toll of at least three dozen deaths since 2015, federal and local officials were moved to action.

This April, the Department of Housing and Urban Development added an “important consideration” to its guidance for HUD housing developments: Those doing environmental assessments should consider whether nearby stormwater infrastructure includes “measures like grates or fencing to prevent drownings during floods.”

HUD officials said they made the change after reading the ProPublica article and speaking with featured officials from Denver’s Mile High Flood District. The Denver district has for years preached the importance of installing grates on some inlets to prevent people from getting sucked in when the area floods and stormwater rushes toward an open drainage pipe, which is often out of sight below the waterline. The Mile High district has developed criteria that cities and towns can use to determine which openings might be dangerous enough to warrant a covering.

Holly Piza, research and development director with the Mile High Flood District, said the HUD move could save lives. “It’s fantastic that the [grate] research has gotten this intense attention on a national level,” she said. “This research can save lives if we have the attention of those that can help increase awareness and make a difference.”

Her organization, along with Colorado’s Larimer County Dive Rescue Team, Colorado State University’s Hydraulics Lab and the engineering company AECOM, are now researching detailed metrics that municipal engineers could use to decide exactly how to position a grate and which type of grate would best fit a given drain. Once the research is complete, HUD officials said they will consider whether to incorporate it into their trainings on environmental assessments or floodplain management.

Piza also said that officials from several municipalities reached out to the Denver district in the past year to ask about how to secure their drains.

The number of storm drain deaths continued to rise in 2022. In June, a 10-year-old boy, his father and another man were killed in Milwaukee when they were pulled into a large drainage culvert after heavy rains. The boy fell into the ditch while chasing a soccer ball. His father and the other man jumped in to save him.

And in Germantown, Tennessee, a youth football coach died in early August when he went into a storm drain to help save one of his players. The boy and his father, who also jumped into the drain, survived.

Dhanush Reddy was pulled into a drainage pipe in South Plainfield, New Jersey, during the remnants of Hurricane Ida. He died. (George Etheredge, special to ProPublica)

One community featured in ProPublica’s story has apparently not taken any action. ProPublica revisited South Plainfield, New Jersey, where two men were pulled through an underground pipe during Ida, and saw no apparent safety improvements. Middlesex County officials, who are responsible for the maintenance of the pipes, refused to answer questions; they also declined last year.

Communities that push back against grates often say the cost of putting them in and maintaining them is prohibitive. They also frequently cite the grates’ potential to exacerbate flooding if they get clogged with debris.

But two other New Jersey communities featured in the story have taken steps to prevent future tragedies.

In Maplewood during Ida, a father of two was pulled into a drainage system as he tried to clear debris from the inlet. He and his neighbors had complained for years about the pipe’s danger. Maplewood had to receive permission from New Jersey’s environmental department, which regulates tributaries and waterways, before it could grate the opening. The state was initially against the measure, but changed course after the death. The pipe is now covered with a grate.

And in Passaic, a large culvert has twice generated national news by pulling people in during flooding. In July 2020, DoorDash driver Nathalia Bruno was swept through the culvert after she fled her car during a flash flood, but she survived. Bruno recounted her harrowing story in news accounts, and city officials talked about installing grates and warning signs. But local engineers pushed back, saying grates would get clogged and lead to more flooding.

Then, during Ida a year later, best friends Nidhi Rana, 18, and Ayush Rana (no relation), 21, abandoned their flooded-out car and were sucked into the same drain that had pulled Bruno in. They died.

Like Maplewood, Passaic had to get approval from the state’s environmental department before it could move forward with any remedies. The city proposed grates similar to those suggested by the Denver flood district, along with fencing; both measures were rejected due to concerns about clogging and flooding, said Mayor Hector Lora.

According to Lora, the state now appears to be open to a grate system that would completely cover the culvert and could actually be walked on.

Lora said finding a remedy is a must.

“I don’t know how I stand in front of the community and tell them after having three individuals go through there that we still can’t do anything about it,” he said.

by Alison Burdo and Michelle Brunetti Post, The Press of Atlantic City

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

A Superior Court judge in New Jersey has struck down a state law granting Atlantic City’s casinos tens of millions of dollars in tax breaks, saying that the measure was passed on dubious grounds and violated the state Constitution.

The ruling, handed down Monday, deals a blow to Gov. Phil Murphy and the state’s legislative leaders, who fast-tracked the legislation through the Legislature last year. It is also a rebuke to the gaming industry, which had argued the bill was needed because it was struggling amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

At issue in the court case were changes to a local taxing program known as PILOT, or payment in lieu of property taxes. Since 2016, instead of paying property taxes, each casino has paid a share of an industrywide assessment that was distributed to Atlantic City, its school district and the county to fund various operations. The number was calculated based on the prior year’s total gaming revenue. But last year, the industry pressed for and won a key legislative change to that formula, excluding online gaming — a fast-growing sector of its business — from the program. The alteration reduced the gaming companies’ total PILOT liability this year by $55 million — revenue cuts that disproportionately impacted Atlantic City, one of the state’s most distressed cities.

A conservative nonprofit group called Liberty and Prosperity 1776 challenged the constitutionality of the law, saying the state’s founding document bars preferential tax treatment. The state countered that the new law was exempt from that prohibition because it served a “permissible public purpose.” On Monday, Atlantic County Assignment Judge Michael Blee sided with the nonprofit, potentially increasing casinos’ tax bills and sending tens of millions of additional dollars into local coffers.

“This Court finds that the Amendment was enacted to aid the casino industry and not for a public purpose,” Blee said in his decision.

At the time the bill was passed, state lawmakers and industry leaders argued that despite soaring online gaming revenues, the change was necessary to prevent financial peril. “We are risking four casinos closing,” said then-state Senate President Steve Sweeney, without providing specifics.

But, as The Press of Atlantic City and ProPublica reported in June, the casino industry was already rebounding from a pandemic slump as it argued for tax relief. Even as the industry claimed fiscal trouble, it had its best year in more than a decade: Casinos in Atlantic City reported roughly $767 million in gross operating profit in 2021. Financial reports show that revenue from in-person gambling has surpassed pre-pandemic levels. Through the first six months of 2022, the most recent data available, the city’s nine casinos reported $339 million in gross operating profits, or 17% more than the same period last year.

“There is no evidence to suggest that casinos could not meet their PILOT obligations under the Original Act,” Blee wrote. The legislation, he concluded, was advanced “to aid what was actually a resurging industry.” That echoed the findings of The Press of Atlantic City and ProPublica investigation, which calculated what each casino’s tax liability would have been had the PILOT law remained unchanged.

Gaming analysts and former regulators then examined that analysis and told us that Atlantic City’s nine casinos could have weathered their increases and remained open.

The Casino Association of New Jersey declined to comment on the ruling, citing its policy of not discussing pending litigation. The organization previously told The Press of Atlantic City and ProPublica that last year’s changes to the PILOT law were necessary. “Failing to adjust the PILOT would have resulted in egregious, inappropriate, and inequitable taxes for any industry, let alone an industry that is still fighting to recover from COVID-19,” the group said in a statement.

Seth Grossman of Liberty and Prosperity said Tuesday he was happy with the judge’s decision to vacate the amendments to the PILOT program and leave the original law in place. “The bottom line is when you have tough economic times, every business is affected,” he said. “So to say you’re going to give one industry a break by making everybody else pay more, that’s not helping the economy. It’s just helping one ‘ailing’ industry.”

He also said he expects some “intense litigation” to be waged over the judge’s ruling.

Indeed, Alyana Alfaro Post, a spokesperson for Murphy, told The Press of Atlantic City and ProPublica on Tuesday that the state “plans to appeal Judge Blee’s decision and is optimistic that it will be overturned.”

The ruling is the second to come down against the PILOT law in recent months. A judge had previously sided with Atlantic County in a separate lawsuit alleging that the state had violated the terms of a 2018 consent agreement that guaranteed the county a certain percentage of the industry’s overall PILOT payment. The county had asserted that the change in the PILOT formula would cost it about $5 million a year.

This month, Blee awarded millions in damages to Atlantic County and required the state to cover attorney fees and other costs. The state is appealing that decision, and on Monday it won a stay from the court on the damages while the case works its way through the appeals process.

Taken together, the decisions in the two cases leave the imminent tax obligations of the casino industry unclear. State regulators, who bill and collect PILOT payments, did not immediately return a request asking for clarification.

Atlantic County Executive Dennis Levinson, who urged Murphy to veto the PILOT bill last year, said that this week’s court decision is another signal that state lawmakers should have left the PILOT program alone.

“Had the governor responded to our concerns about the PILOT amendment prior to and after its passage during a lame duck session, four days before Christmas, this could have all been avoided, saving the taxpayers of New Jersey hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Levinson said in a statement Tuesday.

by Brittany Freeman, Rocky Mountain PBS

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

It was Christmastime in 2021, and Michael St. James didn’t feel much like celebrating.

From his top-floor condo overlooking Denver’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, St. James said he spent much of his time in the final weeks of December trying to recover nearly $30,000 that had disappeared from the bank account of his condo’s homeowners association.

“Half of the board has checked out for the year. ... The bankers are about to go on vacation, too,” said St. James, who volunteers as the HOA’s board president. “Meanwhile, every day, I’m looking at the bank account, like, ‘What’s going on?’”

More than eight months later, the London House HOA said it still has not recovered its funds. The HOA realized its money was missing, St. James said, when he asked its management company if he could use the association’s bank card to pay for building expenses.

The company, Mastino Management, replied he should not use the card because the community’s account was restricted by the bank over “some fraud activity.” St. James said he followed up with the bank, which told him that Mastino had reportedly paid $29,996 out of the HOA’s funds to a “fraudster” after receiving a “compromised email” with an invoice requesting immediate payment.

The HOA said the transaction was so large it exceeded the balance of the association’s operating account, funded by monthly dues and other fees paid by owners of the building’s 65 units. Records gathered by the HOA show the bank reached out to Mastino several days after it processed the payment because the community’s account was overdrawn, and Mastino authorized the bank to take $20,000 out of the community’s reserves to cover the transaction. It was a payment so large that, under the community’s rules, the board would need to sign off on the expenditure and transactions, but the board told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica that Mastino never asked.

The board fired Mastino in February. St. James said the company has since refused to provide the HOA with its accounting records and has also yet to provide proof of the emailed invoice to the HOA. Mastino reported the incident to police in Aurora, where the company’s office is located, but an investigator closed the case after police said the company failed for months to provide bank statements for the transaction, despite repeated requests.

About two months after its funds disappeared, the board reached out to the office of Denver’s district attorney for advice. The office’s staff advised the board to file a complaint with the HOA office in the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA).

The board put together a detailed complaint, attaching the evidence it had gathered, and sent it to regulators. A few weeks later, it received an email reply it still struggles to understand: Like every other complaint received by the state HOA office this year, London House’s concerns could not be investigated. That’s because HOA managers, also known as “community association managers,” are no longer subject to any government oversight in Colorado.

“I feel like we have done every single thing we were supposed to do,” St. James said. “And yet we don’t seem to get any remedy for getting ripped off for $30,000.”

State records show the majority of Colorado’s 10,000-plus HOAs hire professional companies to handle their community’s day-to-day needs, delegating a great deal of responsibility — and power — to them. Management companies often have direct access to an association’s bank accounts, collect dues from homeowners, arrange for repairs and maintenance, and enforce the community’s rules by assessing fines and fees.

A review of complaints submitted this year to the state HOA office shows homeowners targeted their ire at management companies more often than the resident-run boards that make decisions for their communities. Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica obtained and reviewed 86 complaints submitted to the state HOA office through its online portal in the first half of the year and found more than 48% of them were directed at management companies. About a third were directed at boards, and 11% complained about both boards and management companies.

Michael St. James volunteers as the board president of the London House HOA. (Jeremy Moore/RMPBS)

The complainants alleged that management companies jeopardized the sale of their property, withheld association records from homeowners, held shadowy elections and didn’t provide explanations for large increases in dues. One homeowner submitted a link to a YouTube video showing a flooded yard, saying the management company was slow to respond to a water main break. One board had a complaint similar to London House’s: Once it fired its management company, the company was refusing to turn over the community’s records.

In a statement to Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica, Mastino said it made “several attempts” — through London House’s attorney — to return the HOA’s accounting records. But “no response was provided,” the company said.

Mastino also noted that it “was instructed” to let its bank handle providing documentation for the police investigation. Mastino did not answer questions about who had provided this instruction.

In its statement, Mastino also alleged that London House still owes the company payment for management services that it had provided.

The HOA said it cannot determine how much it may owe Mastino until it receives its accounting records. The HOA’s attorney said Mastino’s statement that it had made several attempts to return those records is “not accurate.”

When similar disputes arise with management companies, many residents, including board members, said they feel they have little recourse. Some residents said they have had to pay larger dues because of management companies’ mismanagement.

Watch the Rocky Mountain PBS Report

“Who is the department that is supposed to make sure that the law is followed, and if it is not, who investigates to see whether or not it was a misunderstanding or whether it’s someone materially breaching that law on purpose?” St. James said. “I’ll jump to the end of the story: There is nobody.”

Officials at the state HOA office, known formally as the HOA Information and Resource Center, said they are accustomed to hearing that kind of reaction.

“Some members of the public can say, ‘Well, then, why did I take the time to do this?’” said David Donnelly, Colorado’s HOA information officer. “I explain to them what we do with the statistical data that we collect, which is that we collect that into a report and provide it to the legislature so that the legislature can act if they deem appropriate. Which is important.”

But the legislature, and the governor, apparently have not deemed it appropriate. Proposals to regulate community association managers have failed to become law in two of the four previous legislative sessions.

Stan Hrincevich, who runs Colorado HOA Forum, an online resource for homeowners, said he hears concerns from homeowners almost daily. “We have nearly a $3 billion HOA industry with no oversight and plenty of abuse,” he said. “Something needs to be done one day.”

It Wasn’t Always This Way

In February 2018, a complaint came in to Colorado real estate regulators at the Department of Regulatory Agencies, saying that the manager of an HOA management company called ProActive Community Management was misappropriating money from HOAs.

The state sent the complaint to ProActive’s manager and asked her to respond. But she did not respond, state records show. Eventually, a state investigation revealed about two dozen unauthorized payments and transfers the manager had made from the funds of seven different HOAs.

The state revoked the manager’s license, effectively putting her out of business, and handed her an $11,500 fine.

ProActive and its manager could not be reached for comment.

That kind of discipline is no longer possible in Colorado. It happened during a four-year window in which the state had regulatory authority over community association managers. But the window closed in 2019 when Gov. Jared Polis vetoed a bill that would have extended a program that required anyone managing a community association to be licensed.

Under the expired law, in order to obtain a license, managers were required to take classes or obtain professional credentials, pass an exam, pass a criminal background check and pay a fee to the state. Managers were also required to meet continuing education requirements to maintain their licenses.

Rep. Brianna Titone, an Arvada Democrat, had proposed extending the program because of her experience serving as the president of her HOA board.

“It’s the first level of protection for me as a board member, and to the people in the community, to have a manager who really knows what they’re doing,” Titone said. “Now there’s more people getting into this business who don’t know the business and are not vetted in a way that would make it safe for them to be in a community. That’s what we were trying to prevent.”

The state said it received 1,319 complaints about the 1,638 community association managers who were licensed during the duration of the program. Regulators disciplined 98 managers in that time. Eight managers either had their licenses revoked or voluntarily surrendered them.

Polis’ veto came as a shock to many. One HOA attorney, Molly Foley-Healy, blogged that she saw “a significant decrease in basic management mistakes and oversights” during the period when managers were licensed and said the decision “set back the entire industry and important consumer protections.”

In a letter explaining his veto, Polis said, “The data we have reviewed does not demonstrate that regulating community association managers has had the intended effect of reducing harm to consumers,” and he argued that licensure requirements can create undue barriers to employment for Coloradans, as well as extra costs passed along to homeowners. He directed the Department of Regulatory Agencies to study whether licensure would protect consumers in the future.

A subsequent review conducted by the state recommended regulating the HOA management industry — echoing similar recommendations in two prior state reports examining HOA issues.

In response to the latest recommendations, Titone brought forward another proposal to revive licensure in the most recent legislative session. She tried to take what she thought would be a lower-cost approach by requiring companies, rather than individual managers, to be licensed. But the bill died in committee.

“This issue is a really, really tough issue,” Titone said. “There’s little appetite for change in the legislature because of the lobbying efforts.”

Rep. Brianna Titone proposed the extension of a program that required community association managers to be licensed. (Jeremy Moore/RMPBS)

The governor’s office said Polis “continues to support efforts to reduce the power of HOAs from oppressing homeowners,” and it noted that he signed significant legislation to limit foreclosures initiated by HOAs this year.

When asked if Polis would support future efforts to bring regulation back to the HOA management industry, the governor’s office responded with a statement, which reads in part:

“In the future, the Governor hopes more legislation comes to his desk that limits HOAs from preventing homeowners from making positive changes such as installing zero-scaping and turf, which would create a more sustainable water future for Colorado.”

Even those in the industry who opposed the governor’s 2019 veto said it would be difficult and costly to go back now.

“To ask [community association managers] and community association management companies to spend the funds and time necessary to retake these courses and related examinations for a new licensure program would be wrong,” Foley-Healy told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica. Instead, she said, boards should be asking prospective managers about the training and certification they have obtained.

At committee hearings for Titone’s latest proposal, opponents — who mainly represented the industry — argued that only a tiny percentage of licensed HOA property managers were disciplined during the window the state regulated them. They also said regulation would add costs for homeowners and is largely unnecessary, pointing to the relatively small numbers of complaints received annually by the state’s HOA office.

“Last year, [the state HOA office] reported a 28% reduction in complaints,” testified John Krueger of Associa, a national community association management company. “I’ve yet to see or hear any data or evidence that there is a significant problem with this profession in Colorado requiring this licensure program.”

Titone has taken to calling the HOA Information and Resource Center “the office of shoulder to cry on,” because it can’t do much more than listen to complaints and count them. She believes it’s unfair to draw conclusions about how many problems exist in HOAs from the numbers of complaints gathered by an office that cannot investigate or mediate the disputes. Many homeowners may not file complaints at all, she said, because they see it as a waste of time or they are unaware that the office exists.

“It’s hard to measure because nobody calls the office. Nobody cries on the shoulder. They don’t believe it does anything, because it doesn’t. ... The same sad song plays on and on,” Titone said.

The Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies responded to London House’s complaint by saying that it could not investigate. (Obtained by ProPublica and RMPBS)

Donnelly said that, while his office does not have the authority to investigate complaints or intervene in disputes, it provides educational resources and carefully responds to people who come forward seeking help.

“I do provide a response to that individual, helping them by providing some resources or information that might help aid them in their next steps,” Donnelly said. “While I can be a shoulder to cry on, I don’t think that that’s me really doing my job very well if that’s all that I provide.”

Donnelly said he frequently has to explain to homeowners and board members that HOA law in Colorado is a civil matter — meaning enforcement of the law can require a homeowner to seek mediation or file a lawsuit.

“If a board is not doing what they should be doing, it would be incumbent on a homeowner to raise that through perhaps a small claims case or a county court or district court lawsuit, if that is appropriate,” Donnelly said.

Titone said litigation isn’t an option for everyone: “The only recourse that people have is to take people to court, and taking people to court is expensive. ... If you’re a private citizen or an HOA that just had $30,000 stolen from you, do you have the resources to fight this company?”

Homeowners Pay the Price

On a Tuesday night in August, about two dozen homeowners took seats on white folding chairs inside the clubhouse at the Traditions community in Aurora. The HOA board president took note of a larger-than-normal turnout for a monthly board meeting and noted that an update about the community’s former management company was last on the agenda. “That’s why a lot of you are here,” Ken Haldeman said.

The HOA’s social committee reported on a successful movie night and announced plans for a dog swimming event once the community pool closes for the season after Labor Day. The board discussed a plan to reduce vandalism at the clubhouse with security cameras and a proposal to add speed humps to some heavily trafficked neighborhood roads.

With all of its regular business out of the way, Haldeman turned to the topic he figured most of his neighbors had gathered to hear.

The Traditions Filings 1-7 Master Association, a sprawling master-planned community of more than 900 homes near Aurora’s expanding eastern edge, had filed a lawsuit against its former management company, Mastino, and its owner Kimberly Bacon. Haldeman read key passages from the lawsuit.

“$757,885.40 of Association funds that were supposed to be deposited into the Association’s accounts were, instead, deposited into Mastino’s bank account ... and not repaid to the Association,” Haldeman read. Neighbors shook their heads. “Dude!” one resident exclaimed upon hearing the dollar amount. Board members asked homeowners to refrain from posting on the matter on social media. The board declined to comment for this story.

“We’ve worked two years to get to this point,” Haldeman said.

Traditions, according to a police report, cut ties with Mastino in the summer of 2020 citing “increasing problems with them getting work completed.” The HOA said it discovered during the transition to new management that Mastino had failed to pay more than $150,000 in bills and left less money in the HOA’s bank account than the board expected. Faced with a financial crunch, homeowners are now paying about 28% more every month for their dues.

“The average homeowner in Traditions has lost faith in the process. They feel that the process has abandoned them by the inability to investigate or pursue the recovery of their funds,” Traditions attorney Brian Matise told Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica, when approached about the lawsuit. He said the community has spent tens of thousands of dollars so far in an effort to recover its funds.

In a statement, Mastino said the company will soon file a response to the lawsuit, including a counterclaim against Traditions and third-party claims against the HOA’s bank, as well as “one other person who was in charge of the Traditions account.” The company said the record will “completely exonerate” Mastino and will include a letter from AppFolio, an HOA accounting software provider, which confirms that Mastino did not initiate the deposits of the funds to its account.

“This lawsuit arose from a despute [sic] in which the Traditions Board refused to pay their vendors and overspent beyond their ability to pay. One of the parties they have not paid includes Mastino,” the statement read, in part. Mastino “takes their direction from the Boards they work with. If they are refusing to pay bills, [Mastino] can’t pay them.”

Traditions filed its lawsuit after Aurora police closed the case. A police report shows a detective gathered voluminous accounting records and interviewed former Mastino employees. One former employee told police they had tried to report the company to regulators.

“I tried to contact the insurance, department of what’s it called? Regulatory. Yeah, I tried to contact them. I left a message, but I never [heard] back,” police quoted the former employee as saying.

The police report shows an Aurora detective interviewed Mastino owners Kimberly and Rick Bacon after an accountant hired by the HOA claimed more than $700,000 had been misappropriated. The owners, according to police, said deposits of some Traditions funds were “defaulted” into a Mastino account because of bank errors. The report said the Bacons produced documentation showing they had tried to correct the issue with both the bank and their software provider.

Ultimately, police decided to close the case after consulting with prosecutors. Police felt “they would not have been able to prove theft beyond a reasonable doubt after they completed their investigative work,” according to city of Aurora spokesperson Ryan Luby.

In a statement, Steve Fauver, a senior deputy district attorney with the 18th Judicial District, said his office “offered some suggestions regarding additional information that should be provided by the complainant and additional areas of investigation that would be necessary to accurately assess whether a theft may have occurred.”

Fauver added: “It’s important to note that while poor accounting practices or lack of transparency may be perceived as a red flag, it does not necessarily prove that a crime took place.”

Traditions and London House were not the only HOAs dissatisfied with Mastino. Two more disputes between the company and homeowners associations ended up in court last year.

In February 2021, the Villas at Meridian Village HOA sued the company claiming “a former employee of Mastino confidentially notified” their association that the company “had been misappropriating funds” and a forensic review of the HOA’s financials showed a shortfall of more than $80,000. In court filings, Mastino said there was no evidence the company stole any money and suggested the bank or software provider may have been responsible for the issues. Court records show the case was settled this year. In a statement to Rocky Mountain PBS and ProPublica, Mastino said, “The Villas lawsuit was settled via a settlement agreement that has a confidentiality provision in it.” The HOA’s current management company said its board would not be able to comment.

About two months after the Villas at Meridian Village filed its lawsuit, Mastino filed a case against the Fox Run at Centennial HOA. In the lawsuit, Mastino said it ended its contract with Fox Run after a board member lashed out at Kimberly Bacon at a board meeting. Two board members posted online reviews claiming the company failed to pay some of the HOA’s bills and complete repairs in a timely fashion, and Mastino claimed in its lawsuit the reviews were “false and defamatory.”

“Please help us share our negative experience with other potential communities, in order that they may not endure the same experience as our community did,” one of the reviews read.

Court records show the lawsuit was dismissed after a settlement was reached. Fox Run did not respond to requests for comment directed to its current management company.

“The lawsuit was the only way ... [to stop] the board members behavior [and] to force the social media sites to remove the content,” Mastino said in a statement. The reviews, however, are still visible on several sites.

About the patterns noted in the lawsuits and complaints, Mastino said it has been working with more than 20 “accounts” for three years or longer, indicating their bills are getting paid to their satisfaction.

“Numerous HOAs say [Mastino] doesn’t pay on time, but Mastino is not in full control of the payments,” the company said. “The Board authorizes the payments, and they are often the party that halts the efforts to pay.”

Mastino also said it changed its accounting practices in May 2021 and “no longer relies on in-house employees to perform accounting functions.” Instead, the company said, a third party does most of the accounting “to reduce the potential employee errors and add an extra layer of checks and balances.”

That change did not prevent the “spoofing incident” that left London House in a $30,000 hole.

In a statement, Mastino said the incident happened when someone faked an email and then accessed Mastino’s accounting software to release the payment “without going through a higher approval.”

For its part, the London House HOA’s board is reluctant to sue to recover the community’s funds, St. James said, knowing how expensive the endeavor could be. “It just doesn’t seem like there’s any recourse here,” he said.

Mastino, too, lamented the current lack of a regulatory system to mediate HOA disputes without litigation. The company said it held a license “without incident” during the period community association managers were licensed by the state.

“DORA provided a vested 3rd party to resolve disputes. Because they were familiar with complaints and different types of resolution, it presented a much better method for resolving these issues,” the company said.

In the current landscape, St. James said, he’s learned it’s important for homeowners and the boards they run to take more control.

“I think that HOAs for the longest time have handed over their bank accounts, have handed over their business,” he said. “That is a massive problem when it gets complicated.”

There was a similar sentiment at the most recent community meeting for the Traditions HOA.

Residents asked how they could feel confident about their current management company. Board members responded that when they changed management, they ensured that they could monitor the association’s bank accounts in real-time.

“Volunteers are going to have to do more work to serve on an HOA board. You’re going to have to be more involved,” St. James said. “Don’t believe your property management blindly.”

Colorado Homeowners: Do You Have Experience Dealing With an HOA? Help Us Investigate.

Mariam Elba contributed research.

by Kiah Collier and Maya Miller

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Elected officials in the Texas-Mexico border town of Laredo have begun taking steps to conduct air monitoring after a ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation revealed that toxic pollution from an industrial facility has increased the cancer risk for about half of the city’s residents.

This month, the Laredo City Council approved $105,360 to purchase equipment and hire a full-time technician to oversee a new air monitoring program. The Webb County Commissioners Court also gave $35,000 to an environmental coalition as part of a larger effort to conduct air monitoring at the five schools that are closest to the plant.

Owned by Missouri-based Midwest Sterilization Corporation, the facility uses ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing chemical, to sterilize medical equipment. An unprecedented ProPublica and Tribune analysis of five years of industry self-reported emissions data found that the facility released enough ethylene oxide from 2014 to 2018 to elevate the estimated lifetime cancer risk for nearly 130,000 Laredoans, including more than 37,000 children. A company spokesperson said that the plant’s emissions are within legal limits.

“I’ve read all this literature, and this is some pretty nasty stuff,” Commissioner John C. Galo said before the Monday vote. “Even if they are in legal limits, if you’re exposed to that day in and day out, you know, say 300 days out of the year, there are a lot of people that are not tolerant to that.”

A written statement from Midwest said the company “takes its regulatory compliance seriously and expects to remain in compliance.” The statement says that the company uses ethylene oxide to provide critical medical sterilization services, calling the chemical an “important tool in protecting patient health.”

“Midwest is taking all steps necessary to ensure that patients across the nation and residents locally remain safe,” the statement read.

The company declined to answer questions about what those steps are.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this month listed Midwest’s Laredo plant, along with another facility the company owns in Missouri, among 23 high-risk commercial sterilizer facilities. The agency, which spent the past year analyzing emissions data from such facilities, announced plans to “engage and inform” nearby communities about the risks.

A community meeting is planned in Laredo on Sept. 15. The public meeting comes years after the EPA initially identified the Midwest plant as high-risk and directed its regional office to inform residents.

Last year, ProPublica and the Tribune contacted more than 100 Laredo residents to ask if they were aware of the risk posed by the plant. All but one said they didn’t even know the plant existed.

Upon learning of the public health risks posed by the Midwest plant from reporters, the city’s nonprofit environmental group, the Rio Grande International Study Center, spearheaded the creation of the Clean Air Laredo Coalition. The coalition’s membership includes the environmental group, concerned community members and elected officials. This month, the group began asking local governmental entities for money to conduct air monitoring at five school campuses closest to the plant, an initiative it says will cost roughly $115,000.

With the $35,000 approved by county commissioners, the group will begin taking air samples at Julia Bird Jones Muller Elementary School, which is less than 2 miles from the plant. The school is in an area that has an estimated elevated lifetime cancer risk of 1 in 3,700. That’s nearly three times higher than the maximum 1 in 10,000 risk level the EPA considers acceptable, making it the most at-risk school in Laredo and one of the most at-risk in the country.

The coalition plans to seek the remaining funding for the air monitoring effort from the Laredo City Council and the city’s two public school districts.

Two weeks ago, the board of trustees of Laredo’s United Independent School District voted unanimously to begin examining the cost of air monitoring at its schools, starting with Muller. While the school district did not allocate funding, board President Ramiro Veliz said in an interview that he believes there’s enough support among trustees to pay for air monitoring at one or more campuses.

City Council member Vanessa Perez, whose district includes the Midwest plant and who has been working closely with the coalition, said there’s been widespread interest in air monitoring since the community learned about the toxic air pollution from the facility.

“You could be sitting in your backyard and be breathing in ethylene oxide without knowing it,” Perez said of the odorless and invisible gas. With more air monitoring, she said, the chances of that happening again would plummet because officials would know for certain that there are unsafe levels of the chemical in the air and could take action.

An ethylene oxide sterilizer plant in the Chicago suburb of Willowbrook closed in September 2019 after EPA monitoring found that emissions levels at various sites were higher than what the agency considers safe. But air monitoring doesn’t always lead to such action. In Calvert City, Kentucky, ProPublica found that state and federal regulators did little to stop pollution despite air monitors registering high levels of a cancer-causing chemical for years.

Perez hopes her colleagues on the City Council will support providing funding to the coalition in addition to the steps the city has already taken to develop its own air monitoring program.

The details for the city’s program, including locations for air monitoring, are still being worked out but should be finalized sometime this fall, according to Dr. Richard Chamberlain, director of the city Health Department. Chamberlain said the city plans to hire someone to oversee the new air monitoring program when funding becomes available on Oct. 1.

“Air quality and water quality monitoring are essential to ensure good health of an individual and community,” he wrote in an email.

The Health Department submitted an application in March for the EPA’s Enhanced Air Quality Monitoring for Communities program in hopes of securing $400,262 to support its efforts. It has not yet heard back from the agency.

Chamberlain said the city will proceed with monitoring regardless of whether it receives funding from the EPA. He said if the city gets the money, some of it could go to support the coalition’s air monitoring efforts. While the initiatives are separate, he said the city plans to provide logistical support to the coalition and share data.

The program will monitor for not only ethylene oxide but a variety of other air pollutants, Chamberlain said.

Air monitoring efforts are pivotal, said Sara Montalvo Saldaña, who has been helping take care of her nephew, Juan Jose, or JJ, Nevares since he was first diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia in 2018. The cancer has been linked to ethylene oxide exposure. At the time, JJ was just one month shy of his sixth birthday and had been attending Julia Bird Jones Muller Elementary.

“It’s a blessing,” Saldaña said, expressing relief at learning that Muller is slated to receive air monitors.

JJ, who is looking forward to celebrating his upcoming 10th birthday, returned to Muller as a fourth grader this month. He is still undergoing chemotherapy at home every day and travels to The Children’s Hospital of San Antonio for more intensive treatment every six weeks. If all goes well, doctors expect that he may reach remission in May.

by Christine Willmsen, WBUR

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This story was produced in partnership with WBUR. WBUR’s investigations team is uncovering stories of abuse, fraud and wrongdoing across Boston, Massachusetts and New England. Get their latest reports in your inbox.

Both U.S. senators from Massachusetts criticized local bans on hiring outsiders as police chiefs, while the top federal law enforcement official in the state said that the restrictions may violate civil rights law.

U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said that requiring police chiefs to be hired from within their departments is “problematic” and “ridiculous.” Such rules may limit the diversity of the candidate pool, she said.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., urged state and local officials to “address these pressing civil rights concerns” and lift “harmful policies that have only made it more difficult for women and people of color to take on leadership roles.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said that “excluding outside candidates from consideration for key public positions is not a good idea.” An ordinance in the Boston suburb of Revere “should be reexamined to ensure all qualified candidates, internal and external, get a fair shot in an inclusive hiring process,” she said.

Rollins, Markey and Warren were reacting to a recent WBUR and ProPublica investigation of the police chief in Revere and the circumstances that led to his selection. Revere and another suburb, Waltham, have had ordinances for more than two decades that ban hiring an outside candidate as chief.

Revere’s ordinance prevented Mayor Brian Arrigo from looking outside for candidates to clean up what he called the police department’s “toxic culture.” In 2020 he promoted David Callahan, who as a lieutenant had been accused of bullying and sexually harassing a patrolman and creating “an atmosphere of fear” in the department. Neither Callahan nor the other three candidates for the chief’s job — all white men — had scored in the top two ranges, “excellent” and “very good,” on a test measuring attributes such as decisiveness and leadership. The Revere chief oversees more than 100 officers and civilian employees.

Also in response to the WBUR/ProPublica investigation, Revere City Councilor Dan Rizzo this week proposed a public examination of the allegations against Callahan and what the mayor knew about them. The council voted to speak with the mayor in private.

Rollins said an ordinance like Revere’s may violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gives the U.S. Department of Justice the authority to initiate investigations into “practices that have the effect of discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin.” For example, the no-outsiders law could constitute discrimination if there were no officers of color inside the department who had sufficient rank or experience to be eligible for chief, or if the ordinance prevented a qualified external candidate of color from applying.

While declining to speak specifically about Revere, Rollins said, “If there were an ordinance that somebody told me directly precluded a city or a town from hiring qualified members of law enforcement that have language capacity, that are representative of certain communities, I’d want to work as hard as I could to remove that hurdle.”

Rollins recently led an investigation into patterns of police misconduct in another Massachusetts city, Springfield, where officers in the narcotics bureau failed to report instances of excessive force. Under a consent decree announced in April, the Springfield police agreed to improve internal investigations, as well as policies to prevent excessive use of force.

With police departments facing demands for reform nationwide, some experts say that one way to address problems such as racial discrimination, poor training or use of excessive force is to bring in an outsider. But Revere’s mayor, Arrigo, didn’t have that option. In 2017, he tried to change the ordinance so he could look at external candidates, but he was rebuffed by the city council.

“We absolutely welcome the help of [U.S. Attorney] Rachael Rollins to make these changes going forward,” Arrigo said in a statement to WBUR. “I have been and always will be in support of this change and am willing to work with anyone able to provide help and guidance. The work of improving a toxic police department culture cannot be done alone.”

U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins said that rules like Revere’s that require hiring police chiefs from within are “ridiculous” and may limit the diversity of the candidate pool. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

It’s not known exactly how many cities and towns around the country are constrained to choose police chiefs who already work in the department. In New Jersey, state law requires most municipalities to choose a chief from the ranks. The city of Bakersfield, California, will hold a ballot referendum this November on whether to remove its insiders-only requirement. Bakersfield agreed to the referendum as part of a settlement with the California state Department of Justice, which had been investigating alleged civil rights abuses by city police officers. In 2020, after a sweeping overtime pay scam that implicated more than 45 troopers, the Massachusetts legislature dropped a requirement that the head of the state police be hired from within.

Police unions and local elected officials often support these insider-only ordinances to reward veterans of the force for their service and to keep political allies close. Brandon Buskey, head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project in New York, said that these requirements should be abolished because they limit cities from finding the most qualified candidates for chief, but that unions are standing in the way.

“That’s a problem that really is national in scale because we see police unions and the lobbying effort of police groups being used to really thwart necessary reforms in so many jurisdictions,” he said.

Historically, in Revere, police unions have opposed eliminating the insider-only rule. Callahan had served almost three decades on the force when Arrigo chose him in July 2020. As a lieutenant, he had been recognized by the FBI for “exceptional assistance” in a public corruption investigation.

In 2017, a patrolman, Marc Birritteri, accused Callahan of repeated sexual harassment and “torment,” including calling him a “rapist” in front of fellow employees. The city found that Birritteri’s complaints were substantiated. Arrigo agreed that the city would pay the patrolman $65,000 and went along with Birritteri’s request for a special type of retirement for officers injured on duty, which could ultimately cost the city at least $750,000. Birritteri, who has been on paid leave for more than a year, promised not to disparage the city, the mayor or the police department.

Callahan has disputed Birritteri’s allegations. During an interview with WBUR and ProPublica on Aug. 4, he admitted that while he was a lieutenant he texted an image depicting the Virgin Mary superimposed on a vagina to a patrolman. He called it “a mistake” and said it would “never happen again.” He has also acknowledged that he didn’t properly investigate allegations that another senior officer had sex in multiple areas of the police station while on duty. Callahan declined to comment for this article.Arrigo has never disciplined Callahan, who has a five-year contract as chief at an annual salary of $192,000.

The mayor told WBUR in May that he would give the chief an “A” for his job performance. He said Callahan has stood up to the department’s culture as if he were an outsider.

Rizzo, the city councilor, criticized those comments, saying Arrigo is “complimenting a chief that’s got numerous allegations against him, none of which have been investigated and all of which he’s aware of. … It’s despicable.”

But Rizzo, who served as the city’s mayor until he lost his reelection bid to Arrigo, doesn’t want to change the ordinance. Opening the job to outsiders would be “basically saying, ‘Look, we have such a horrible police department that we can’t find one person that could be chief,’” he said. “I think that’s a slap in the face, quite honestly, to the men and women of the department.”

Arrigo said Rizzo had four years as mayor “to tackle the toxic culture at the Revere Police Department, but chose instead to ignore it.”

During Monday’s city council meeting, Rizzo introduced a motion calling for the mayor to publicly “appear before the City Council to discuss his knowledge of prior and/or current allegations of misconduct against the current Chief of Police and what actions and/or financial settlements have been made on behalf of the city as a result of these allegations.” Rizzo said he wanted an accounting and explanation of financial settlements with officers made since 2017.

However, other councilors were reluctant to publicly discuss the police department’s problems. The council unanimously voted to compel Arrigo to provide documents and meet with them, but only in a private, executive session. Rizzo said he supported the compromise because it was the only way to hold the mayor accountable.

Buskey, of the ACLU, said he’s concerned by the council’s decision to keep the information behind closed doors. At a minimum, he said, Revere should appoint an independent counsel and investigator to look into the police misconduct. He added that Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden or state Attorney General Maura Healey should investigate Revere’s hiring and disciplinary practices. Both declined to comment.Revere is a “very, very troubling situation,” Buskey said. It’s a “poster child for the need for independent oversight and control of the police function.”

Update, Aug. 26, 2022: This story has been updated to include comment from Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

by Jessica Lussenhop

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For nearly three decades, long before the fall of Roe v. Wade, the blond brick Building for Women in Duluth, Minnesota, has been a destination for patients traveling from other states to get an abortion. They have come from places where abortions were legal but clinics were scarce and from states where restrictive laws have narrowed windows of opportunity.

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For many residents of northern and central Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, it was faster to head west toward the Minnesota border than to go southeast to clinics in Milwaukee, Green Bay or Madison. Over the years, thousands of pregnant people climbed the stairs of the Building for Women to get abortions at WE Health Clinic, on the second floor.

Treating travelers from other states is nothing new for WE Health or the other abortion providers around the state, but Minnesota’s role as a so-called abortion access island is. The state’s neighbors have either banned abortion, are poised to do so or have severely restricted the procedure.

Data kept by Minnesota shows that white people make up a larger share of those who travel from another state for an abortion than those who seek abortions in state, raising questions about whether certain groups — particularly people of color — will be able to make the trip.

The Building for Women is home to the WE Health Clinic. (Jenn Ackerman, special to ProPublica)

According to the state’s data, Minnesota residents seeking abortions are a fairly diverse group. From 2018 through 2021, on average, 31% of patients were Black, 9% were Hispanic, 8% were Asian and 2% were American Indian; an additional 6% were recorded as “other.” White patients accounted for 44%.

But among those coming from out of state, people of color made up a much smaller percentage on average of the patient population. White people made up 75% of out-of-state patients.

Experts say some of the disparity results from the fact that the states bordering Minnesota are predominantly white, particularly in the rural areas adjacent to the state. But this also describes Minnesota’s population. So at least some of the difference could be tied to access to transportation or money to travel.

“Minnesota is going to become a haven state, but for what percentage of people that actually need our services?” said Paulina Briggs, WE Health Clinic’s laboratory manager and patient educator. “That’s a huge thing.”

Paulina Briggs, WE Health Clinic’s laboratory manager and patient educator, said the facility was prepared for the estimated rise in out-of-state patients. (Jenn Ackerman, special to ProPublica)

When Roe was overturned in June, the small staff at WE Health Clinic was dismayed but not surprised. In fact, it was prepared to meet the estimated 10% to 25% increase in out-of-state patients.

“We’ve anticipated this for a long time,” Briggs said. “So it’s not like sudden news to us.”

While the clinicians in Duluth may have been prepared for the end of Roe, something much more unexpected happened 2 1/2 weeks later, when a district court judge delivered a surprise ruling that expanded abortion access in the state. Ruling in Doe v. Minnesota, the judge threw out measures that included a mandatory 24-hour waiting period before abortions, two-parent consent for minors and a requirement that physicians discuss medical risks and alternatives to abortion with patients. He also tossed out a requirement that only doctors were allowed to provide abortion care, including by telemedicine, and that after the first trimester, the care had to take place in a hospital.

In contrast to the tearful scenes that played out in many clinics after Roe fell, in Minnesota that Monday morning, abortion providers and their support staff celebrated. Laurie Casey, the executive director of WE Health, was behind her long, crowded desk, doing paperwork when she first got news.

“It’s like, ‘Oh my God, is this real?’” she said. “Something good happened?”

Briggs said: “I think I audibly cheered. Like: ‘Yeah. Hell yeah.’”

Laurie Casey, the executive director of WE Health. She and her staff celebrated a surprise ruling that expanded abortion access in the state. (Jenn Ackerman, special to ProPublica)

Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the Minnesota case, which was filed in 2019, had expected to go to trial at the end of August. Instead, the judge granted abortion supporters a big victory, leaving intact two measures: a requirement that abortion providers collect and report data on their patients to the state, and a law that dictates the rules for disposing of fetal remains.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, whose office represented the state in the lawsuit, announced that he would not appeal the court’s decision. Ellison also pledged that he would not prosecute abortion-seekers from other states and wouldn’t cooperate with extradition orders from outside jurisdictions.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed an executive order making similar promises.

Both officials have made abortion access central tenets of their reelection campaigns.

In these early days of a post-Roe reality, it’s not yet clear who will need these protections, though the data can provide clues.

States track demographic data on abortion differently; according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than two dozen publicly report the race and ethnicity of patients. Minnesota is the only access island state in the Midwest that releases those numbers; the state also separates that data into resident and nonresident figures.

Illinois is projected to accept far more out-of-state patients than Minnesota, but its health department does not release statistics about the race and ethnicity of abortion patients. Kansas allows abortion up to 22 weeks, protects the right to abortion in its Constitution and reports one of the highest rates of out-of-state patients in the country, at nearly 50% and second only to Washington, D.C. But Kansas’ state health department does not combine where patients are from with demographic data.

From 2008 to 2021, 13,256 patients who live outside Minnesota received abortion care there, an average of about 950 people a year, according to the state health department. Among that population, the racial and ethnic breakdown of patients has held fairly steady.

A number of factors play into the lack of diversity, said Asha Hassan, a graduate researcher at the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota.

“There’s the obvious one that might be coming to mind, which is the effects of the way structural racism and poverty are interwoven,” Hassan said.

The bridge between Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin, often crossed by out-of-state pregnant people seeking abortion care in Minnesota. (Jenn Ackerman, special to ProPublica)

Caitlin Knowles Myers, a professor at Middlebury College in Vermont who studies the economics of abortion, added, “Obviously resources like ability to take time off, ability to get and pay for child care, etc., etc. — that obviously prevents poor women from making a trip.”

Then there is the cost of the procedure itself. In Minnesota, residents can use state medical assistance funds to pay for an abortion under certain circumstances; out-of-state residents cannot. According to Our Justice, a nonprofit that provides financial assistance for abortion care and travel to Minnesota, in-clinic abortion services can cost $400 to $2,000, depending on the gestational age of the pregnancy. A locally based telemedicine service and mobile clinic called Just the Pill charges $350 for abortion medication.

Shayla Walker, executive director of Our Justice, said her organization helps people work through the kinds of barriers to travel that pregnant people of color face every day. Undocumented patients, for instance, may not have a driver’s license or other form of identification, meaning that flying from states like Texas or Oklahoma is out of the question.

Of the out-of-state patients who come to Minnesota, residents from neighboring Wisconsin make up the vast majority. And like Minnesota and its neighboring states, Wisconsin is predominantly white: 80.4% of residents identified as such in the 2020 U.S. Census.

From 2008 to 2021, an average of 690 patients from Wisconsin received abortion care in Minnesota each year. The proportion of Wisconsinites has dropped over the years — in 2008, 80% of out-of-state abortion patients reported that they lived in Wisconsin, compared with 63% by 2021. Over that same period, South Dakota residents ticked up from 4% to 16%, and Iowa patients rose from 2% to 6%.

According to Myers, the lack of abortion providers in western and central Wisconsin likely drives the traffic across the border to Minnesota. These parts of the state are largely rural and mostly white. Wisconsin’s more diverse urban centers are concentrated in the southern and eastern parts of the state, much closer to the Illinois border.

“A lot of them are likely to end up heading south to the Chicago area,” Myers said. “The Chicago area also has a lot of providers and likely a lot of capacity. And the question for Minnesota is, if the Chicago area ends up unable to absorb an enormous influx of patients heading their way from all directions, then you would expect to see patients spilling over into Minneapolis.”

Leaders of the Options Fund, which provides financial help to pregnant people in rural central and western Wisconsin who are seeking abortions, said the majority of the money they provide is for care that takes place in Minnesota.

“Certainly it’s not that people of color don’t exist, of course,” said the group’s vice president, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for her safety. “But I think generally, the more rural we get, the more white it’s going to be.”

Of course, the data from Minnesota is backward-looking, from years when abortion was still legal, though restricted or sometimes difficult to access, in surrounding states. There are certain to be shifts in where patients travel from, most obviously North Dakota, where the state’s lone abortion clinic moved from Fargo to its Minnesota sister city of Moorhead, just across the border. And as reproductive rights supporters across the country respond to the end of Roe, abortion funds have reported huge increases in their donations, which may bring travel and abortion care in Minnesota within the grasp of more low-income pregnant people and people of color.

The first week after the Doe v. Minnesota decision, WE Health Clinic’s patients felt the impact. Casey said she was able to tell a mother that her minor daughter could receive an abortion without the permission of her long-absent father or from a judge. Briggs was able to schedule a next-day abortion, which would have been illegal before the judge’s decision.

A medical abortion kit from WE Health Clinic includes mifepristone and misoprostol as well as a home pregnancy test, lip balm, candy and other items. (Jenn Ackerman, special to ProPublica)

At some point, a clinic worker went through intake folders and pulled out all the forms certifying that “state mandated information” had been provided to patients. They were fed into the office shredder.

Tossing out their scripts, canceling the physician phone calls 24 hours in advance, no longer going down to the county courthouse to ask judges to grant their minor patients special permission to have an abortion — all of this will save the WE Health Clinic workers hours every week.

Beyond that, the court ruling — which abortion opponents are seeking to have overturned — has the potential to increase the number of providers, as advanced clinicians like nurse practitioners and some classifications of midwives may now be able to get training, and eventually provide abortion care and telemedicine.

This pivotal moment for abortion care in Minnesota and the country at large comes at a moment of major transition for WE Health as well. Casey is looking at retirement in the coming year, which means much of the work of adapting the clinic to serve patients in a post-Roe world will fall to her staff, including Briggs.

Briggs started working at the clinic six years ago, when she was just 23. She wanted to do this work after receiving her own abortion at WE Health as a college student, an experience she found at once “nonchalant” and “empowering.”

She is troubled by the disparities in who might be able to make it across the borders and climb the stairs of the Building for Women, to receive the kind of life-changing care that she did. Just keeping the doors open does not mean the care will be equitable.

Haru Coryne contributed data analysis.

Correction

Aug. 26, 2022: This story originally misstated the age of Paulina Briggs when she started working at WE Health Clinic. She was 23, not 21.

by Abrahm Lustgarten

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The western United States is, famously, in the grips of its worst megadrought in a millennium. The Colorado River, which supplies water to more than 40 million Americans and supports food production for the rest of the country, is in imminent peril. The levels in the nation’s largest freshwater reservoir, Lake Mead, behind the Hoover Dam and a fulcrum of the Colorado River basin, have dropped to around 25% of capacity. The Bureau of Reclamation, which governs lakes Mead and Powell and water distribution for the southern end of the river, has issued an ultimatum: The seven states that draw from the Colorado must find ways to cut their consumption — by as much as 40% — or the federal government will do it for them. Last week those states failed to agree on new conservation measures by deadline. Meanwhile, next door, California, which draws from the Colorado, faces its own additional crises, with snowpack and water levels in both its reservoirs and aquifers all experiencing a steady, historic and climate-driven decline. It’s a national emergency, but not a surprise, as scientists and leaders have been warning for a generation that warming plus overuse of water in a fast-growing West would lead those states to run out.

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I recently sat down with Jay Famiglietti, the executive director of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan, to talk about what comes next and what the public still doesn’t understand about water scarcity in the United States. Before moving to Canada, Famiglietti was a lead researcher at NASA’s water science program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and a member of the faculty at the University of California, Irvine. He pioneered the use of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment satellites to peer into the earth’s mass and measure changes in its underground water supplies. The Colorado River crisis is urgent, Famiglietti said, but the hidden, underground water crisis is even worse. We talked about what U.S. leaders either won’t acknowledge or don’t understand and about how bad things are about to get.

Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start with the Colorado River because it’s in the news. The federal government has put some extraordinary numbers out there, suggesting water users cut between 2 and 4 million acre-feet of water usage starting this year — roughly 40% of the entire river’s recent flow. How could that possibly happen?

It’s going to be really hard. We’re looking at drastically reduced food production and the migration of agriculture to other parts of the country and real limits on growth, especially in desert cities like Phoenix. My fear is that groundwater will, as usual, be left out of the discussion — groundwater is mostly unprotected, and it’s going to be a real shit show.

Remind us how that happens. States and farmers cut back on the Colorado River, and California and Arizona just start pumping all the water out of their aquifers?

Yeah. This started with the drought contingency plan [the 2018 legal agreement among the states on the Colorado River]. Arizona had to cut nearly 20% of its Colorado River water. To placate the farmers, the deal was that they would have free access to the groundwater. In fact, something like $20 million was allocated to help them dig more wells. So, it was just a direct transfer from surface water to groundwater. Right away, you could see that the groundwater depletion was accelerating. With this latest round, I’m afraid we’re just going to see more of that.

Some of that groundwater actually gets used to grow feed for cattle in the Middle East or China, right? There’s Saudi-owned agriculture firms planting alfalfa, which uses more water than just about anything, and it’s not for American food supply. Do I have that right?

There’s been other buyers from other countries coming in, buying up that land, land grabbing and grabbing the water rights. That’s happening in Arizona.

What about in California? Groundwater depletion has caused the earth to sink in on itself. Parts of the Central Valley are 28 feet lower today than they were a century ago.

California passed the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in 2014, which mandated an extraordinarily long time horizon: two years to form the Groundwater Sustainability Agencies and then five years for each GSA to come up with its sustainability plan. So that’s now: 2022. And then 20 years to come into sustainability. My fear is that the slow implementation will allow for too much groundwater depletion to happen. It’s sort of the same old, same old.

But could it work?

I don’t think we’re talking about sustainability. I think we’re talking about managed depletion. Because it’s impossible to keep growing the food that we grow in California. It’s agriculture that uses most of the groundwater. The math just isn’t there to have sustainable groundwater management. If you think of sustainability as input equals output — don’t withdraw more than is being replenished on an annual basis — that’s impossible in most of California.

Will we run out of water? Are we talking about 10 years or 100 years?

Yes. We are on target to. Parts of the Central Valley have already run out of water. Before SGMA, there were places in the southern part of the valley where I would say within 40 to 50 years we would run out or the water is so saline or so deep that it’s just too expensive to extract. SGMA may slow that down — or it may not. I don’t think the outlook is really good. Our own research is showing that groundwater depletion there has accelerated in the last three years.

Then what happens? What does California or Arizona look like after that?

It looks pretty dry. Even among water users, there’s an element that doesn’t understand that this is going to be the end for a lot of farming. Farmers are trying to be really efficient but also magically want the supply of water to be sustained.

We focus on the big cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas, but it’s farms that use 80% of water. They grow crops that provide huge amounts of the winter fruits and vegetables and nuts for the entire country. Is there any way that farming in California and Arizona can continue even remotely close to how it is today?

I don’t think so. It has to drastically change. We’ll need wholesale conversion to efficient irrigation and different pricing structures so that water is better valued. We’ll need different crops that are bred to be more drought tolerant and more saline-water tolerant. And we’ll probably have a lot less production.

What does that mean for the country’s food supply?

This is the big question. I don’t want to be flippant, but people don’t understand the food-water nexus. Do we try to bring more water to the southern high plains, to Arizona, to California, because if the food system’s optimized, maybe that’s the cheapest thing to do? Or does agriculture move to where the water is? Does it migrate north and east? It’s not just food production. What about the workers? Transportation? If we were to move all of our agriculture to northern California, into Idaho, into North Dakota over the next decade, that’s a major upheaval for millions and millions of people who work in the ag industry.

It’s really interconnected, isn’t it? The nation essentially expanded West beginning in the 19th century in order to build a food system that could support East Coast growth. The Homestead Act, the expansion of the railroads, was partially to put a system in place to bring stock back to the meat houses in Chicago and to expand farming to supply the urban growth in the East.

I don’t think a lot of people really realize that, right? When I go to the grocery store in Saskatoon, my berries are coming from Watsonville, California. The lettuce is coming from Salinas, California.

Farmers in the West are fiercely independent. So, in California, Arizona, do they lose the ability to choose what to plant?

Right now, there’s freedom to plant whatever you want. But when we look out a few decades, if the water cannot be managed sustainably, I don’t actually know. At some point we will need discussions and interventions about what are the needs of the country? What kind of food? What do we need for our food security?

Let’s discuss California. Its governor, Gavin Newsom, has advanced a lot of progressive climate policies, but he replaced the water board leader, who pushed for groundwater management across the state, and last month the agency’s long-serving climate change manager resigned in protest of the state’s lax water conservation efforts. What does it mean if a liberal, climate-active governor can’t make the hard decisions? What does that say about the bigger picture?

There has been a drop off from the Jerry Brown administration to the Newsom administration. Water has taken a step lower in priority.

Is that a sign that these problems are intractable?

No. It’s a sign that it’s just not as high a priority. There are tough decisions to be made in California, and some of them won’t be popular. You can see the difference between someone like Brown, who was sort of end-of-career and just like, “Screw it, man, I’m just going to do this because it needs to be done,” and someone like Newsom, who clearly has aspirations for higher office and is making more of a political play. We’re not going to solve California’s water problem, but we could make it a lot more manageable for decades and decades and decades. (Newsom’s office has rejected the criticism and has said the governor is doing more than any other state to adapt to climate change. On Aug. 11 his administration announced new water recycling, storage and conservation measures.)

Water wars. It’s an idea that gets batted around a whole bunch. Once, negotiating water use more than a century ago, California and Arizona amassed armed state guard troops on opposite banks of the Colorado River. Is this hyperbole or reality for the future?

Well, it’s already happening. Florida and Georgia were in court as was Tennessee. There’s the dispute between Texas and New Mexico. Even within California they’re still arguing environment versus agriculture, farmers versus fish, north versus south. Sadly, we’re at a point in our history where people are not afraid to express their extreme points of view in ways that are violent. That’s the trajectory that we’re on. When you put those things together, especially in the southern half or the southwestern United States, I think it’s more of a tinderbox than it ever has been.

That’s hopeful.

You’re not going to get any hope out of me. The best you’re going to get out of me is we can manage our way through. I don’t think we’re going to really slow global change. We have to do what we’re doing because we’re talking about the future. But a certain number of degrees warming and a certain amount of sea level rise is already locked in, and all that’s happening in our lifetimes. The best you’re going to hear from me is that we need to do the best we can now to slow down the rates of warming that directly impacts the availability of water. We’re talking about the future of humanity. I think people don’t realize that we’re making those decisions now by our water policies and by our climate change policy.

When people think about water, they think of it as a Western problem, but there’s water shortages across the High Plains and into the South, too.

I don’t think most people understand that scarcity in many places is getting more pronounced. Nationally, let’s look at the positives: It’s a big country, and within its boundaries, we have enough water to be water secure and to be food secure and to do it in an environmentally sustainable way. A lot of countries don’t have that. That’s a positive, though we still have the same problems that everyone else has with increasing flooding and drought. What I really think we need is more attention to a national water policy and more attention to the food, water and energy nexus. Because those are things that are going to define how well we do as a country.

What would a national water policy look like?

It recognizes where people live, and it recognizes where we have water, and then it decides how we want to deal with that. Maybe it’s more like a national water/food policy. Moving water over long distances is not really feasible right now — it’s incredibly expensive. Does the government want to subsidize that? These are the kind of things that need to be discussed, because we’re on a collision course with reality — and the reality is those places where we grow food, where a lot of people live, are running out of water, and there are other parts of the country that have a lot of water. So that’s a national-level discussion that has to happen, because when you think about it, the food problem is a national problem. It’s not a California problem. It’s not a Southern, High Plains, Ogallala, Texas Panhandle problem. It’s a national problem. It needs a national solution.

Is this a climate czar? A new agency?

Something like that. We’re failing right now. We’re failing to have any vision for how that would happen. In Canada, we’re talking about a Canadian water agency and a national water policy. That could be something that we need in the United States — a national water agency to deal with these problems.

In the Inflation Reduction Act we finally have some legislation that will help cut emissions. There’s plenty of other talk about infrastructure and adaptation — seawalls and strengthening housing and building codes and all of those sorts of things. Where would you rank the priority of a national water policy?

It’s an absolute top priority. I like to say that water’s next, right after carbon. Water is the messenger that’s delivering the bad news about climate change to your city, to your front door.

We don’t usually mix concern over drought with concern over contamination, but there was a recent study about the presence of “forever” chemicals in rainfall and salt washing off the roads in Washington, D.C., and contaminating drinking water. Can these remain separate challenges in a hotter future?

It doesn’t get discussed much, but we’re seeing more and more the links between water quality and climate change. We’ve got water treatment facilities and sewers close to coasts. During drought, discharge of contaminants is less diluted. The water quality community and the water climate communities don’t really overlap. We’ve done a terrible job as stewards where water is concerned.

Globally, what do you want Americans to think about when they read this?

The United States is kind of a snapshot of what’s happening in the rest of the world. There’s no place we can run to. Things are happening really, really fast and in a very large scale. We as a society, as a country or as a global society are not responding with the urgency, with the pace and the scale that’s required. I am specifically talking about rapid changes that are happening with freshwater availability that most people don’t know about. The problems are often larger than one country. A lot of it is transboundary. And we’re just not moving fast enough.

News flash.

Around the world the water levels have just continued to drop. In the Middle East or India. In fact, they’re getting faster. It’s actually a steeper slope.

So, the Colorado River is the least of our worries.

Globally? It’s not even as bad as the others. Arizona doesn’t really show up as much compared to some of these places.

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by Anjeanette Damon

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This story was co-published with The Baltimore Banner and Reno Gazette Journal.

As Nevada lawmakers heard public comment last year on a bill to ban ghost guns and the parts used to make them, a resident of the rural town of Dayton called into the hearing to offer his opinion. The privately made firearms are virtually untraceable because they lack a serial number and can be easily purchased online and assembled by people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to legally buy a gun.

“I do not care if this bill passes or not,” said the man, who identified himself only as Loran Kelley. “I am just informing you that we, as Americans, just will not comply with it no matter what you do.”

What he didn’t mention to the committee is that he owns a company called Polymer80, one of the country’s most prolific manufacturers of ghost gun kits and parts. His vow to defy such regulations is as much about principle as profit, even as thousands of untraceable guns bearing the P80 stamp have turned up at crime scenes from Los Angeles to Baltimore.

According to court documents, the vast majority of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement nationwide are built from Polymer80 parts. That’s why Nevada lawmakers were debating the bill: Anti-gun violence advocates saw a unique opportunity to shut down the flow of ghost gun parts to the rest of the country by going after the source.

“You can say you can’t possess an unserialized gun, but you need to be able to go up the supply chain if you want to stop this problem,” said David Pucino, deputy chief counsel for Giffords Law Center, who helped draft the Nevada legislation.

Nevada’s effort came as big city mayors across the country were beginning to grapple with an increase in crimes committed with Polymer80 guns. A handful of states had passed legislation restricting ghost guns. Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles had sued Polymer80, claiming the company was selling a product that violated their local gun control laws. And an additional four cities had sued the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, seeking to compel the agency to require manufacturers like Polymer80 to put serial numbers on core ghost gun components.

Advocates viewed the Nevada law as a potentially more effective tactic than the patchwork of efforts brought to bear so far.

And it almost worked.

The Legislature passed Assembly Bill 286 on a party-line vote in May 2021. In seven months, when the new law took effect, Polymer80 would be out of the ghost gun kit-making business. At least in Nevada.

But thanks to a strategically chosen court venue in rural Nevada and with the help of the New York law firm Greenspoon Marder, Polymer80 won a decision vacating the section of law that would have halted its ghost gun business. While it is now illegal to assemble or possess a ghost gun in Nevada, it remains legal to possess and transport the components of a ghost gun.

As a result, the parts that some use to evade gun-control laws and others use to pursue their hobby of homemade gunmaking continue to flow from Polymer80 to the rest of the country.

Anti-gun violence advocates say their court defeat in Nevada underlines the weakness of a state-by-state approach to closing the ghost gun loophole. They also noted that the bipartisan federal gun bill signed into law in June in response to a spate of mass shootings does nothing to address the problem of ghost guns.

“The state level laws are really important but can only go so far,” Pucino said. “Really we need a federal solution.”

Kelley, who doesn’t trust the news media, rarely talks to reporters, despite his company’s increasingly high profile. But in an hourlong interview with ProPublica, Kelley described his remarks to lawmakers last year as “political grandstanding” and not a promise to break the ghost gun law. Still, it was a moment that portended Kelley’s victory in court.

“I was pointing out a simple fact, ‘You can do whatever you want, but it’s not going to work,’” Kelley said. “And I was proven to be right.”

But Polymer80’s victory in the Nevada court does not obviate the legal threat it faces elsewhere, including lawsuits from big-city mayors trying to stem gun violence on their streets and a pair of deputies ambushed in their patrol car by an assailant wielding a Polymer80 ghost gun.

It’s a position that Kelley both relishes and resents. If it were up to him, he said, he’d focus on building his business and looking after his 50 or so employees. But he doesn’t shy away from a fight over his principles.

“Polymer80 is on the front lines of protecting the Second Amendment rights of all Americans right now,” Kelley told ProPublica. “That’s not a brag. It’s just the reality because we’ve become the whipping boy for emotionally driven government policy.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, right. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Baltimore Banner)

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is one of the city leaders who has sued Polymer80. The lawsuit is intended to hold the company accountable for the street violence perpetrated by people using Polymer80 kits to circumvent federal and state gun laws that require a background check to purchase a firearm and a license to own a handgun. Maryland law also prohibits the sale and manufacture of guns that aren’t included on the state’s handgun roster, which does not list those built with Polymer80 parts.

Scott said he first heard about ghost guns in 2018, when, as a City Council member, he was chair of the Public Safety Committee. That year, law enforcement confiscated nine unserialized firearms. Within three years, police were confiscating hundreds of the illegal weapons annually.

“Once they arrived, they became a huge problem for us,” Scott told ProPublica. “They’ve been used in shootings, robberies, carjackings, murder. We’re seeing them run the gamut.”

Baltimore police recently busted a ghost gun-making operation, arresting a man who had dozens of Polymer80 kits, Scott said. The man was a childhood friend of Scott’s.

But another incident made the issue even more personal for Scott. In January 2021, Dante Barksdale, an anti-violence activist beloved in Baltimore was shot nine times with a Polymer80 ghost gun. He died in the courtyard of an apartment building where he had a few weeks earlier delivered winter coats to families who live there.

“Dante was like a brother to me,” Scott said. “His death really impacts everything that I do in the realm of public safety. If he were here today — he’s probably in the room with me right now — he would say, ‘You gotta go after the gun companies, too.’”

The rise of ghost gun crimes on Baltimore’s streets coincides with the growth of Polymer80’s business.

Kelley founded Polymer80 in 2013 with his father, Loran Kelley Sr., and their business partner David Borges, who recently retired from the company. Kelley’s father died in January. Polymer80 got its start in Vacaville, California. But Nevada, with its low taxes and friendly regulatory environment, beckoned, and the company moved here a year later.

In 2016, Polymer80 became a licensed firearm manufacturer, allowing it to produce traditional firearms that comply with the Federal Gun Control Act. But the larger part of its business is the production of so-called unfinished frames, the lower part of a handgun, including the pistol grip and trigger guard, onto which the firing mechanism and related components are fitted. The company also makes unfinished receivers, the base component of a rifle, such as an AR-15.

Federal law requires completed frames and receivers to be stamped with serial numbers. To avoid that requirement, Polymer80 designed “unfinished” frames, which are about 80% complete. The frame and remaining components can easily be assembled into a functioning firearm. In 2015, Polymer80 began sending samples of its unfinished frames to the ATF, which agreed the part did not require a serial number.

“Our strategy always has been to be very open and candid with the ATF and the government,” Kelley said. “We’ve always been proactive with sending the ATF information on our products and we just operate above board.”

Business took off. Between January 2019 and October 2020, for example, Polymer80 shipped nearly 52,000 items to customers across the country, according to court documents.

But as Polymer80 grew, so did the number of privately assembled firearms police were recovering at crime scenes. Just as Baltimore experienced an increase in ghost gun recoveries starting in 2016, so too did Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Nationally, according to ATF published numbers, the number of ghost guns recovered by law enforcement jumped to 19,344 in 2021 from 1,758 in 2016. The vast majority of those guns were assembled with Polymer80 parts, according to court documents.

Ghost guns haven’t been involved in the latest high profile mass shootings, such as in Uvalde, Texas; Highland Park, Illinois; or Buffalo, New York, which each involved legally obtained AR-15-style weapons. But mayors in the cities that have either sued Polymer80 or asked the ATF to close its ghost gun loophole — Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York — argue they’re increasingly common in street violence. Ghost guns have been used in school shootings by teenagers too young to legally buy firearms in New Mexico, Arizona, Maryland and California. In 2020, two Los Angeles County deputies sitting in their patrol car were shot — one in the face, one in the arm — by a man with a ghost gun. Both survived but sustained grievous injuries. A lawsuit they filed against Polymer80 is pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court, as is the lawsuit filed by the city of Los Angeles on behalf of the people of California.

Although the ATF gave Polymer80 the go-ahead to sell unfinished frames without serial numbers, the company started to market a kit — called Buy, Build, Shoot — that included both the unfinished frame and other parts needed to quickly assemble a complete firearm. The ATF never gave Polymer80 explicit approval to sell these complete kits without complying with serial number and background check requirements.

Pucino, the deputy chief counsel for Giffords Law Center, said Polymer80 is exploiting loopholes to enable its customers to evade gun control laws, including age requirements for gun purchases.

“Their whole business model, which makes them different from, say, Glock, is they evade restrictions,” he said.

In late 2020, investigators with the ATF concluded that Polymer80’s kits likely violated the Federal Gun Control Act and launched a raid on the Dayton manufacturing plant in December 2020. According to the search warrant affidavit, investigators found evidence Polymer80 shipped gun parts to individuals whose criminal backgrounds prohibit them from owning firearms and to individuals in foreign countries. (Polymer80’s website previously said the company has “a strict policy against selling 80% lower receivers to persons known to us to be convicted felons or otherwise prohibited persons.” That language was recently removed.)

Polymer80's headquarters and manufacturing facility in Dayton, Nevada. (Jason Bean/Reno Gazette Journal)

Although the affidavit was made public, the federal court has resealed the case, meaning the results of the raid and any subsequent actions aren’t public. ATF spokesperson Ginger Colbrun said she couldn’t comment on the case because the investigation remains active.

Kelley wouldn’t comment on the specifics of the ATF investigation, but he pointed to the fact no one from his company has been arrested following the raid as an indication Polymer80 hasn’t broken the law.

“We are still talking to them about that,” he said. “We have a positive set of conversations going on.”

Kelley vehemently disagrees with the assertion his company tries to exploit loopholes, saying the company does nothing but comply with the law. He describes his customers as hobbyists and homemade-gun enthusiasts engaging in a centuries-old practice of building their own firearms.

“Polymer80 has always been a law-abiding company and always will be,” he said, noting it hasn’t sold any ghost gun parts to Nevadans since the 2021 law — which still prohibits possessing a complete ghost gun. “What’s going on is people in power realizing people have always had a right to do this and they don’t like it.”

Polymer80 wants to succeed through legal means, Kelley said. That wouldn’t be possible if all his customers were criminals.

“It would be a really, really stupid business model to cater specifically to criminals, and I would find such a practice to be deplorable,” he said.

It’s not hobbyists using Polymer80 guns on the streets of Baltimore, Scott said.

“That is the most ludicrous thing and ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Scott said. “Their business model explicitly targets purchasers seeking to evade law enforcement or who can’t obtain a gun from a licensed dealer.”

After the 2021 ghost gun law passed in Nevada, Polymer80 hired the New York City law firm Greenspoon Marder to file the lawsuit in Yerington, an onion farming town that’s the seat of the county that’s home to Polymer80. One of the firm’s managing partners, James McGuire, traveled to Yerington to argue before Judge John Schlegelmilch that the law was written so vaguely it would be impossible to enforce and would be ripe for abuse.

McGuire said in an email he no longer represents Polymer80 and referred questions to another lawyer at the firm, who didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In court, McGuire argued the law failed to define key terms such as “receiver” and “frame,” and used “murky and undefined terms” to explain what an “unfinished receiver” is. He also argued the law doesn’t specify when in the manufacturing process an unfinished receiver actually becomes a receiver.

During two hearings on the lawsuit, Schlegelmilch seemed to have little patience with the state’s argument that the law relies on industry-specific terms that are well understood by Polymer80. Instead the judge agreed with McGuire that the law didn’t adequately define an unfinished receiver. At one point he asked whether his 5-year-old’s rubber band gun could be considered an unfinished receiver simply because it looks like a gun.

“What if I’m at home, and I’m machining a piece of wood. OK? And my 5-year-old wants a rubber band gun. OK? So, I take that piece of wood, I turn it, I make it into — you know, I take a band saw, and I cut out what looks like a firearm. And I put a couple of sticks on it so that you can put a rubber band on it when you push it up. You’ve seen a rubber band gun before, right? So, is that mostly completed?”

“I mean, a rubber band gun’s not a firearm,” responded the state’s attorney, Greg Zunino. “I don't think you would ever be prosecuted under that scenario because you still have to have an intent to turn something into a firearm.”

Schlegelmilch ruled in favor of Polymer80 and enjoined the state from enforcing the section of the law that prohibited the possession and sale of unfinished frames and receivers. Schlegelmilch let stand the rest of the law, which Polymer80 didn’t challenge and prohibits the possession of a completed ghost gun.

The state has appealed Schlegelmilch’s ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court.

Schlegelmilch declined an interview request because the appeal is pending.

Kelley declined to comment on the decision to file the lawsuit on his home turf in Lyon County.

Other courts have ruled differently.

A similar lawsuit filed in federal court in Reno the same month was quickly tossed by a judge who decided the law “is a valid exercise of the government’s police power.”

“What happened here, with the state court being more successful for them, indicates politics and ideology within the judiciary,” Pucino said.

This month, a judge in Washington, D.C., found Polymer80 sold illegal firearms in the district and ordered it to pay $4 million in penalties.

The ATF is also seeking to impose a new rule that would require unfinished receivers and frames to include a serial number — one of the federal strategies that Pucino said would be more effective than a state-by-state approach. The new rule, seen as a way to close the ghost gun loophole, is set to take effect on Aug. 24, but it faces at least three lawsuits from the ghost gun industry seeking to block its implementation.

McGuire, the lawyer who represented Polymer80, authored a 27-page public comment submission on the new rule arguing, in part, that it’s impermissibly vague, the same argument that he used successfully to stop the Nevada law.

To some, there’s an easy solution: Polymer80 could stamp serial numbers on the unfinished frames and receivers they sell.

Kelley said putting a serial number on his products wouldn’t hurt his company. But using those numbers to require background checks is a “critical threat” to his business, which he said relies on a growing market of individuals who “value their Fourth Amendment rights” to privacy.

“There’s a problem when people’s right to privacy is infringed and a government agency is looking at what you bought whenever they want,” he said.

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by Emily Corwin for ProPublica

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Funded in part by the Abrams Nieman Fellowship for Local Investigative Journalism at Harvard University.

DeMond Bush was living in his friend’s basement in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2017 when he heard about a job that could help him get beyond his past. Since getting out of prison two years earlier, the 43-year-old had cycled through day labor and temp work but hadn’t been able to find anything steady. He’d spent more than two decades behind bars for a violent crime that he was charged with as a teenager. During that time, he’d done everything he could to prepare for a better life — earning several associate’s degrees, learning a trade and performing in nine Shakespeare plays. But the world outside didn’t seem to care.

So when the temp agency Express Employment Professionals offered him a “temp-to-hire” position at a warehouse run by Tennant Company, a cleaning products manufacturer, Bush couldn’t help but get his hopes up. Bush said Express wasn’t concerned by his record and told him that if he worked 90 days as a temp, he’d be considered for a job working directly for Tennant with higher wages, plus benefits and sick days.

“I’m thinking, ‘I’m going in and prove myself, work hard, they’ll judge me based off that,’” said Bush, who was born in New Jersey but occasionally slips into a Southern lilt.

His plan seemed to be working: Bush said his managers told him he was doing a good job and he’d likely get hired. That changed on his 90th day on the job, after Tennant ran a background check, Bush said. In an instant, Bush’s months of hard work vanished. When he showed up for work the next day, a company representative escorted him off the property.

“I was feeling like, man, you know, I put this effort into this thing,” Bush said. “And then here it was, something from 27 years ago, it’s still haunting me. It seems like I can’t get past it, no matter how hard I work or what effort I put into it.”

Yet to the federal government, this outcome was worthy of a reward. Bush’s temp work was more than enough to qualify Express for a tax credit worth up to $2,400.

After losing the job, Bush became homeless and was caught in Indiana, having crossed state lines without permission. That was a violation of his parole, and Bush returned to prison.

When Congress passed the Work Opportunity Tax Credit to encourage businesses to hire and retain marginalized workers, lawmakers made it clear that the credit should be used for permanent employment — not dead-end temp jobs like Bush’s.

Instead, the $2 billion program is now handing out hundreds of millions of dollars a year in subsidies for the very jobs lawmakers wanted to avoid rewarding. ProPublica analyzed data from nine states’ WOTC applications and found that nearly a quarter of the jobs certified for the tax credit between 2018 and 2020 were with temp agencies. The numbers become even more striking when the analysis is limited to one eligible group — workers with felony records. Thirteen of the top 14 employers certified to get credits for those workers were temp agencies.

In addition, some of the credit’s biggest beneficiaries are temp agencies with long records of labor violations.

Express did not respond to multiple calls and emails. Tennant, which benefited from Bush’s work but wasn’t eligible for the credit because it wasn’t his direct employer, declined to comment.

Coming out of the welfare reform movement of the mid-1990s, the WOTC aimed to give groups like food stamp recipients, residents of high-poverty areas and formerly incarcerated people access to long-term employment. In exchange, companies could write off thousands of dollars from their taxes for each worker they hired.

But the program’s rules didn’t match that intent. To receive the minimum tax credit — worth 25% of a worker’s wages — a company need only employ a worker for 120 hours, or about three weeks of full-time work. Employers can get the maximum credit — 40% of a worker’s wage, up to $2,400 — after just 10 weeks. The criteria say nothing about type of employer or the quality of the job and don’t forbid companies with a history of workplace violations from participating.

In the absence of tighter rules, the WOTC has become a financial boon for large low-wage employers with high turnover, including Walmart, Dollar General and Amazon. Those three companies are the top recipients of the tax credit in ProPublica’s analysis.

Walmart and Dollar General did not respond to requests for comment. Amazon spokesperson Barbara Agrait said, “Like many other companies, we utilize the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and we believe it helps to break down barriers some may face when seeking employment and encourages a strong and diverse workforce.”

But few industries have benefited as much as temp agencies.

Corporate filings by publicly traded temp agencies reveal how big a windfall the tax credit has been. One company, Kelly Services, reported receiving tax credits, “primarily” WOTC, worth $164 million over 10 years, or 48% of its U.S. pre-tax earnings. TrueBlue, which owns the day-labor firm PeopleReady, reported receiving tax credits — also described as “primarily” WOTC — worth $114 million over the past 10 years, or 29% of its pre-tax income. The credits reduced TrueBlue’s federal income taxes by 69% and Kelly Services’ by 73%.

“Everybody’s winning except the formerly incarcerated person,” said Andrea C. James, executive director of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.

Taylor Winchell, a TrueBlue spokesperson, said the WOTC “addresses a compelling need,” and suggested temp jobs serve the program’s goals by giving workers the chance to learn skills and providing “a path to permanent employment.” Kelly Services declined to comment on its use of the tax credit.

The departments of Labor and the Treasury share responsibility for the WOTC, but neither agency collects much data on it, even as it diverts billions from public coffers. Studies published over the last two decades cast doubt on whether the tax credit has led to long-term jobs.

“One of the most shocking things I ever discovered was how short these jobs are,” said Sarah Hamersma, an economist at Syracuse University who found that the subsidized jobs had little or no effect on workers’ long-term employment.

“I used to tell people, ‘I’m just waiting for someone to call me to give my testimony,’ but nobody does,” she said. “My cynical view is this is a program that clearly benefits businesses and gets support among that contingent. And it looks like it benefits vulnerable workers. So it tends to get a lot of support.”

The American Staffing Association defended the industry’s use of the credits. “As hiring experts, staffing agencies can help individuals obtain job training and uncover talents, experiences, and skills that can help them put their best foot forward with future employers,” Toby Malara, vice president for government relations, said in a statement.

Labor Department spokesperson Monica Vereen said the law doesn’t allow it to deny WOTC certifications based on job type or an employer’s record of labor violations. However, she said, “the department welcomes the opportunity” to assist Congress in strengthening the program. Similarly, Treasury spokesperson Julia Krieger said, “While we would like WOTC to lead to lasting employment, the IRS is administering the statute as it was enacted by Congress.”

Today, the WOTC costs the federal government about $2 billion each year. That’s enough to provide free community college tuition for 512,820 people, and, after adjusting for inflation, it’s about eight times what Congress estimated the program would cost in 1996.

Back then, lawmakers made the tax credit temporary so that the government could fully assess its effectiveness before making it permanent. A formal review has yet to occur.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, co-sponsored legislation last year to make the tax credit permanent but voiced concern after learning of ProPublica’s findings. “These agencies could be scamming the system using American tax payer dollars,” he said in an email. “It’s unacceptable, and my office will be looking into this to ensure the WOTC program is doing what Congress intended it to do: supporting workers and helping them secure good, long-term employment opportunities.”

A Failed Program Resurrected

The origins of the WOTC can be traced to the mid-1970s, when the jobless rate for young Black workers seemed stuck near 40%. The Carter administration set out to tackle what it called the “structural unemployment” of marginalized workers with public works projects and job training programs. But lawmakers balked at the cost and decried public programs for leading to temporary and dead-end jobs. The private sector, one prominent Democratic senator said, was more likely to lead to “further advancement and to a permanent job.”

The Targeted Jobs Tax Credit, which would form the basis of the WOTC, became law in 1978.

It failed spectacularly.

In 1994, Labor Department auditors found that most of the subsidized jobs lasted less than a year and that 92% of participating workers would have been hired even without the credit. The inspector general testified that “for the most part, the only ones benefiting” from the program were employers and he called on Congress to end the program.

The next year, a labor historian concluded in a research paper that “interest groups distorted the credit into a windfall for businesses that hire large numbers of low wage workers” and spawned “a whole industry” of consultants who processed the tax credits for employers.

Another industry was also poised to benefit. Around the time that lawmakers were devising the tax credit, lobbyists for the staffing industry were convincing state legislators to deregulate employment agencies, which had long been associated with exploitation, said George Gonos, a former sociology professor at the State University of New York at Potsdam who has spent his career studying the temp industry. One way lobbyists did this was by making staffing agencies — not the clients to whom they sent workers — the “bona fide legal employers” of temp workers.

“Not only could the employers get people through temp staffing agencies with lower wages and without rights, but the temp agency could also collect subsidies on the side for everyone they placed,” Gonos said. “Man, what a racket.”

Kelly Services and two other staffing agencies helped found a lobbying group dedicated to preserving and expanding the tax credit. Within months of the credit’s expiration in 1994, Kelly Services and others began asking lawmakers to revive it.

They found their opportunity in welfare reform.

In 1995, lawmakers resurrected the tax credit under a new name: WOTC. As Congress planned to require welfare recipients to work to receive benefits, lawmakers hoped that a new version of the credit might drive demand for those workers.

One of the WOTC’s architects, Rep. Amo Houghton, R-N.Y., bemoaned how many people left welfare only to find temp work. “They move into a job and out of a job, into a job and out of job,” he said. The new credit, he told colleagues, would ensure people become permanent employees.

Rep. Amo Houghton, a New York Republican, championed the Work Opportunity Tax Credit with the goal of helping marginalized workers land permanent jobs. (Denis Paquin/AP)

But Congress tweaked the old program only slightly: Employers would now need to confirm that the job applicant was eligible for the program before hiring and would have to employ workers longer to receive the maximum credit. The minimum credit was still available after just three weeks.

Many of the old problems persisted. Echoing past criticism, the Government Accountability Office noted that the program mostly benefited billion-dollar corporations with a large number of low-skilled workers and high turnover. A 2001 report showed that only 17% of employees remained at their jobs long enough to earn more than $6,000. That report also included a survey in which a majority of participating employers said applicants’ eligibility had no effect on their chances of being hired.

Such warning signs have had little impact. In April, the White House featured the tax credit prominently in its “strategy to expand employment opportunities for formerly incarcerated persons.”

William Signer, who worked on tax issues for former Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., and now lobbies for the WOTC on behalf of payroll and tax credit processing firms, said the WOTC is beneficial “regardless of whether the first job results in permanent employment.”

Though Houghton died in 2020, Bob Van Wicklin, who was Houghton’s legislative director when WOTC passed, said of the subsidized workers that “Amo definitely would have intended for them to get a full-time job — not a temp job.”

Rangel, who championed the WOTC alongside Houghton, said in an interview that he’s proud of the tax incentive. But he acknowledged the program has shortcomings and said using the tax system to address economic hardship was a legislative compromise.

“The tax system should not be used for social benefits,” he said. “There should be permanent programs providing for the needs that people have.”

Sanctions and Subsidies

Temporary staffing agencies might seem like an odd fit for a program designed to incentivize permanent employment. By definition, temp agencies exist to provide short-term help. They typically pay workers directly and earn money by charging companies an average markup of 41% to cover workers’ compensation insurance, overhead and profits.

While some workers, like travel nurses, earn a premium in exchange for unpredictable assignments, blue-collar temps typically earn less than conventional employees and rarely receive paid days off, health insurance or retirement benefits.

To find people willing to put up with those conditions, temp agencies “need exploitable disposable labor,” said Gretchen Purser, a Syracuse University sociologist who worked at day-labor agencies as research for her dissertation. People with criminal records “experience a whole bunch of barriers in the labor market that lead them to these jobs as a last resort.”

Mario Alvarez, a former branch manager at a PeopleReady franchise near Boston, said most of his workers were homeless, struggled with addiction or had criminal records. He described constant pressure from PeopleReady to cut costs “any way possible.” “The unfortunate part is that our product are people, no matter how you slice it,” he said. “I’m not selling desks. I’m not selling TVs. I’m selling people’s hard work.”

Comparing temp agency safety records is difficult because when temp workers are hurt on the job, those injuries are often attributed to the company where they occurred, not to the temp agency employing the worker. That makes calculating injury rates nearly impossible. But records from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration show that many of the temp agencies with the greatest number of severe injury reports in recent years are also among the companies that have benefited most from the tax credit, according to our data.

ProPublica requested WOTC data from all 50 states and received nearly 700,000 records from nine of them — Virginia, Arizona, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, Kentucky, Rhode Island and North Dakota — which together represent 14% of the U.S. population.

Of the 10 temp agencies approved for the most tax credits, seven firms — including Express, TrueBlue and Kelly Services — were also among the agencies with the most reports of severe injuries, according to the OSHA data. In addition, the three companies approved for the most credits for employing people with felony records — Express, EmployBridge and TrueBlue — have each been cited for dozens of serious safety violations and wage infractions in the past two decades.

“Companies use temp staffing agencies to distance themselves from their workers and to avoid accountability as an employer,” said Laura Padin, an attorney at the National Employment Law Project. “Because they can be fired from an assignment at a moment’s notice, it is very hard for workers to speak out and enforce their rights.”

Winchell of TrueBlue argued that it wasn’t fair to compare agencies using OSHA or wage data because it doesn’t account for differences in the number of workers each agency assigns or the types of work environments they send people to. “Each year, we connect approximately 615,000 people with essential work and place their safety and fair treatment above all else,” she said.

Kelly Services spokesperson Christian Taske also noted these gaps in the data. He said Kelly Services assesses companies’ work environments before sending them temps and sometimes assigns safety managers to sites. “The health and safety of our temporary and contract workers is an important priority for Kelly and host employers,” Taske said.

In 2013, ProPublica found that temp workers faced a significantly greater risk of getting injured on the job than regular employees and, in at least four states, were three times as likely to suffer amputations.

Since then, the Labor Department has recorded hundreds of severe injuries among temp workers and ordered staffing agencies to pay $20 million in unpaid wages. But while one part of the federal government sanctioned the companies, another provided them subsidies.

No temp firm had more employees certified for the WOTC in the states ProPublica analyzed than EmployBridge, which calls itself the nation’s largest industrial staffing firm. But according to federal lawsuits, the company has also failed to protect some workers from injuries and sexual harassment.

Dustin Petrey said in a lawsuit that he suffered a life-changing injury after EmployBridge subsidiary ResourceMFG failed to train him for work at a Tennessee plastics factory. In an interview, he said he was vacuuming debris from a hopper outside the plant in 2014 when a coworker flipped a switch inside. Before the 19-year-old could comprehend what had happened, an auger had severed his right arm. Petrey said he’d passed a simple safety test at the temp agency, but that he’d never received on-the-job training — or even heard of “lockout, tag-out,” a standard safety protocol for securing machinery.

Larissa Overfield said that during her 14 months with EmployBridge subsidiary EmploymentPlus in Kentucky, two coworkers at the auto parts factory where she worked repeatedly asked her for sex, according to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint and federal lawsuit. She said the men touched intimate parts of her body and threw things on the floor and told her to pick them up. Eventually, Overfield told a temp agency supervisor what was happening. The next day, she said, she was fired. When Overfield asked for another placement, the agency told her it didn’t have any other work available. “They completely turned their backs on me,” she said.

EmployBridge declined to comment. The company denied Overfield’s allegations in court. She said she received a settlement and her case was dismissed. EmployBridge was dismissed from Petrey’s lawsuit because it was already paying him workers’ comp benefits for his injury. Malara of the American Staffing Association said health and safety are a priority. “Over the past eight years,” he said, “ASA and our members have worked with federal stakeholders to ensure the increased safety of temporary and contract workers.”

A common argument for temp agencies’ participation in the WOTC program is that temp jobs will act as stepping stones to permanent employment. But according to many economists, such outcomes are the exception. “There’s no evidence to support the idea that temp work is leading to lots of direct-hire jobs,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In the early 2000s, Autor and economist Susan Houseman analyzed a trove of data on the employment outcomes of Detroit welfare recipients who had been assigned to either temp agency jobs or “direct-hire” jobs, meaning positions where workers are hired by the company they report to rather than through a temp agency. The researchers found that temp jobs failed to improve outcomes and may even have resulted in lower earnings in the long term. “These results cast doubt on whether the widespread use of temporary-help agencies by government programs is a sound public investment,” the economists concluded.

In studies published from 2003 to 2011, Hamersma of Syracuse found that jobs subsidized by the WOTC typically lasted only nine months and that temp jobs were even shorter. While she concluded the WOTC may boost welfare and food stamp recipients’ earnings initially, she said, “I didn’t find evidence it helped them get or keep jobs in the long run.”

One possible reason: Many companies rely on outside firms to process the credits, and managers at temp agencies and retailers told ProPublica they weren’t aware which workers were eligible when making hiring decisions.

That “actually makes it a terrible incentive, because nobody’s responding to it,” Autor said. It’s like hiring someone and then getting a notification from the IRS saying, “‘Oh, congratulations, he’s a felon. Here’s your 2,400 bucks.’”

Congress paid little attention to Hamersma’s research, but staffing agencies and tax credit processing companies succeeded in circulating papers heralding the credit among lawmakers. Two papers written by Peter Cappelli, a prominent business professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, said the WOTC was “not a windfall” for employers and estimated the credits provide a substantial return on investment for taxpayers. What the industry representatives didn’t disclose was that the papers were unpublished and had been paid for by lobbyists.

Cappelli said the attorney who offered to pay for his research didn’t say who was funding it or what it would be used for. If he were to redo the report, Cappelli said, he would make some changes, but he stood by the reports on the whole. “The questions that we’re asking here are about estimating the value of WOTC,” he said. “These things are not so simple to do.”

In the decade since, Congress has voted to extend the tax credit four times.

Reinforcing Barriers

One of the main problems with the WOTC, its critics say, is that it doesn’t address the many forces that create barriers for marginalized workers.

DeMond Bush is exactly the kind of person the WOTC was designed to help. He survived abuse as a child, became homeless at 14 and started selling drugs as a teenager. Then in 1995, when he was 21, a jury convicted him of robbery, kidnapping and manslaughter. Another Black man had been convicted in the high-profile murder of a white librarian in Frankfort, Kentucky, and prosecutors argued that Bush had helped him. Witnesses said they’d seen the men together in the days following the killing, jailhouse informants testified that Bush confessed to them and — in the time before DNA testing — a hair found in the victim’s car was determined to match Bush’s hair using forensic methods now considered inaccurate.

When Bush got out of prison, he hoped that his carpentry credentials would help him land a construction job. But despite the WOTC, he couldn’t find permanent work for several years. He’s now working a union construction job that he landed with the help of someone he met through a reentry program. (Luke Sharrett, special to ProPublica)

Bush insists he was in another city when the crime occurred and maintains his innocence, noting that the primary suspect in the case, who initially alleged that Bush was involved, has since retracted his statement. And over the more than 21 years Bush spent in Kentucky prisons, he earned three associate’s degrees in arts, science and skilled trades, a diploma from a seminary and two certificates in carpentry from a community college. He hoped that, when he got out, the carpentry training might help him land a union job.

Instead, Bush found himself picking up union workers’ trash. A day-labor agency had sent him to a sports arena to clean up after a union event.

Each day, Bush spent hours waiting at the agency for a chance to earn $9 to $10 an hour performing manual labor. The seats smelled like urine, he recalled, and cold air blew in through a hole in the door where a doorknob should have been.

“Beggars can’t be choosy,” Bush said. “And they know that, right?”

After more than two decades behind bars, Bush said he needed a lot more than a job. He needed housing, mental health services and time to adjust. But all he had access to were temp jobs. “You got to eat immediately,” he said. “I didn’t feel like there were any other options for me.”

Workers with criminal records who spoke with ProPublica listed dozens of reasons that temp jobs were their first and often only jobs after leaving prison. While failed background checks and the need for food and rent were common themes, longstanding criminal justice policies were often equally powerful factors.

Workers required to live at halfway houses said strict curfews ruled out the night shift at nearby factories and warehouses — often the only decent-paying direct-hire jobs available to them.

For most workers, employment was a condition of their parole. One parole office in New Hampshire provided ProPublica with a list of employers it gives to people. The first nine employers were temp agencies.

Workers also described owing court fines, parole fees or restitution. Some said the disruption caused by midweek parole meetings cost them jobs with conventional employers.

The rules governing federal grants to organizations that serve formerly incarcerated people also promote temp work. To receive federal grants for employment services, reentry nonprofits must show high job-placement rates. Because they needn’t specify whether those jobs are permanent positions or if they include benefits, some advocates say, nonprofits rely on temp agencies to keep their numbers up.

The U.S. Employment Service, a federal program that provides assistance to job seekers at centers across the country, once prohibited counselors from referring workers to employment agencies. But today its website tells people with felony records that “employment agencies can be a good path to a job” and recommends that applicants print out a brochure about the WOTC to present to employers.

Temp agencies, meanwhile, sometimes deter their client companies from hiring workers directly, charging penalty fees if companies want to bring someone on before their contract ends — and sometimes for up to a year after the contract expires.

For Courtney Decker, a 30-year-old Louisville resident whose battle with addiction led to stints behind bars, there was yet another reason she felt she had no choice but to take temp work. Because her mother had custody of Decker’s daughter, Decker owed child support. In Kentucky, missing just a few months of payments is a jailable offense. “If I did not pay my child support, I would have ended up getting locked up again,” she said.

Courtney Decker said she worked a series of temp jobs, never landing a permanent job despite promises that she would be hired. (William DeShazer, special to ProPublica)

As a child, Decker had wanted to be a police officer, like the one who let her pick out candy from the trunk of the cruiser he parked in her neighborhood. She was a junior ROTC cadet in high school and planned to join the Army. She dreamed of a career helping people and an income that would provide more than the instant ramen noodles with chopped hot dogs she and her four younger siblings ate while their single mom was at work.

Instead, Decker spent her 20s bouncing between prison and short-term jobs, grabbing hold of sobriety and then turning back to drugs and alcohol. Decker longed for a stable, full-time job — something that would allow her to pay for her own apartment and help support her young daughter.

Instead, Decker said, she woke up each morning on a friend’s couch, laced up her steel-toe boots and made her way in the predawn darkness to the same day-labor agency Bush had used. “You’d have to get there at like 4 in the morning,” she said. “If you was late, you didn’t get assigned anywhere.”

But none of the temp jobs led to lasting employment. Once, Decker said, a temp agency sent her to a nearby warehouse with the promise of a permanent job and benefits after 90 days. But the job ended the same way Bush’s did. After two months, Decker said, the company ran a background check and told her she could stay on as a temp but couldn’t become a permanent employee.

Soon after, Decker relapsed, her probation was revoked and she returned to prison. Despite the outcome, the temp agency was still eligible to collect tax credits for Decker’s work.

“It doesn’t make sense that they’re getting this tax credit and it’s not going towards full-time employment,” she said.

More Than “Worker Bees”

Bush and Decker had little in common before leaving prison. Yet after they were released, their journeys were remarkably similar. Both were attracted by temp agencies’ promises of permanent employment only to have their hopes dashed. Both draw a direct line between that disappointment and their return to prison. And both credit a nonprofit — not the private sector — with giving them a second chance.

After Bush left prison at the end of 2019, he vowed he’d never go back to a temp agency. This time, he found his way to a reentry services program run by Goodwill Industries of Kentucky. Bush enrolled in a class there, then landed a full-time job with the nonprofit, coaching men and women like him. “It drastically changed my life,” he said. It gave him newfound confidence and, eventually, a contact he made through Goodwill helped him get union construction work, earning more than $20 an hour.

Bush said it was a nonprofit, not temp agencies, that first offered him stable employment. (Luke Sharrett, special to ProPublica)

Likewise, Decker’s path after prison led her to Goodwill, which helped her find sober housing and gave her bus vouchers. Then, a career coach connected her with a full-time job directing traffic around construction. She stayed in that job for two years. The work was dependable and paid enough for Decker to move into her own apartment and start thinking about what she really wanted in a career: to help people like her. She applied for a job as a peer-support specialist at Goodwill.

Decker said Goodwill’s program is effective because the only roles that it considers to be acceptable placements are direct-hire jobs with benefits, an unusual policy among similar providers. If taxpayers are going to subsidize jobs for people like her, Decker said, these are the standards that employers receiving the WOTC should have to meet.

Labor advocates argue the same. “I think we need to restructure the WOTC so that we’re not just giving employers a subsidy for providing a job, no matter how low-quality that job is,” said Padin of the National Employment Law Project. She suggested increasing the minimum tenure from three weeks to a year, creating a wage floor greater than the federal minimum wage and requiring employers to provide training or opportunities for advancement to receive the subsidy.

Others say policymakers’ emphasis on immediate employment after prison is part of the problem.

If lawmakers want evidence-based programs with a good return on investment, said Autor, they should try six-to-12-month vocational training programs. But unlike tax credits, he warned, “the upfront costs are very substantial.”

Decker plays with her two youngest daughters in their backyard. (William DeShazer, special to ProPublica)

James of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls said people need resources after the “massive disruption, economic disruption and familial disruption” of incarceration. Her organization is in the second year of a project providing $500 a month, no strings attached, to women transitioning home from prison. James said recipients have used the funds for groceries, rent, gas and, in one case, graduation clothes for a grandson. While James’ program hasn’t produced data yet, studies show similar programs reduce crime rates, increase employment and improve mental health outcomes.

On a recent Saturday, Bush sat at a picnic table in Louisville’s Central Park, leaned into the summer sun and described the future he imagines for himself. In the evenings over the last year, Bush has been working toward a master’s degree in social work at a local university. Someday, he said, he hopes to use those skills to start his own nonprofit.

The way Bush sees it, most reentry programs, including WOTC, do little more than teach people leaving prison to become “worker bees,” prepared for little else but low-wage labor. Instead, Bush wants to help them envision the future they want, cope with their transition home and develop the skills and community they need to succeed. If given a chance, formerly incarcerated people like him can build rewarding careers and become community leaders, Bush said. “We have it in us to do it.”

Do You Have a Tip for ProPublica? Help Us Do Journalism.

by Andrew Perez, The Lever, and Andy Kroll and Justin Elliott, ProPublica

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

This story was co-published with The Lever.

An elderly, ultra-secretive Chicago businessman has given the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history — worth $1.6 billion — and the recipient is one of the prime architects of conservatives’ efforts to reshape the American judicial system, including the Supreme Court.

Through a series of opaque transactions over the past two years, Barre Seid, a 90-year-old manufacturing magnate, gave the massive sum to a nonprofit run by Leonard Leo, who co-chairs the conservative legal group the Federalist Society.

The donation was first reported by The New York Times on Monday. The Lever and ProPublica confirmed the information from documents received independently by the news organizations.

Our reporting sheds additional light on how the two men, one a judicial kingmaker and the other a mysterious but prolific donor to conservative causes, came together to create a political war chest that will likely supercharge efforts to further shift American politics to the right.

As President Donald Trump’s adviser on judicial nominations, Leo helped build the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, which recently eliminated Constitutional protections for abortion rights and has made a series of sweeping pro-business decisions. Leo, a conservative Catholic, has both helped select judges to nominate to the Supreme Court and directed multimillion dollar media campaigns to confirm them.

Leo derives immense political power through his ability to raise huge sums of money and distribute those funds throughout the conservative movement to influence elections, judicial appointments and policy battles. Yet the biggest funders of Leo’s operation have long been a mystery.

Seid, who led the surge protector and data-center equipment maker Tripp Lite for more than half a century, has been almost unknown outside a small circle of political and cultural recipients. The gift immediately vaults him into the ranks of major funders like the Koch brothers and George Soros.

In practical terms, there are few limitations on how Leo’s new group, the Marble Freedom Trust, can spend the enormous donation. The structure of the donation allowed Seid to avoid as much as $400 million in taxes. Thus, he maximized the amount of money at Leo’s disposal.

Now, Leo, 56, is positioned to finance his already sprawling network with one of the largest pools of political capital in American history. Seid has left his legacy to Leo.

“To my knowledge, it is entirely without precedent for a political operative to be given control of such an astonishing amount of money,” said Brendan Fischer, a campaign finance lawyer at the nonpartisan watchdog group Documented. “Leonard Leo is already incredibly powerful, and now he is going to have over a billion dollars at his disposal to continue upending our country’s institutions.”

In a statement to the Times, Leo said it was “high time for the conservative movement to be among the ranks of George Soros, Hansjörg Wyss, Arabella Advisors and other left-wing philanthropists, going toe-to-toe in the fight to defend our constitution and its ideals.” Leo and representatives for Seid did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Marble Freedom Trust is a so-called dark money group that is not required to publicly disclose its donors. It has wide latitude to spend directly on elections as well as on ideological projects such as funding issue-advocacy groups, think tanks, universities, religious institutions and organizing efforts.

In an unusual maneuver, Leonard Leo was added as an officer to Barre Seid’s company. Seid left the company’s board, and his name was crossed out in state corporate disclosure filings. (Illinois Office of the Secretary of State)

The creators of the Marble Freedom Trust shrouded their project in secrecy for more than two years.

The group’s name does not appear in any public database of business, tax or securities records. The Marble Freedom Trust is organized for legal purposes as a trust, rather than as a corporation. That means it did not have to publicly disclose basic details like its name, directors and address.

The trust was formed in Utah. Its address is a house in North Salt Lake owned by Tyler Green, a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Green is listed in the trust’s tax return as an administrative trustee. The donation does not appear to violate any laws.

Seid’s $1.6 billion donation is a landmark in the era of deregulated political spending ushered in by the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. That case, along with subsequent changes and weak federal oversight, empowered a tiny group of the super rich in both parties to fund groups that can spend unlimited sums to support candidates and political causes. In the last decade, donations in the millions and sometimes tens of millions of dollars have become common.

Individuals could give unlimited amounts of money to nonprofit groups prior to Citizens United, but the decision allowed those nonprofits to more directly influence elections. A handful of billionaires such as the Koch family and Soros have spent billions to achieve epochal political influence by bankrolling networks of nonprofits.

Even in this money-drenched world, Seid’s $1.6 billion gift exceeds all publicly known one-time donations to a politically oriented group.

The Silent Donor

One day in November 2015, the employees of Tripp Lite, a manufacturer of power strips and other electrical equipment, gathered for a celebration at the company’s headquarters on the South Side of Chicago. Cupcakes frosted in blue and white spelled out the numbers “56.” An easel held up a sign hailing Tripp Lite’s longtime leader: “Congratulations Barre!”

A small, balding man with a white goatee and a ruddy complexion took the microphone. Barre Seid was known as someone who preferred to keep a low profile, but on the 56th anniversary of his leadership of Tripp Lite, he couldn’t resist the chance to address his employees. Later, as he bit into a cupcake, Seid posed for a company photographer, who later uploaded the photo to the company’s Facebook page.

Even this semipublic glimpse of Seid was rare.

For several decades, a select group of political activists, academics and fundraisers was ushered to Tripp Lite headquarters to pitch Seid at his office. Despite his status as one of the country’s most prolific funders of conservative causes, and despite his decades as the president and sole owner of one of the country’s most successful electronics makers, Seid has spent most of his 90 years painstakingly guarding his privacy.

There are no art galleries, opera companies, or theaters or university buildings emblazoned with his name in his hometown of Chicago. There’s even some confusion over how to pronounce his last name. (People who’ve dealt with him say it’s “side.”)

The Lever and ProPublica pieced together the details of his life and his motivations for his extensive donations through interviews, court records and other documents obtained through public-records requests.

One of the only photos of Seid that The Lever and ProPublica could find shows him as a 14-year-old walking in a small group across a college campus. Born in 1932 to Russian Jewish immigrants, Seid grew up on the South Side of Chicago, the oldest of two brothers, according to Census records. A precocious child, he was chosen for a special bachelor’s degree program at the University of Chicago, not far from his childhood home.

Seid attended the University of Chicago in the early years of the “Chicago school,” a group of professors and researchers who would reimagine the field of economics, assailing massive government interventions in the economy and emphasizing the importance of human liberty and free markets. After college, Seid served two years in the Army and eventually returned home to Chicago, according to testimony given decades later in a court case. He took a job as an assistant to an investor and businessman named Graham Trippe, whose company made headlights and would produce the rotating warning lights used by police cars, tow trucks and other emergency response vehicles.

By the mid-1960s, Seid had taken over as Trippe Manufacturing’s president. In the decades to come, the company, now called Tripp Lite, became a pick-and-shovel business of the digital gold rush. The company sells the power strips that supply electricity to computers and the server racks, cooling equipment and network switches that make data centers run. Business surged with the shift to cloud computing and the proliferation of vast data centers.

That boom vaulted him from the ranks of merely rich to the superrich. Seid was making around $30 million per year by the mid-1990s, tax records obtained by ProPublica show. His annual income, the vast majority of which came from Tripp Lite’s profits, took off in the mid-2000s and steadily rose, hitting around $157 million in 2018. Tripp Lite, which was 100% owned by Seid, contributed $136 million to his total income that year.

Even as Seid built a billion-plus dollar business, he drew scant public attention; Forbes never put him on its list of the wealthiest Americans, and business and political press rarely mentioned him.

Yet he was becoming a major donor. He gave at least $775 million in charitable donations between 1996 and 2018, a period in which he reported $1.7 billion in income, according to his tax records. Seid parceled out a small portion of those donations to Chicago-area universities, religious organizations, medical research and dozens of civic-focused groups.

While Seid has never spoken to the press about his ideology, evidence of his worldview has emerged here and there. His family foundation has supported the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, named after two of the Chicago school’s intellectual leaders, Gary Becker and Milton Friedman. He has also donated to the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit that has a history of using inflammatory rhetoric and misleading tactics to undermine climate science.

Seid appeared to be the donor (listed as “Barry Seid”) who gave $17 million to fund the distribution during the 2008 presidential campaign of millions of copies of a DVD of the film “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War With the West.” The DVDs, which were sent specifically to households in presidential election battleground states, were criticized as virulently anti-Muslim.

Seid’s personality can be glimpsed in exchanges with George Mason University officials from the late 2000s to mid-2010s that came out in response to a public-records request by the activist group UnKoch My Campus. In the emails, Seid comes across as an intellectually probing figure, asking the dean of the law school to respond to news stories about the value of a law-school degree or the workings of higher education’s accreditation system. Seid drily addressed several administrators for the university, whose law school and economics department are known for their alignment with conservative, free-market principles, as “Fellow Members of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.”

Seid appears to have continually sought new vehicles for dispensing his money and maintaining as much anonymity as possible. The GMU emails also show a redacted donor — who activists believed to be Seid based on other unredacted materials — routing donations to the school through DonorsTrust or the Donors Capital Fund, two donor-advised funds that provide an additional level of anonymity.

While the roots of Seid and Leo’s professional relationship aren’t clear, the two worked together at a small foundation Seid formed in 2009 called the Chicago Freedom Trust, a charity that gave out small grants to nonpolitical groups. Leo later joined the foundation’s board.

The GMU emails provide an inkling of the relationship between the two men. In early 2016, Seid emailed the dean of GMU’s law school and the head of a prominent American Jewish organization to urge them to work together. The dean, Henry Butler, forwarded Seid’s message to Leo seeking to better understand Seid’s intentions.

“Do you have any insight?” Butler wrote.

“I do not, but will find out,” Leo replied.

The Money

Billionaires tend to craft intricate estate plans to pass the family business to the next generation, fortified from taxation and protective of their vision. The apparently childless Seid didn’t have that option, but starting in April 2020, he set in motion a plan to make sure his fortune would go toward his favored causes.

That month, the Marble Freedom Trust was created, and Seid subsequently transferred his 100% ownership stake in Tripp Lite to the trust, according to the documents reviewed by The Lever and ProPublica.

In February 2021, Tripp Lite filed its annual reports with the state of Illinois as it had done for decades. But this time, Seid’s typewritten name had been crossed out as an officer of the company. Added as an officer, written in by hand, was Leonard Leo.

A Tripp Lite subsidiary in Nova Scotia, Canada, similarly removed Seid as a director and added Leo as a director in March 2021, according to disclosure filings.

Then, later that same month, Eaton Corporation, a large publicly traded company, acquired Tripp Lite for $1.65 billion.

The transactions appear to have been carefully sequenced to reap massive tax savings. Selling a company that has grown in value after decades of ownership is treated the same way for tax purposes as a person selling a share of stock. If the property has grown in value, capital gains taxes are due when it is sold.

But Seid transferred Tripp Lite to the Marble Freedom Trust, a nonprofit that is exempt from income tax, before the electronics company was sold. As a result, lawyers say, Seid avoided up to $400 million in state and federal income tax, preserving those funds for Leo’s operation.

“If the person who had owned the stock had sold the stock himself, he would’ve been taxed on the appreciation in the stock,” said Ellen Aprill, a tax law professor at Loyola Marymount University. “Whereas if you give it to the 501(c)(4), there’s no charitable deduction for giving the money, but you avoid the tax on all of that appreciation.”

Political advocacy nonprofits like the Marble Freedom Trust are formally called 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations, after the section of the tax code. Informally, they are known as dark-money groups because donors can remain secret, in contrast to the public disclosures required of gifts to political campaigns or super PACs. While they can spend money directly advocating for or against candidates in political campaigns, such spending cannot be their primary purpose.

In giving to such a dark money group, Seid also avoided another federal levy, the gift tax, thanks to a change signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015.

There’s a reason why giving money specifically to a trust might have been attractive for an older and ideological donor such as Seid. The founding documents that lay out how the trust will spend money can be harder to change than the governing documents of a corporation, according to Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a professor at Notre Dame Law School.

Mayer added that while corporations usually have at least three directors, trusts can have just a single trustee in charge of the organization’s activities.

Leo is the trustee and chairman of the Marble Freedom Trust. In other words, Leo is now in charge of the massive sum of money.

The Rainmaker

For decades, Leo had served as a top executive at the Federalist Society, helping lead the influential Washington-based conservative lawyers group that serves as a launching pad for careers on the right.

But in early 2020, Leo made an announcement that suggested he was taking his successful model for reshaping the courts to remake American politics at every level: local, state and federal. In an interview with Axios, Leo said he was stepping away from his day-to-day role with the Federalist Society to take a more active role steering a network of conservative dark money groups.

The plan was to expand the network’s scope to “funnel tens of millions of dollars into conservative fights around the country,” according to Axios. What Leo did not mention in the interview was the imminent creation of the Marble Freedom Trust, his biggest-ever war chest.

Leo’s long career as both a legal activist and a prodigious fundraiser for conservative causes shows a steady march toward becoming a central figure in the Republican Party’s successful strategy to fill as many judicial vacancies as possible with young, conservative judges skeptical of the federal government’s power. He served as an adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign, helping the candidate take a step no other major presidential candidate had ever taken: releasing a list of names he would draw on to nominate to the Supreme Court.

Coming at a moment when conservatives were wary of Trump’s past leanings, the move bolstered his support among social conservatives. Leo stayed on as a judicial adviser during Trump’s four years in office. During that time, Leo helped the president appoint and confirm more than 200 nominees to the federal bench, most famously Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Leo’s efforts to reshape the country’s judicial system began long before Trump’s political ascent. In 1991, he joined the Federalist Society, which was then in its early years and only beginning to build a pipeline for conservative jurists.

In the view of Leo and his allies, the U.S. legal system had drifted dangerously far from its roots, establishing privileged classes and doctrines that were not enumerated in the Constitution and would be unrecognizable to the Founders. Those same courts had also empowered a class of unelected bureaucrats dubbed the “administrative state” to impose needless regulations and to endow the federal government with too much power. Like his close friend Justice Antonin Scalia, Leo argued for an originalist view of the Constitution — namely, that the country’s founding document should be interpreted strictly based on how its 18th century authors understood its words at the time.

In 2005, Leo and his allies formed a dark money network to rally support for George W. Bush’s Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. But if Leo wanted to turn back the tide of what he saw as unchecked judicial activism, he needed to build something bigger, more lasting.

Leo set out to create a network of interlocking groups that could each play a part in returning the country to what he saw as its roots, whether by training future generations of Scalias, funding scholarship that made the case for originalism or bankrolling efforts to install conservative judges on the bench.

Between 2005 and mid-2021, Leo and his associates raised at least $460 million (not including the Marble Freedom Trust’s funds).

According to tax records, Leo’s network has funneled those hundreds of millions into ad campaigns and right-leaning groups. The Judicial Crisis Network — which is now called the Concord Fund and is headed by a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and Leo associate named Carrie Severino — has spent tens of millions airing ads during Supreme Court confirmation fights.

The group’s fundraising took off in 2016, when it led a campaign to block Obama Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland’s confirmation. That year, Leo’s network received a $28 million infusion from a single anonymous donor. Leo and his network long refused to say who is paying for their advocacy campaigns.

Leo’s network has worked closely with Senate Republicans and has showered them with cash as well, recently donating $9 million to a dark money group affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

While Leo is best known for his influence on the Supreme Court, he and his network have also worked to shift the balance of power throughout the judiciary — in federal district and appellate courts, and state supreme courts, too.

At the state level, the network funds groups supporting conservative gubernatorial and legislative candidates. Leo’s nonprofits and their subsidiaries have recently pushed states to tighten voting laws, opposed the teaching of critical race theory in schools and financed organizations pressing states to remove millions of Americans from the Medicaid rolls.

But now, with Seid’s largesse, Leo has nearly four times the amount he raised over 16 years at his disposal and ambitions to match.

“I have a very simple rule, which is, I’m engaged in the battle of ideas, and I care very deeply about our Constitution and the role of courts in our society,” Leo told The Washington Post in 2019 when asked about his donors. “And I don’t waste my time on stories that involve money and politics because what I care about is ideas.”

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Doris Burke and Andrea Suozzo contributed reporting.