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Oran Ambus was charged with harassment for social media videos in which he advocated for an old friend convicted of rape.

The U.S. right wing has won a generational war against education and informed consensus with the closure of the Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB), which states it will being shuttering its doors after being unable to survive recent brutal funding cuts by Republicans. After the White House falsely deemed NPR and PBS a “grift” last April, Republicans […]

ST. LOUIS - Four juveniles were arrested overnight Wednesday after a carjacking and a police chase in north St. Louis. According to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department (SLMPD), the carjacking occurred around 11 p.m. Tuesday night on the 4400 block of Kennerly Avenue in north St. Louis' the Ville neighborhood. The victim of the [...]

A person was injured in a shooting in Bellefontaine Neighbors on Tuesday afternoon, and was transported to a nearby hospital for treatment.

The Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis starts its 10th season tomorrow night with “A Streetcar Named Desire” at the Grandel Theatre in Grand Center. The 11-day festival continues with special performances and other events throughout the weekend.

by Joel Jacobs

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

A New York business frozen out of its checking account. A Georgia chemotherapy patient denied a credit card refund after a product dispute. A New Jersey service member defrauded out of their savings.

These consumers — along with hundreds of others — reached out to their congressional representatives for help in the past 12 months.

“I have been unable to pay my rent, utilities, personal bills, student loans, or my credit card. I have been unable to buy groceries or put gas in my car,” wrote the New Yorker, who contacted Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ office.

Records show their representatives — all Republicans — referred them to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency formed in the wake of the Great Recession to shield Americans from unfair or abusive business practices. All three consumers got relief, according to agency data.

Then the lawmakers — along with nearly every other Republican in Congress — voted to slash the agency’s funding by nearly half as part of President Donald Trump’s signature legislative package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a step toward the administration’s goal of gutting the agency.

Republicans have long been critical of the CFPB, accusing it of imposing unreasonable burdens on businesses. Already, the CFPB under Trump has dropped a number of cases and frozen investigations into dozens of companies.

Yet the agency has historically benefited consumers across the political spectrum, securing around $20 billion in relief through its enforcement actions.

Data obtained by ProPublica through a public records request shows that many of the same Republican members of Congress who have targeted the CFPB for cuts have collectively routed thousands of constituent complaints to the agency.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, for example, voted to reduce the CFPB’s budget. Yet each of their offices has referred more than 100 constituents to the CFPB for help, among the most of any House members. The office of Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who also voted for the CFPB cuts, has routed more than 800 constituent complaints to the agency, the most of any current lawmaker from either party, ProPublica found.

A spokesperson for Issa said in an email that most of his office’s referrals to the agency “occurred several years ago” and reflected “a conventional way” to handle constituents’ consumer issues.

Wittman and Cornyn didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the disconnect between their offices’ use of the CFPB’s services and their votes to cut it. Neither did New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, whose office fielded the defrauded service member’s complaint, or Malliotakis, who was approached by the New York business owner, or Rep. Rick Allen, whose office directed the Georgia chemotherapy patient to the agency.

Overall, members of Congress have steered nearly 24,000 complaints to the CFPB since it opened its doors in 2011. Roughly 10,000 of those were referred by the offices of current and former Republican lawmakers, ProPublica found.

“This is how members of Congress from both parties get help for the people who live in their districts,” said Erie Meyer, the CFPB’s former chief technologist, who left the agency in February. The agency has a particular mandate to help service members and seniors, she noted. “This is how, if a service member is getting screwed on an auto loan, this is the only place they can go.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has referred more than 200 constituents to CFPB since its creation. In a statement to ProPublica, he accused Republicans in Congress of “pursuing senseless cuts that will undermine their own ability to protect their constituents, who will be left in the lurch when they fall victim to scams or deceptive and unfair business practices.”

“Republicans have made clear that they stand on the side of big businesses — not consumers,” he added. “Their irresponsible pursuit of dismantling the CFPB will have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.”

An Irreplaceable System

In recent years, the CFPB’s public database shows the number of complaints has exploded, from around 280,000 in 2019 to more than 2.7 million last year.

Complaints have grown across many categories, including credit cards and debt collection. Last year, most of the complaints filed, over 2.3 million, were about mistakes or other problems involving credit reporting agencies, and more than half of them resulted in relief, CFPB data shows.

“These credit score formulas govern so many factors of your life. It’s not just your ability to get a loan, it’s your ability to secure housing or qualify for a job,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s important that you can resolve something, but it’s difficult to do it on your own.”

Once a complaint is submitted, it is routed to the company, which has 15 days to respond. Companies can request an additional 45 days to reach a final resolution.

Many consumers end up getting nonmonetary relief, such as fixes to erroneous credit reports or an end to harassment by debt collectors, but some get financial help as well. More than $300 million has been returned to Americans through the complaint system, including $90 million just last year.

Normally, staff at the CFPB monitor the complaints to identify systemic issues and escalate complaints involving consumers who are at immediate risk of foreclosure, although that didn’t happen for a few weeks this year when the agency’s acting director halted its work.

The CFPB also shares complaint information with other federal agencies, states and localities to help them protect consumers. No other government or private entity has the capacity to effectively handle the volume of complaints that the CFPB does, experts and current and former employees say.

States often have limited resources for consumer protection efforts. Many states — including some conservative ones that supported a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure — steer consumers to the agency on their websites, providing links to it.

In legal filings opposing the Trump administration’s steps to effectively shut down the CFPB, 23 Democratic attorneys general noted that their states collectively have referred thousands of complaints to the agency and that its services can’t be replaced by state-level operations.

“In the CFPB’s absence, consumers will be left without critical resources,” they wrote.

These Republican lawmakers have referred constituents to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even while voting to slash the agency’s budget. Clockwise from top left: Rep. Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Rep. Darrell Issa of California, Rep. Rick Allen of Georgia, Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey. (House Creative Services via Wikimedia Commons)

The complaint system has also lessened the burden on congressional offices, which can route constituent problems to an agency dedicated to, and expert in, addressing consumer issues. Yet that hasn’t stopped Republicans from pursuing dramatic cuts to the agency.

The CFPB receives its funding from the Federal Reserve instead of annual appropriations bills. The structure is meant to safeguard the agency’s independence, though critics say this makes the agency less accountable, giving elected officials less power over its operations.

Initially, Republicans pressed for extreme cuts to the CFPB as part of Trump’s legislative package. House members approved a 70% cut. The Senate Banking Committee attempted to go even further, zeroing out the agency’s funding entirely.

Ultimately, the final version of the bill signed into law by Trump on July 4 cut the CFPB’s budget by around 46%, reducing the agency’s funding cap — the maximum amount it can request from the Federal Reserve — from $823 million to $446 million for this fiscal year. The agency requested $729 million last fiscal year.

The offices of lawmakers who voted for the bill have referred about 3,400 complaints to the agency, running the gamut of consumer problems — from crushing debt to mortgage issues to financial scams, ProPublica’s data analysis shows. (In some of these cases, consumers also took complaints to the CFPB themselves in addition to reaching out to their representatives. Consumers’ names aren’t disclosed in the data.)

Their constituents are sometimes desperate: “I’m about to be homeless because of this,” wrote a Florida resident whose bank account was frozen.

Others have expressed frustration at getting the runaround from a company. “I’ve spent countless hours on hold trying to speak with a representative, only to be met with silence or outdated instructions to send letters,” wrote one Virginian in a complaint about their bank.

In a statement after the CFPB funding cut passed, the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Tim Scott, R-S.C., applauded the measure for saving taxpayer money but insisted it would not affect the agency’s mandatory functions, which include handling complaints.

Consumer experts as well as current and former CFPB employees, however, said the cuts will likely hinder the agency’s effectiveness.

“I think the whole process is at risk,” said Ruth Susswein, director of consumer protection at the nonprofit advocacy group Consumer Action. “If you starve the system, it cannot provide the benefits that it now offers.”

Signs of Strain

The Trump administration’s initial efforts to unilaterally hobble the CFPB give a hint of what may lie ahead for the complaint system.

In February, acting Director Russell Vought issued a stop-work order to all CFPB employees and canceled a slew of contracts, including for antivirus software that scanned files attached to consumer complaints.

The actions largely froze the complaint system for about a week. More than 70,000 complaints were submitted, but most were not sent to companies for their response during that period, data shows.

Although some issues were later fixed, the work stoppage spawned a backlog of more than 16,000 complaints that required manual review, according to court records from a lawsuit filed by the union that represents CFPB employees. About 75 complaints from consumers at risk of imminent foreclosure, which would normally be escalated to CFPB staff, weren’t acted upon.

In late March, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered the CFPB to end the work stoppage, reverse contract terminations and reinstate probationary employees who were fired. However, an appeals court allowed layoffs to proceed, triggering a frenzied effort by the administration to cut about 90% of the CFPB’s staff.

The layoffs included the vast majority of the roughly 130-member team that manages the complaint system as well as nearly every staffer in legally mandated offices focused on service members and seniors.

The CFPB has fielded over 440,000 complaints from current and former service members and their families since 2011, according to CFPB data, more than 100,000 of which have resulted in relief.

The CFPB did not respond to multiple requests for comment. In a court declaration, Mark Paoletta, the CFPB’s chief legal officer, said that the agency’s leadership had “been assessing how the agency can fulfill its statutory duties as a smaller, more efficient operation. In making this assessment, leadership discovered vast waste in the agency’s size.”

Paoletta also said the agency would have a “much more limited vision for enforcement and supervision activities, focused on protecting service members and veterans, and addressing actual tangible consumer harm and intentional discrimination.”

In April, Jackson issued an order blocking the firings made at the CFPB after the appeals court decision. The administration has appealed Jackson’s ruling.

Lawsuits won’t protect the CFPB or its complaint apparatus from the cuts included in the recently passed spending bill, current and former agency employees pointed out.

These changes are likely to hit home with consumers no matter which party they favor, said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, which is a plaintiff in the union’s lawsuit.

“Republicans don’t want to be abused by big corporations that ignore them any more than Democrats do,” she said.

Have You Recently Sought Help From the CFPB? ProPublica Wants to Hear From You.

ST. LOUIS - Some spots of fog are developing again this Wednesday morning. Much of the area is clear with warmer and more humid conditions continuing to take hold again across the region. Wednesday will bring lots of sunshine and top temps right around 90 F. While the chance is low, a pop-up afternoon shower [...]

John Mellencamp and Neil Young with Chrome Hearts are among the artists headlining the 40th anniversary edition of Farm Aid in September, and they are giving fans a chance to win a VIP trip to…

Source

by Molly Redden

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

Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Fearing mass firings, or worse, retaliation by the people they helped prosecute, a group of agents scrambled to enlist a legal team who could stop the administration in court. Norm Eisen, a prominent ethics lawyer now leading dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, agreed within hours to represent the agents pro bono, along with Mark Zaid, a veteran whistleblower attorney. For more firepower, the two approached the giant Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn, which has a history of providing free representation to people and organizations that squared off against Trump’s first administration.

But Winston declined to represent the FBI agents, three people with knowledge of the matter said. It was one of several cases Winston turned down in quick succession, they added, that would have pitted the firm against an openly retributive president.

Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients challenging the Trump administration, more than a dozen attorneys and nonprofit leaders told ProPublica, while others have sought to avoid any clients that Trump might perceive as his enemies. That includes both clients willing to pay the firms’ steep rates, and those who receive free representation. Big Law firms are also refusing to take on legal work involving environmental protections, LGBTQ+ rights and police accountability or to represent elected Democrats and federal workers purged in Trump’s war on the “deep state.” Advocacy groups say this is beginning to hamper their efforts to challenge the Trump administration.

Their fears intensified after Trump signed a battery of executive orders aimed at punishing top firms over old associations with his adversaries. But as the Winston episode shows, Big Law began to back away from some clients almost the minute he returned to power. The country’s top firms remain deeply wary, even though the president has lost all four initial court challenges to those executive orders.

“The President’s Policy is working as designed,” said a lawsuit the American Bar Association filed against the administration in June. “Even as federal judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA — have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.”

The bar association itself has struggled to find representation, the lawsuit said. One unnamed firm, which has represented the association since the 1980s in lawsuits related to ABA’s accreditation of law schools, “is no longer willing to represent the ABA in any litigation against or potentially adverse to the Administration and its policies.” Sidley Austin, the sixth-ranked corporate firm by revenue in the world, has represented the ABA in at least five lawsuits over its accreditation practices since 1989.

The ABA and Susman Godfrey, which is representing the association in its lawsuit against the administration, declined to comment. Winston, Sidley and the White House did not respond to questions sent in writing.

Trump’s grievances with Big Law stem partly from its role in blocking his first-term agenda. In his executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a firm with close ties to the Democratic Party that fought Trump on transgender rights and immigration, he assailed the firm for allegedly “abus[ing] its pro bono practice to engage in activities that undermine justice.” Another firm, WilmerHale, was where former Special Counsel Robert Mueller worked before and after leading the Russian interference investigation.

The executive orders barred attorneys working for the firms from entering federal buildings where they represent clients, terminated the firms’ government contracts, revoked partners’ security clearances and required government contractors to disclose if they work with the targeted firms. Perkins Coie, one of Trump’s first targets, began to lose business “within hours,” its suit said. The judge who halted the executive order against WilmerHale wrote that the firm “faces crippling losses and its very survival is at stake.”

“I just think that the law firms have to behave themselves,” Trump said at a press conference in late March.

Nine corporate law firms behaved themselves in the form of reaching public settlements with Trump. The deals require them to provide $940 million in total of pro bono support for Trump-approved causes. There has been no public indication of the White House calling on them to perform specific work, and Trump has not released any new executive orders against firms since April.

Yet organizations that challenge the government are still feeling the chill.

“There’s been a real, noticeable shift,” said Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a national nonprofit that brings lawsuits over alleged police abuse and was a frequent pro bono client of Big Law.

In November, as soon as Trump won reelection, a top firm that was helping NPAP develop a lawsuit against a city’s police force abruptly stopped attending all planning calls, Bonds said. Later, the firm became one of the nine that struck a deal with Trump, after which the firm half-heartedly told Bonds, she said, that it would reconsider the case in the future. Bonds declined to identify the firm.

Activist nonprofits have long relied on free representation because they typically lack the resources to mount major lawsuits on their own. Civil rights cases in particular are complex undertakings usually lasting years. Many call for hundreds of hours spent deposing witnesses and performing research, as well as upfront costs of tens of thousands of dollars. Big Law, with its deep ranks of attorneys and paying clients to subsidize their volunteer work, is in a unique position to help. In exchange, the work burnishes the firm’s reputation and serves as a draw for idealistic young associates.

“I know that [cases] have been shot down that in Trump Administration 1, firms would crawl over each other to get our name at the top of the case so that we could get the New York Times headline,” said a Big Law partner whose firm has not been one of Trump’s targets. “That’s the environment. What’s become radioactive has grown from a very small number of things to anything this administration and Trump might notice and get angry about.”

Jill Collen Jefferson, the president and founder of Julian, a small nonprofit that investigates civil rights violations, has felt the chill too.

Three years ago, Julian partnered with the elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the country’s No. 1 corporate firm most years by per-partner revenue, to bring lawsuits against the town of Lexington, Mississippi, and its police force for racial discrimination.

“It wasn’t hard at all to get help,” she recalled. George Floyd’s death had raised public support for police accountability, and the details Julian was exposing in Lexington were especially grim. The police chief was secretly recorded promising to cover for a fellow officer if he killed someone “in cold blood.” A DOJ investigation released in 2024 found Lexington police operated in “a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law.” (The town’s board fired the chief, Sam Dobbins, over the recording. In a court filing, Dobbins said he was not guilty of “any actionable conduct” and denied Julian’s characterization of the recording, asserting that “the recording speaks for itself.” Julian’s litigation is still ongoing.)

Since January, when Trump began gutting police accountability measures, Jefferson’s efforts to recruit pro bono help have yielded almost no commitments. The official explanation many firms offer is that they lack the capacity to help, she said, though lawyers at those firms have privately told her that was false. Wachtell did not respond to a request for comment.

Jefferson now doubts Julian’s ability to bring a police abuse lawsuit it had planned to file before the statute of limitations expires this month.

“It’s been a nightmare,” she said. “People don’t want to stand up, and because of that, people are suffering.”

NPAP ultimately joined forces with another civil rights organization to salvage the case after its co-counsel disappeared from planning calls last November. But the suit will be “less robust” without the firepower of a major law firm, Bonds said. And NPAP’s capacity to file future suits is in question. Civil rights attorneys in NPAP’s network have developed novel legal theories for challenging arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement under state constitutions, but they lack enough outside partnerships.

“There are cases that aren’t being brought at a time when civil rights abuses are maybe at the highest they’ve been in modern times,” Bonds said.

Big Law was often in the vanguard of fighting Trump’s first administration. After he signed the 2017 travel ban affecting several predominantly Muslim countries, partners from Kirkland & Ellis and Davis Polk rushed alongside hundreds of other lawyers to international airports to help travelers stuck in limbo. Kirkland teamed up with the LGBTQ+ legal advocacy organization Lambda Legal to challenge Trump’s transgender military ban.

Now, Davis Polk is among the many firms that are avoiding pro bono immigration cases, The New York Times reported. Kirkland, by some measures the top moneymaker in Big Law, entered a deal with Trump to provide $125 million in pro bono work, and the firm is notably absent from Lambda’s nearly identical challenge to Trump’s reinstated ban on transgender military service members. Kirkland and Davis Polk did not respond to requests for comment.

Winston & Strawn’s annual pro bono reports show how its focus — or at least, its language — has changed. The firm’s 2023 impact report highlighted its advocacy on behalf of a transgender competitive marathoner. “I am also pleased to report that Winston dedicated 30% of our pro bono hours to racial justice and equity matters in 2023,” nearly double its share in 2020, wrote Angela Smedley, the pro bono committee chair. The 2024 report, published after Trump’s reelection, contained zero mentions of “equity” and spotlighted attorneys who helped small nonprofits navigate “complex mergers and business challenges.”

Eisen and Zaid, the lawyers representing the FBI agents, themselves became the target of a presidential memorandum in March that revoked their access to classified material. Both have aggravated Trump for years. Zaid represented a whistleblower who helped bring about Trump’s first impeachment.

Zaid sued to restore his security clearance in May, in a case that is ongoing. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, is a high-profile defense attorney who left Winston this spring in order to form his own firm. Lowell said his goal is to represent those “unlawfully and inappropriately targeted.” New York Attorney General Letitia James, who won a fraud judgment against Trump and is now a target of his DOJ, was one of his first clients.

“The Administration’s attempt at retribution against Mark for doing his job — representing whistleblowers without regard to politics — is as illegal as its similar efforts against law firms that have been enjoined in every case,” Lowell wrote in an email to ProPublica.

Good-government groups and small and mid-sized law firms have stepped into the breach, helping to file hundreds of lawsuits against the Trump administration. And the four firms that sued Trump over his executive orders are devoting thousands of pro bono hours to others challenging the administration. Perkins Coie, for example, has replaced Kirkland as Lambda Legal’s partner in challenging Trump’s transgender military ban.

But until they build up the capacity to fully replace Big Law, Bonds said, some of the administration’s legally dubious actions will go unchallenged.

“There’s a financial resources piece that we’re really missing when we can’t engage a firm,” Bonds said. “Even if there’s a big case and we feel really confident about it, we’ll just have to pass on it.”

BERKELEY — Christy Williams stood outside the Boeing facility in St. Louis for hours on Tuesday next to her handwritten sign declaring: “We aren’t building toasters!” For the last three years, Williams and her son have helped build F-15 fighter jets at Boeing in the St. Louis area — something she called her life’s dream.  […]

The Trump administration recently slashed funding for the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), an agency that works to improve our health care system. Such budget cuts threaten to make Missouri hospitals less safe, less effective and potentially more prone to devastating medical errors. While not as well-known as other federal health care […]

The Trump administration has denied legally obligated funds to thousands of organizations dependent on federal grants, causing layoffs, service cuts, and mass anxiety.

Donald Trump is destroying the world’s faith in America and the dollar. We will pay dearly for that.

The Trump administration is racing to revoke the cornerstone of U.S. climate regulation by the end of the year. Environmental groups have vowed to fight back.

by Sawyer Loftus, Bangor Daily News

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

People living in public housing across the nation have special protections meant to prevent low-income tenants from being evicted when they fall behind on rent.

The consequence of an eviction from public housing for people in Maine is especially challenging because there are not enough affordable housing options in the rural state, and those evicted are more likely to face homelessness. Maine public housing authorities file a disproportionately high share of eviction cases compared with all landlords in the state, according to an analysis of court data obtained by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica.

If you’re one of 1.6 million tenants living in public housing nationally, including 6,000 in Maine, here are some available safeguards. The following is not legal advice.

Rent Relief Options

If you start having trouble paying your rent, there are options available to you before you face eviction. You can ask for help in the following ways:

Lowering your rent. In public housing, your rent is typically based on your income. So if your paycheck decreases, you can write to the housing authority to request what’s known as an interim recertification to lower your rent.

Pausing rental payments. If you currently pay the minimum rent allowed at your housing authority and fall behind, you can request what’s called a hardship exemption to pause your rental payments. You may qualify if:

• You lost government assistance such as food stamps or Medicaid, or are waiting to see if you can get it.
• You lost your job.
• A family member died and it affects your household income.

You can also ask if your housing authority sets other qualifications for a hardship exemption.

30-Day Notice

The eviction process starts as soon as you get a 30-day notice letter from your housing authority. It might be called a “termination” or “eviction” notice. The letter should tell you what you owe. If you fail to begin payments within 30 days, the housing authority can bring an eviction case against you in court. The notice does not mean you have to move out immediately.

• Public housing authorities have to give you a 30-day notice, which is a new federal requirement as of January 2025.
• The notice must include instructions on how you can update your income with the housing authority and/or ask for a hardship exemption.
• It must provide an itemized list of how much back rent you owe, broken down by month. The list may also include any penalties for lease violations or other fees you owe for maintenance, utilities or other services.
• It also has to say how you can switch from flat rent to income-based rent. (Flat rent is based on what the federal government considers a fair rent for your area, and income-based rent is based on how much you earn.)
• The notice must share information about the housing authority’s grievance process, which allows you to formally dispute the eviction before it reaches court.

The Grievance Procedure

(Cat Willett for ProPublica)

After receiving the 30-day notice, you can try to avoid eviction by requesting an informal meeting with your public housing authority, which is the first step in the grievance process. It’s wise to make this request in writing by the deadline in your eviction notice. In this meeting, you will have the chance to talk over your case and see what options might be available to avoid eviction, such as agreeing to a repayment plan (more on those below).

If that doesn’t work, you can request a formal grievance hearing to try to prevent your eviction from going to court. It’s better to do this in writing, too.

Ahead of the hearing, you can request:

• Documents in your tenant file.
• The housing authority’s Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy, which explains in detail the housing authority’s rules, including how the grievance hearing should unfold.

At the hearing you have the right to:

• Have a lawyer present.
• Present your own evidence and question evidence offered by the housing authority.
• Call witnesses to support your case and question any witnesses called by the housing authority.

The hearing is decided by an arbiter or panel. If you win the grievance, the housing authority cannot file the eviction case against you in court. If you lose, the case heads to eviction court.

Repayment Agreement

The federal government encourages housing authorities to enter into repayment agreements with tenants who are behind on rent in order to prevent evictions from public housing. Such an agreement, which housing authorities are not required to offer, is a legally binding contract that outlines how long you have to repay your debt. You can ask your housing authority if this is an option.

Despite federal guidance to offer repayment agreements outside of court, public housing authorities sometimes will take you to court before offering one. If you decline the agreement, you could be evicted following the court hearing.

What to know about in-court agreements:

• Signing a repayment agreement in court can put an eviction on your permanent record, even if you meet all the agreement’s requirements. This important fact might not even be mentioned in the agreement, so it’s worth asking.
• Housing authorities can ask you to agree to be evicted immediately if you fail to abide by the terms of the agreement, such as making payments on time.
• A repayment agreement reached in court can require you to follow all housing authority rules — such as those prohibiting smoking, requiring you to take down holiday decorations or shovel your driveway — or face an immediate eviction.

Pay cap. The federal government encourages — but does not require — housing authorities to create repayment plans that do not make you pay more than 40% of your monthly income (taking into account your regular monthly rent and additional payment to cover back rent).

Timeframes differ. Every housing authority has its own rules about how long a repayment agreement can last.

Eviction Court

(Cat Willett for ProPublica)

If you lose the grievance process, are not offered a repayment agreement or fail to uphold your end of a repayment agreement reached outside of court, the housing authority will likely file an eviction case in court. Research your local eviction court process because eviction rules can differ by state or municipality.

In Maine, here’s what to expect at the courthouse:

• Like most states, Maine does not provide you with an attorney in eviction court. But you still have the option to hire your own lawyer. There are several organizations in Maine that provide free or reduced-cost legal services and lawyers to people with low incomes.
  • Pine Tree Legal Assistance
  • Disability Rights Maine
  • Legal Services for Maine Elders
  • Volunteer Lawyers Project
• You do not have to respond to the public housing authority’s eviction complaint ahead of the hearing, but you do need to show up in court. If you don’t appear at the hearing, the judge will automatically rule against you. This means you will be evicted.
• Once you’re in court, there will not be a jury. Eviction court is typically crowded, and the process moves quickly.
  • The judge will call your case and typically will ask if you, the tenant, want to try to reach an agreement with the housing authority’s attorney.
  • If you don’t reach an agreement, the judge will review the evidence presented by the housing authority and any defense you may have shortly before making a ruling.
  • Maine courts also let you resolve eviction cases through mediation on the same day as your hearing. This informal process happens at the courthouse. It gives you an opportunity to speak with the housing authority and is directed by an independent mediator. Mediators have no power to decide a case; their job is just to help you and the housing authority find a compromise.

This guide was compiled using resources from the National Housing Law Project, Pine Tree Legal Assistance and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

We are still reporting. Have you been evicted in Maine? To share your story, reach Bangor Daily News reporter Sawyer Loftus at sloftus@bangordailynews.com.

This story was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Overuse has created zones of “mega-drying” around the world — and caused more sea level rise than Greenland’s ice sheet.

The Trump administration wants to eliminate the energy-efficiency program, but bakers, builders, hot tub lobbyists, and chemical companies are trying to save it.