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by Neil Bedi, Sharon Lerner and Kathleen McGrory

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

When ProPublica published stories this fall cataloging new evidence that American chemical workers are being exposed to asbestos, readers reacted with surprise over the most simple fact: Asbestos, the killer mineral whose dangers have been known for over a century, is still legal?

Asbestos is only one of many toxic substances that are linked to problems like cancers, genetic mutations and fetal harm and that other countries have banned, but the United States has not. That includes substances like hexabromocyclododecane, a flame retardant used in some building materials that can damage fetal development and disrupt thyroid hormones, and trichloroethylene, a toxic industrial degreaser that has contaminated communities, including a whole neighborhood that suffered a string of tragic pediatric cancer cases.

Michal Freedhoff, the head of chemical regulation at the Environmental Protection Agency, concedes to decades of regulatory inaction. She says a chronic lack of funding and staffing, plus roadblocks created by the Trump administration, have hamstrung the agency in recent years. Still, Freedhoff believes in the regulatory system’s ability to protect the public from dangerous substances and says the EPA is “moving as quickly as we can to put protections into place that have been desperately needed.”

But the flaws of the American chemical regulatory apparatus run deeper than funding or the decisions of the last presidential administration. ProPublica spoke with environmental experts around the world and delved into a half century of legislation, lawsuits, EPA documents, oral histories, chemical databases and global regulatory records to construct a blueprint of a failed system. This is how the U.S. became a global laggard in chemical regulation.

1. The Chemical Industry Helped Write the Toxic Substances Law

The Toxic Substances Control Act authorizes the EPA to ban or restrict the use of chemicals that pose serious health risks. But industry magnates were so intimately involved in the drafting of the original 1976 bill that the EPA’s first assistant administrator for its chemical division joked the law was “written by industry” and should have been named after the DuPont executive who went over the text line by line.

The resulting statute allowed more than 60,000 chemicals to stay on the market without a review of their health risks. It even required the EPA, a public health agency, to always choose regulations that were the “least burdensome” to companies. These two words would doom American chemical regulation for decades.

In 1989, the EPA announced after 10 years and millions of dollars of work that it was banning asbestos. Companies that used asbestos sued the EPA, and in 1991, a federal court ruled that despite all of the work it had done, the EPA did not sufficiently prove that a ban was the least burdensome option. The rule was overturned.

It wasn’t until 2016 that Congress amended the law to cut the “least burdensome” language. The bill was hailed as an extraordinary compromise between health-focused lawmakers and the chemical industry. It created a schedule where a small list of high-priority chemicals would be reviewed every few years; in 2016, the first 10 were selected, including asbestos. The EPA would then have about three years to assess the chemicals and another two years to finalize regulations on them.

(Simon Bailly, special to ProPublica)

Behind the scenes, though, the bill text began not as a reformative measure, but as a company-friendly statute that would help industry avoid some regulations. Many public health advocates and several progressive lawmakers did not support it. Then-Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., announced at one point that in the metadata of a draft of the bill she had received, the American Chemistry Council, an industry lobbying group, was listed as the document’s originator. “Maybe I am old fashioned,” Boxer said, “but I do not believe that a regulated industry should be so intimately involved in writing a bill that regulates them.” (The ACC and a congressional sponsor of the bill denied her claim.)

Freedhoff, who was previously a lead Senate negotiator for the new chemicals bill, said that when the bill was finally signed into law a year later, it went from being a piece of legislation that was mostly supported by Republicans to one with wide bipartisan support. Both the ACC and health advocacy organizations were at the final signing ceremony, she added.

Some experts point out though, that during the legislative process, the chemical industry prevented the inclusion of some stronger regulations and collected several key wins, including the federal preemption of state-level chemical regulations. In the years before the amendment passed, progressive states like California and Vermont had stopped waiting for the EPA to regulate chemicals and started imposing their own restrictions. Under the new law, federal restrictions would overrule those state-level statutes in certain cases, creating a simpler regulatory structure that was easier for companies to comply with.

2. Following Early Failures, the EPA Lost Its Resolve

When the EPA failed to ban asbestos in 1991, some experts say the agency could have tried again. In the court’s decision, the judge did provide a road map for future bans, which would require the agency to do an analysis of other regulatory options, like import limits or warning labels, to prove they wouldn’t be adequate. “That to me is so telling,” said Eve Gartner, an environmental attorney who worked on the 1991 case and is now a managing attorney at Earthjustice. The EPA “clearly could have taken the steps it needed to ban asbestos in the ’90s.”

But EPA officials froze, believing it would be nearly impossible to prove a chemical should be banned under the “least burdensome” constraints. Many of the most dangerous substances, which faced bans in other countries, remained on the market for decades.

Among them was trichloroethylene, or TCE, a clear, colorless liquid with a sweet odor that resembles chloroform. Its chemical properties make it suited for a number of tasks, and it was used as everything from an anesthetic used during childbirth to a solvent used in the production of decaf coffee to, most commonly, a degreaser for cleaning machinery in factories. But its properties also made it toxic and carcinogenic to humans. Because of the health effects, the Food and Drug Administration banned the use of TCE in medicines, anesthetics and food products in 1977. The European Union placed TCE under its highest level of restriction almost 10 years ago. But the EPA never banned its use in workplaces and industrial factories, including some plants that let TCE leak into the environment.

In 2014, Kari Rhinehart, a nurse from Franklin, Indiana, was at work when she got a call about her daughter, Emma Grace Findley. Doctors had found signs of swelling during the 13-year-old’s annual eye exam and said she needed further testing. She was taken to the same emergency room where Rhinehart worked and prepped for an MRI. When a tech returned to inject more dye, Rhinehart, who held her daughter’s hand as she lay inside the machine, started sobbing silently. She knew that Emma Grace had a brain tumor. It turned out to be glioblastoma multiforme, a rare cancer mostly seen in adults over 50. Only three months after the diagnosis, a week before Christmas, Emma Grace died at home in her mother’s arms.

After WTHR, a local news station, discovered that many children in the community were developing abnormal cancers, Rhinehart learned that sites near her home were polluted with TCE. Even though they had been investigated by EPA, government-ordered tests showed they were still contaminating the air and groundwater. Parents demanded government action. Authorities reopened an investigation and ordered new cleanup efforts, including the replacement of thousands of feet of sewer lines. (Because the causes of most pediatric cancers haven’t been scientifically proven, no direct link has been established between the childhood cancer cases and TCE.)

After the “least burdensome” language was removed from the law in 2016, the EPA named TCE as one of its 10 high-priority chemicals and tried to propose a ban on high-risk uses that year. But the agency under Trump shelved the proposal following industry complaints and decided to reassess the risk of the chemical. Then, in 2021, the Biden EPA restarted the effort after finding that the previous administration had ignored ways the public could be exposed to chemicals like TCE. “It would have been a disservice to the people that we are charged with protecting” to not take the time to fix those issues before moving forward, said Freedhoff.

In July, the agency published a draft version of a new assessment, which found that 52 of 54 uses of TCE present an unreasonable risk to human health. The EPA still needs to finalize that assessment before it can start the yearslong process of writing a regulation.

Asked about the delays, Rhinehart said, “How does the EPA say with a straight face their job is to protect human health?”

3. Chemicals Are Considered Innocent Until Proven Guilty

For decades, the EU and the United States followed the same “risk-based” approach to regulation, which puts the burden on government officials to prove that a chemical poses unreasonable health risks before restricting it. The process can take years while evidence of public harm continues to mount.

(Simon Bailly, special to ProPublica)

In 2007, the EU switched to a more “hazard-based” approach, which puts the burden on chemical companies to prove that their products are safe when evidence shows a chemical can cause significant harm like cancer or reproductive damage. Named REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals), the new system started by requiring the registration of every chemical that is imported or manufactured at a volume of more than 1 metric ton annually. Under a “no data, no market” policy, companies would be required to submit toxicological studies on those chemicals. And if those studies or other scientific research showed that a chemical could significantly harm human health, it could be prioritized for regulation.

Some experts say REACH isn’t perfect and there are ways for companies to subvert science or mislead regulators. For example, because the EU receives large amounts of information on thousands of chemicals, companies have been able to submit improper data or conduct inadequate testing without their actions being noticed for some time.

Nonetheless, the new system has fundamentally changed regulation in Europe. Under this approach, the EU has successfully banned or restricted more than a thousand chemicals.

While the Europeans discussed a hazard-based approach, the United States Congress was doing the same. Then-Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat, introduced the Kid Safe Chemicals Act in 2005, which would require companies to reassess the safety of their chemicals every three years. The bill also required the EPA to assess 300 chemicals by 2010, and thousands more by 2020. Lobbyists and industry-friendly lawmakers were quick to fight back. They argued that this approach would ruin innovation in the United States and only a risk-based one was acceptable.

“Over and over again, we’ve seen this fail,” said Anna Lennquist, a senior toxicologist at ChemSec, an international nonprofit that works on chemical safety. “For the most harmful substances, the only way to ensure there is no risk from them is to ban them. That’s one main difference between the U.S. and EU.”

Neither the 2005 bill nor similar efforts over the years gained traction. Lautenberg died in 2013 before any reform passed in Congress. The 2016 law, a bill that maintained the risk-based approach with some improvements, was named after him.

Experts say a risk-based reform was likely the only type that could have passed in the U.S. legislature. The chemical industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying lawmakers to support its fight against stronger restrictions. The ACC alone has been one of the top lobbying organizations in the country in recent years.

Asked if the EPA needed a new stronger law to better regulate chemicals, Freedhoff said no and argued that the 2016 law “hasn’t been given half of a chance to succeed” because of a lack of funding and resources.

4. The EPA Mostly Regulates Chemicals One by One

Six years after the reform led the EPA to create a priority system to keep chemical regulations moving, the agency is behind on all such rules. So far, it has only proposed one ban, on asbestos, and the agency told ProPublica it would still be almost a year before that is finalized. In June, Freedhoff testified to the Senate Environment and Public Works committee: “I think we can all recognize that the law is not yet working as everyone had hoped.” Speaking about the chemicals the agency selected in 2016 to be a priority, Freedhoff admitted that, without additional resources, the EPA would “not get more than a handful of those rules on the books before 2025 or beyond.”

The 10 Top-Priority Chemicals Pending Regulation

The first batch of chemicals chosen by the EPA for regulatory review, along with the agency’s latest actions on each one. The final rules are due between 2022 and early 2023, and the agency has said it will be late on all of them.

Asbestos

BAN PROPOSED IN APRIL 2022

Primarily used by the chemical industry as part of chlorine production. Some asbestos-containing products like vehicle brake blocks are also imported in small quantities.

Asbestos can cause a number of cancers, including the aggressive cancer mesothelioma, and other health problems like asbestosis, which scars the lungs.

1-Bromopropane

DRAFT RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN JULY 2022

Used in degreasers, spot cleaners for dry cleaning, spray adhesives and automobile-care products.

It can be toxic to human development and can increase a person's chance of developing cancer.

Carbon Tetrachloride

DRAFT RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN AUG. 2022

A raw material for producing refrigerants, agricultural products and other chemicals in industrial and laboratory settings.

Health risks include possible damage to or cancer in the liver, and cancer of the adrenal gland or brain.

C.I. Pigment Violet 29 (PV29)

FINAL RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN SEPT. 2022

Used in paints, coatings, plastics and rubber products in the automobile industry and in industrial carpeting and commercial printing. The coloring is also used in some consumer watercolors and paints.

The pigment can damage the lungs by increasing the number of cells there, a condition called alveolar hyperplasia.

Cyclic Aliphatic Bromide Cluster (HBCD)

FINAL RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN JUNE 2022

A flame retardant used in insulation and other building materials. It also shows up inside some pastes, recycled plastics and automobile parts.

Known to cause reproductive damage and developmental effects, and to disrupt the operation of the thyroid.

1,4-Dioxane

FINAL RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN DEC. 2020

Used in the production of other chemicals, as a laboratory chemical, and in some adhesives and sealants.

Exposure can lead to vertigo, drowsiness and headaches. The chemical may also damage organs like the liver and kidneys.

Methylene Chloride

FINAL RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN NOV. 2022

An ingredient in products like paint strippers, adhesives and degreasers.

It can cause suffocation, coma and death. It has also been linked to neurotoxicity, damage to the liver, and cancer.

N-Methylpyrrolidone (NMP)

DRAFT RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN JULY 2022

A solvent used in some paint strippers, adhesives and lubricants, and in industrial products used for cleaning metals, textiles and plastics.

NMP can damage the reproductive system and affect fetal development.

Perchloroethylene

DRAFT RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN JUNE 2022

Mostly used in industrial settings as a metal degreaser. It's also used in dry cleaning.

The colorless liquid can damage the nervous system and has been linked to cancer.

Trichloroethylene (TCE)

DRAFT RISK EVALUATION ISSUED IN JULY 2022

An organic chemical used mostly in industrial settings as a metal degreaser. It is also an ingredient in some cleaning, furniture-care and automotive-care products.

It can damage the immune system, cause reproductive and developmental effects, and damage the heart, lungs, kidney and liver. It is also a carcinogen.

Source: EPA

Freedhoff told ProPublica the delays are not caused by a lack of commitment and the agency’s entire staff is working to “make sure that people are protected from these dangers.” But she pointed out that the chemical division’s workload increased exponentially in 2016, and funding has mostly remained flat since then. “The fundamental truth is [the Toxic Substances law] has existed in its current form for almost six and a half years now and we still have the budget of the old broken law,” she said. In the EPA’s 2023 budget request, it asked for an additional $63 million and 200 new employees to better handle the workload.

A key reason the system is moving so slowly is that the law requires that every chemical go through a yearslong process, and the underfunded EPA division must face industry resistance for each one. “The whole regulatory process is designed to be slow and to be slowed down by those opposed to regulation,” said Joel Tickner, a professor of environmental health at University of Massachusetts, Lowell and a leading expert on chemical policy. “Frankly, unless EPA doubled their size, they can’t do much with the resources they have.”

Chemical company representatives and industry groups like the ACC have challenged the risk evaluations for many of the first 10 chemicals labeled as high priority. The organizations have submitted lengthy public comments accusing the EPA of conducting unscientific assessments and asked for extended time frames that further delayed regulation. When the EPA updated some risk assessments from the Trump administration to include risks from air and water exposure for chemicals like TCE, the industry groups were quick to challenge the agency with a 34-page rebuttal, accusing it of not following the letter of the law.

The industry has also vehemently argued against a full asbestos ban. Trade groups like the ACC insisted that workers were protected from the dangers of asbestos. Industry-friendly scientists wrote papers accusing the EPA of overestimating the substance’s dangers. And 12 Republican attorneys general wrote to the head of the agency questioning the EPA’s legal authority to pursue the ban.

Even when the EPA used its new authority under the 2016 law to have companies conduct toxicology tests of 11 prioritized chemicals, some industry organizations sued the agency in an attempt to invalidate the orders. One trade group sued over testing of 1,1,2-trichloroethane, a possible human carcinogen that is released in huge quantities by plants all across Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” In its complaint, the group argued the order was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with the law.” The lawsuit is still ongoing. The testing for all of these chemicals was originally due to be done in December 2021. So far, testing has been completed on only one of the 11 chemicals.

“The conveyor belt is sort of stopping,” said Robert Sussman, an attorney who served as a deputy administrator for the EPA during the Clinton administration. “The sobering reality is that [the Toxic Substances Control Act] was supposed to change that with the new law, but now when you take a step back, that was maybe unrealistic to expect.”

Meanwhile, the EU has authored a new plan to regulate chemicals even faster by targeting large groups of dangerous substances that can cause cancers, genetic mutations, endocrine damage, immune system damage and more. If it’s enacted, it would lead to bans of another 5,000 chemicals by 2030, according to the European Environmental Bureau, a nongovernmental organization.

5. The EPA Employs Industry-Friendly Scientists as Regulators

The EPA has a long history of hiring scientists and top officials from the companies they are supposed to regulate, allowing industry to sway the agency’s science from the inside.

For example, in 2010, the agency worked with a panel of scientists to evaluate the risks of hexavalent chromium, the chemical featured in the movie “Erin Brockovich.” But the Center for Public Integrity found that several scientists on that panel had actually defended PG&E, the company that poisoned a community with the substance. Some of those scientists disagreed with this characterization and one said he had gone through the EPA’s conflict-of-interest vetting. In 2017, the EPA hired a new top official at its chemical division who had been an executive at the ACC for five years. The New York Times found that she helped direct much of the Trump administration’s decisions to deregulate chemicals.

And then there’s Todd Stedeford. A lawyer and toxicologist, Stedeford has been hired by the EPA on three separate occasions. During his two most recent periods of employment at the agency — from 2011 to 2017 and from 2019 to 2021 — he was hired from corporate employers who use or manufacture chemicals the EPA regulates.

Before 2011, Stedeford worked for Albemarle Corp., which was among the largest makers of flame retardants in the world. The chemicals, which are added to furniture, electronics and other products to help prevent fires, have been associated with neurological harm, hormone disruption, and cancers. A 2012 investigation by the Chicago Tribune revealed that Albemarle and two other large manufacturers founded, funded and controlled a front group that deceived the public about the safety and effectiveness of flame retardants used in furniture. Albemarle argued its products were safe, effective and extensively evaluated by government agencies. When Stedeford left the job defending flame retardants, he went on to head the EPA program that assessed the risks of chemicals including those same flame retardants, the Tribune reported. In response, Stedeford told ProPublica that he had recused himself from work on flame retardants when he joined the agency.

(Simon Bailly, special to ProPublica)

Then Stedeford left the EPA in 2017 and went to work for Japan Tobacco International, where he defended the company's “novel tobacco products,” such as vape pens and e-cigarettes. When he returned to the EPA in 2019, Stedeford became involved in a scientific project with a former Japan Tobacco colleague that looked into how to evaluate the dangers of chemicals in e-cigarettes. Stedeford said that he was hired to advance “new approach methodologies” at the agency and that the project fell under that purview and there was nothing wrong with that.

Some close watchers of the agency say people like Stedeford epitomize the EPA’s revolving-door problem. “He represents the sense that industry science is the best science, which is very much in line with regulators deferring to industry-funded studies showing there isn’t cause for concern,” said Alissa Cordner, an academic who wrote the book “Toxic Safety: Flame Retardants, Chemical Controversies, and Environmental Health.”

In response, Freedhoff said she didn’t believe her current staff was “corrupt, or unduly responsive to industry” and that she has seen “the dedication and the commitment and the passion that the career staff here feel for the work that they’ve been charged with doing.” She declined to comment on Stedeford, who was last hired by the previous administration.

When he was hired again in 2019, Stedeford was in a pivotal position to influence how the new chemical regulation law would be implemented. Whistleblowers have accused Stedeford of changing the findings of health assessments of new chemicals that were being evaluated before being allowed on the market, minimizing and sometimes deleting hazards listed in the documents, according to The Intercept. The EPA’s Office of Inspector General is now investigating those claims. Stedeford declined to comment on the accusations.

During this stint at the EPA, Stedeford was also tasked with leading an effort to update the agency’s approach to assessing polymers, chemicals that make up the vast majority of plastics. Polymers can cause “lung overload,” a condition in which tiny particles accumulate in the lungs, potentially causing chronic lung diseases. The EPA had Stedeford work with companies that make these chemicals on a paper about lung toxicity and, in October 2020, Stedeford proposed a new policy based on their unpublished research.

The change was set to affect how dozens of new plastics were assessed, increasing the amount of the polymers that it was considered safe to inhale, according to a complaint submitted by EPA scientists who opposed the policy. (Stedeford told ProPublica that he disagreed with those scientists and that he had told agency staffers they didn’t need to use the new approach if they felt it was inappropriate in a particular case.) After the complaint was filed, the agency withdrew the policy.

Stedeford left the EPA again in 2021 to work for a law firm that represents chemical companies. Emails obtained by ProPublica show he continued to work with agency staff on the paper about lung overload. Stedeford said “there’s nothing untoward about that” because he had “contributed scholarship” to the paper while at the agency. The EPA said “employees that worked on this paper did so with the full knowledge and support of their management at the time the work was occurring. Other co-authors on the paper include scientific experts from industry and NGOs.”

Do You Work With These Hazardous Chemicals? Tell Us About It.

If the weather is good, the exit ramp for westbound I-270 at West Florissant will close for good this morning.

Strange diseases are spreading in Blackfeet Country. Can canines track down the culprits?

Someone fired shots at the courthouse while the Lemar Johnson trial advanced.

Tishaura Jones, the mayor of St. Louis, will make the announcement at 11 a.m.

Guardian programs offer one example of how governments can work with Indigenous peoples.

The district is making the change to offer a new incentive to employees, aiming to better attract and retain staff amid ongoing labor shortages.

A fire broke out early this morning at a home near St. Charles, injuring one person.

Free, prior, and informed consent is key to safeguarding Indigenous peoples lands and livelihoods.

Republican Sen. Mike Lee supports the PRESS Act

Gage Skidmore

The next few days will likely determine whether the PRESS Act becomes the law of the land before Congress adjourns or whether presidents and prosecutors can continue spying on journalists and their sources.

While the PRESS Act was introduced by a Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden, it is by no means partisan legislation.

Even before Sen. Mike Lee co-sponsored the PRESS Act with Wyden, Republican former House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte wrote in support of the bill. Conservatives, from Lindsey Graham to Mike Pence to Jim Jordan, have a long history of supporting similar “shield” legislation prohibiting newsroom surveillance by any administration. Forty-nine states, red and blue, protect reporters against government snooping, leaving the federal government — which has surveillance capabilities far superior to local authorities — as the outlier.

Here are just a few reasons why Republicans should prioritize passing the PRESS Act.

Conservative journalists are often targets of government surveillance

When the Obama administration wanted to uncover a source of then-Fox News journalist James Rosen in 2013, it secretly spied on him and read his emails.

At the time, Fox News and Rosen (who’s now at Newsmax) had no legal recourse when the government baselessly characterized Rosen as a criminal co-conspirator for doing his job — gathering and reporting the news.

Had the PRESS Act been in effect, Rosen would have received notice and a hearing before any warrant or legal order could be issued. And at that hearing, the government would have needed to prove that disclosure of Rosen’s records was necessary to prevent terrorism or imminent violence. It, of course, would never have met that burden, given it was investigating already 4-year-old reporting.

The PRESS Act protects all journalists – regardless of politics

The bill is broad enough to protect both mainstream and independent outlets, regardless of political leanings, so that no administration, present or future, can circumvent the law to retaliate against adversarial journalists.

Here’s how it defines a journalist: “a person who regularly gathers, prepares, collects, photographs, records, writes, edits, reports, investigates, or publishes news or information that concerns local, national, or international events or other matters of public interest for dissemination to the public.”

Simple as that. There are no loopholes, caveats or ambiguities that could conceivably allow the current administration, or a future one, to play favorites.

The PRESS Act would help independent and alternative media thrive

The PRESS Act is neutral not only on the political leanings of the journalists it protects but on the size and reach of media outlets. Critics of the mainstream media should embrace the PRESS Act because it gives upstarts, who do not have armies of lawyers to fight subpoenas, room to grow unimpeded by official harassment.

The PRESS Act would protect, for example, Project Veritas — which claimed it was improperly surveilled after an FBI raid last year — to the same extent as it would protect The New York Times, as long as they are all engaged in legal journalistic practices.

That’s because the act does not limit its reach based on who the journalist is or any official credentials they may or may not have — it instead focuses entirely on the act of newsgathering.

The PRESS Act is strong anti-surveillance legislation

Constitutional originalists should appreciate that the PRESS Act not only strengthens the First Amendment but the Fourth. Unlike many past shield bills, its protections against government overreach extend not only to journalists themselves but to their phone, email and other technology providers.

New technologies mean new ways to spy on citizens. The PRESS Act recognizes this by ensuring its protections cannot be evaded by targeting tech companies instead of news rooms.

The PRESS Act recognizes national security concerns

A free and aggressive press benefits all aspects of government, including national security. That being said, the PRESS Act recognizes law enforcement concerns through exemptions when information in a journalist’s possession is necessary to prevent terrorism or imminent violence.

It then establishes common sense procedures to ensure that the exemption is not abused.

Most harassment of journalists isn’t political

Incidents that affect presidential politics tend to get the most attention. But most of the abuses the PRESS Act would curtail occur off the national stage. Journalist Joshua Miller broke the story of a father buying a coach’s home at a premium to get his son into Harvard, handing prosecutors the case on a silver platter. He was rewarded with a subpoena this October.

Music critic Jim DeRogatis received death threats and a bullet through his porch window after exposing musician R. Kelly’s abuse of underage women but he was forced to risk his safety to contest a subpoena at Kelly’s latest trial in September.

Americans can all agree that the law should encourage — not impair — reporting of misconduct by elite universities and sex crimes by celebrities. That has nothing to do with politics.

The bottom line

The PRESS Act will vastly improve the quality of journalism — all journalism — and ensure citizens of all political stripes have access to the information they need to be informed participants in our democracy. It will protect journalists and their sources from government abuse — no matter the party in the White House.

We’ve allowed our journalists to operate too long without any legal guarantee that they won’t be spied on by the government and without the ability to assure potential sources that they won’t be unmasked in court. That’s not a tolerable status quo in a country that values free speech.

Everyone who believes in the First Amendment should contact their Senators today and let them know that protecting journalists from government overreach is absolutely vital and cannot wait.

The rapid arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried offers a small bit of hope that we’ve turned the page on an era of no accountability.

Recent data shows a strong possibility that inflation will come down on its own.

It took about half a decade for crypto magnates to recreate all the problems that blew up Wall Street in 2008.

1,350 union workers are losing their jobs at an Illinois plant, an early signal about the staying power of green manufacturing jobs in the United States.

by Annie Waldman, Aliyya Swaby and Anna Clark, with additional reporting by Nicole Santa Cruz, photography by Kathleen Flynn, 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.

In Amite County, Mississippi, where a third of adults struggle to read, evidence of America’s silent literacy crisis is everywhere.

It’s in a storefront on Main Street, in the fading mill town of Gloster, where 80-year-old Lillie Jackson helps people read their mail. “They can’t comprehend their bills,” she said. “So many of them are ashamed that they haven’t finished grade school.” She longs for the day she can retire, but she doesn’t want to abandon her neighbors. “That’s the only reason I really stay open,” she said.

It’s in the Greentree Lumber mill, where dozens of residents cut Southern yellow pine into boards, but supervisors — who must be able to page through machine guides and safety manuals — are recruited from other counties. “We’re going to have demand for jobs with no people to supply them,” mill accountant Pam Whittington said.

Lillie Jackson helps a customer pay bills from her business on Main Street in Gloster, Mississippi. Greentree Lumber mill in Liberty, Mississippi.

And it’s in the local high school, in a district where a fifth of students drop out, one of the highest rates in the state. Principal Warren Eyster has seen low literacy trickle from one generation to the next — an unusually American phenomenon.

In other wealthy countries, adults with limited education who were born into families with little history of schooling are twice as likely to surpass their parents’ literacy skills. Here, one’s destiny is uniquely entrenched. Though nationwide graduation rates have risen in recent decades, the number of adults who struggle to read remains stubbornly high: 48 million, or 23%.

If there were local programs that could teach adults the reading skills they never got, those parents could help educate their kids and get better jobs, Eyster said. The entire county would benefit: “Our tax base would go up,” he said. But in Amite County, no such program exists.

Amite County High School Principal Warren Eyster believes his community would benefit from an adult education program.

In a nation whose education system is among the most unequal in the industrialized world, where race and geography play an outsize role in determining one’s path to success, many Americans are being failed twice: first, by public schools that lack qualified teachers, resources for students with disabilities and adequate reading instruction; and next, by the backup system intended to catch those failed by the first.

Nearly 60 years ago, the federal government established funding to provide free education for adults who could not read to help them improve their literacy and obtain employment. Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson recognized how low literacy intertwined with poverty and all the ills that came with it. The adult education system they built was supposed to give people everywhere a second chance at success.

States Vary Widely in Funding Adult Education (Source: Data for state funding came from the 2020-21 <a href="https://nrs.ed.gov/">initial federal financial reports</a> through the National Reporting System for Adult Education, as required by the Adult Education and Family Literacy Act, Title II of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. Data for the eligible number of students by state came from U.S Department of Education estimates of qualifying adults obtained through a records request. The funding data is derived from initial reports and is subject to change. Note: As of Dec. 13, 2022, Kentucky’s <a href="https://nrs.ed.gov/rt/ky/2020">initial federal financial report</a> for 2020-21 was not available through the National Reporting System for Adult Education.)

But, ProPublica found, access to this instruction is limited, increasingly insufficient and — much like the nation’s school systems — highly dependent on geography and the political will of elected officials.

The federal government provided roughly $675 million to states for adult education last year, an amount that’s been relatively unchanged for more than two decades when adjusted for inflation. It’s not enough, and states that oversee these programs are required to commit their own share of funding. A review of adult education spending found glaring disparities among states, with some investing more than four times as much as others for each eligible student.

“The magnitude of the need for adult education services has long eclipsed Congressional appropriations,” a U.S. Department of Education spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “Funding levels have not kept pace with the rising cost of service delivery, nor are funding levels commensurate with the millions of people who could benefit from adult education services.”

ProPublica reporters interviewed dozens of students and adult education workers in states that historically have contributed some of the least funding. We found that in some states, programs keep adults on waitlists, unable to meet demand. Some students succeed in these programs, but many drop out within weeks or months, before they are able to make progress. Students often find themselves in overstuffed classes led by uncertified part-time or volunteer teachers.

Resources are scant. An adult education manager at Copiah-Lincoln Community College in Mississippi said she can’t afford enough practice exams. The supervisor of Nevada’s programs, unable to hire enough teachers, worries about having to put students on waitlists. And most programs across the country lack the specialized staff to help adults with learning disabilities that public schools failed to have diagnosed.

In fact, the entire system is set up to prioritize students who can quickly graduate with a high school or work credential, often leaving behind those who need more time to overcome greater reading gaps. Programs that offer more personalized assistance frequently say they can only do so with private support.

Vast swaths of some states are literacy deserts, lacking any government-run adult education classes. This is the case for about a fifth of Mississippi counties, where hundreds of thousands of people live. Students are forced to cross county lines to attend classes or forgo them altogether. “In an ideal world, each county would have a physical location where adult education classes are offered,” said Kell Smith, the interim executive director of the state’s Community College Board, which oversees adult education. “However, due to financial constraints, this is not possible.” (Read the full response here.) Gov. Tate Reeves did not respond to a request for comment.

Many counties that lack programs also double as hot spots of low adult literacy. These are primarily in the mountains of Appalachia, the Southern Black Belt, the Central Valley of California and along the Texas border with Mexico, but they exist throughout the nation. In about 500 American counties, nearly a third of adults struggle to read basic English, according to ProPublica’s analysis of federal literacy data. These adults may have a basic vocabulary and be able to interpret short texts, but their reading comprehension may be limited beyond that.

Hot Spots of Low Literacy Persist Across the Country (Source: National Center for Education Statistics. Note: The NCES defined adults with low literacy skills as those who tested at or below Level 1, the lowest outcome of its <a href="https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/piaac/skillsmap/">national survey</a>, or those who were unable to participate in the survey because of cognitive, physical or language barriers. People with low literacy skills may be able to read a basic vocabulary and decipher short texts, but their reading comprehension abilities are limited.)

In communities with lower literacy, personal challenges magnify into collective crises. In Detroit, for example, former police Chief James Craig recalled how, in their coursework, academy recruits from poorly performing schools had the most trouble with reading. It was harder for them to complete the program, he said, which added to the recruitment challenges faced by the police in Detroit and other cities.

Back in Amite County, Cartina Knox, 50, said she’d jump at the chance to learn what she missed after dropping out of school in ninth grade. But the nearest program is 30 miles away, and she can’t afford a car to get there. “They need places like that out here,” she said.

Standing before a sea of glaring television lights in the packed congressional chamber, President Kennedy exposed an invisible epidemic, reflected in the rates of military rejections, welfare enrollment and incidents of crime.

Millions of Americans were “functionally illiterate,” Kennedy told the nation during his 1962 State of the Union address. In the distinctive clip of his Boston accent, he called for a “massive attack to end this adult illiteracy,” marking a shift from decades of limited and sporadic federal action.

“The economic result of this lack of schooling is often chronic unemployment, dependency or delinquency,” he later told lawmakers. “The twin tragedies of illiteracy and dependency are often passed on from generation to generation.”

President Johnson soon delivered on this call to action, launching the nation’s first federal adult education program as part of his War on Poverty. The goal: Educate Americans whose inability to read or write kept them impoverished and out of the workforce.

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The federal government covered the vast majority of costs for free, state-run adult literacy classes. The funds were initially limited to basic instruction, excluding high school credential programs. As the effort expanded, the government mandated that states recruit adults with the highest literacy needs and urged programs to help with transportation and child care. Buoyed by federal funds, enrollment that started at 38,000 in 1965 soared to a peak of about 4 million by 1996.

But in more recent years, fundamental shifts in the program’s goals and funding impeded its success.

The adult education system began to morph into what is now effectively a credentialing program largely aimed at pumping out students with high-school equivalency or workforce certificates. The federal government started tracking student gains as a way to measure performance. States can use these indicators to determine local funding levels or even eliminate funding to programs not meeting high enough standards. This shift led programs to prioritize more advanced students, often at the expense of those originally envisioned by Kennedy: adults who lacked basic reading skills and needed more help.

“The purpose of these programs is no longer to provide literacy education. That is not what they do anymore,” said Amy Pickard, an assistant professor of education at Indiana University Bloomington.

All the while, as federal funding stagnated, states were called on to put up more money or risk atrophying their programs. National enrollment has careened down to only 700,000 students last year. Despite the country’s immense need, less than 3% of eligible adults receive services.

Jacqueline Davis in front of her home in Memphis. She was kept out of school as a child.

By the time Jacqueline Davis sought reading help, the system was no longer built to serve her. The 62-year-old lives in Shelby County, Tennessee — home to Memphis — where more than a quarter of adults struggle to read. Her father, who was traumatized by a racist assault he experienced as a child, kept her out of school. He read history books to her but didn’t provide any formal instruction. As an adult, Davis stumbled over large words and grammar. Her low reading level made chores out of basic tasks. At the doctor’s office, she had to ask for help filling out intake forms, and she later looked up unfamiliar words in the privacy of her home.

For most of her life, Davis worked as a cashier at places like Popeyes and Kmart, which sometimes required applicants to have a high school credential. She usually lied on the forms so they would hire her, she said. To her knowledge, no one found out. She dreamed of running a small produce business, sustaining herself with what she could grow with some dirt and her own hands. But her inability to fill out hiring or grant paperwork stopped her.

A family portrait taken in the mid-’80s shows Davis, left; her father, Samuel Gathing; and her daughters, Ginger Foster, right, and Mecca Stevenson.

More than a decade ago, Davis signed up for free classes with Messick Adult Center in East Memphis — one of the few in the county at the time. The program, like many across the nation, catered to adults who were close to getting a high school credential, not those who lack basic reading skills like she did. Davis tried to follow the lessons but quickly fell behind. “I just didn’t have the foundation,” she said. “My writing skills are not good, my spelling is not good.”

Her daughter, Mecca Stevenson, recalls watching Davis struggle with homework, too proud to ask her children for help. She only found out her mother had dropped out when the center called their home phone to check on her. Years later, Tennessee shut the center down for failing to graduate enough adults with a high school credential. The state has since worked to improve the quality of instruction in adult education, including providing more training to teachers, according to Jay Baker, the assistant commissioner of adult education.

After she dropped out, Davis kept looking for other options, frustrated by her inability to keep up in a group setting but determined to find something that worked. Several years later, she saw a television advertisement encouraging adults to sign up for classes at the library. She enrolled in a program run by the nonprofit Literacy Mid-South, which provides one-on-one tutoring for adults with a sixth-grade reading level or less. It was exactly what she needed.

Davis reads with her grandsons before they head to school, first image, and fixes the hair of her mother, whom she cares for.

Over five years, her abilities and confidence have risen, as her tutor encouraged her to take apart long words and sound out each letter. She says the program has changed her life. “I’ve learned how to pronounce words and read words that I’ve never seen,” she said.

The difference: Literacy Mid-South is not part of the government’s adult education system, so it has more flexibility to help students at Davis’ level.

While it’s one of the only programs in Memphis offering free tutoring for adults like Davis, it doesn’t get federal or state funding to do so. Adult program coordinator Lee Chase said he hasn’t applied because his program doesn’t work the way those funded by the government do, pushing students to get their high school credentials as quickly as possible. “Our learners choose their goals and we don’t want to limit what those are,” he said.

Lee Chase is the adult program coordinator of Literacy Mid-South, which provides one-on-one tutoring for adults with a sixth-grade reading level or less.

The lack of additional funding has hampered the program’s ability to grow. All tutors are volunteers, and only two employees receive salaries. Applicants often face a monthslong waitlist for a tutor.

“We’re just plugging holes in a lifeboat,” Chase said.

The nation’s approach to adult education has so far failed to connect the massive number of people struggling to read with the programs that could help them. ProPublica reporters heard time and again that in communities stricken with low literacy, programs had to close sites because not enough students had enrolled. Meanwhile, more than two dozen adults in these hot spots told us that a lack of transportation or child care or busy work schedules prohibited them from attending classes. As a result, many have fallen through the cracks.

Steven Binion couldn’t get the kind of help he needed from Detroit’s troubled schools.

For years, Steven Binion wanted to improve his reading level beyond the eighth grade. He didn’t get the one-on-one help he had needed in Detroit’s notoriously troubled schools. Then, he said, after family fights began to escalate, he left home at age 14. Knowing he would have to support himself, he soon dropped out. He survived for years on low-paying jobs: trimming lawns, sorting packages, working at factories. When he had a baby, his worries escalated as he struggled to afford diapers and shoes for his son’s growing feet and couldn’t rent an apartment for his family. He tried several times to attend education programs, but he couldn’t sacrifice the time spent earning a paycheck.

Meanwhile, Mayor Mike Duggan of Detroit was watching this pattern play out at scale. When he was elected in 2013, the city was bankrupt and nearly 1 in 5 adults were unemployed. Adults struggled to read — so many of them, generation after generation, that the city had grown to epitomize the nation’s literacy crisis. While difficult to measure, low literacy estimates for Detroit and its surrounding county have ranged from more than a quarter to nearly half of all adult residents.

The lack of skilled workers stunted the city’s ability to attract industrial investment. Middle-wage jobs all but disappeared. The city struggled to expand its tax base and maintain its public services. “At the time I got elected, the streetlights weren’t on in the city and the ambulances didn’t show up for an hour,” Duggan told ProPublica. “It was pretty much nonfunctional.”

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan spearheaded a plan to increase the education of the city’s residents.

The mayor realized that to interrupt this cycle, the city needed to better educate its residents. But even with the handful of literacy programs available, not enough adults were attending to make a meaningful difference. Too often, people like Binion couldn’t balance learning with work. While the earlier vision of America’s adult education system prioritized helping students overcome these barriers, many programs today cannot offer this support.

Eric Murrow, at left in the first image, is tutored in math by senior adult education manager Aubrey Williams as he prepares for a GED practice test. Deonte Ruff studies for a GED practice test at St. Vincent and Sarah Fisher Center in Detroit.

Duggan and other city officials came up with an unprecedented plan, one that accounted for the city’s responsibility in creating the crisis. They launched Skills for Life last year; unlike most municipal job programs, it pays participants to go to school. Two days a week, they can improve their reading abilities, prepare for high school credential exams or develop skills like masonry or electrical wiring. The other three days, the city employs participants either in blight remediation, clearing vacant lots or as park ambassadors, tending the city’s green spaces. They’re paid at least $15 an hour — about $5 more than the state minimum wage — for all five days. The city also provides assistance for participants without transportation or child care.

As many as 2,200 residents are expected to participate in Skills for Life over three years; it has up to $75 million in funding committed through 2024.

“The first responsibility of government is to show folks who dropped out because they thought things were hopeless, who didn’t learn to read because they thought there was no value — to show them there is a real and immediate benefit,” Duggan said.

Relying on a temporary stream of pandemic aid dollars, the city pays local adult education programs to run the classes. Detroit is simultaneously addressing some of the root causes of the literacy crisis: With an additional $1.3 billion in federal relief funding, the school district is on its way to dramatically improving facilities and expanding literacy tutoring for children.

While it’s too early to measure the success of the Skills for Life program, the mayor says he is confident that it will prove an integral part of Detroit’s turnaround.

“By the end of 2024, we’re going to be able to show definitively: Yes, you can fundamentally reduce poverty rates, raise literacy rates, raise income,” said Duggan, who believes this could be a model for other communities. “At least so far, we’re feeling very optimistic.”

After searching online, Binion, now 32, came across Skills for Life. Though incredulous that it would provide him with paid time to learn alongside a city job, he showed up an hour early to the interview, he said, and was hired that day.

Binion takes part in Detroit’s Skills for Life program.

Three days a week, he cleared the city’s abandoned lots, and two days a week, he worked with a tutor through the nonprofit St. Vincent and Sarah Fisher Center. The city’s program also set him on a path to earning a certificate in masonry, which will open up dozens of job opportunities. But first, he had to attain his high school credential.

Within months of starting the program, he passed the exam’s science and math sections. But he stumbled on language arts, failing the section twice.

Without the encouragement of his tutors, Binion would have given up. But after several more months of the city paying him to learn, he passed.

One in Five Americans Struggles to Read. We Want to Understand Why.

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