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Help Shape the Future of Saint Louis County Hearing June 16, commission vote is July 7 STLCO 2050 Comprehensive Plan is out now, and we want to hear from you! – Got 10 minutes? Then you have time to check out the draft recommendations for STLCO 2050, Saint Louis County’s new Comprehensive Plan, and […]
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Welcome to It's All in the Mix! Join us for a vibrant and eclectic mixed media art exhibit at Artisans in THE LOOP. Explore a fusion of colors, textures, and techniques that push the boundaries […]
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ProPublica announced on Wednesday a new call for proposals to select the next five partners in its Local Reporting Network. These newsrooms will be chosen to be part of the organization’s 50 State Initiative, a commitment to partnering with one newsroom from each state by 2029. The deadline for applications is July 21 at 5 p.m. Eastern. Reporters selected for the one-year program will begin work on Oct. 1, 2025.
Through this partnership, ProPublica will reimburse news organizations for the salary of the selected reporter (up to $75,000 plus a benefits stipend) so they can spend a year working full time on an accountability journalism project of importance to their communities. Additionally, ProPublica provides editing support, along with our data, research, visual storytelling, graphics, design, audience and engagement expertise.
More information about how to apply and the application for prospective newsrooms have just been posted. Newsrooms from 35 states are eligible to apply for this round. Please see our eligibility map for details.
As part of the 50 State Initiative, ProPublica is currently working with newsrooms from the first 10 states; another five newsrooms will start in July. Reporting with The Connecticut Mirror on car towing in the state sparked legislative reforms to overhaul century-old towing laws that favored tow companies at the expense of drivers. In Georgia, we have documented how the state’s Medicaid work requirement, which is being heralded as a model for the rest of the country, has fallen short and cost millions. And in Tennessee, we’ve shown how one company has vastly expanded the use of a unique high-interest loan — and then gone on to sue more than 100,000 borrowers.
“It’s thrilling to see ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network reach newsrooms in all regions of the country,” said Sarah Blustain, an assistant managing editor at ProPublica. “With each additional state, we are able to bring urgent local issues to readers nationwide.”
The 50 State Initiative expands the scope of ProPublica’s work at the local and regional level, which includes a growing team of journalists reporting from communities across the country and groundbreaking partnerships with local news organizations through the LRN program.
The initiative broadens our support for local journalism, which now includes the LRN alongside dedicated reporting hubs in the Midwest, South, Southwest and Northwest, as well as an investigative unit in Texas in partnership with The Texas Tribune. ProPublica has more than 25 staff reporters and more than 20 reporting partnerships around the country contributing to regional and local accountability reporting, ensuring people can benefit from world-class journalism that can drive measurable change in their communities.
The LRN began in January 2018 in an effort to help remedy the lack of investigative reporting at the local level. It has since led to partnerships with some 80 news organizations across the country.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.
What Happened: A trio of lawmakers demanded transparency from the Department of Veterans Affairs on Tuesday, saying the Trump administration continues to “stonewall” requests for details on the agency’s recent cancellation of hundreds of service contracts.
The group, which included Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Angus King, as well as Rep. Mark Takano, said that despite repeated requests, the agency has disclosed incomplete and inaccurate lists that failed to specify exactly which contracts have been canceled. Blumenthal and Takano are Democrats, and King is an independent. They made their comments at a special forum in Washington.
A review by the Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs identified 655 contracts canceled by the VA, where previous lists disclosed by the agency included dozens less and contained significant errors.
The lawmakers cited a recent ProPublica investigation into the agency’s use of a flawed artificial intelligence tool to assess VA contracts. That analysis was conducted by a staffer from the Department of Government Efficiency with no health care or government experience. The VA uses contractors for a range of services, including to support hospitals, research and other services aimed at caring for ailing veterans.
What They Said: Lists of contracts previously disclosed to the committee are “gobbledygook” and filled with errors, the lawmakers said. “This hearing shouldn’t even be necessary,” said King, who sits on the VA oversight committee. “The simplest thing is to send us a list.”
Senators highlighted the harm caused by canceling the contracts, including one that resolved glitches between VA systems preventing veterans from receiving benefits. Without this contract, said Benjamin Ambrose, whose job it was to resolve these errors, there is nobody left at VA to do this work. “In this case veterans are being locked out forever,” he said.
Scott Amey, general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government Oversight, said: “There’s a lot of fallout. There’s a lot of dominoes that go with canceling just one contract.”
Amey expressed doubt that the necessary work was done to ensure canceled contracts were duplicative or wasteful. “From the stonewalling that we’ve heard from the VA, you can’t have any confidence that that work was done,” he said.
The lawmakers also questioned the VA’s use of AI to assess contracts for possible cancellation, referring to ProPublica’s investigation. Blumenthal said AI holds promise, but it “has to be used thoughtfully.”
Background: ProPublica reported on Friday that the VA used an error-prone AI tool to identify contracts for possible cancellation. The tool, written by former DOGE staffer Sahil Lavingia, used outdated AI models to “munch” contracts based on conflicting instructions and produced glaring mistakes, a ProPublica analysis found.
Experts in AI and government procurement agreed that the DOGE analysis of VA contracts was flawed, with one calling it “deeply problematic.” Lavingia acknowledged that there were problems. “I’m sure mistakes were made. Mistakes are always made. I would never recommend someone run my code and do what it says. It’s like that ‘Office’ episode where Steve Carell drives into the lake because Google Maps says drive into the lake. Do not drive into the lake.”
ProPublica identified at least two dozen contracts on DOGE’s list that have been canceled so far. Among them is a service agreement to maintain a gene sequencing device used to develop better cancer treatments. Another was with Columbia University for blood sample analysis to support a VA research project. Others still were related to addressing nursing issues, including one to develop social media tools to recruit nursing staff and another to help assess and improve the care they provide.
Democrats in Congress have been seeking more information from the VA on the canceled contracts in an attempt to assess whether the cuts have put veterans’ well-being in jeopardy.
Response: VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz has defended DOGE’s work on reviewing contracts, saying that the vetting sets a “commonsense precedent.” He and Lavingia have said that VA staffers reviewed everything on the DOGE “munchable” list before deciding which contracts to cut.
In a statement on Tuesday, Kasperowicz said that the agency’s contract review has been a careful process aimed at benefiting veterans and using taxpayer money efficiently. “Decisions to keep, cut or descope contracts are based on careful and methodical multilevel reviews by VA employees, including career subject-matter experts who are responsible for the contracts, as well as VA senior leaders and contracting officials,” he said.
He disputed any suggestion from legislators that the contract review might diminish essential services. “Terminating or not renewing these contracts will not negatively affect veteran care, benefits or services,” he said. “In fact, these decisions will allow VA to redirect billions of dollars back toward health care, benefits and services for VA beneficiaries.”
Why It Matters: Over 9 million veterans across the U.S. rely on the VA for health care through its network of 170 hospitals and 1,200 clinics. One of the nation’s largest health care providers, it is a training ground for doctors and nurses and an engine for medical research. Since returning to office in January, the Trump administration has set about a massive overhaul of the agency, seeking an increase in its overall budget while announcing layoffs that could claim the jobs of around 80,000 employees.
The VA is examining all of its estimated 76,000 contracts as part of that overhaul and in accordance with the Trump administration’s push towards tech. ProPublica’s analysis identified over 2,000 contracts flagged by AI for termination. It’s unclear how many more from that list are on track for cancellation. The Trump administration’s decisions on VA contracts have largely been a black box.
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