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by Sharon Lerner and Lisa Song

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The Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn a legal complaint filed last year against the GEO Group, a major donor to President Donald Trump that has more than $1 billion in contracts with the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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pratheek Rebala contributed reporting.

CHICAGO – Attorney General Kwame Raoul today issued a statement in support of a lawsuit California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed against President Trump, the Department of Defense and Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in response to their unlawful orders to federalize the California National Guard. “I stand in solidarity with my colleague Attorney General Rob Bonta regarding his legal challenge to Donald Trump’s unprecedented order directing the National Guard to respond to lawful protesters. The administration’s actions to federalize the National Guard are inappropriate and have escalated circumstances unnecessarily in Los Angeles. President Trump has further inflamed the situation by taking the extraordinary action of ordering Marines to be deployed on American soil. While shocking, both actions are consistent with President Trump’s other attempts to move our democracy toward authoritarianism. “Our Constitution protects the right t

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CHICAGO – The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) announced today that 21 additional professions are now available for licensure via the Department's new online licensing system, CORE (Comprehensive Online Regulatory Environment). Today’s announcement marks the successful completion of CORE’s Phase 2.1, with additional parts of Phase 2 set for completion in the coming weeks. The Department will announce when each part of Phase 2 is completed, including which professions are added to CORE. “The expansion of CORE means increased accessibility for applicants, ensuring more qualified professionals can obtain their licenses in a timely and efficient manner,” said IDFPR Secretary Mario Treto, Jr. “We are now one step closer to making CORE available for all license types, ultimately benefiting both consumers and professionals alike across Illinois.” Phase 2 focuses on adding license types to CORE that are currently

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In a 2010 interview , actress Courtney Cox claimed she and her Friends co-stars Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow ate a Cobb salad for lunch every day for 10 years. More recently, actress Selena Gomez, 32, said she picked up an “old man habit” from her Only Murders in the Building co-stars Martin Short, 74, and Steve Martin, 79. Gomez said the elder statesmen eat the same thing every day, and she follows suit, typically with a chicken salad sandwich. It's a real thing, says Carly Zimmer, a registered dietitian-nutritionist at OSF HealthCare. For some, eating the same meal over and over might be a matter of convenience. It’s quicker and cheaper to have a granola bar for breakfast every day rather than cooking a big meal, for example. For others, it might be more of a medical issue. They can’t tolerate the taste or texture of some foods, or the foods may upset their stomach. Or, they may have swallowing difficulties or an allergy. Regardless, Zimmer

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ST. LOUIS - The 2026 Priority Project List , compiled for the bi-state St. Louis region by the St. Louis Regional Freightway, includes 29 projects totaling nearly $8.9 billion. The list was released at the Freightway’s annual Freight Summit on Wednesday, June 4, the signature event of FreightWeekSTL. As of May 2024, more than $560 million in projects on the list had been completed and more $2.6 billion in funding had been allocated for additional projects on the list, with many of those under construction or soon to be. The list highlights the top infrastructure needs of manufacturing and logistics industries in Eastern Missouri and Southwestern Illinois. “The numbers highlighted in this year’s report, which continue to grow year over year, underscore the tremendous commitment to improving freight infrastructure in the bi-state St. Louis region by securing funding and advancing major projects through the development pipeline,” said Mary Lamie, Executive Vice

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Legislation to void non-disclosure agreements in child sexual abuse cases was signed into law Tuesday by Gov. Mike Kehoe. The bill has been called “Trey’s Law,” referring to the late Trey Carlock, who died by suicide in 2019 after being sexually abused by Pete Newman at the Branson-based Kanakuk Kamps. Trey’s sister, Elizabeth Carlock, said […]

ST. LOUIS – The City of St. Louis, in partnership with the Missouri State Emergency Management Agency and Saint Louis University (SLU), will open a Disaster Assistance Center (DAC) on Monday to serve as a central space for tornado-affected residents to connect with agencies offering guidance, resources, and assistance related to recovery and long-term support. “As we move from responding to helping residents put their lives back together, it is critical that a one-stop place like the Disaster Assistance Center makes it as convenient as possible for residents to get the resources they need on the road to recovery,” said Mayor Cara Spencer. “This is another example of the community collaboration that we have seen since the tornado and reflects the compassion and resilience of the city. I am extremely thankful to everyone contributing to this effort.” The DAC will take place June 9-12 (Monday-Thursday), June 16-18 (Monday-Wednesday), and June 23-26 (Monday-Thursday),

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Senate Democrats don’t have to separate the crackdown in Los Angeles and the Republican bill in Washington. The latter will allow for more of the former.

We’ve noted how Republicans are busy screwing up the infrastructure bill’s $42.5 billion BEAD broadband grant program. After performatively whining that the program wasn’t moving quickly enough for their liking during the election season, the GOP announced it would be significantly slowing fund dispersal just to make life harder on poor people and to throw […]

On This Day, June 10, 1985…Forty years ago, Talking Heads released their sixth studio album, Little Creatures, which turned out to be the band’s most commercially successful release.The album featured a…

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Missourians who lost homes or other property during the May 16 tornado in St. Louis or storms that struck Scott County on April 29 are now eligible for federal disaster money. Gov. Mike Kehoe announced Tuesday that President Donald Trump  had approved his request for disaster declarations for the storms the day before, making federal […]

The disaster declaration makes Individual Assistance available to eligible residents in the City of St. Louis.

by Aliyya Swaby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other states also considered passing harsher penalties for school threats.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pennsylvania’s Legislature adjourns at the end of December.

Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed reporting.