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by Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv for ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. David Barnea, the director of the Mossad for some of the most remarkable successes in its storied history, never intended to be an intelligence officer. As a young man, he served as a team leader in the Israeli military's most elite commando unit and then came to New York to study for a career in business.After earning a master's degree in finance at Pace University, he took jobs at an Israeli investment bank and then a brokerage firm, the first steps toward a career in which the biggest danger was an unexpected shift in the world's financial markets.Barnea's world was jolted in November 1995 when an extremist right-wing Israeli assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a peace rally. Rabin had signed the 1993 Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was pushing for a two-state solution to decades of conflict between Arabs and Jews. The Rabin assassination shocked him like many other Israelis," recalled David Meidan, a retired senior Mossad operative considered Barnea's mentor. He said the killing prompted Barnea, at age 30, to rethink everything and look for some meaning in his life." A friend suggested he apply to the Mossad, and after passing the required physical and psychological tests, he was accepted into the agency's trainee program.Barnea showed a knack for spotting, recruiting and running agents who would work for the Mossad inside countries hostile to Israel. A year after he joined the spy agency, he became a case officer in its Tzomet, or Junction, division.Meidan said Barnea had the qualities essential for success in the role: emotional intelligence and empathy." His foreign postings included years in a European capital, where Mossad colleagues said he proved to be charming, focused and determined.The latter qualities were evident from an early age. Barnea was born in Ashkelon, Israel, in 1965. His father, Yosef Brunner, left Hitler's Germany in 1933 for British-ruled Palestine and eventually served as a lieutenant colonel in the early years of the Israel Defense Forces. At age 14, Barnea's parents enrolled him in a military boarding school. He became a fitness fanatic and still runs or cycles when he has the chance. When it came time to do his required military service, Barnea won a coveted spot in the Sayeret Matkal, an elite commando unit frequently dispatched across Israel's borders to collect intelligence or carry out covert attacks or sabotage.In the 1990s, when he began his career as a spy, the Mossad's main focus was on Palestinian terrorism. Barnea, who speaks Arabic, proved adept at running agents in and around the PLO and other organizations.He rose through the ranks and was part of the Mossad's leadership when it decided to make gathering intelligence on Iran its top priority in 2002. The shift reflected growing concern about Iran's secretive nuclear program and its ties with powerful regional proxies such as Hezbollah.In 2019, Barnea was named deputy head of the Mossad and chief of its operations directorate. Within the agency, he stood out as an advocate of aggressive operations aimed at Iranian scientists, nuclear sites and Iran's growing arsenal of missiles that could reach Israel.In November 2020, Barnea oversaw the operation that assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a physicist and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps general who was in charge of the military aspects of Iran's nuclear program. After months of surveillance by non-Israeli agents, the Mossad was able to figure out Fakhrizadeh's travel patterns. A plan was hatched to park a Nissan pickup truck by the side of the road and install a unique remote-controlled machine gun on its bed. The weapon had a sophisticated camera and artificial intelligence software that would identify Fakhrizadeh and shoot only at him.The operation was controlled from Mossad headquarters, north of Tel Aviv, where Barnea was joined in the command center by his boss, agency director Yossi Cohen. They could see the nuclear physicist's car approaching, and then the gun opened fire, hitting Fakhrizadeh several times while sparing his wife, who was sitting next to him.Seven months later, Barnea was appointed head of the Mossad by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the 13th man to hold the job.In the years that followed, Barnea built on the strengths of the Fakhrizadeh operation, recruiting scores of non-Israeli agents for operations inside Iran. Those agents played crucial roles in the June airstrikes against Iran's nuclear program, identifying the locations of nuclear scientists' homes and knocking out Iran's air defenses.A colleague in the Mossad's top ranks, Haim Tomer, said that Barnea may not be as strategic, charismatic or flamboyant" as some of his predecessors, but he has proved himself to be a top-tier operator."The Mossad's successes under Barnea include the exploding pagers that decimated Hezbollah, the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and a Hamas political leader who was visiting Tehran, and the commando raids that destroyed Iran's air defenses and allowed Israel to strike the nuclear facilities without losing a plane.Those missions represent a remarkable turnaround for Israelis in the intelligence community, many of whom felt they had failed the nation after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 251. That sense of shame was felt in every agency, even ones like the Mossad that were not chiefly responsible for monitoring Hamas.The Mossad's directors generally serve for five years, and so Barnea, or Dadi as he is known to his staff, may be replaced by the middle of 2026; but his term could be extended as recognition of his successes.These are historic days for the people of Israel," Barnea told a gathering of operatives at Mossad headquarters after the brief war in June, where he referred to his close cooperation with the CIA. The Iranian threat, which has endangered our security for decades, has been significantly thwarted thanks to extraordinary cooperation between the Israel Defense Forces, which led the campaign, and the Mossad, which operated alongside - together with the support of our ally, the United States." Yossi Melman is a commentator on Israeli intelligence and a documentary filmmaker. Dan Raviv is a former CBS correspondent and host of The Mossad Files" podcast. They are the co-authors of Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars."

by Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv for 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 the early morning hours of June 13, a commando team led by a young Iranian, S.T., settled into position on the outskirts of Tehran. The target was an anti-aircraft battery, part of the umbrella of radars and missiles set up to protect the capital and its military installations from aerial attack.Across the country, teams of Israeli-trained commandos recruited from Iran and neighboring nations were preparing to attack Iranian defenses from within.As described by their handlers, their motives were a mix of personal and political. Some were seeking revenge against a repressive, clerical regime that had imposed strict limits on political expression and daily life. Others were enticed by cash, the promise of medical care for family members or opportunities to attend college overseas.The attack had been planned for more than a year by the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service. Just nine months earlier, the spy agency had shocked the world with its technical prowess - executing a plot hatched in 2014 by its director at the time, Tamir Pardo, that crippled Hezbollah by detonating pagers booby-trapped with tiny but lethal amounts of explosives. According to Hezbollah, the blasts killed 30 fighters and 12 civilians, including two children, and injured more than 3,500. At 3 a.m. on June 13, S.T. and a foreign legion of roughly 70 commandos opened fire with drones and missiles on a carefully chosen list of anti-aircraft batteries and ballistic missile launchers. (His handlers in the Mossad would only tell us his initials.) The next day, another group of Iranians and others recruited from the region launched a second wave of attacks inside Iran.In detailed interviews, 10 present and former Israeli intelligence officials described the commando raids and a wealth of previously undisclosed details of the country's decadeslong covert effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. They requested anonymity so they could speak freely.The officials said the commando attacks were pivotal in June's airstrikes, allowing Israel's air force to carry out wave after wave of bombing runs without losing a single plane. Informed by intelligence gathered by the Mossad's agents on the ground, Israeli warplanes pounded nuclear facilities, destroyed around half of Iran's 3,000 ballistic missiles and 80% of its launchers, and fired missiles at the bedrooms of Iranian nuclear scientists and military commanders.As they had with the pagers, Israeli spies took advantage of their ability to penetrate their adversary's communications systems. Early in the aerial attack, Israeli cyberwarriors sent a fake message to Iran's top military leaders, luring them to a phantom meeting in an underground bunker that was then demolished in a precision strike. Twenty were killed, including three chiefs of staff.The strategic map of the region has been dramatically redrawn since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks in which Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis and took 251 hostages. Public attention, particularly in recent weeks, has focused on Israel's retaliation against Gaza, which has caused scores of thousands of deaths and a deepening famine that has been globally condemned.The secret war between Israel and Iran has attracted far less public attention but has also played a significant role in the region's changing balance of power.In 2018, Israeli-trained operatives broke into an unguarded Tehran warehouse and used high-temperature plasma cutters to crack safes containing drawings, data, computer disks and planning books. The material, weighing over 1,000 pounds, was loaded onto two trucks and driven into neighboring Azerbaijan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu displayed the material at a press conference in Tel Aviv and said it proved Iran had been lying about its nuclear intentions.Two years later, the Mossad killed one of Iran's top physicists, using artificial intelligence-enhanced facial recognition to direct a remotely operated machine gun parked on a roadside near his weekend house.In the lead-up to June's air attacks, according to Israeli planners, they arranged for unwitting truck drivers to smuggle into Iran tons of metallic equipment" - the parts for the weapons used by the commando teams.Israeli officials said these operations reflect a fundamental shift in the Mossad's approach that began about 15 years ago. The agents in Iran who broke into the safes, set up the machine guns, blasted the air defenses and watched the scientists' apartments were not Israelis. All were either Iranians or citizens of third countries, according to senior Israeli officials with direct knowledge of the operations. For years, such missions in Iran had been the exclusive work of Israeli field operatives. But officials said the growing unpopularity of the Iranian regime has made it much easier to attract agents.S.T. was one of them. Israeli officials said he grew up in a working-class family in a small town near Tehran. He enrolled in college and was living a seemingly ordinary student life, when he and several classmates were arrested by Iran's feared Basij militia and taken to a detention center where they were tortured with electric shocks and brutally beaten.S.T. and his friends were ultimately released, but the experience left him enraged and eager for revenge. Soon after, a relative living overseas provided his name to an Israeli spy whose job was to identify disaffected Iranians. Messages were exchanged via an encrypted phone app, and S.T. accepted a free trip to a neighboring country.A case officer from the Mossad invited him to work as a covert operative against Iran. He agreed, asking only that Israel pledge to take care of his family if anything went wrong. (Iran summarily executes anyone caught spying for foreign countries, especially Israel.)He was trained for months outside of Iran by Israeli weapons specialists. Just before the attack was to begin, he and his small team slipped back into the country to play their role in one of the biggest and most complex military operations in Israel's history.The Origins of a Secret WarThe Mossad made Iran its top priority in 1993 after Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, seemingly ending decades of conflict. Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, center-right - flanked by, from left, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli negotiator Joel Singer, President Bill Clinton and Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization - signs the Oslo Accords in 1993. The agreement sought to end decades of conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians. (J. David Ake/AFP via Getty Images) Israel had long had a complicated relationship with Iran. For decades, it maintained a strategic alliance with the shah of Iran. But Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the Islamists who overthrew the monarch in 1979 described the Jewish state as a cancerous tumor" that should be excised from the Middle East.Israel's strategy is, in effect, to protect its nuclear monopoly in the region. It does not publicly acknowledge its arsenal, estimated at more than 90 warheads. The Israeli air force destroyed Iraq's nuclear reactor in 1981 and a Syrian reactor under construction in 2007.After the Iraq airstrike, Israel's prime minister, Menachem Begin, declared that his country had a right to prevent neighbors from building their own bomb. We cannot allow a second Holocaust," he said. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, left, in 1981 with Ariel Sharon, who at the time was the defense minister and would become prime minister in 2001. Begin said that his country had a right to prevent its neighbors from building a nuclear bomb. (STF/AFP via Getty Images) A few years later, Iran began researching nuclear weapons, drawing on the expertise of a Pakistani engineer, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who had once worked for a Dutch company that produced enriched uranium.Shabtai Shavit, the Mossad director whose term ended in 1996, said Israel was aware of Khan's travels in the region but did not initially detect his crucial role in Iran's program. We didn't fully understand his intentions," Shavit told us in an interview before his death in 2023. If we had known, I would have ordered my combatants to kill him. I believe that could have reversed the course of history."According to United Nations nuclear inspectors, the Iranians used blueprints provided by Khan to begin building the centrifuges needed to enrich uranium they purchased from Pakistan, China and South Africa.In 2000, Shavit's successor drew up plans for the Mossad's special missions unit known as Kidon - Hebrew for bayonet" - to assassinate Khan while he was visiting what one official described as a Southeast Asian country." The mission was shelved when Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, told President Bill Clinton he would rein in Khan's global activities. Iran turned to Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani engineer who had worked for a Dutch company that produced enriched uranium, as Iran began researching nuclear weapons. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images) That promise wasn't kept.That same year, the Mossad discovered that the Iranians were building a secret enrichment plant near Natanz, a city about 200 miles south of Tehran. The spy agency tipped off an Iranian dissident group, which went public with the revelation two years later.Mossad veterans said that operatives - likely Israelis posing as Europeans installing or servicing equipment - walked around Natanz wearing shoes with double soles that collected dust and soil samples. Testing eventually revealed that the Iranian-made centrifuges were enriching uranium well beyond the 5% level needed for a nuclear power plant. (Medical isotopes use 20% enriched uranium; bombs need 90%.)In 2001, Israel elected Gen. Ariel Sharon, famous for his belligerent toughness, as prime minister. The following year, Sharon named one of his favorite generals, Meir Dagan, as director of the Mossad. Both had a reputation for pushing boundaries and defying norms.Dagan, who led the Mossad from 2002 to 2011, decided to make stopping Iran's nuclear program the spy agency's main goal.Like Begin, who was born in Poland, Dagan was haunted by the Holocaust. Heads of foreign intelligence agencies recalled visiting his office and seeing a photograph of Nazi soldiers brutalizing Dagan's grandfather on the wall. Explaining the photo's meaning at an anti-Netanyahu rally in 2015, he said: I swore that that would never happen again. I hope and believe that I have done everything in my power to keep that promise." Meir Dagan, who led the Mossad from 2002 to 2011, had this photograph of Nazi soldiers brutalizing his grandfather on the wall of his office. He explained its meaning in 2015: I swore that that would never happen again. I hope and believe that I have done everything in my power to keep that promise." (Yad Vashem) Under Dagan's leadership, the Mossad organized an array of covert operations to slow the Iranian program. Israeli agents began assassinating Iran's nuclear scientists, sending operatives on motorcycles to attach small bombs to cars in traffic.The Art of RecruitmentDagan took pride in the Mossad's growing ability to recruit Iranians and others for covert operations inside Iran.One key to the spy agency's success is the ethnic composition of Iran. Israeli officials noted in interviews that roughly 40% of the country's population of 90 million is made up of ethnic minorities: Arabs, Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds and others.Shortly before he died in 2016, Dagan told us that the best pool for recruiting agents inside Iran lies within the country's ethnic and human mosaic. Many of them oppose the regime. Some even hate it."Present and former officials said Dagan championed the shift to relying on foreign-born agents. In the early years of the effort to penetrate Iran, the spy agency had relied mostly on Israelis, known to Mossad insiders as blue and white" - a reference to the colors of Israel's flag.Under Dagan, the Mossad's leadership came to believe they could find highly effective agents in Iran or among Iranian exiles and others living in one of the seven countries that border it. Meir Dagan, seen in an undated photograph, was a proponent of using foreign-born agents for the Mossad's missions against Iran. (Yaakov Saar/GPO/Getty Images) Present and former officials said the recruits fell into two categories. Some gravitated to the realm of traditional espionage, gathering intelligence and passing it on to their handler. Others expressed a willingness to carry out violent operations, including attacks on nuclear scientists.Not surprisingly, given the risk of summary execution, many had initial doubts.Convincing someone to betray their country is no small feat," said a former senior Mossad officer who oversaw units handling foreign agents. It's a process of gradual erosion. You start with a minor request, an insignificant task. Then another. These are trial runs. If they perform well, you assign them something larger, more meaningful. And if they refuse - well, by then you have leverage: pressure, threats, even blackmail."Spymasters, he said, try to avoid threats or coercion. It's better to guide them to a place where they act willingly - where they take the first step themselves," the former officer said.The most critical element is trust. Your agent must be loyal and emotionally tied to you. Like a soldier who charges forward despite the danger, trusting his comrades, so it is with agents. He goes on the mission because he trusts his handler and feels a deep sense of responsibility toward him."Most of the people who agreed to work for Israel expected payment for the risks they were taking. But the present and former officials said the driving force for people who agree to spy on their own country is often more primal.Financial reward is, of course, important," the former Mossad officer said. But people are also driven by emotion - hatred, love, dependence, revenge. Yet it always helps when the recruit's motives are supported by some kind of tangible benefit: not necessarily a direct payment but some type of indirect help."This is how S.T. was recruited.His handlers said he was consumed by hatred toward the regime and what had been done to him by the Basij militia. But what finally pushed him to cooperate was the Mossad's offer to arrange medical treatment unavailable in Iran for a relative.For decades, medical care has been one of the Mossad's signature recruitment methods. Israeli intelligence has links with doctors and clinics in several countries, and arranging surgery and various therapies was also used to penetrate Palestinian extremist groups. It has featured even more in approaches to Iranians, in the hope of persuading them to help Israel.The Mossad also uses the internet to attract agents, creating websites and publishing social media posts aimed at Iranians that offer to help people suffering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer. These posts include phone numbers or encrypted contact options.Israeli intelligence can mobilize its international network to find trusted doctors or clinics - places that won't ask too many questions. The Mossad typically pays the bills directly and discreetly.Another incentive used to entice potential spies is higher education in a foreign country. Based on years of research and experience, Mossad recruiters know that Iranians crave access to quality education. Even the fundamentalist religious regime of the current supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, encourages academic advancement. This makes offers of placement in Western universities, or boarding schools for teenagers, an especially compelling tool.Once a candidate is identified, the Mossad sets up an initial meeting in an accessible location - often in neighboring countries such as Turkey, Armenia or Azerbaijan, which are relatively easy for Iranians to enter. Other options include destinations in Southeast Asia like Thailand and India that allow Iranian citizens to apply online for business, medical or tourist visas.Candidates undergo a series of meetings and psychological evaluations. Psychologists observe their behavior, often from behind one-way mirrors. They fill out detailed questionnaires about their personal history, including intimate details about their family life, and are questioned by a polygraph examiner.Agents are regularly retested after they begin working in the field. Every action, whether minor or major, is followed by another lie detector test to confirm continued loyalty.They receive extensive training and supervision. To avoid arousing suspicion, they are told what to wear, where to buy their clothing, what cars to drive, and even how, when and where to deposit the money they receive.The agent-handler relationship is critical, as a former Mossad operative who ran" agents explained. In many cases, the handler is simultaneously confessor, babysitter, psychologist, spiritual mentor and surrogate family member.The goal is to build a bond so strong that the agent feels safe and supported - comfortable enough to share even their deepest personal secrets, including their sexual relationships.Any and all information about the agent can be valuable to the Mossad, either as a red flag marking a potential vulnerability to Iran's secret police or another aspect of the agent's life that the handlers can put to use. Among the key questions: Who's in the person's social circle? Can he or she use that relationship to the Mossad's benefit?The operatives who were assigned to assassinate nuclear scientists on the street received extensive training from Mossad case officers. They were taught to ride motorcycles and either shoot their targets at close range or plant explosives on their vehicles.The intent was both to deprive the Iranian program of expertise and to discourage promising scientists from working on nuclear weapons. From 2010 to 2012 the Israelis killed at least four scientists and barely missed another.The operations were managed by Israelis, down to the smallest details, often from nearby countries or directly from Mossad headquarters north of Tel Aviv, and occasionally by Israeli intelligence officers who briefly entered Iran.Operation Rising LionOver the years, the Mossad and Israel's military repeatedly drew up plans to halt Iran's nuclear program by bombing its key facilities. Israel's political leaders always drew back under pressure from American presidents who feared an attack would trigger a regional war, destabilizing the Middle East. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, had stockpiled tens of thousands of missiles, enough to overwhelm Israel's air defenses and hit its largest cities.Those calculations shifted dramatically in the past year.In April and October of 2024, Iran fired missiles and drones directly at Israel. Nearly all were shot down with the help of the United States and allies. The Israeli air force responded with airstrikes that destroyed much of Iran's air defenses. The remains of an Iranian missile ended up near the Dead Sea in Israel on Oct. 2, 2024. (Erik Marmor/Getty Images) The Israeli military had begun planning a bombing campaign against Iran in mid-2024 that it hoped would be ready within a year. With Donald Trump's victory in the November election, and Hezbollah neutralized, Israeli officials saw a window of opportunity.Israel's American-trained pilots had been secretly flying over Iran since 2016 - learning the landscape and exploring various routes to minimize the chances of detection.One nuclear target in Iran, however, was considered so formidable that the Israeli air force had no plan for destroying it. The Iranians had built a uranium-enrichment facility at Fordo and buried it inside a mountain - nearly 300 feet beneath the surface. Iran tried to keep Fordo a secret, but the Mossad and American and British intelligence were able to track movements in and out of the mountain. President Barack Obama disclosed its existence in 2009, and United Nations inspectors who visited the site soon after found that Iran was planning for up to 3,000 highly advanced centrifuges to enrich uranium. A 2013 satellite image shows a uranium-enrichment facility in Fordo, Iran. (DigitalGlobe via Getty Images) Only the United States had a bomb powerful enough to pierce a mountain: the GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator, the world's largest conventional bomb known as a bunker buster."And so Israeli military planners drew up a plan for a highly risky ground operation, details of which are disclosed here for the first time. Under the plan, elite commandos were to be smuggled to the Fordo site without being detected. Then they would storm the building, taking advantage of the element of surprise. Once inside, their mission would be to blow up the centrifuges, grab Iran's enriched uranium and escape.The new head of the Mossad was skeptical. David Barnea, known as Dadi, had long pushed for aggressive actions against Iran. He had overseen the remote-machine gun attack in 2020 just before being promoted to the top job. Yet he thought the plans for a commando attack on Fordo were far too risky. Barnea worried that some of Israel's best soldiers and spies would be killed or taken hostage, a nightmare for Israelis already deeply pained by the ordeal of Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza since the attack of Oct. 7, 2023.Barnea and other Israeli officials came to believe that the Trump administration might join an Israeli attack on Iran, with U.S. warplanes dropping the massive bunker busters" on Fordo. Trump had repeatedly and publicly declared that he would not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb. To prepare for what would be dubbed Operation Rising Lion, the Mossad and the military intelligence agency, Aman, stepped up their tracking of Iran's military leaders and nuclear teams. Several of the operation's planners said that Barnea significantly expanded the Mossad's Tzomet, or Junction, division, which recruits and trains non-Israeli agents. The decision was made to entrust this foreign legion with Israel's most sophisticated equipment for paramilitary operations and communications. The cover stories for each agent, known as their legends, were checked and rechecked for inconsistencies.The Mossad's espionage efforts were helped by a geographic fact. Iran is bordered by Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan. Smuggling is a way of life in the region, as thousands of people earn their living using donkeys, camels, cars and trucks to carry drugs, fuel and electronics across the borders.The Mossad had developed contacts with smugglers - and often with the government intelligence agencies - in all seven nations.Bringing equipment in and out is relatively easy," said an Israeli who has worked with Mossad on logistics, and the Mossad also used front companies that legally shipped boxes and crates by sea and on trucks driven legitimately through border crossings."The material was delivered to infrastructure agents," Mossad operatives inside Iran who store the material until it's needed. Mossad veterans said the gear can be hidden in safe houses for years, updated as technology evolves or maintenance is needed.Officials said the Mossad trained the non-Israeli agents who would attack Iranian targets for about five months. Some were brought to Israel, where models had been built to enable practice runs. Others rehearsed their missions in third countries where they met Israeli experts.There were two groups of commandos, each with 14 teams of four to six members. Some already lived in Iran. Others were anti-regime exiles who slipped into the country on the eve of the attack.Each had their instructions, but they were also in touch with Israeli planners who could change or update the attack plan. Most of the teams were tasked with striking Iranian air defenses from a list of targets provided by the Israeli air force.The Mossad had code names for each of the teams and their assignments, which were based on combinations of musical notes.On the night of June 12, the teams arrived at their positions as orchestrated. The Israelis in charge of the covert operations directed the agents to leave little or no equipment behind. (Iranian media reports after the attack asserted that the infiltrators had missed their targets and fled without their gear; Israeli officials said what the Iranians found were insignificant components - the equivalent of gum wrappers.)One hundred percent of the anti-aircraft batteries marked for the Mossad by the air force were destroyed," a senior Israeli intelligence official said. Most were near Tehran in areas where the Israeli air force had not previously operated.In the first hours of the war, one of the commando teams struck an Iranian ballistic missile launcher. Israeli analysts believe this mission had a disproportionate impact, causing Iran to delay its retaliatory salvo against Israel out of fear that other missile launchers were vulnerable to attacks from inside Iran.Officials emphasized that the military logistics of the plan were the work of Aman and the Israeli air force, which hit more than a thousand targets over the 11 days of airstrikes. But officials agree that the Mossad contributed key intelligence for one aspect of Rising Lion: the assassinations of senior Iranian commanders and nuclear scientists.The Mossad compiled detailed information on the habits and whereabouts of 11 Iranian nuclear scientists. The dossiers even mapped the locations of the bedrooms in the men's homes. On the morning of June 13, Israeli air force warplanes fired air-to-ground missiles at those coordinates, killing all 11.After a delay, Iran retaliated with a barrage of missiles. Most were intercepted, but the ones that got through did considerable damage. Israel reported 30 civilian deaths and estimated its reconstruction costs at $12 billion. Iran's state media put the death toll in their country at more than 600. An aerial view of the destruction after an Iranian ballistic missile hit Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 14. (Yair Palti/Anadolu via Getty Images) The question of how much Iran's nuclear efforts were set back remains in dispute. Trump has insisted the American airstrikes on Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan obliterated" Iran's program. Analysts in Israeli and American intelligence have been more restrained.This war significantly set them back," said a former head of Aman, Gen. Tamir Hayman. Iran is no longer a nuclear threshold state, as it was on the eve of the war. It could be able to return to threshold status in one or two years at the earliest, assuming a decision by the Supreme Leader to break out toward a bomb."Hayman, who now heads the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, said it's possible the assault might have the opposite of its intended effect, if Iran becomes even more eager to build a bomb that could deter future Israeli attacks. Yossi Melman is a commentator on Israeli intelligence and a documentary filmmaker. Dan Raviv is a former CBS correspondent and host of The Mossad Files" podcast. They are the co-authors of Spies Against Armageddon: Inside Israel's Secret Wars."

by Gerardo del Valle, ProPublica, and Alejandro Bonilla Suarez and Edwin Corona Ramos for ProPublica Leer en espanol.ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans, and Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News. The Trump administration's move four months ago to send more than 230 Venezuelan migrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT took a staggering toll, not only on the men themselves but also on their families. The men were released to Venezuela on July 18 as part of a prisoner swap without much explanation, and they and their relatives have begun sharing the details of their ordeal.Juan Jose Ramos Ramos describes the physical torture he says he endured during his incarceration at CECOT as his mother, Lina Ramos, explains the emotional agony of not knowing whether she'd ever see her son again. Andry Blanco Bonilla and his mother, Carmen Bonilla, still struggle to make sense of how they could have been caught up in something like this when Blanco didn't have a criminal record and, in fact, had a deportation order to be sent back to his home country. Wilmer Vega Sandia, who had migrated to the United States to find work that would help him pay for his mother's cancer treatment, says he prayed every day of his incarceration that he'd make it home in time to hold her in his arms.Without providing evidence, the U.S. government branded them all Tren de Aragua gang members, the worst of the worst," sick animals" and monsters." Our reporting, a first-of-its-kind, case-by-case examination, shows how the government knew a majority of them had not been convicted of a crime in the U.S. - and only a few had serious convictions such as assault and gun possession. We found a dozen or so had criminal records abroad and included those in our comprehensive database, too.Nearly half, 118 of the more than 230 men, including Ramos, came to the U.S. legally and were deported in the middle of their immigration cases. He entered the U.S. with a CBP One appointment, a program the Biden administration used to try to bring order to the soaring numbers of migrants attempting to enter the country. At least 166 of the more than 230 men had tattoos, including Blanco, Ramos and Vega. Our investigation found that the government relied heavily on tattoos to tie the men to the Venezuelan gang, even though Tren de Aragua experts say tattoos are not reliable indicators of gang affiliation.A handful of the men, including Vega, had been granted voluntary departures by an immigration judge, which means they had agreed to pay their way home to Venezuela. Instead, they were deported to El Salvador.Watch the video here. Melissa Sanchez, Perla Trevizo, Mica Rosenberg and Gabriel Sandoval of ProPublica; Ronna Risquez of Alianza Rebelde Investiga; and Adrian Gonzalez of Cazadores de Fake News contributed reporting. Mauricio Rodriguez Pons and Almudena Toral of ProPublica contributed production.

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 SystemIn 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 StrainThe 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.

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."

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 OptionsIf 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:

by Lisa Song ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. It was meant to be a routine discussion on pollution. One by one, delegates at the United Nations expressed support for a new panel of scientists who would advise countries on how to address chemicals and toxic waste.But the U.S. delegate took the meeting in a new direction. She spent her allotted three minutes reminding the world that the United States now had a national position" on a single word in the documents establishing the panel: gender.Use of the term gender' replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity and is demeaning and unfair, especially to women and girls," the delegate told the U.N. in June.The Trump administration is pushing its anti-trans agenda on a global stage, repeatedly objecting to the word gender" in international resolutions and documents. During at least six speeches before the U.N., U.S. delegates have denounced so-called gender ideology" or reinforced the administration's support for language that recognizes women are biologically female and men are biologically male."The delegates included federal civil service employees and the associate director of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for Trump's policies, who now works for the State Department. They delivered these statements during U.N. forums on topics as varied as women's rights, science and technology, global health, toxic pollution and chemical waste. Even a resolution meant to reaffirm cooperation between the U.N. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations became an opportunity to bring up the issue.Insisting that everyone's gender is determined biologically at birth leaves no room for the existence of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, who face discrimination and violence around the world. Intersex people have variations in chromosomes, hormone levels or anatomy that differ from what's considered typical for male and female bodies. A federal report published in January, just before President Donald Trump took office, estimated there are more than 5 million intersex Americans.On at least two occasions, U.S. delegates urged the U.N. to adopt its language on men and women, though it's unclear if the U.S.' position has led to any policy changes at the U.N. But the effects of the country's objections are more than symbolic, said Kristopher Velasco, a sociology professor at Princeton University who studies how international institutions and nongovernmental organizations have worked to expand or curtail LGBTQ+ rights.U.N. documents can influence countries' policies over time and set an international standard for human rights, which advocates can cite as they campaign for less discriminatory policies, Velasco said. The phrase gender ideology" has emerged as a catchall term" for far-right anxieties about declining fertility rates and a decrease in traditional" heterosexual families, he said.At the U.N., the administration has promoted other aspects of its domestic agenda. For example, U.S. delegates have demanded the removal of references to tackling climate change and voted against an International Day of Hope because the text contained references to diversity, equity and inclusion. (The two-page document encouraged a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth" and welcomed respect for diversity.")But the reflexive resistance to the word gender" is particularly noteworthy.Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights said the U.S.' repeated condemnation of gender ideology" signals support for more repressive regimes.The U.S. is sending the world a clear message: that the identities and rights of trans, nonbinary, and intersex people are negotiable," Ash Lazarus Orr, press relations manager at the nonprofit Advocates for Trans Equality, said in a statement. Laurel Sprague, research director at the Williams Institute, a policy center focused on sexual orientations and gender identities at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she's concerned that other countries will take similar positions on transgender rights to gain favor with the U.S. Last month Mike Waltz, Trump's nominee for ambassador to the U.N., told a Senate committee that he wants to use a country's record of voting with or against the U.S. at the U.N. as a metric for deciding foreign aid.In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement: President Trump was overwhelmingly elected to restore common sense to government, which means focusing foreign policy on securing peace deals and putting America First - not enforcing woke gender ideology."A clash between Trump's administration and certain U.N. institutions over transgender rights was almost inevitable.Trump's hostility to transgender rights was a key part of his election campaign. On his first day in office, he issued an executive order called Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government." The order claimed there were only two immutable" sexes. Eight days later, Trump signed an executive order restricting gender-affirming surgery for anyone under 19. Federal agencies have since forced trans service members out of the military and sued California for its refusal to ban trans athletes from girls' sports teams.In June, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized American government officials for their statements vilifying transgender and non-binary people." The human rights office urges U.N. member states to provide gender-affirming care and says the organization has affirmed the right of trans persons to legal recognition of their gender identity and a change of gender in official documents, including birth certificates." The office also supports the rights of intersex people.Intersex people in the U.S. are extremely worried" that they will become bigger targets, said Sylvan Fraser Anthony, legal and policy director at the intersex advocacy group InterACT.In all regions of the world, we are witnessing a pushback against women's human rights and gender equality," Laura Gelbert Godinho Delgado, a spokesperson for the U.N.'s human rights office, said in an email. This has fueled misogyny, anti-LGBTI rhetoric, and hate speech."The Trump administration's insistence on litigating gender" complicates the already ponderous procedures of the U.N. Many decisions are made by consensus, which could require representatives from more than 100 countries to agree on every word. Phrases and single words still under debate are marked with brackets. Some draft documents end up with hundreds of brackets, awaiting resolution at a subsequent date.At the June meeting on chemical pollution, delegates decided to form a scientific panel but couldn't agree on crucial details about whether the panel's purpose included the protection of human health and the environment." A description of the panel included brackets on whether it would work in a way that integrates gender equality and equity" or equality between men and women."The U.S. delegate, Liz Nichols, reminded the U.N. at one point that it is the policy of the United States to use clear and accurate language that recognizes women are biologically female and men are biologically male. It is important to acknowledge the biological reality of sex to support the needs and perspectives of women and girls."Career staffers like Nichols are hired for subject-matter expertise and work to execute the agenda of whichever administration is in charge, regardless of personal beliefs. Nichols has a doctorate in ecology from Columbia University and has worked for the State Department since 2018. When asked for comment, she referred ProPublica to the State Department.A State Department spokesperson said in a statement, As President Trump's Executive Orders and our public remarks have repeatedly stated, this administration will continue to defend women's rights and protect freedom of conscience by using clear and accurate language and policies that recognize women are biologically female, and men are biologically male."Gender is a crucial factor in chemical safety, said Rachel Radvany, environmental health campaigner at the Center for International Environmental Law who attended the meeting. Pregnant people are uniquely vulnerable to chemical exposure and women are disproportionately exposed to toxic compounds, including through beauty and menstrual products.Radvany said the statement read by Nichols contributed to the uncertainty on how the panel would consider gender in its work. The brackets around gender-related issues and other topics remained in the draft decision and will have to be resolved at a future gathering that may not happen until next summer.The U.S. has also staked out similar positions at U.N. meetings focused on gender. At a session of the Commission on the Status of Women in March, Jonathan Shrier, a longtime State Department employee who now works for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said the U.S. disapproved of a declaration supporting the empowerment of all women and girls" that mentioned the word gender." The phrase all women and girls" in U.N. documents has been used as a way to be inclusive of trans women and girls.Shrier read a statement saying that several factors in the text made it impossible for the U.S. to back the resolution, which the commission had recently adopted. That included lapses in using clear and accurate language that recognizes women are biologically female and men are biologically male."During the summit, Shrier repeated those talking points at an event co-sponsored by the U.S. government and the Center for Family and Human Rights, or C-Fam. The group's mission statement says its goal is the preservation of international law by discrediting socially radical policies at the United Nations and other international institutions."Shrier directed questions to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, which did not respond. Responding to questions from ProPublica, C-Fam's president, Austin Ruse, said in a statement that the U.S. position on gender is in line with the definitions found in an important U.N. document on the empowerment of women from 1995.Some countries have pushed back against the U.S.' stance, often in ways that appear subtle to the casual observer. The U.N. social and environmental forums where these speeches have been delivered tend to operate with a culture of civility and little direct confrontation, said Alessandra Nilo, external relations director for the Americas and the Caribbean at the International Planned Parenthood Federation. Nilo has participated in U.N. forums on HIV/AIDS and women's health since 2000.When other delegates speak out in support of diversity and women's rights, it's a sign of their disapproval and a way to isolate the U.S., Nilo said. During the women's rights summit, the delegate from Brazil celebrated the expansion of gender and diversity language" in the declaration.Nilo said many countries are scared to speak out for fear of losing trade deals or potential foreign aid from the U.S.Advocating an America First" platform, Trump has upended U.S. commitments to multinational organizations and alliances. He signed orders withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization and various U.N. bodies, such as the Human Rights Council and the cultural group UNESCO.It's rare for the U.N. to directly affect legislation in the U.S. But the Trump administration repeatedly cites concerns that U.N. documents could supersede American policy.In April, the U.S. criticized a draft resolution on global health debated at a meeting of the U.N. Commission on Population and Development. Spencer Chretien, the U.S. delegate, opposed references to the U.N.'s Sustainable Development Goals, which provide a blueprint for how countries can prosper economically while improving gender equality and protecting the environment. Chretien called the program a form of soft global governance" that conflicts with national sovereignty. Chretien also touted the administration's unequivocal rejection of gender ideology extremism" and renewed membership in the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an antiabortion document signed by more than 30 countries, including Russia, Hungary, Saudi Arabia and South Sudan. The first Trump administration co-sponsored the initiative in 2020 before the Biden administration withdrew from it.Chretien helped write Project 2025 when he worked at The Heritage Foundation. He is now a senior bureau official in the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Chretien couldn't be reached for comment.The U.N. proposal on global health faced additional opposition from Burundi, Djibouti and Nigeria, where abortion is generally illegal. Delegates from those countries were upset about references to sexual and reproductive health services," which could include abortion access. The commission chair withdrew the resolution, seeing no way to reach consensus.During a July forum about a document on sustainable development, the U.S. delegate, Shrier, asked for a vote on several paragraphs about gender, climate change and various forms of discrimination. In his objections, he cited two paragraphs that he argued advanced this radical abortion agenda through the terms sexual and reproductive health' and reproductive rights.'"The final vote on whether to retain those paragraphs was 141 to 2, with only the U.S. and Ethiopia voting no. (Several countries abstained.)When the results lit up the screen, the chamber broke into thunderous applause. Doris Burke contributed research.

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. When Jasmin Belanger agreed to a plan to pay $750 in back rent, she had no idea how the decision would haunt her.It wasn't until 10 months later, while apartment hunting to distance herself from an ex-boyfriend she said had abused her, that she discovered an eviction on her record. She hadn't ever been ordered to move out, having paid her back rent on schedule. But it turned out that the 2023 deal she made in court with her landlord to help her avoid eviction created a paper record that made it look like she had been evicted. That black mark kept her from finding a new place to live.Belanger's landlord was the Bangor public housing authority, which operates apartments for low-income residents. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development strongly encourages public housing authorities to offer so-called repayment agreements to tenants who have fallen behind on rent in order to help them stay in their homes. It recommends that authorities reach these deals before cases reach eviction court.But housing authorities have flexibility as to how to design and enforce such agreements. And the way these second-chance opportunities are executed in some parts of Maine - verbally in eviction courts with little judicial oversight - has come back to harm even tenants who meet every term of their deals.That's because judges here don't pause eviction cases even when tenants and housing authorities reach agreements. In fact, those judges often grant landlords possession of properties at the time that repayment deals are made - expediting the process of kicking out tenants who violate the agreements. Some states have taken steps to prevent this, requiring landlords to return to court to evict tenants who don't fulfill the terms of their repayment plans. Housing authorities also could choose to pause or close eviction cases if repayment agreements are made in court, but they rarely do so in Maine, said Erica Veazey, an attorney with Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a legal aid group based in Portland that represents low-income tenants throughout the state.Most housing authorities in Maine, including Bangor's, told the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica that they follow HUD's guidance and try to reach agreements with tenants outside of courts. But court records show that's not always true in Bangor, the state's second-largest housing authority. There, 54 tenants had repayment agreements made in court, according to the newsrooms' examination of eviction filings between 2019 and 2024. All 54 tenants ended up with eviction judgments in court records, including those who may have repaid their debts. (If a repayment agreement was made outside of court, it would not appear in any official record.)Maine's court system is one of the last in the country to rely on paper records, making a holistic accounting of such ghost evictions difficult. But the Bangor cases show for the first time how these repayment agreements can backfire for tenants against the intent of the HUD guidance.Presented with these findings, Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor's housing authority, said he did not know public housing residents would automatically end up with evictions on their records if they entered into repayment agreements in court.I don't quite understand or know how those processes may be changed," Myatt said, but we would certainly lead an effort or be part of an effort that would change those rules." Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor's housing authority. He said he did not know that public housing residents would automatically end up with evictions on their records if they entered into repayment agreements in court. (Linda Coan O'Kresik/BDN) HUD, during President Donald Trump's first term, began urging housing authorities to reach repayment agreements before taking tenants to eviction court in July 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. In January, just before President Joe Biden left office, the agency reemphasized that guidance as part of new safeguards for public housing tenants; that doesn't include a recommendation about whether evictions should be included on tenants' records as part of such deals.HUD's intent seems pretty clear: Eviction filing should be a last resort for housing authorities and not essentially a way to strong-arm tenants into agreeing to whatever terms you want to put them under," said Hannah Adams, a senior attorney at the National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy center for low-income tenants and homeowners. She practices in Louisiana, where judges regularly sign off on repayment agreements without entering an eviction judgment.Of the more than three dozen tenants contacted by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica, only Belanger agreed to publicly share her experience about the consequences of having an eviction on her record.An eviction, even one that never actually happened, can haunt a person's financial record for years, visible to lenders and prospective landlords and hurting opportunities to obtain credit or rent a home, Adams said.Asked to comment on a range of questions, including the effect of housing authorities deviating from federal guidance, HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett issued a statement saying the Trump administration is reviewing all rules finalized during the last administration.Many artificially raised the cost of housing and administration of HUD programs," Lovett said. HUD is looking into this specific rule and considering necessary options to revise or remove this burden."The agency did not respond to follow-up questions about whether or how it would revise the guidance about repayment agreements.Perils of Court-Based DealsBelanger said she fell behind on her rent in 2023 because she was paying to stay at a hotel to live away from her ex. She had also lost income because she was no longer showing up regularly to her cosmetology job due to the stress.An eviction notice delivered to her door in May 2023 prompted her to meet with a financial counselor at the Bangor housing authority. The counselor advised her to seek a repayment plan in order to remain in her apartment and avoid eviction court, Belanger said. But the housing authority initially refused, telling her that she could only get a repayment plan in court, according to a text message from a housing authority representative to Belanger. The text message appears to contradict Myatt's characterization of his agency's standard practice.Myatt would not explain why Belanger was not allowed to enter into an agreement before court, saying he could not speak about individual eviction cases even with Belanger's permission.Every eviction case is unique and has different circumstances," he said. We go above and beyond to help people stay in their housing."When her court date arrived two months later in July, Belanger said the process moved quickly. The judge called her name, and she was ushered to a conference room off the courthouse hallway where the housing authority's attorney, Joseph Bethony, verbally offered her a deal: She could remain in her apartment if she paid her back rent. She said he never mentioned anything about an eviction going on her record. Bethony declined to comment, referring the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica to Myatt. There is no guidance on what housing authority attorneys are supposed to tell tenants when making repayment agreements, Myatt said.Our goal is to keep families housed and collect the very important rent we need to pay our expenses," Myatt said. Our counsel works with everyone to accomplish that goal."Belanger, who did not have an attorney, said she agreed to the repayment plan without seeing it in writing. Maine judges typically do not review repayment agreements made in eviction court between housing authorities and tenants. (Linda Coan O'Kresik/BDN) She returned to the courtroom, where a judge asked if she had reached an agreement with the housing authority. She responded yes and the hearing ended, Belanger said. She believed the deal had been simple: Pay what she owed, make the payments on time and the housing authority would let her stay.The repayment agreements are drawn up by attorneys for the housing authority and are not typically reviewed by judges, according to Barbara Cardone, a spokesperson for the Maine Judicial Branch. Cardone said the court's authority in eviction cases is limited to determining whether the landlord can take possession of the property.The housing authority said it does not give tenants the agreements to sign in court. After the hearing, the agency sends a letter to the tenant outlining the repayment agreement and terms of the court ruling. Myatt said he does not review the agreements.The copy of the agreement that Belanger eventually received was dated seven days after the court hearing and was signed by Bethony but not Belanger, according to the document reviewed by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica. The one-page document said Belanger had agreed that the judge ruled in favor of the housing authority, which would have the power to immediately evict her if she does not pay her rent - and back rent - on time over the next year.She would not understand the implications until March 2024, while trying to move away from her ex, when a prospective landlord informed her she would not get the apartment because an eviction judgment had been entered against her in court. Belanger even had a reference letter from the housing authority saying that she had fulfilled her repayment agreement and her previous struggles paying rent were due to the monies she has had to spend staying away from her apartment to be safe," according to an email reviewed by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica.I had paid off all of my debt," Belanger said in an interview. I would have fought this if I had known this was a consequence."Myatt, head of the Bangor housing authority, said he trains his staff to use court-based agreements as a last resort. He said tenants should not be punished with eviction records if they've fulfilled their agreements.If the obligations are met," he said, the eviction should be lifted." There is currently no way to expunge an eviction record in Maine. A housing complex managed by the Bangor public housing authority. It is the state's second-largest housing authority. (Linda Coan O'Kresik/BDN) Unlike in Maine, other places across the country have set up more guardrails around repayment agreements and evictions. Massachusetts requires all repayment agreements made in court to be in writing and approved by judicial officials. In addition, landlords can't automatically evict tenants who don't abide by their agreements; they must return to court to prove tenants did not uphold their side of the deals before obtaining enforceable eviction orders.In SeaTac, a Seattle suburb, local ordinances require eviction proceedings to stop in court if a tenant and landlord agree to a repayment agreement, so tenants do not wind up with evictions on their records. In Portland, Oregon, the public housing authority allows residents to sign repayment agreements at any point before eviction hearings.Nicole Summers, an associate professor at Georgetown Law who has extensively studied eviction settlements, refers to repayment agreements as civil probation." That's because these agreements often include rules and conditions governing tenants' behavior well beyond paying off back rent.In Maine, Veazey said that under some agreements, violating public housing rules by failing to mow your lawn or smoking too close to the building can lead to a tenant's forced removal without having to return to court for an eviction order.In Presque Isle, the housing authority gave a public housing resident 48 hours to pack up and leave after she missed a rent payment. The woman, featured in a story by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica in December, was homeless for three years after violating the repayment plan she had made in court. When there is no repayment agreement in place, landlords normally must provide tenants 30 days' notice for most lease violations before filing eviction cases in court.Belanger's agreement in Bangor featured a similar trigger for eviction. She wasn't just required to pay what she owed, she also had to make future rent payments on time for 12 months.In the two years since Belanger agreed to the repayment deal in court, she said she has felt trapped.Despite a positive reference from the Bangor housing authority's director of property management, landlord after landlord rejected her rental application because of the eviction. It took the single mother of a toddler nine months to get into another apartment far away from her ex, who was out on bail after being arrested for allegedly beating and threatening to kill her. (He was later found not guilty after a trial.)Belanger said she's afraid to move again because the paper eviction hasn't gone away.I'm probably still going to have this hassle coming along with me wherever I go." This story was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. Mariam Elba of ProPublica and Christina Wallace contributed research.

by Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor, photography by Sarahbeth Maney, ProPublica This article was produced for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. For more than half a century, Diana Skarphol's family received a check every month from the company that drilled the first successful oil well in North Dakota on their land in 1951.The checks, from the company that became Hess Corp., were straightforward. Her family, which owns the oil and gas underground, received a percentage of the revenue generated from the company's sale of the minerals, called a royalty.But in April 2015, when she opened that month's check and looked at the accompanying statement detailing her share, she noticed for the first time that a significant portion of the payment had been deducted. About 35% of what she thought she was owed was gone, and she didn't know why.She was so taken aback that she called her husband, Bob Skarphol, a state lawmaker on the verge of retirement, as he drove from the capitol in Bismarck to their home in Tioga, a small community in the oil-rich Bakken in the western part of the state.Why are there minuses?" Diana Skarphol recalls asking. Rather than being added in, things were being subtracted. I was puzzled and confused." The couple remembers that call because it was the start of a frustrating, decade-long search for answers from the company and of a string of unanswered pleas for help from the state, which has not taken action to help royalty recipients even as other states have. Over the past decade, Hess has withheld about 31%, or $137,635, of the Skarphols' royalty income to cover the company's costs to move oil and gas from the well site to market, records show.Oil and gas companies owed the state's private mineral owners, like the Skarphols, an estimated $4.6 billion in 2023 before deductions, according to North Dakota State University research. But those deductions - which can vary greatly - are deeply contentious in the state: The companies claim certain costs should be shared with royalty owners, while owners say that in most circumstances, the deductions shouldn't be permitted at all. The state itself doesn't regulate what can be deducted and there is no official accounting of how much of that money is withheld.The North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica spoke with 18 mineral owners, interviewed experts and lawmakers, and reviewed court records and royalty statements to understand the extent of deductions. A dozen owners provided records of companies withholding 20% or more of their oil and gas royalties. Some monthly statements showed deductions as high as 50%. Similarly, at least one energy company and one independent researcher have found the deductions to be around 20% in recent years.The industry's chief lobbyist said percentages that high are atypical. Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said it would be impossible" to calculate an average deduction but suggested it couldn't be more than 7% to 10% based on the cost of transporting oil out of state. If deductions were in that range, North Dakota royalty owners collectively would have lost between $322 million and $460 million in 2023.The Skarphols' leases with Hess were signed during a time when oil and gas was often sold at or near well sites. The leases didn't say anything about deductions.It's a matter of fairness," Diana Skarphol said. We didn't get any say in it. They just up and changed it. You feel like you're being cheated. It's not right." Bob and Diana Skarphol have kept records of payments for their mineral rights going back decades. While the language in the leases has not changed, the industry has. Most companies now choose to move the commodities away from the well site before selling them, incurring additional transportation and processing costs. They pass on a share of those costs to the royalty owners, which the North Dakota Supreme Court has ruled is legal.By contrast, North Dakota officials have taken steps to safeguard state-owned royalties. Since 1979, all state leases with oil and gas companies prohibit deductions. When state trustees noticed deductions were being taken anyway, they fought back and have spent years negotiating settlements to recoup those missing royalties.But the majority of the oil and gas in North Dakota is privately owned by about 300,000 individuals, according to the industry. And North Dakota policymakers have not taken action that would protect private minerals, an investigation by the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica has found. There's a double standard," said Rep. Keith Kempenich, a Republican from Bowman, a community in the oil field. He has co-sponsored several pieces of unsuccessful legislation aimed at helping private owners.Lawmakers have rejected efforts to rein in deductions and to make it easier for royalty owners to understand what costs are being deducted and why. And oil and gas regulators have claimed they have no jurisdiction to help.It's ridiculous," said Bob Skarphol, who has led the advocacy efforts by private mineral owners. The industry has an incredible amount of influence in North Dakota." The state, which owns about 6% of the minerals in North Dakota, has advantages that private mineral owners don't have. It has the resources to audit companies that pay royalties and to litigate disputes. State law also requires that companies provide electronic copies of royalty and production data to regulators, but private royalty owners are guaranteed access only if they travel to the company's office, which could be out of state.And unlike the state, private mineral owners rarely have the leverage to negotiate a lease that prohibits deductions, and leases don't expire unless oil production lapses.In responses to questions from the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, officials from three companies that operate in North Dakota - Hess Corp., Slawson Exploration Co. and Zavanna Energy - said they follow the language in the leases. In fact, most leases, like the Skarphols', don't explicitly mention deductions. The companies also said that while there are additional expenses to selling the oil and gas farther away from the well site, doing so also leads to a better price for both the companies and the owners.The companies, as well as the organization that advocates for the industry, blamed some of the fees charged to private owners on costly state regulations enacted a decade ago.Basically it got really, really expensive and really, really challenging. And I think it put the economics of gas in a whole different position," said Ness of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, which represents more than 550 oil and gas companies in the state. Pure and simple, the world changed." Saddled With Expenses"Diana Skarphol was less than a year old when her mother's family, the Iversons, first leased the rights to any oil found under their land to Amerada Petroleum, which later merged with Hess, in 1949. The Iverson family had immigrated from Norway at the turn of the century. They'd farmed the land for decades, survived the dust bowl of the hard '30s and were still feeling the effects of the Great Depression.The discovery of oil in 1951, setting off the state's first oil boom, changed everything. Oil executives and workers flooded the small community. Diana Skarphol said her relatives welcomed them and invited them over for coffee. The Clarence Iverson Well #1 on April 4, 1951, its first night of operation. The well was the first in North Dakota to produce oil. Clarence Iverson was a relative of Diana Skarphol. (William Shemorry, courtesy of State Historical Society of North Dakota. SHSND 10958-0059-00001) It was a change in fortune for the Iversons and many other families. They weren't very rich farmers. They were just getting by. And this supplemented their income," she said. The leases promised a 12.5% royalty on the oil's market value the day it left the well site, free of cost." That means that the mineral owner is not responsible for costs to drill or operate a well or other production expenses.That's why families like the Skarphols say they were perplexed when the deductions began.The Skarphols keep decades of monthly royalty checks, so they can track when Hess began deducting money. A column titled other deductions" first appeared in 1998 but remained blank until April 2007, when the company began to deduct less than 2% of their royalty, an amount they said was too small to notice at the time.North Dakota's oil and gas industry was on the verge of momentous change. The shale oil boom, triggered by new technologies, had arrived. Crude oil was fetching $100 a barrel by 2008, and the drill, baby, drill" spirit took hold before the phrase was ever uttered in the White House.But the oil was leaving the surface intermingled with vast quantities of wet natural gas, which the companies often disposed of by burning it. The sight of small flames, called flares, became ubiquitous in the Bakken.Flaring looked unsightly, polluted the air and wasted a natural resource that could be sold. State officials enacted regulations in 2014 that required companies to curtail the flaring. The industry, in turn, said it has spent an estimated $25 billion so far to build the necessary infrastructure to collect the gas, process it and export it through pipelines. Flares burn off natural gas at a production site in Williams County, North Dakota, in June 2025. Watch video Companies pass on to owners a share of those infrastructure costs, as well as the expenses associated with processing and transporting oil and gas, sometimes to far-flung markets. Whether owners ought to share in these costs is the heart of the debate.The industry justifies the shared costs by citing a North Dakota Supreme Court ruling that empowered companies to deduct expenses. That 2009 ruling, which addressed a narrow issue related to natural gas, concluded that the value of the gas for royalty purposes should be calculated at the well," where it leaves the ground.That laid the groundwork for postproduction deductions. The ruling meant that when calculating royalties, companies could start with the sale price and then deduct the costs incurred after the minerals were extracted - what has been called the postproduction phase - to determine how the resources would have been valued at the well. But to royalty owners whose leases promise a royalty free of cost," the fact that companies incur expenses before selling the oil and gas is not their problem.Mineral owners are being saddled with expenses," said Neil Christensen, the agent for his three sisters who inherited mineral rights in McKenzie County that they lease to Hess. Those expenses, he suggested, should reduce stockholder dividends, not reduce mineral owner income." Private Royalties in North Dakota, Estimated in the Billions Royalties fluctuate based on the price of oil and the amount produced. The figures are prior to deductions. (Source: North Dakota State University research) There's a lot of money at stake. North Dakota Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, a Republican who routinely sponsors bills advocating for the interests of both the industry and royalty owners, estimates that companies deduct at least hundreds of millions of dollars" every year. He says companies should use their revenues to cover the postproduction costs - as they did before the most recent oil boom.An executive with XTO Energy told lawmakers in 2021 that the oil and gas company deducts on average $30 million annually, or about 21% of the royalties owed to private leaseholders in North Dakota. Mary Ellen Denomy, a forensic accountant who has audited royalty statements across the country and for at least 30 North Dakotans in the last decade, said that about 22% of royalties are deducted on average - which would have amounted to $1 billion in 2023. These figures are in line with royalty statements that mineral owners shared with the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica.It's difficult to verify what specific costs each company deducts because companies don't detail those, either for royalty owners or for the state, instead providing only broad categories on the statements that accompany their checks.Hess said it is a common industry practice" to pass on some infrastructure costs, such as the $1.5 billion the company spent on pipelines, the expansion of a gas processing plant and construction of other facilities in the early 2010s. Hillary Durgin Harmon, a Hess spokesperson, said those investments support economic growth by increasing oil and gas production and transporting it to more markets, benefiting royalty owners and the state overall. Zavanna Energy also attributed the increased deductions to infrastructure expenses, including the cost of getting landowners' permission to install pipelines in the state, according to the company's general counsel.I've seen the costs associated with obtaining pipeline easements in some parts of North Dakota increase as much as 3000% over the last 10 years," Zavanna's Gillian Wilkin said. Those increased costs can substantially influence the price that must be paid to get oil and gas to downstream markets."Todd Slawson, chairman of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, defended owners sharing the costs to move and enhance oil and gas after leaving the well site. Such post-marketability" costs, he said, benefit the owners, too.The objective of the operator is also to obtain the best prices for all parties," said Slawson, who owns Slawson Exploration Co., another energy company. We are all in this together, so everyone wants the best price."He called royalty owners like the Skarphols, who inherited leases, very lucky and fortunate." What a great country we live in where minerals can be privately owned - I do not know of another country where that occurs, but there probably are some," he said. In most countries, oil and gas are largely owned by the government.Bob and Diana Skarphol didn't feel fortunate when Hess began taking unexpected deductions in 2015. Nor did Brian Anderson, who also inherited a lease with Hess that his father signed in 1949. Donald Anderson was then a 21-year-old farmer who worked in a coal mine on his property to support his younger siblings.The family started getting royalties soon after. But since the company began taking deductions a decade ago, Brian Anderson said his family has lost more than $600,000.The fact that they just arbitrarily started taking it just sticks in my craw so bad," said Anderson, who at one time worked for Hess. You don't take anything for 60 years, and then all of a sudden you, abracadabra, can do it?" Brian Anderson inherited an oil and gas lease from his father. He began noticing deductions on his royalty statements a decade ago. Anderson's property in Tioga in the 1950s in an old photograph hanging in his dining room, first image; his family home still stands on that land. Second image: An oil well on his property in June. By the fall of 2018, Skarphol had talked to enough other mineral owners to realize that deductions had begun appearing on many of their royalty statements - and they weren't stopping.Skarphol called a meeting at City Hall in Williston on a brisk October evening to discuss what they could do about it. Dozens of mineral owners filled every seat and stood shoulder to shoulder in the back of the room.Janice Arnson, who along with her seven siblings inherited mineral rights from their mother, stood up and declared that deductions were out of control." One particular lease, signed by her mother in 2009, began paying royalties a few years later when Hess drilled a well. The deductions were minuscule at first and then skyrocketed to 23% of Arnson's royalty check in February 2015. We just want to be paid our fair share," she said at the meeting.I want the Legislature to take this seriously," said Linda Meyer, a mineral owner in Williams County.Skarphol, who called the meeting, responded. Do we want to get angry enough to do something about it?" Skarphol asked the crowd. I do."That night, the mineral owners formed the Williston Basin Royalty Owners Association. Bob Skarphol shows a group of mineral royalty owners the breakdown of a royalty statement. At that October 2018 meeting, Skarphol and other mineral owners founded the Williston Basin Royalty Owners Association. (Jamie Kelly/Williston Herald) Such a Hopeless Feeling"The group started with a request at the beginning of the 2019 legislative session for the state to study the issue and consider potential solutions. Lawmakers approved the request, but the committee that selects which studies should be completed discarded the proposal.In 2021, royalty owners worked with legislators to draft a bill to directly address their concerns. Among other changes, the legislation would have prohibited deductions unless they were explicitly allowed for in a lease and would have permitted royalty owners to audit a company's records, at the royalty owners' expense, to ensure they are being paid correctly.Curtis Trulson, a retired farmer, shared concerns about the deductions with lawmakers during that session. He receives royalty payments through leases with multiple companies, and he first started noticing his royalty payments were diminishing during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.Nobody ever called and said, Well, we're going to start taking these costs and here's why.' It just started disappearing," Trulson said. Almost every operator is doing the same thing now. They didn't all do it to start with." Curtis Trulson on his farmland near Stanley, North Dakota. He has asked lawmakers to help mineral owners. Trulson emailed details of his situation, and a royalty statement, to seven senators on the committee considering the bill drafted by the royalty owners. Some deductions go totally unexplained!" he told them. The only legislator who responded was the one Democrat, Merrill Piepkorn.I hate to say this because I lean a little more on the Republican side and I'm more conservative," Trulson said. Other ones didn't even bother to respond or say thanks for the information or anything." He added: The state of North Dakota doesn't want to help us out."The legislation was turned into a study, which ultimately recommended no changes to state law. I had a hard time keeping from screaming," Anderson said of his frustration during the hearings, which he attended in person.The mineral owners tried for more modest changes in 2023. That year, they pushed for a bill that would have required companies to provide royalty statements in spreadsheets. While state law requires that companies provide them that way for publicly owned minerals, there is no such requirement for private owners.That legislation failed, too.Every time we make any kind of an attempt it seems like the industry has a whole lot more influence over the Legislature in North Dakota than the people do," Christensen said.Arnson, who worked with Skarphol to bring concerns about this issue to legislators' attention, said she feels betrayed by her representatives.It was such a hopeless feeling," Arnson said. Have I lost a lot of faith? Yes I have." Janice Arnson on land once owned by her family. Arnson and her siblings inherited mineral rights from their mother in Williams County, North Dakota. Legislators from both parties who were involved in the efforts to amend state law told the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica that repeated legislative measures have failed because of the industry's impact on the state economy and subsequent influence in state politics. State and local governments took in about $32 billion in oil and gas taxes between 2008 and 2024, according to a study by the Western Dakota Energy Association. That same study found that more than 50% of all local tax collections are tied to oil and gas.The industry's influence has curtailed any investigation or legislation regarding looking into the validity of the deductions," Piepkorn said. Ron Ness is a pretty smooth talker," he said of the industry's chief lobbyist. We just take what he says for gospel." Ness said his reputation with policymakers as a trusted and respected voice for the industry" has been hard earned" over 27 years.Bekkedahl, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee that crafts the state budget, said more than half the state's revenues are tied to oil and gas activity. He called the energy industry's lobbying efforts on this issue very aggressive" but said lawmakers need to address concerns about royalty deductions.I've always maintained that we should, as the Legislature, provide some clarity to this issue so that the courts can make the interpretations with clear statutes in place, which they don't have now," Bekkedahl said.North Dakota Petroleum Council staff have testified to lawmakers that the state should not get involved in what it describes as private contract disputes.But the Legislature has gotten involved in other contract issues championed by the energy industry, including this year when it approved legislation related to coal leases. The new state law allows the companies to extract critical minerals from coal without having to negotiate amendments to existing leases. Joseph Schremmer, a University of Oklahoma law professor who specializes in the energy industry, said the Legislature can take action on other issues affecting private contracts as long as there is a legitimate state interest."The Legislature has the power to do many things that would potentially modify the operation of existing contracts," he said.Gov. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican who is both a royalty owner and a former executive in his family's oil company, declined to comment for this story. He said in an interview last year that royalty owners should rely on the courts, though litigation is expensive and not feasible for most.If you think you have a litigation issue, litigate it," Armstrong said. You're trying to use the state of North Dakota as your private lawyer. If you are in a contract dispute, there is a better place to settle that." North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness, left, talks to North Dakota Gov. Kelly Armstrong, center, and North Dakota State University researcher Dean Bangsund during an event to highlight the economic impact of the oil and gas industry. (Kyle Martin for North Dakota Monitor) Diana Skarphol is doing just that. She is one of 34 plaintiffs from the extended Iverson family who sued Hess in 2021 for $10 billion in damages, arguing that the company breached their contracts by taking deductions.Northwest Judicial District Judge Robin Schmidt ruled in favor of Hess and dismissed the case last week. North Dakota law, which the Skarphols and other families have been asking the Legislature to change for years, is not on your side," she told the plaintiffs in a June hearing.But where this will end is unclear: The North Dakota Supreme Court has overturned this judge's rulings on a different case related to deductions. And the Skarphols' attorney said they will likely appeal. Schmidt also told the plaintiffs they could bring a new lawsuit over a different set of oil wells.Meanwhile, Bob and Diana Skarphol continue to open the checks each month and calculate their losses. So far this year, Hess has deducted 36%.

by Marissa Greene, Fort Worth Report and Report for America ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. This article is co-published with Fort Worth Report and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas. Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline recently stood before a gathering of conservative activists just outside Fort Worth, recapping legislative wins and previewing what's next at the Capitol. On this day, however, he was speaking not only as a lawmaker but also as a pastor.A week earlier, the Internal Revenue Service decided to allow religious leaders to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, effectively upending a provision in decades-old tax law barring such activity. Schatzline, a longtime pastor at Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, was excited. The IRS affirmed what we already knew," he said at the July 14 meeting: The government can't stop the church from getting civically engaged.There is absolutely no reason that a politician should be more vocal about social issues than your pastor, and so I need pastors to stand up," Schatzline told the crowd made up of members of True Texas Project, a Tarrant County-based organization that is a key part of a powerful political network pushing lawmakers to adopt its hard-line opposition to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights and to advance conservative education policies.We need pastors to be bold."For decades, pastors like him have fought for the right to speak on political issues and actively endorse candidates in their capacity as religious leaders. Now, before a judge has weighed in on whether to allow the IRS policy change, some religious leaders are already calling on congregations to demand greater political involvement from their churches.While the tax agency's stance applies to churches nationwide, Texas is expected to be where it will matter most, said Ryan Burge, a political and religious expert at Washington University in St. Louis.More than 200 megachurches call Texas home. In the Lone Star State, pastors seem to have a larger profile in social, political and religious discussions. Texas will be the epicenter for testing all these ideas out," he said. Schatzline said as much in a follow-up interview with Fort Worth Report. A nonprofit that Mercy Culture Church previously created to help elect candidates to political office is working with President Donald Trump's National Faith Advisory Board to expand that work and to mobilize churches and pastors to get them more civically engaged, the state representative said.Officials from the White House and the advisory board did not respond to a request for comment.While Schatzline said pastors can choose not to be vocal about candidates, congregations like his may feel differently. Especially our conservatives across America, they have an expectation that their pastor is going to speak to the issues of truth," he said.For more than 70 years, churches and other religious institutions in the United States were told to steer clear of any political activity" or risk losing their tax-exempt status. That federal measure, the Johnson Amendment, was added into IRS tax law in 1954 and named after its author, Lyndon B. Johnson, then a Texas congressman.In August 2024, during the last months of the Biden administration, an association of religious broadcasters and two East Texas churches sued the IRS, arguing that the Johnson Amendment infringed upon their freedom of speech and religion.Nearly a year later, the IRS, now under Trump, and the plaintiffs filed a proposed joint settlement outlining in the agreement that when a house of worship speaks to its congregation about electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith," it neither participates nor intervenes in a political campaign and so doesn't violate the amendment. The court must now consider their proposal.IRS officials did not respond to a request for comment on what prompted its decision.The biggest implication of the proposed legal agreement is a push on pastors to be more political than they want to be," said Burge, a former Baptist pastor who is now a professor of practice at Washington University's John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.It all comes down to the 5% of people on each side of the political spectrum who are the loudest and are trying to drag you into their fervor," said Burge, adding that congregants could threaten to leave a church if their pastor doesn't talk about their political stances.A previous investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune highlighted 20 examples of churches that were seemingly violating the Johnson Amendment. That was more than what the IRS itself had investigated in the previous decade. Thirteen of those congregations were in the North Texas area, including Mercy Culture, where Schatzline was ordained a pastor in 2024.The tax agency largely abdicated enforcing the amendment, the newsrooms previously reported.For example, in the mid-2000s, the IRS investigated a little more than 100 churches, including 80 for endorsing candidates from the pulpit, after citing an increase in allegations of church political activity leading up to the 2004 presidential election. Agency officials didn't revoke the tax-exempt status of any churches, instead sending warning letters.Following the filing of the proposed settlement in July, the Fort Worth Report identified at least three churches in Texas whose leaders openly praised the IRS decision, including Mercy Culture and Sand Springs Church, one of those involved in the lawsuit that sparked the IRS change.The day after the court filing, Mercy Culture Church posted a screenshot on Instagram and Facebook of The New York Times article detailing the news and noting it was time for the church to get loud!"We will not be silent on issues of righteousness, life, liberty, or leadership. We don't endorse parties - we stand for the Kingdom!" the post read.In Athens, less than 100 miles south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Sand Springs Church senior pastor Erick Graham told congregants during a July 9 Bible study that the IRS ruling is encouraging."He told congregants during the teaching, which was livestreamed on Facebook and reviewed by the newsroom, that the church was not going to comment on the IRS court filing until the judge's final ruling approving or denying the proposed settlement. First image: A member of True Texas Project wears an organization T-shirt during a monthly meeting at the Texas Star Golf Course in Euless. Second image: A Mercy Culture Church sign at its flagship Fort Worth campus, one of five locations in Texas. (First image: Mary Abby Goss/Fort Worth Report. Second image: Marissa Greene/Fort Worth Report.) A Powerful Tool"Megachurches with the means to livestream services online or by broadcasting could be a powerful tool for promoting political candidates," said David Brockman, a nonresident scholar at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy and an adjunct professor at Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University.In North Texas, First Baptist Dallas draws about 16,000 members to attend worship in person or through several streaming methods, according to the church's website. Nondenominational Mercy Culture Church draws thousands of worshipers to its flagship location in Fort Worth, The Washington Post has reported. Since its inception, the church has formed other campuses in east Fort Worth, Dallas, Waco and Austin.First Baptist Dallas' lead pastor, Robert Jeffress, an avid Trump supporter, thanked the president on Facebook for the IRS' recent interpretation of the Johnson Amendment.This would have never happened without the strong leadership of our great President Donald Trump! Honored to get to thank him personally today in the Oval Office," Jeffress wrote in his July 9 post. Government has NO BUSINESS regulating what is said in pulpits!"Religion News Service reported this spring that Jeffress was one of multiple pastors who told Trump during a White House Easter service in April that the IRS had investigated their churches for their political endorsements. Jeffress told The New York Times he believed the conversation was a tipping point," in the new IRS interpretation of the Johnson Amendment, something Trump himself promised to do during his 2016 presidential campaign.He did not respond to requests from the Fort Worth Report for comment. A spokesperson for the church said he was out of town.Different religious traditions may respond to the policy change in distinct ways, said Matthew Wilson, a religious and politics professor at Southern Methodist University.The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United Methodist Church, for example, both announced they would maintain their stances on not endorsing or opposing political candidates. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national nonprofit advocating for separation between church and state, announced July 30 it is joining others in condemning efforts to ignore or weaken the Johnson Amendment.While some religious leaders may be reluctant to engage in politics, white conservative churches, which generally support Republican candidates, and African American churches, which historically have favored Democrats, have come right up to the line" of the provisions in the Johnson Amendment - if not sometimes crossing it," Wilson said.Those religious organizations have spoken in more explicitly political terms for a long time, and this [IRS decision] frees them even more to do that," he said.Mansfield Mayor Michael Evans, who has been pastor for 30 years at Bethlehem Baptist Church, southeast of Fort Worth, said he doesn't plan to endorse candidates for the congregation because it could only lead to more division. At his predominantly African American church, congregants come from both ends of the political spectrum, he said. While the candidates put forth by political parties and their philosophies may change, Evans said, the word of God remains the same."Mercy Culture Church is already well down the path of exerting its political influence. Schatzline launched its nonprofit For Liberty & Justice in 2021 after a church elder unsuccessfully ran to become the mayor of Fort Worth. The organization partners with local churches in grassroots campaigning efforts to promote Godly candidates for local government," according to its website.The nonprofit created an online program called Campaign University," designed to train people of faith on how to run for office. The organization's liberty rallies" have influenced the decisions of local school boards and city councils to lead with Christian values in Tarrant County," according to its website.For Liberty & Justice has supported 48 candidates since its inception. One was Schatzline. Cecilia Lenzen of the Fort Worth Report contributed reporting. Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at marissa.greene@fortworthreport.org.

by Renee Dudley ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Last month, Microsoft announced that Chinese state-sponsored hackers had exploited vulnerabilities in SharePoint, the company's widely used collaboration software, to access the computer systems of hundreds of companies and government agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.The company did not include in its announcement, however, that support for SharePoint is handled by a China-based engineering team that has been responsible for maintaining the software for years.ProPublica viewed screenshots of Microsoft's internal work-tracking system that showed China-based employees recently fixing bugs for SharePoint OnPrem," the version of the software involved in last month's attacks. The term, short for on premises," refers to software installed and run on customers' own computers and servers.Microsoft said the China-based team is supervised by a US-based engineer and subject to all security requirements and manager code review. Work is already underway to shift this work to another location."It's unclear if Microsoft's China-based staff had any role in the SharePoint hack. But experts have said allowing China-based personnel to perform technical support and maintenance on U.S. government systems can pose major security risks. Laws in China grant the country's officials broad authority to collect data, and experts say it is difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has deemed China the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks." ProPublica revealed in a story published last month that Microsoft has for a decade relied on foreign workers - including those based in China - to maintain the Defense Department's cloud systems, with oversight coming from U.S.-based personnel known as digital escorts. But those escorts often don't have the advanced technical expertise to police foreign counterparts with far more advanced skills, leaving highly sensitive information vulnerable, the investigation showed.ProPublica found that Microsoft developed the escort arrangement to satisfy Defense Department officials who were concerned about the company's foreign employees, and to meet the department's requirement that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Microsoft went on to win federal cloud computing business and has said in earnings reports that it receives substantial revenue from government contracts." ProPublica also found that Microsoft uses its China-based engineers to maintain the cloud systems of other federal departments, including parts of Justice, Treasury and Commerce.In response to the reporting, Microsoft said that it had halted its use of China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud computing systems, and that it was considering the same change for other government cloud customers. Additionally, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth launched a review of tech companies' reliance on foreign-based engineers to support the department. Sens. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, have written letters to Hegseth, citing ProPublica's investigation, to demand more information about Microsoft's China-based support.Microsoft said its analysis showed that Chinese hackers were exploiting SharePoint weaknesses as early as July 7. The company released a patch on July 8, but hackers were able to bypass it. Microsoft subsequently issued a new patch with more robust protections."The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said that the vulnerabilities enable hackers to fully access SharePoint content, including file systems and internal configurations, and execute code over the network." Hackers have also leveraged their access to spread ransomware, which encrypts victims' files and demands a payment for their release, CISA said.A DHS spokesperson said there is no evidence that data was taken from the agency. A spokesperson for the Department of Energy, which includes the National Nuclear Security Administration, said in a statement the agency was minimally impacted."At this time, we know of no sensitive or classified information that was compromised," the spokesperson, Ben Dietderich said.Microsoft has said that, beginning next July, it will no longer support on-premises versions of SharePoint. It has urged customers to switch to the online version of the product, which generates more revenue because it involves an ongoing software subscription as well as usage of Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform. The strength of the Azure cloud computing business has propelled Microsoft's share price in recent years. On Thursday, it became the second company in history to be valued at more than $4 trillion. Doris Burke contributed research.

by Emily Schwing, KYUK This article was produced for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network in partnership with KYUK Public Media and NPR's Station Investigations Team. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. When Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon toured the public school in Sleetmute last fall, he called the building the poster child" for what's wrong with the way the state pays to build and maintain schools. The tiny community 240 miles west of Anchorage had begged Alaska's education department for nearly two decades for money to repair a leaky roof that over time had left part of the school on the verge of collapse.Seated at a cafeteria table after the tour, Edgmon, a veteran independent lawmaker, told a Yup'ik elder he planned to start raising a little bit of Cain" when he returned to the Capitol in Juneau for the 2025 legislative session.Other lawmakers said similar things after an investigation by KYUK Public Media, ProPublica and NPR earlier this year found that the state has largely ignored hundreds of requests from rural school districts to fix deteriorating buildings, including the Sleetmute school. Because of the funding failures, students and teachers in some of Alaska's most remote villages face serious health and safety risks, the news organizations found.Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, an Anchorage Democrat, called the investigation's findings heartbreaking" and said in an email during the legislative session earlier this year that the current state of these schools is unacceptable." Sen. Scott Kawasaki, a Fairbanks Democrat, wrote to say that the responsibility lies squarely on the legislature" and acknowledged we do not do enough." Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel, a Republican who represents part of Anchorage, wrote, We are working to right the ship!"Yet during a legislative session where money for education was front and center, lawmakers were only able to pass $40 million in school construction and maintenance funding, about 5% of the nearly $800 million that districts say they need to keep their buildings safe and operating. Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon visits Sleetmute students last fall. (Emily Schwing/KYUK) In June, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed more than two-thirds of that, nearly $28 million.Basically, we don't have enough money to pay for all of our obligations," Dunleavy explained in a video posted on YouTube.In the video, seated at an empty table in a darkened room and flanked by U.S. and Alaska flags, Dunleavy, a Republican, painted a grim picture of the state's future. The price of oil has gone down; therefore our revenue is going down," he said.The crisis Dunleavy described isn't just a short-term problem. State officials have known for decades that relying on oil to fund the budget is risky as prices and production have declined. But year after year, they have failed to agree on a solution to finance school repairs and renovations. Alaska is one of only two states without an income tax or statewide sales tax.Average annual spending on education facilities declined by nearly 60% after 2014, the year oil prices plummeted, according to a 2021 report by the University of Alaska Anchorage. Overall spending on rural facilities is now less than half of what the National Council on School Facilities recommends.Sen. Loki Tobin, a Democrat from Anchorage who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said it's hard to get momentum" around various ideas to fund education, let alone just getting folks to realize that we have been by attrition defunding our schools." Education Front and CenterAlaska's Legislature seemed primed this year to address education funding. Several new candidates from both parties campaigned on education and won seats in November's statewide election.We flipped an entire statehouse," said Tobin, who was elected to the Legislature in 2022, based on the question of adequate school funding."Lawmakers filed a bill to fund education before the session even began. And in the first months of the year, dozens of superintendents, students and school board members traveled to Juneau to testify before lawmakers and urge them to increase funding for curriculum, teacher salaries and other costs.During one Senate Finance Committee hearing, panel co-chair Lyman Hoffman, who has represented rural Alaskan school districts for 38 years, raised the specter of a civil rights lawsuit similar to those the state has faced in the past over education in primarily Indigenous communities.The prospect, he said, could be more costly to the state than if we came forward and tried to do something about the condition of these schools." Sleetmute's roof has been leaking for so long that the wall has started to buckle under the weight of snow and ice, first image, and a bathroom ceiling is covered in mold. (Emily Schwing/KYUK) In April, Alaska's House and Senate passed a bipartisan bill that would have offered the largest increase in nearly a decade in what the state spends on each student annually. It did not include capital funds for school construction or maintenance.Days later, Dunleavy, a former superintendent and school board member, vetoed it. He said it didn't include enough support for homeschooling and charter schools - policy changes that he's long pushed for.Before the legislative session adjourned in May, lawmakers passed a compromise bill that included less spending and eased regulations for charter schools. Dunleavy again vetoed it, but lawmakers overrode the veto. The next month, Dunleavy used his line-item veto power to slash 3% from the education budget, the largest cut to any department in the state.This year's total state budget came to $14.7 billion, about $1 billion less than the previous year. Some lawmakers have described it as bare bones" and flat funded."Among Dunleavy's cuts was more than $25 million that was supposed to pay for school construction and maintenance. School districts have to apply to the state for those funds each year, and their proposed projects are then ranked. The reduction doesn't leave enough money this year to pay for even the top three projects among the 84 maintenance proposals school districts submitted. Seventeen major construction projects, including the replacement of five rural schools, received no funding at all.One of those projects is a new school in Stebbins, a Yup'ik village on the coast of the Norton Sound and the Bering Sea where the building burned down last year. More than 200 K-12 students now attend classes in about a dozen small temporary buildings. Mayor Sharon Snowball said several students left the community after the fire to attend boarding school or live with family in other communities. First image: The remains of the Tukurngailnguq School in Stebbins, Alaska, last June after a fire. Second image: Workers apply the finishing touches to a temporary yurt in Stebbins in September. (Ben Townsend/KNOM) At a potlatch in Stebbins last fall, Yup'ik residents practiced their traditional dance. (Ben Townsend/KNOM) Two hundred miles southwest in Mertarvik, a village that recently relocated due to climate change, the school district did not receive the funds it applied for to build a wastewater system for a school that's set to open in 2026. The district said it couldn't answer questions about how it will move forward with the project.Dunleavy has called lawmakers back to Juneau on Aug. 2 for a special session to discuss reforming the state's education system. It's unclear whether maintenance and construction funds will be part of those discussions.Scrapping for SolutionsAlaska's budget crisis has been detrimental to the state's rural school districts, which rely almost entirely on the annual budget for funding to fix and maintain buildings because they serve unincorporated communities that don't have the power to levy taxes.The budget depends heavily on profits from the production and sale of crude oil, which go into the state's Permanent Fund, a state-owned investment fund. Returns on those investments pay for more than half of Alaska's operational needs each year.Prices of crude oil from Alaska's North Slope dropped by more than a third from 2014 to this spring, according to the Alaska Department of Revenue. The result is a budget deficit that some economists say will exceed $1 billion by next year.State lawmakers have failed to address the warning signs of a budget crisis for decades. By the early 2000s, Alaska's daily oil production had fallen by half from its peak in the 1980s. Last year, it was a quarter of that.But for a time, high oil prices allowed Alaska to make it work. When Edgmon came into office in 2007, he said every day was a windfall.We put a ton of money into schools both operationally and capital budgetwise," he said.Legislators have weighed numerous options to fund the budget. They've considered whether to trim the annual dividend checks that Alaska pays to its year-round residents from the return on Permanent Fund investments. Last year, Alaskans received just over $1,700. Cutting payments is wildly unpopular, in part because research has shown the money reduces the number of Alaskans in poverty by up to 40%.Lawmakers have dipped into the state's dwindling savings accounts to cover the deficit, said Matt Berman, a University of Alaska Anchorage economics professor who co-authored a 2016 report that examined various deficit-reduction methods.The fact that the study was done 10 years ago and that absolutely no action has taken place since then speaks for itself," Berman wrote in an email. Mertarvik's school district did not receive the funds it needs to build a wastewater system for a school that's set to open in 2026. (Emily Schwing/KYUK) Some lawmakers have long called for Alaska to adopt a statewide income or sales tax, but neither idea has gained much traction. A bipartisan working group studied the possibility of enacting taxes in 2021. After a year on the working group, state Rep. Kevin McCabe, a Republican from north of Anchorage, said he wasn't convinced taxes were the answer.We experimented with sales tax, maybe a seasonal sales tax, we tried an income tax, progressive income tax," he said. It's just not gonna bring in the money that we need for all of our infrastructure deficit."Alaska used to have a special tax on every employed resident to help pay for education. But it was repealed in 1980 after the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which allowed the state to sell more oil from North Slope.I'll never forget my first payroll check," said Click Bishop, a former six-term Republican senator from Fairbanks. He said his boss went through the statement with him. He gets down here on this line, and it says education head tax $5,' and he said, Kid, that $5 is going to the state to help you get your education,'" he recalled. Bishop, who is exploring a run for governor, has proposed reinstating an annual education tax. But his proposal would only raise about $14 million each year, hardly enough to scratch the surface on the state's school maintenance needs.Instead of taxes, McCabe and other lawmakers say a more long-term solution for both schools and Alaska's overall budget would be to build a natural gas pipeline that would raise money from gas sales.Estimates from the U.S. Geological Survey show the state is home to more than a hundred trillion cubic feet of untapped natural gas, but there's no way to bring it to market.Described by the industry as big, expensive and complex," the pipeline project has been in discussions for at least 50 years. In 2020, the Alaska Gasline Development Corp., an independent state corporation tasked with developing the infrastructure, estimated construction could cost close to $40 billion. Though an energy developer recently announced interest from dozens of international customers, it's unclear who would foot that bill. Correction Aug. 1, 2025: This story originally misstated the district that Alaska Senate Majority Leader Cathy Giessel represents. She represents part of Anchorage, not Fairbanks.

by Corey G. Johnson ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. If you have information about cases or investigations paused or dropped by either the Department of Justice or the Securities and Exchange Commission, contact Corey G. Johnson at corey.johnson@propublica.org or 917-512-0287. The Trump administration has halted litigation aimed at stopping civil rights abuses of prisoners in Louisiana and mentally ill people living in South Carolina group homes.The Biden administration filed lawsuits against the two states in December after Department of Justice investigations concluded that they had failed to fix violations despite years of warnings.Louisiana's prison system has kept thousands of incarcerated people behind bars for weeks, months or sometimes more than a year after they were supposed to be released, records show. And the DOJ accused South Carolina of institutionalizing thousands of people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses - sometimes for decades - rather than provide services that would allow them to live in less restricted settings, as is their right under federal law.Federal judges temporarily suspended the lawsuits in February at the request of the states and with the support of the DOJ.Civil rights lawyers who have monitored the cases said the move is another sign of the Trump administration's retreat from the department's mission of protecting the rights of vulnerable groups. Since January, President Donald Trump's DOJ has dropped racial discrimination lawsuits, abandoned investigations of police misconduct and canceled oversight of troubled law enforcement agencies.This administration has been very aggressive in rolling back any kind of civil rights reforms or advancements," said Anya Bidwell, senior attorney at the public-interest law firm Institute for Justice. It's unquestionably disappointing."The cases against Louisiana and South Carolina were brought by a unit of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division tasked with enforcing laws that guarantee religious freedom, access to reproductive health services, constitutional policing, and the rights of people in state and local institutions, including jails, prisons and health care facilities for people with disabilities.The unit, the Special Litigation Section, has seen a dramatic reduction in lawyers since Trump took office in January. Court records show at least seven attorneys working on the lawsuits against Louisiana and South Carolina are no longer with the DOJ. The section had more than 90 employees at the start of the year, including about 60 front-line attorneys. By June, it had about 25, including around 15 front-line lawyers, according to a source familiar with its operation. Sources said some were reassigned to other areas of the department while others quit in protest against the direction of the office under Trump, found new jobs or took early retirement.Similar departures have been seen throughout the DOJ.The exodus will hamper its ability to carry out essential functions, such as battling sexual harassment in housing, discrimination against disabled people, and the improper use of restraints and seclusions against students in schools, said Omar Noureldin, a former senior attorney in the Civil Rights Division and President Joe Biden appointee who left in January.Regardless of your political leanings, I think most people would agree these are the kind of bad situations that should be addressed by the nation's top civil rights enforcer," Noureldin said.A department spokesperson declined to comment in response to questions from ProPublica about the Louisiana and South Carolina cases. Sources familiar with the lawsuits said Trump appointees have told DOJ lawyers handling the cases that they want to resolve matters out of court.The federal government has used settlement talks in the past to hammer out consent decrees, agreements that set a list of requirements to fix civil rights violations and are overseen by an outside monitor and federal judge to ensure compliance. But Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, Trump's appointee to run the DOJ's civil rights division, has made no secret of her distaste for such measures.In May, Dhillon announced she was moving to dismiss efforts to impose consent decrees on the Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis police departments. She complained that consent decrees turn local control of policing over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats." Dhillon attends an April meeting of the Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias Task Force at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. (Ken Cedeno/Reuters/Redux) A DOJ investigation in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer accused the department of excessive force, unjustified shootings, and discrimination against Black and Native American people. The agency issued similar findings against the Louisville Metro Police Department after the high-profile killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot in 2020 when officers forced their way into her home to execute a search warrant.Noureldin, now a senior vice president at the government watchdog group Common Cause, said consent decrees provide an important level of oversight by an independent judge. By contrast, out-of-court settlements can be subject to the political whims of a new administration, which can decide to drop a case or end an agreement despite evidence of continuing constitutional violations.When you have a consent decree or a court-enforced settlement, the Justice Department can't unilaterally just withdraw from the agreement," Noureldin said. A federal judge would have to agree that the public interest is served by terminating that settlement."I Lost Everything"In the case of Louisiana, the Justice Department issued a scathing report in January 2023 about the state confining prisoners beyond their sentences. The problems dated back more than a decade and remained widespread, the report said. Between January and April 2022 alone, more than a quarter of everyone released from prison custody was held past their release dates. Of those, 24% spent an additional 90 days or more behind bars, the DOJ found.Among those held longer than they should have been was Robert Parker, a disc jockey known as DJ Rob" in New Orleans, where he played R&B and hip-hop music at weddings and private parties. Parker, 55, was arrested in late 2016 after violating a restraining order brought by a former girlfriend.He was supposed to be released in October 2017, but a prison staffer mistakenly classified him as a sex offender. That meant he was required to provide prison authorities with two addresses where he could stay that complied with sex offender registry rules.Prison documents show Parker repeatedly told authorities that he wasn't a sex offender and pleaded to speak to the warden to clear up the mistake. But nobody acted until a deputy public defender contacted state officials months later to complain. By the time he walked out, Parker had spent 337 extra days behind bars. During that period, he said, his car was repossessed, his mother died and his reputation was ruined.I lost everything," he told ProPublica in an interview from a nursing home, where he was recovering from a stroke. I'm ready to get away from Louisiana."Louisiana's detention system is complex. Unlike other jurisdictions, where the convicted are housed in state facilities, inmates in Louisiana can be held in local jails overseen by sheriffs. A major contributor to the so-called over-detentions was poor communication among Louisiana's court clerks, sheriff's offices and the state department of corrections, according to interviews with attorneys, depositions of state officials, and reports from state and federal reviews of the prison system.Until recently, the agencies shared prisoner sentencing information by shuttling stacks of paperwork by van or truck from the court to the sheriff's office for the parish holding the prisoner, then to corrections officials. The document transfers, which often crisscrossed the state, typically happened only once a week. When the records finally arrived, it could take staff a month or longer to enter the data into computers, creating more delays. In addition, staff made data errors when calculating release dates.Two years ago, The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Parker could pursue a lawsuit against the former head of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, James LeBlanc. That lawsuit is ongoing, said Parker's attorney, Jonathan Rhodes. LeBlanc, who resigned last year, could not be reached for comment, and his attorneys did not respond to requests for comment.In a statement, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill acknowledged that the state's process to determine release dates was unreliable but said the issue had been overblown by the Justice Department's investigation, which she called factually incorrect."There were simply parts of it that are outside state control, such as clerks & courts," Murrill stated.Murrill said correction officials have been working with local officials to ensure prisoner releases are computed in a timely and correct fashion." Louisiana officials point to a new website that allows electronic sharing of information among the various agencies.The system has been overhauled. That has dramatically diminished, if not completely eliminated this problem," Murrill stated. She did not address questions from ProPublica asking if prisoners were being held longer than their release dates this year.Local attorneys who are handling lawsuits against the state expressed skepticism about Murrill's claims.William Most, an attorney who filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of incarcerated people who had been detained past their release dates, noted that as late as May 2024, 141 people who were released that month had been kept longer than they should have been, 120 of them for more than 30 days.I have seen no evidence suggesting the problem in Louisiana is fixed," Most said. And it seems unwise to dismiss any cases while that's the situation." After Breonna Taylor's high-profile killing in 2020, the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden found that the Louisville Metro Police Department used excessive force and discriminated against Black residents. (Xavier Burrel/The New York Times/Redux) Trapped in Group HomesSouth Carolina's mentally ill population is grappling with similar challenges.After years of lawsuits and complaints, a DOJ investigation determined that officials illegally denied community-based services - required by the Americans with Disabilities Act and a 1999 Supreme Court decision - to over 1,000 people diagnosed as seriously mentally ill. Instead, the state placed them in group homes that failed to provide adequate care and were overly restrictive, the department alleged.The DOJ report didn't address why the state relied so heavily on group homes. It noted that South Carolina's own goals and plans called for increasing community-based services to help more people live independently. But the investigation concluded that the availability of community-based services varied widely across the state, leaving people in some areas with no access. And the DOJ said the state's rules for deciding when someone could leave were too stringent.South Carolina funds and oversees more than 400 facilities that serve people with serious mental illness, according to a state affidavit.Kimberly Tissot, president of the disability rights group Able South Carolina, said it was common for disabled adults who were living successfully on their own to be involuntarily committed to an adult group home simply because they visited a hospital to pick up medicine.Tissot, who has inspected hundreds of the adult facilities, said they often are roach-infested, soaked in urine, lacking in adequate medicine and staffed by untrained employees. Her description mirrors the findings of several state and independent investigations. In some group homes, patients weren't allowed to leave or freely move around. Subsequently, their mental health would deteriorate, Tissot said.We have had people die in these facilities because of the conditions," said Tissot, who worked closely with the DOJ investigators. Scores of sexual abuse incidents, assaults and deaths in such group homes have been reported to the state, according to a 2022 federal report that faulted South Carolina's oversight.South Carolina has been on notice about the difficulties since 2016 but didn't make sufficient progress, the DOJ alleged in its lawsuit filed in December.After two years of failed attempts, state lawmakers passed a law in April that consolidated services for disabled people into a new agency responsible for expanding access to home and community-based treatments and for ensuring compliance with federal laws.South Carolina's attorney general, Alan Wilson, has argued in the DOJ's lawsuit that the state has been providing necessary services and has not been violating people's constitutional rights. In January, his office asked the court for a delay in the case to give the Trump administration enough time to determine how to proceed.His office and a spokesperson for the South Carolina Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities declined to comment, citing the ongoing DOJ lawsuit.Tissot credits the federal attention with creating a sense of urgency among state lawmakers to make improvements. While she said she is pleased with the latest progress, she warned that if the DOJ dropped the case, it would undermine the enforcement of disabled people's civil rights and allow state abuses to continue.It would signal that systemic discrimination will go unchecked and embolden institutional providers to resist change," Tissot said. Most importantly, it abandons the people directly impacted."

by Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, Melissa Sanchez and Mica Rosenberg, ProPublica, Ronna Risquez, Alianza Rebelde Investiga, and Adrian Gonzalez, Cazadores de Fake News, photography and additional reporting by Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune Leer en espanol. Now that he's free, Leonardo Jose Colmenares Solorzano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, wants the world to know that he was tortured over four months in a Salvadoran prison. He said guards stomped on his hands, poured filthy water into his ears and threatened to beat him if he didn't kneel alongside other inmates and lick their backs.Now that he's free, Juan Jose Ramos Ramos, 39, insists he's not who President Donald Trump says he is. He's not a member of a gang or an international terrorist, just a man with tattoos whom immigration agents spotted riding in a car with a Venezuela sticker on the back.Now that he's free, Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he wondered every day of his time in prison whether he'd ever hold his mother in his arms again. He's relieved to be back home in Venezuela but struggles to make sense of why he and the other men were put through that ordeal in the first place.We are a group of people who I consider had the bad luck of ending up on this black list," he said.These are the accounts being shared by some of the more than 230 Venezuelan men the Trump administration deported on March 15 to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. Throughout the men's incarceration, the administration used blanket statements and exaggerations that obscured the truth about who they are and why they were targeted. The president has both hailed the men's removal as a signature achievement of his first 100 days in office and touted it as a demonstration of the lengths his administration was willing to go to carry out his mass deportation campaign. He assured the public that he was fulfilling his promise to rid the country of immigrants who'd committed violent crimes, and that the men sent to El Salvador were monsters," savages" and the worst of the worst." ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans, and Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News. Few cases have gotten as much attention as the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. They were deported against the instructions of a federal judge, frog-marched off American planes and forced to kneel before cameras and have their heads shaved. The administration rebuffed requests to confirm the men's names or provide information about the allegations it had made against them. Meanwhile, the deportees were held without access to lawyers or the ability to speak to their families. Then, 12 days ago, they were returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap.Now that they're home, they've begun to talk. We interviewed nine men for this story. They are bewildered, frightened, angry. Some said their feelings about what happened were still so raw they had trouble finding words to describe them. All of the men said they were abused physically and mentally during their imprisonment. Their relatives say they, too, went through hell wondering whether their loved ones were alive or dead, or if they would ever see them again. All the men said they were relieved to be free, though some said their release was proof the U.S. had no reason to send them to prison to begin with. Blanco, for example, has no criminal record in the U.S., according to the government's own data. His only violation was having entered the country illegally. He'd come because he wasn't earning enough to help his parents and support his seven children, ages 2 to 19, after his family's wholesale dairy and deli supply business failed. He arrived in December 2023 and turned himself in to immigration authorities in Eagle Pass, Texas, to request asylum. Then he was released to continue his immigration process.Afterward, Blanco moved to Dallas and found work delivering food. In February 2024, he accompanied his cousin to a routine appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. While he was there, he decided to notify the agency that he'd changed his address. On his way out of the building, an immigration agent stopped him and asked about his tattoos. He has several of them, including a blue rose, a father hugging his son behind railroad tracks and a clock showing the time his mother was born.He said the tattoos signified his affection for his family, not evidence of affiliation with a gang. Records show the officials didn't believe him and detained him. While in custody, a judge ordered his deportation. However, because Washington and Caracas don't have diplomatic relations, the Venezuelan government was refusing to accept most deportees from the United States at the time. Immigration officials released Blanco back into the U.S. until they could send him home.For the next seven months, Blanco continued on in Dallas and picked up additional work as a mechanic. Then, shortly after Trump was inaugurated, ICE officers asked Blanco to come in for another appointment and detained him. A month later, despite Venezuela agreeing to take back some deportees, Blanco was on one of three planes bound for El Salvador.From the moment I realized I was in El Salvador and that I would be detained, it was anguish," he said. I was shaken. It hit me hard. Hard, hard, hard." We are a group of people who I consider had the bad luck of ending up on this black list." - Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla and his mother, Carmen Bonilla, at their house in Valencia, Venezuela To deport the Venezuelans, Trump invoked an obscure law from the 1700s known as the Alien Enemies Act. He declared that the men were all part of a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren de Aragua that was invading the United States. Within days, CBS News published a list of the men's names, and there were anecdotal reports indicating that not all of the deportees were hardened criminals, much less savages." By early April, several news organizations had reported that the majority of the men did not appear to have criminal records.Administration officials dismissed the reports, saying that many of the deportees were known human rights abusers, gang members and criminals outside of the U.S. The fact they hadn't committed crimes in the United States, they said, didn't mean they weren't a threat to public safety.To examine those claims, ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of Venezuelan journalists from Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates) and Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) launched an exhaustive investigation of the backgrounds of the 238 men on the list of detainees first published by CBS. Last week, we published a first-of-its-kind database that highlights our findings, including the fact the Trump administration knew at least 197 of the men had no criminal convictions in the U.S. Nearly half the men had open immigration cases when they were deported, and at least 166 have tattoos, which experts have told us are not an indicator of gang membership.When asked for comment for this story, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, called ProPublica a liberal rag hellbent on defending violent criminal illegal aliens who never belonged in the United States." She added, America is safer with them out of our country."A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson echoed the White House's claim. Once again, the media is falling all over themselves to defend criminal illegal gang members," the spokesperson said in a statement. We hear far too much about gang members and criminals' false sob stories and not enough about their victims."The fact that border encounters have plummeted to record lows after reaching record highs during the Biden presidency suggests that the administration's efforts are having the effect that Trump intended. After what happened to him, Colmenares said he didn't think migrating to the U.S. was safe anymore.He'd been a youth soccer coach in Venezuela before setting off for the U.S. He followed the rules and got an appointment to approach the U.S.-Mexico border last October, as had more than 50 of the men. At the appointment, Colmenares said an agent pulled him aside to take pictures of his many tattoos - then detained him. He never set foot in the U.S. as a free man.The country with the Statue of Liberty deprived us of our liberty without any kind of evidence," he said in an interview two days after he was returned to his family. Who is going to go to the border now, knowing that they will grab you and put you in a prison where they will kill you?"The men we interviewed said the terror they felt in El Salvador began almost immediately upon arrival.Salvadoran police boarded the planes and began forcing the shackled men off - shoving them, throwing them to the ground, hitting them with their batons. Five said they saw flight attendants crying at the sight.This will teach you not to enter our country illegally," Colmenares said one ICE official told him in Spanish. He wanted to explain that wasn't true in his case but could tell there was no point. He got off the plane and was loaded onto a bus to prison.Once inside, guards stripped them down to white boxers and sandals. Those who tried to refuse to have their heads shaved were beaten. Blanco said he heard their screams and didn't dare resist. Humiliated and enraged, he did as he was told: head down, body limp.They were loaded up again on the buses and taken to another part of the compound. Blanco said the shackles were so tight that he couldn't walk as fast as the guards wanted, so they beat him until he passed out and dragged him the rest of the way. Inside, they dropped him so hard that his head banged on the floor. As he opened his eyes and saw the guards, bright lights and polished concrete floor, he asked: God, why am I here? Why?" Blanco was detained during an immigration appointment and sent to CECOT, where he says guards beat and humiliated him. The men said beatings by the guards were random, severe and constant. Guards lashed out at them with their fists and batons. They kicked them while wearing heavy work boots and shot them at close range with rubber pellets. One man we spoke to said he suspects he will have a lasting injury from a hard kick to the groin.Colmenares recalled seeing one man defecate all over himself after a particularly severe beating. Guards laughed at him and left him there for a day, saying that the Venezuelans weren't real men."Just as vicious, the men said, was the psychological abuse. They lost track of the days because they were never allowed outdoors. Blanco said that whenever he asked a guard for the time, they'd mock him: Why do you want to know what time it is? Have somewhere to be? Is someone waiting for you?"Over and over, the men said, the guards called them criminals and terrorists and sons of bitches who deserved to be locked up. They said the guards told them so often that they were nobodies and that no one, not even their families, cared about them that some started to believe it.The men said they waged at least two dayslong hunger strikes, skipping the beans, rice and tortillas they were fed most days, to demand an end to the abuses and an explanation for why they were in prison. They told us nothing about how the process was going, what was going to happen to us, when we were going to see a judge, when we were going to see an attorney," Ramos said.Several of those interviewed said suicide crossed their minds. Ramos said he thought: I'd rather die or kill myself than to keep living through this experience. Being woken up every day at 4 a.m. to be insulted and beaten. For wanting to shower, for asking for something so basic. ... Hearing your brothers getting beaten, crying for help." Four talked about a man who started cutting himself and writing messages on the walls and sheets with his blood: Stop hitting us." We are fathers." We are brothers." We are innocent people."Some of them became friends. They made playing cards out of juice boxes and soaked tortillas in water and shaped the cornmeal into dice. They talked about their families and wondered if anyone knew where they were. They prayed.About three and a half months into their detention, the men said they noticed a change in the guards and in the conditions in the facility. They were beaten less frequently and less severely. They were given ibuprofen, antibiotics and toothbrushes. They were told to shave and shower. And a psychologist came in to evaluate them.Then, sometime after midnight on July 18, guards began banging their batons on the bars of the men's cells. Everyone take a shower," they yelled.This time, when Blanco asked for the time, a guard gave it to him. It was 1:40 a.m.Photographers and reporters were allowed into the facility. Blanco wondered whether he was about to be a part of a publicity stunt. He told himself he wouldn't give them what they wanted. No smiles for the camera.Then, a top Salvadoran official walked in. You are leaving." I'd rather die or kill myself than to keep living through this experience." - Juan Jose Ramos Ramos Ramos and his mother, Lina Ramos, at their home In a brief phone interview, Felix Ulloa, El Salvador's vice president, denied any mistreatment and pointed to videos of the men looking unscathed as they left the prison as proof they were in good shape. He declined to comment on what role, if any, the U.S. had played in what happened to the men while they were in El Salvador. However, according to court records, the Salvadoran government previously told the United Nations that while it was physically holding the men, they remained under U.S. jurisdiction.The Trump administration pledged millions of dollars to El Salvador to hold the deportees in CECOT.Natalia Molano, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said the U.S. is not responsible for the conditions of the men's detention in El Salvador. If there are complaints now that the men have returned to Venezuela, she said, the United States is not involved in the conversation."During his months in CECOT, Ramos said he found solace in the Bible, the only book available. He said he felt particularly drawn to the Book of Job, a wealthy man whom God tested with loss and pain. Despite his losses, Ramos said, Job never denied God." He said Job had a lot of faith."That's how Ramos, a former telephone technician, saw his time in El Salvador: a divine test that he'd overcome with faith. The seven long months it had taken him to migrate from Venezuela to the United States - which involved walking through the treacherous Darien jungle - seemed easy by comparison.As soon as his family and neighbors got word that he was on his way home to Guatire, just outside Caracas, they cobbled together $20 to help his mother, Lina Ramos, decorate the house and make a meal of chicken and rice with plantains.Knowing that his mother had marched and fought for his release, that no one had forgotten him and the other men who'd been detained with him, he said, was the best gift we could have gotten."But the effects of what he went through still linger. Now, when he tries to read the Bible, he said, he notices his sight is failing in his left eye. He thinks it was caused by a particular beating, one of many, where guards repeatedly hit him on his ears and head after he tried to bathe outside of the designated time. He said he has no money at the moment to see a doctor. He arrived home with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.He is sure he'll work something out, though. He has faith. Do You Have Information About the CECOT Deportations? Help ProPublica Report. Design and development by Zisiga Mukulu. Photo editing by Cengiz Yar. Gabriel Sandoval contributed reporting.

by Becca Savransky, Idaho Statesman Kali Larsen sat at her desk at Fruitland Elementary School in Idaho earlier this year, trying to read the test questions as her classmates silently worked around her. Her anxiety climbed as she stared at the paper. She asked to use the bathroom and left the room.Her mother, Jessica Larsen, had been substitute teaching that day when she received a call from the front office, notifying her that her 9-year-old daughter was having a panic attack. Kali, now 10, has dyslexia and struggles with reading and writing, Larsen said.Wouldn't you be anxious?" Larsen told the Idaho Statesman and ProPublica.For years, Larsen had been pleading with the Fruitland School District to get Kali qualified for special education for reading. Larsen, who herself was diagnosed later in life with dyslexia, had her daughter tested in first grade in 2021 by a private specialist who said Kali had the same disability. But a diagnosis doesn't automatically qualify a student for special education. The school still wouldn't evaluate Kali for help, saying she likely wouldn't qualify, in part because her scores weren't low enough, Larsen said.Larsen grew more frustrated with each passing school year as her child - a shy girl who feels most confident when competing in rodeos on her horse, Pie - would cry after school and tell her she felt dumb." A year before her daughter's panic attack in fourth grade, Larsen had filed a state complaint against the district, saying it refused to evaluate Kali for special education. A few months later, in March 2024, a state investigator agreed: The district had broken the law.Parents of students with disabilities have increasingly resorted to filing complaints with the state over their schools' failure to educate their children, alleging districts are violating federal law. Most of the time, state investigators have agreed and found that districts refuse to identify and evaluate children with disabilities, such as dyslexia or autism, and fail to follow plans to educate them fairly.In Idaho, students with disabilities have performed worse in reading and math than many of their peers in other states, federal data shows. Idaho was among the states with the most founded complaints per capita in recent years, according to a national center that analyzes data on complaints and provides support to states. Over the past five years, investigators found in over 70% of the complaints filed in Idaho that districts had broken the law. But the state often closes cases without making sure the districts have fully solved the problems, parents across Idaho told the Statesman and ProPublica.Districts can resolve the violations without really changing their ways," said Amy Martz, a Utah-based attorney who has worked with families in Idaho. There's no teeth."State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield said the state Department of Education expects districts to make any corrections needed to be in full compliance with state and federal law, and that it has conducted listening sessions and piloted other programs to help meet the needs of students and parents.Critchfield said the challenge with educating students with disabilities comes down, in part, to the way the state distributes funding, which is based on a flat percentage and not the actual number of students with disabilities in each district. She said staff members have large caseloads and districts lack trained staff and specialists.Parents say it can take months for the districts to evaluate a child for services, and in some cases, districts have refused to provide the instruction or behavioral interventions students need.Lawmakers have been reluctant to approve changes to the funding formula despite warnings from state officials about a shortfall between what districts spend on special education and what the state allocates. An independent oversight office this year estimated the gap to be over $80 million. Idaho routinely ranks last in the nation for funding per student overall.Larsen said she didn't want to get the district or teachers in trouble when she filed her complaint. But she said she risked retaliation, in a small community where speaking out can be damaging, because she intended to make public schools better for her daughter and other kids.We're failing our kids. This is our future," Larsen said. Why are we failing them? And that's my question to them, but they can't answer." Jessica Larsen and Kali at their home in Fruitland, Idaho. Kali is passionate about horses and competes in rodeos with her horse, Pie. (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman) What Investigators FoundSchool districts nationwide are required to identify children who have disabilities or health impairments that could make it harder to learn, such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or dyslexia, and evaluate them for special education services. A parent can also formally request an evaluation of their child. Under federal law, if the school has any reason to suspect a disability, it must provide that evaluation.But when Larsen asked the district to evaluate her daughter, the school pushed back.Records show that district officials over a period of 1 1/2 years provided numerous reasons Kali didn't need or wouldn't qualify for special education: Her low reading scores were mainly due to anxiety, rather than a disability; she needed to advocate for herself; she was making progress"; a special education evaluation would take a long time; if she received special education services, she'd miss out on valuable instruction time in a general education classroom. Fruitland Elementary School (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman) A few months after Larsen filed her complaint in 2024, an investigator contracted by the state Department of Education concluded that the district didn't have procedures in place to make sure all students with disabilities were identified and helped, and that it hadn't conducted a full evaluation of Kali, even after Larsen requested it. The investigators issued a corrective action plan and ordered the district to begin the evaluation process with Kali within about two weeks and to help her within two months if they found she qualified for special education.Fruitland Superintendent Stoney Winston, who started in July 2024, after the state issued the corrective action plan, said the district has made corrections" and is meeting current requirements. He said he can't speak to what happened before he assumed his role. Get in TouchDo you have personal experience with problems related to special education in Idaho or accessibility through the Americans with Disabilities Act in schools? We want to hear from you, whether you're a student, a parent, an educator or an administrator. We will only use your name with permission. Reach out to Becca Savransky at bsavransky@idahostatesman.com or 208-495-5661. Disability advocates have said the lack of funding makes it hard for school districts in the state to attract qualified specialists or special education teachers who fully understand the law, which can lead to improper education plans or other violations. High caseloads for staff members also mean less time for making or implementing specialized education plans, they said.The state relies on a decades-old funding formula that assumes a set percentage of students in every district would qualify for special education: 6% in elementary school and 5.5% in middle and high school. State education officials acknowledged those percentages were never adequate. Officials said they don't know how lawmakers first arrived at that formula.That 5.5 and that 6%, which was already insufficient back in 2016, is even more insufficient," said Casey Petti, from Idaho's Office of Performance Evaluations, an independent oversight agency.According to the most recent data, about 12% of students in Idaho qualify for special education services - the lowest in the country.In 2009, that agency told Idaho officials to consider tying special education funding to the actual cost of educating those students. In 2016, the office came out with a report with the same findings.That same year, the Legislature created a committee to research the issue and rewrite the state's funding formula. The committee met for three years, and in 2019, lawmakers proposed legislation. While those proposals would have provided money for special education based on the number of students actually receiving services, state education officials and school administrators said they were left out of the process and the legislation would be difficult to implement. The state superintendent at the time questioned whether it would even adequately fund special education. Most Idaho School Districts Had to Spend More on Special Education Than the State Allocated Nearly 75% of school districts that received state funding for special education programs spent anywhere from $640 to $19 million more than what the state provided during the 2023-24 school year. Source: Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations (Chris Alcantara/ProPublica) Source: Idaho Office of Performance Evaluations. Note: West Bonner and Wendell school districts are not shown because they did not have financial data available for 2023. Prairie Elementary School District is not included because it had no estimated special education state allocations. Pleasant Valley Elementary District, Avery School District and Three Creek Joint Elementary School District are also not shown because they reported no special education spending and had no estimated special education allocations. All allocations are estimates based on Idaho's funding formula.View the full table on ProPublica's site. In the years since, lawmakers have introduced other bills to revise the funding formula, but the Legislature did not approve any of them. The cost to investigate complaints overall has nearly tripled since the 2020 school year, according to the state Department of Education, with each investigation ranging from a few hundred dollars to $30,000.This year, the Idaho Legislature approved adding another specialist to help handle complaints. During the 2023-24 school year, the state received 53 complaints and found districts were out of compliance in most of them.But while the state has spent more money to investigate the problems, administrators said they have been given little to fix them. In Idaho, districts rely on local taxpayers to fund special education more than in many other states, according to a 2024 study by Bellwether, a nonprofit that analyzed data from the National Center for Education Statistics for the 24 states where it was available.Boundary County Superintendent Jan Bayer described special education as an unfunded mandate." The district spends about $1.7 million from its general fund to educate students with disabilities and goes to its taxpayers every two years to ask for additional funding to provide other programs.Other superintendents said it was difficult to meet the needs of every student in special education.While we provide the vast majority of our students with the services they need, we do have a couple of higher need students who need more services than we can provide," Butte County Superintendent Joe Steele, who retired this summer, said in an email to the Statesman. But finding educators or specialists with the proper training, and paying for them, would be challenging in the remote area, he said.Kendra Scheid watched her son struggle in a larger district with high caseloads and inexperienced staff. Scheid's son, who is autistic and nonverbal, qualified for developmental preschool before moving into the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District in eastern Idaho. But the district told her that her son could attend preschool only two days a week for 2 1/2 hours each day.Before her son started attending full-day kindergarten, Scheid asked the school for a meeting to put together a revised education plan for her son. But the district refused, according to the complaint investigation.Scheid went to school with her son on the first days, where he was placed with other students with disabilities, and witnessed what she described as chaos: kids climbing on tables, students injuring themselves with no staff intervention and teachers restraining children in their chairs. They had no idea what any of these kids needed, what any of these kids were like coming into the classroom," she said.Pocatello school district spokesperson Courtney Fisher said the district is committed to proactively addressing parent concerns" and improving its special education services. That includes putting into place a plan that meets all state requirements and hiring more staff, she said, and trying to address any gaps in its system to prevent issues in the future. I feel like a bad mom because I didn't know this stuff at the time. And I feel like I let my son down. -Kendra Scheid After school on the second day, Scheid's son came home crying and covering his ears, something she said he hadn't done before. After day three, Scheid disenrolled her son from the district. For the rest of that year, he saw outside therapists and Scheid worked with him at home.After she filed a complaint with the state, an investigator found the district had broken the law when it failed to create a plan that would work for her son and to ensure the teacher had his previous education plan before school started. The state said the district must create a new education plan for her son should he reenroll, but Scheid had lost faith. Instead, she entered and won one of the few available lottery spots in a charter school, which her son now attends.I feel like a bad mom because I didn't know this stuff at the time," reflected Scheid, who said her son is now doing well in a charter school that's more accommodating. And I feel like I let my son down."I Would Never Move Back There"About 20% of Idaho districts have broken federal disability law multiple times in the past five years, and nearly 40% have violated the law at least once, according to data from the state Department of Education. When they do, the state, which enforces the federal law and corresponding state rules, asks them to fix the problems through corrective action plans.The plans reviewed by the news outlets ask district staff to undergo training, and sometimes a child gets additional hours of education to make up for the time missed. But a Statesman and ProPublica review of corrective action plans and interviews with parents showed districts repeatedly receive training for the same problems and commit similar violations.Critchfield, the state superintendent, said there are several factors that could play a role in whether training is successful for districts permanently, including staff turnover and access to resources.Compliance with state and federal law is the ultimate goal," she said in an email. As a department, we are always prepared to provide remedial training and intervention to address additional concerns as they arise."The Pocatello school district received 11 complaints over the past five years, according to data from the state Department of Education. The Garden Valley School District received 10. In both of these districts, federal investigators found systemic violations in special education law that impacted more than one student. The state Department of Education refused to provide the number of founded complaints per district, citing federal law on student privacy, though some other states publicly post much of their complaint investigations online.Andrew Branham was among several parents who filed complaints against the Garden Valley School District over the past three years.The Branhams wrote in the complaint that their daughter received virtually no education" and was denied services, such as speech and counseling. At one point, they said a school resource officer called her parents threatening to arrest her. Her parents said they rushed to school to find her barefoot in the middle of the parking lot as several adults looked on. A state investigator concluded that the district in some instances had relied" on the resource officer to address the student's behavior.Branham said the district was unwilling" to meet the needs of their daughter. The Branhams elevated their case, hiring an attorney who presented it before a state-contracted hearing officer. The Branhams received a financial settlement with the district and moved to Washington to get their daughter a better education.It is a shame what Idaho is doing to kids in that state," Branham said in December. I would never move back there, and I would never recommend anyone live in that state, especially if you have special needs kids."After the Branhams filed their complaint and went public, more than 20 families shared similar experiences, they said. So they filed a complaint on behalf of other families that alleged that the district ignored state and federal laws meant to protect students with disabilities and denied them an education.The resulting state investigations concluded that at least 13 of the allegations were founded. The district failed to properly construct education plans for students. It also didn't have the proper plans for supporting a child with behavioral issues. The district did not gather or share the data it needed to assess student progress and could not adequately determine whether students were meeting their learning goals, the investigations found.The state decided the district needed extra help, ranking Garden Valley in 2024 as one of three districts in need of substantial intervention. The state now requires the district to follow an improvement plan and monitors its progress - but the district's funding remains the same.The Garden Valley School District did not respond to requests for comment.Families in other districts have also pulled their children from local schools. Some parents and advocates who talked to the Statesman said they are especially worried about President Donald Trump's efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education and leave it to the states when Idaho has long struggled to provide an education to students with disabilities. In Kali's case, the state's corrective action plan issued in 2024, in addition to requiring that the district start to evaluate Larsen's daughter, also mandated that the district help teachers learn how to spot students who should be evaluated for special education and identify those with disabilities.The state closed the case earlier this year, about a year after it was filed. Kali had been struggling without adequate help for three years before the district conceded she was eligible for special education services.Kali now has an education plan, but Larsen said the district still isn't giving her the help she needs. She just finished fourth grade and still hasn't mastered reading and writing. As her daughter prepares for middle school, Larsen is considering pulling her from the district next year. But Larsen doesn't plan on filing another complaint. It was too much stress with little to show for it, she said.When Kali was moved to a different classroom each day to receive more specialized instruction, her teachers sometimes told her to sit and read quietly, Larsen said.She can't read," Larsen said, exasperated. It's so frustrating." Kali uses a voice search tool on Google to help her with spelling. (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman)

by Anjeanette Damon ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. They went to a Las Vegas conference this month that promised pathways to an unlimited lifespan." But at least two attendees left in ambulances and were hospitalized in critical condition, requiring ventilators to breathe.The two women, who are recovering, fell ill after receiving peptide injections at a conference booth. The doctor who ran the booth was a Los Angeles physician specializing in age reversal" therapies who did not have permission to practice medicine or dispense prescriptions in Nevada. Public health investigators are trying to determine if anyone else who attended the Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival experienced a similar illness.The investigation comes as peptides grow in popularity, thanks in part to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s promotion of the amino acid chains as a way to fight aging and chronic disease. Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has vowed to end the Food and Drug Administration's war on peptides" and other alternative health therapies. Kent Holtorf, the doctor overseeing the booth where the women became ill, also has called for less regulation of alternative therapies and has criticized the FDA for blocking compounds he sees as lifesaving. Holtorf told ProPublica he is cooperating with the investigation. Of course, I want to get to the bottom of it. But almost assuredly it will come out that it was not the peptides."He said he became convinced the peptides weren't the cause of the severe reactions after plugging everything he knows about the incident into an artificial intelligence app, which he said gave him a 57-page report that basically says that it is impossible it was the peptides." He refused to comment on what the report attributed the illnesses to.I don't think it was the peptides, but I don't want to try and push the blame and say it wasn't us," he said. We are reassessing everything we are doing."Holtorf acknowledged he is not licensed in Nevada but said he hired a practitioner who is and did not personally write prescriptions or administer therapies at his booth. I knew what was going on but was not hands on," he said.He described the situation as horrific" and unacceptable" and said he's terribly sorry."The FDA has approved dozens of peptide-based medications for treating serious health problems such as cancer, obesity and diabetes. But peptide therapies for anti-aging and regenerative health are largely made by compounding pharmacists who use peptide components to formulate drugs that aren't commercially available or approved for that particular use. Compounded drugs are not reviewed for safety and efficacy by the FDA. The agency also has found significant safety risks" with at least 18 of the most popular peptide compounding components.Anyone who undergoes any sort of medical treatment, no matter how benign, needs to be very wary that even the most benign intervention can have fatal side effects," said Dr. Amy Gutman, a Florida emergency room doctor who speaks about metabolic research and ketogenic diets and appeared at RAADFest. And if you are in a hotel and don't have lifesaving equipment near you, then that is a risk you have to be aware of."The two women, a 38-year-old from California and a 51-year-old from Nevada, received injections on July 13 at RAADFest, which is organized by an Arizona-based nonprofit that has built a community hoping to cheat death. According to a police report, both were injected at a booth run by Holtorf, who is licensed in California but not Nevada. Holtorf's advocacy for alternative therapies has invited controversy in the past, including his criticism of the H1N1 swine flu vaccine in a Fox News interview in 2009. More recently, his practice was advised by the Federal Trade Commission to cease making claims on its website that his peptide therapies could treat or prevent COVID-19. Holtorf said he removed the claims from his website even though he still believes certain peptides can be beneficial in treating COVID-19 and other viral infections.Both the Southern Nevada Health District and the Nevada Board of Pharmacy confirmed they are investigating what led to the hospitalizations after being notified by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police that possibly as many as seven people at the conference were hospitalized. According to the police report, detectives were unable to confirm whether additional attendees got sick.Investigators are examining whether the illnesses were caused by an infection, contamination related to the injections or an issue with the medication itself, according to documents obtained by ProPublica. The two women who were taken by ambulance to the hospital reported feeling as if their tongues were swelling and had trouble breathing and increased heart rates. By the time they reached the hospital, one was already intubated and the other had lost muscle control in her neck and couldn't open her eyes or communicate with doctors, according to the police report.Holtorf said he was so freaked out" by what happened because none of the women's symptoms made any sense." In 30 years of providing such treatments, he said he's never seen such a reaction.Event organizer James Strole, an Arizona businessman who has built a 50-year career selling the promise of eternal life to followers, said the two patients are recovering after several days in the hospital. He said it's not clear the people got sick as a result of treatment from Dr. Holtorf," adding he's anxious" for the illnesses to be deeply investigated." He said nothing similar has happened in the 10 years he has been producing RAADFest.This is the first year Holtorf offered therapies at the conference, Strole said. He added that Holtorf provided the therapies to 60 people at the event and has attempted to reach them to learn whether they experienced any problems. Holtorf said only six patients received peptides.Strole said the coalition's science board scrutinizes therapy providers before granting them permission to operate a booth in the conference's exhibition hall, which organizers referred to as a clinic.The big concern is safety," he said. We look at who is doing the administering, whether it's an injection or supplement. We look at the person and the company itself, what the efficacy is, how they operate, their safety measures. We look at all that."Strole said peptides are considered generally safe" when taken under the direction of a doctor, adding that he takes them regularly. Holtorf also said he believes they are safe and that they saved his life when he was a young man suffering from a severe illness.A review by ProPublica of both the pharmacy and medical board license databases showed no Nevada licenses for Holtorf or his medical practice. Out-of-state doctors who come to provide care at a conference such as RAADfest are required to obtain a special event license from the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners. (As of Friday, 103 doctors had obtained such a license.) To dispense or possess pharmaceuticals, practitioners must also be licensed by the Nevada Board of Pharmacy. RAADFest's organizers, however, said they were unaware that Holtorf is not licensed to provide medical care or dispense medications in the state.In order to practice medicine in the state, you must be licensed," said David Wuest, executive secretary of the Nevada Board of Pharmacy.The Nevada Legislature has passed stricter laws as alternative therapies have become popular outside traditional medical settings. In 2017, for example, the state banned so-called Botox parties, requiring the anti-wrinkle injections only be administered in a medical office or spa equipped to deal with life-threatening emergencies. But beyond its standard medical licensing requirements, the state doesn't have rules governing an event like RAADFest, where attendees receive an array of anti-aging therapies including gene therapies, peptide injections, dialysis-like blood detoxification, bone scans and light therapy.Strole said he wasn't aware that providers need a special in-state license to provide the type of therapies Holtorf offered, which he described as neutraceuticals."I've never heard they had to get from the state permission to do that under the auspices of giving a treatment of that nature, that's not actually treating some disease or something," Strole said.According to the police report, Holtorf contracted with a Nevada-licensed nurse practitioner, who administered the injection to one of the women. He also contracted with another doctor, who mixed the vials and administered the injection to the second woman, the report said. That doctor does not appear to have the necessary Nevada licenses.Holtorf declined to comment on the practitioners he hired for the event, other than to say he had worked with the doctor in the past.Wuest said multiple providers might be investigated, but he wouldn't confirm whether Holtorf is a subject of the probe. The board also is investigating whether the therapy provided to the patients required a medical or pharmaceutical license. The FDA is assisting in the investigation to determine what was in the injections, including whether it was a manufactured pharmaceutical or a compounded medication, Wuest said.Holtorf's medical practice and the peptide company he founded are affiliated with an organization, Forgotten Formula, that asserts a constitutional right to provide treatments as they see fit. On its website, the private membership association warns all bodies in the public sector" that they do not have any jurisdiction" over their doctors. All doctors, healers, and members are protected under the shield of this organization," the website says. We operate member to member. Ignoring this disclaimer can lead to legal consequences against the party at fault."According to the police report, Holtorf told officers he obtained the peptides dispensed at the festival from Forgotten Formula. In the interview with ProPublica, however, he denied that, saying he's not sure which of the many manufacturers he works with provided the peptides used at the booth.The women received different peptide concoctions, according to the police report. Both included at least one component described by the FDA as posing significant risks when compounded. Holtorf said it is difficult to keep up with which peptides are banned and which are still acceptable for compounding.There is so much gray area," he said. People know they just get patients better."Despite the FDA warnings, peptides were popular among RAADFest attendees who were promised beautiful life-saving therapies" at the event's clinic. Event organizers touted that 70 longevity experts would be on hand during the four-day event at the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa but did not list the vendors providing treatments on the event website.We have a RAAD clinic, where people will be able to come in at discounted prices and try and do these therapies safely with doctors," Strole told a Las Vegas TV news program while promoting the event.Strole is executive director of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based Coalition for Radical Life Extension, one of a cluster of for-profit and nonprofit entities devoted to helping people achieve immortality founded by Strole and two immortalist" business partners. Of the three co-founders, only Strole, who is in his 70s, is still alive.Charles Brown, the original founder, claimed to have had a spiritual experience in the 1950s that showed him the path to immortality and proclaimed he could share that path with others, according to an Arizona Republic story. Brown died of Parkinson's disease in 2014. His wife, Bernadeane Bernie" Brown, who operated the for-profit People Unlimited with Strole, died of breast cancer in 2024. Her body is said to have been cryogenically preserved.The nonprofit organizes the annual anti-aging festival, which charges more than $400 for a ticket, while People Unlimited offers monthly memberships for as much as $255 a month, according to its website. Members get access to weekly meetings, where Strole delivers motivational sermons on immortality and age reversal, as well as talks by guest speakers on wellness, discounts on longevity protocols" and access to a community of people who want you to live as much as they want to live."Gutman, the Florida emergency room doctor, spoke at the event earlier this month, her first time attending RAADFest. She left before the last day, when the two women were hospitalized, and hadn't heard about the incident before a reporter called. But she said their symptoms - swollen tongue, trouble breathing, increased heart rate - sounded like an allergic reaction, which she said isn't terribly common in peptide injections. But she cautioned that before injection the drugs are mixed with an agent that can sometimes pose problems.Although she was skeptical of some of the therapies provided at the festival's clinic, she said everyone she met there seemed to have their heart in the right place" and genuinely wanted to help others live their best lives."

by Melissa Sanchez Leer en espanol. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. This story was originally published in our Dispatches newsletter; sign up to receive notes from our journalists. In the early days of President Donald Trump's second term, I spent a few weeks observing Chicago's immigration court to get a sense of how things were changing. One afternoon in March, the case of a 27-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker caught my attention.Albert Jesus Rodriguez Parra stared into the camera at his virtual bond hearing. He wore the orange shirt given to inmates at a jail in Laredo, Texas, and headphones to listen to the proceedings through an interpreter.More than a year earlier, Rodriguez had been convicted of shoplifting in the Chicago suburbs. But since then he had seemed to get his life on track. He found a job at Wrigley Field, sent money home to his mom in Venezuela and went to the gym and church with his girlfriend. Then, in November, federal authorities detained him at his apartment on Chicago's South Side and accused him of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Are any of your tattoos gang related?" his attorney asked at the hearing, going through the evidence laid out against him in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement report. No," said Rodriguez, whose tattoos include an angel holding a gun, a wolf and a rose. At one point, he lifted his shirt to show his parents' names inked across his chest.He was asked about a TikTok video that shows him dancing to an audio clip of someone shouting, Te va agarrar el Tren de Aragua," which means, The Tren de Aragua is going to get you," followed by a dance beat. That audio clip has been shared some 60,000 times on TikTok - it's popular among Venezuelans ridiculing the stereotype that everyone from their country is a gangster. Rodriguez looked incredulous at the thought that this was the evidence against him.That day, the judge didn't address the gang allegations. But she denied Rodriguez bond, citing the misdemeanor shoplifting conviction. She reminded him that his final hearing was on March 20, just 10 days away. If she granted him asylum, he'd be a free man and could continue his life in the U.S.I told my editors and colleagues about what I'd heard and made plans to attend the next hearing. I saw the potential for the kind of complicated narrative story that I like: Here was a young immigrant who, yes, had come into the country illegally, but he had turned himself in to border authorities to seek asylum. Yes, he had a criminal record, but it was for a nonviolent offense. And, yes, he had tattoos, but so do the nice, white American moms in my book club. I was certain there are members of Tren de Aragua in the U.S., but if this was the kind of evidence the government had, I found it hard to believe it was an invasion" as Trump claimed. I asked Rodriguez's attorney for an interview and began requesting police and court records.Five days later, on March 15, the Trump administration expelled more than 230 Venezuelan men to a maximum security prison in El Salvador, a country many of them had never even set foot in. Trump called them all terrorists and gang members. It would be a few days before the men's names would be made public. Perhaps naively, it didn't occur to me that Rodriguez might be in that group. Then I logged into his final hearing and heard his attorney say he didn't know where the government had taken him. The lawyer sounded tired and defeated. Later, he would tell me he had barely slept, afraid that Rodriguez might turn up dead. At the hearing, he begged a government lawyer for information: For his family's sake, would you happen to know what country he was sent to?" She told him she didn't know, either. Rodriguez lifts his shirt to display some of his tattoos. The Trump administration has relied, in part, on tattoos to brand Venezuelan immigrants as possible members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Experts have told us tattoos are not an indicator of membership in the gang. (Andrea Hernandez Briceno for ProPublica) I was astonished. I am familiar with the history of authoritarian leaders disappearing people they don't like in Latin America, the part of the world that my family comes from. I wanted to think that doesn't happen in this country. But what I had just witnessed felt uncomfortably similar.As soon as the hearing ended, I got on a call with my colleagues Mica Rosenberg and Perla Trevizo, both of whom cover immigration and had recently written about how the U.S. government had sent other Venezuelan men to Guantanamo. We talked about what we should do with what I'd just heard. Mica contacted a source in the federal government who confirmed, almost immediately, that Rodriguez was among the men that our country had sent to El Salvador.The news suddenly felt more real and intimate to me. One of the men sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador now had a name and a face and a story that I had heard from his own mouth. I couldn't stop thinking about him.As a news organization, we decided to put significant resources into investigating who these men really are and what happened to them, bringing in many talented ProPublica journalists to help pull records, sift through social media accounts, analyze court data and find the men's families. We teamed up with a group of Venezuelan journalists from the outlets Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News who were also starting to track down information about the men.We spoke to the relatives and attorneys of more than 100 of the men and obtained internal government records that undercut the Trump administration's claims that all the men are monsters," sick criminals" and the worst of the worst." We also published a story about how, by and large, the men were not hiding from federal immigration authorities. They were in the system; many had open asylum cases like Rodriguez and were waiting for their day in court before they were taken away and imprisoned in Central America.On July 18 - after I'd written the first draft of this note to you - we began to hear some chatter about a potential prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Venezuela. Later that same day, the men had been released. We'd been in the middle of working on a case-by-case accounting of the Venezuelan men who'd been held in El Salvador. Though they'd been released, documenting who they are and how they got caught up in this dragnet was still important, essential even, as was the impact of their incarceration.The result is a database we published last week including profiles of 238 of the men Trump deported to a Salvadoran prison.From the moment I heard about the men's return to Venezuela, I thought about Rodriguez. He'd been on my mind since embarking on this project. I messaged with his mother for days as we waited for the men to be processed by the government of Nicolas Maduro and released to their families. Rodriguez, surrounded by his mother, right, aunt, above, and grandmother, left, is back in Venezuela. (Andrea Hernandez Briceno for ProPublica) Finally, one morning last week, he went home. We spoke later that afternoon. He said he was relieved to be home with his family but felt traumatized. He told me he wants the world to know what happened to him in the Salvadoran prison - daily beatings, humiliation, psychological abuse. There is no reason for what I went through," he said. I didn't deserve that."The Salvadoran government has denied mistreating the Venezuelan prisoners.We asked the Trump administration about its evidence against Rodriguez. This is the entirety of its statement: Albert Jesus Rodriguez Parra is an illegal alien from Venezuela and Tren de Aragua gang member. He illegally crossed the border on April 22, 2023, under the Biden Administration."While Rodriguez was incarcerated in El Salvador and no one knew what would happen to him, the court kept delaying hearings for his asylum case. But after months of continuances, on Monday, Rodriguez logged into a virtual hearing from Venezuela. Oh my gosh, I am so happy to see that," said Judge Samia Naseem, clearly remembering what had happened in his case.Rodriguez's attorney said that his client had been tortured and abused in El Salvador. I can't even describe to this court what he went through," he said. He's getting psychological help, and that's my priority."It was a brief hearing, perhaps five minutes. Rodriguez's lawyer mentioned his involvement in an ongoing lawsuit against the Trump administration over its use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans. The government lawyer said little, except to question whether Rodriguez was even allowed to appear virtually due to security issues" in Venezuela.Finally, the judge said she would administratively close the case while the litigation plays out. If he should hopefully be able to come back to the U.S., we'll calendar the case," she said.Naseem turned to Rodriguez, who was muted and looked serious. You don't have to worry about reappearing until this gets sorted out," she told him. He nodded and soon logged off.We plan to keep reporting on what happened and have another story coming soon about Rodriguez and the other men's experiences inside the prison. Please reach out if you have information to share.

by Joaquin Sapien ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Last week, a federal appeals court overturned the conviction of Pedro Hernandez for the murder and kidnapping of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old New York boy who disappeared in 1979 in one of the most famous missing child cases in U.S. history.The three-judge panel ruled that a trial court judge had given jurors manifestly inaccurate" guidance regarding a confession Hernandez made before he had been advised of his Miranda rights. Jurors asked whether, if they decided the first confession was involuntary, that meant they should disregard two videotaped confessions that came afterward.The trial judge said the answer is no" and offered no further explanation.The appellate judges, in their opinion, said that by doing so, the state trial court contradicted clearly established federal law." They threw out Hernandez's conviction and ordered that he be released or retried. He is now 64 years old and has served 13 years of a 25-years-to-life sentence in a case that has haunted New York City for decades.The body of the 51-page decision echoed stories published by ProPublica starting in 2013, before Hernandez was convicted, that raised questions about the veracity and legality of his confessions.We reported that Hernandez met many of the criteria of a person prone to making false confessions, a growing phenomenon and leading cause of wrongful conviction. We also discovered that Hernandez's statements to law enforcement and others over the years were inconsistent and did not match the known facts of the case. On the morning of May 29, 1979, Patz was allowed to walk alone to his school bus stop two blocks away and then vanished. His disappearance ignited national concern around missing children, as he became one of the first milk carton kids" and his image was plastered across New York City.A massive search ensued, and law enforcement spent thousands of hours looking for him: Divers plunged into the East River searching for his remains following a tip from a psychic. Leads were chased as far as Israel. But no arrests were made. No charges brought.In 2012, New York police and the FBI suddenly and very visibly took action on another lead, digging up the basement of a workshop near the Patz family home used by a carpenter who knew Etan and was briefly considered a suspect.Nothing came of the dig, but the surge of media attention prompted one of Hernandez's relatives to call police with a tip about rumors that he had a role in the disappearance of Patz.New York police officers arrived at Hernandez's home in New Jersey on the morning of May 23, 2012, and brought him to a local prosecutor's office to question him. In the ensuing hours, Hernandez asked several times to go home, said the officers were trying to trick him, sobbed, clutched at his stomach, lay on the floor in a fetal position, had a fentanyl patch placed on his chest to treat his chronic pain, and mentioned his mental illness diagnoses. After more than six hours, he told officers that he did it."He said he offered Patz a soda to lure him down into the basement of a bodega where he was working. He said he choked the boy, placed the body in a garbage bag, put the bag in a box and left it around the corner in broad daylight.It wasn't until after that confession that the officers read Hernandez his rights. They then had him repeat his statement in two video-recorded interviews over the next 24 hours. The stories he told contained several inconsistencies.The federal court found that the trial court judge's instruction to the jury about the confessions was manifestly inaccurate," that the jury should have been given more thorough instructions and that it could in fact disregard the recorded confessions.The jury, which had asked about the un-Mirandized confession on the second of nine days of deliberations, was clearly grappling with what weight, if any, to give to the confessions," the appeals court wrote.ProPublica covered the early phases of the case against Hernandez extensively, interviewing the people to whom he supposedly confessed over the years and speaking with a variety of legal and psychological experts about how police tactics can induce false confessions.We found early on that Hernandez's previous claims of having harmed a child not only conflicted with each other but bore little resemblance to the details of his confession to police. Once, for example, he said that he had killed a Black child. Patz was white.We also learned that the bodega Hernandez was working out of had become a kind of police hub for the officers searching for Patz. Hernandez said in one of his confessions that he tossed the boy's book bag behind a refrigerator there. It was never found.Experts told us that a handful of factors are often at play in producing false confessions and that Hernandez's situation contained many of them: He had low IQ, had a history of mental illness, and confessed to a high-profile crime where many of the details were widely known over the course of an intense, long interrogation.The judges, in their decision, took note of many of these same characteristics, which, in their view, made it all the more important for the jury to have proper instructions to evaluate the confessions. ProPublica also highlighted how the trial judge, Maxwell Wiley, held a hearing early in the proceedings to determine for himself whether Hernandez was properly informed of his rights and if he had the capacity to meaningfully waive them. He decided that the confession could be used. Later, Wiley, a former Manhattan prosecutor, limited the questions that could be asked about it and kept some subsequent hearings on the matter secret, drawing fire from several news organizations. Wiley, who is now retired, did not respond to calls for comment.In an email, Cyrus Vance Jr., who handled the case against Hernandez as Manhattan district attorney, said it was exceptionally challenging given the passage of time but also very strong."He said the recent decision came as a surprise, as other appellate courts had reviewed and sustained the confession and verdict.Clearly, the jury heard substantial expert testimony from both the prosecution and the defense, and considered both and the legal instructions by the court during deliberations and before the verdict," he said, adding that he continues to believe Hernandez is guilty and that his thoughts are with the Patz family and with Etan."Now Vance's successor, Alvin Bragg, will have to decide whether to retry Hernandez for the third time. The first of his two trials ended in a hung jury.In a statement from Bragg's office, a spokesperson said only: We are reviewing the decision."

by Patricia Callahan ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. The Food and Drug Administration is cracking down on a generic drugmaker that was the subject of a ProPublica investigation last year, citing problems with safety tests that delayed the recall of a medicine linked to deaths in the U.S.In December, ProPublica reported that a Glenmark Pharmaceuticals factory in central India was responsible for an outsized share of recalls for pills that didn't dissolve properly and could harm American patients. Among the string of recalls, federal regulators had determined that more than 50 million potassium chloride extended-release capsules sold in the U.S. could be deadly. Yet, federal drug inspectors at that point hadn't set foot in the Madhya Pradesh factory for more than four years, ProPublica found.Seven weeks after that story was published, FDA inspectors showed up at the plant and found serious problems. Glenmark subsequently recalled an additional two dozen medicines made there and sold to U.S. patients.Now the FDA has sent Glenmark a warning letter, a disciplinary tool the regulator uses to lay out significant violations of federal requirements and demand changes. If Glenmark fails to fix any of the problems outlined, the FDA warned, it may bar drugs made at the factory from entering the U.S. What's more, the FDA pointed out that the company had made similar serious mistakes at three other manufacturing sites and acknowledged that those factories had been the subject of previous warning letters from the agency since 2019. The problems at one were so severe that federal regulators blocked drugs made there from being imported to Americans. ProPublica's December investigation highlighted this pattern, noting that three of the five factories where Glenmark made drugs for the U.S. market in recent years had been in trouble with federal regulators. Despite that track record, the FDA - backlogged from the pandemic - waited five years before sending its inspectors back to the Madhya Pradesh plant.In his July 11 warning letter, the director of the FDA's Office of Manufacturing Quality wrote, These repeated failures at multiple sites demonstrate that management oversight and control over the manufacture of drugs is inadequate." (The agency made the letter public last week.)You should immediately and comprehensively assess your company's global manufacturing operations to ensure that systems, processes, and the products manufactured conform to FDA requirements," he added.A spokesperson for the company said in a written statement: Glenmark is actively engaging with the U.S. FDA and has initiated corrective actions to address the agency's observations. Patient safety, product quality and regulatory compliance are foundational to how we operate."Citing ongoing litigation the company faces, she declined to comment further.ProPublica has been investigating the FDA's oversight of foreign factories that make generic drugs for the U.S. market.Since last year, ProPublica repeatedly has asked the FDA why it didn't send inspectors to the Glenmark factory sooner, given the outsized share of recalls and the company's troubled track record at its other plants. The agency hasn't answered the question. After the inspection found problems this year, an FDA spokesperson said the agency can only discuss potential or ongoing compliance matters with the company involved.Among the most serious violations outlined in the FDA letter to Glenmark was the company's failure to promptly test pills to ensure they dissolve properly during their normal shelf life, the subject of ProPublica's investigation last year.Companies hold on to samples of pills from batches sold to U.S. customers and test them periodically until they reach their expiration date. Medicines that don't dissolve properly can cause perilous swings in dosing. This flaw is what made Glenmark's potassium chloride pills potentially deadly since high potassium levels can stop the heart, according to the June 2024 recall notice.Glenmark's backlogged testing was overdue by 3 months or longer for a large proportion of your samples," the FDA wrote in the warning letter. The failure to perform these tests on time held up Glenmark's discovery of defective pills and delayed the needed recalls, the agency said.In multiple instances, the FDA found that it took 100 days from the time Glenmark pulled samples of potassium chloride for testing until the company learned the capsules had failed to dissolve correctly.A delay in that recall could factor into a lawsuit that alleges Glenmark's potassium chloride pills were responsible for the death last year of Mary Louise Cormier, a 91-year-old Maine woman. A letter alerting Cormier that her pills had been recalled arrived three weeks after she died. In court filings, Glenmark has denied responsibility for her death. The company stopped making the drug for U.S. patients.Between July and December last year, Glenmark told the FDA that it had received reports of eight deaths in patients who took the recalled potassium chloride, federal records show. The reports, which companies must file so the FDA can monitor drug safety, contained so few details that ProPublica was unable to independently verify what happened in each case. In general, these adverse event reports reflect the opinions of those who filed them and don't prove that the drug caused the harm, the FDA says. The agency didn't mention these deaths in the warning letter.The FDA lambasted Glenmark for failing to thoroughly investigate why pills made at its Madhya Pradesh factory weren't dissolving properly. The agency listed possible reasons that Glenmark failed to consider, but FDA censors redacted so many passages - citing the protection of trade secrets and confidential business information - that it's impossible to discern what could have gone wrong.Citing the same confidentiality provision, the FDA kept secret the name of another Glenmark drug that the agency said failed these same tests. When asked why consumers shouldn't be told which medication had the problem, the FDA didn't answer.More broadly, the FDA's warning letter criticized Glenmark for failing to validate the tests it relies on to prove that its drugs have the identity, strength, quality and purity that they're supposed to have.Without evaluating the validity of methods, you lack the basic assurance that your laboratory data accurately reflects drug product quality," the FDA wrote.

by Aliyya Swaby ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. One afternoon in mid-September, a group of middle school girls in rural East Tennessee decided to film a TikTok video while waiting to begin cheerleading practice.In the 45-second video posted later that day, one girl enters the classroom holding a cellphone. Put your hands up," she says, while a classmate flickers the lights on and off. As the camera pans across the classroom, several girls dramatically fall back on a desk or the floor and lie motionless, pretending they were killed.When another student enters and surveys the bodies on the ground in poorly feigned shock, few manage to suppress their giggles. Throughout the video, which ProPublica obtained, a line of text reads: To be continued......"Penny Jackson's 11-year-old granddaughter was one of the South Greene Middle School cheerleaders who played dead. She said the co-captains told her what to do and she did it, unaware of how it would be used. The next day, she was horrified when the police came to school to question her and her teammates.By the end of the day, the Greene County Sheriff's Department charged her and 15 other middle school cheerleaders with disorderly conduct for making and posting the video. Standing outside the school's brick facade, Lt. Teddy Lawing said in a press conference that the girls had to be held accountable through the court system" to show that this type of activity is not warranted." The sheriff's office did not respond to ProPublica's questions about the incident.Widespread fear of school shootings is colliding with algorithms that accelerate the spread of the most outrageous messages to cause chaos across the country. Social videos, memes and retweets are becoming fodder for criminal charges in an era of heightened responses to student threats. Authorities say harsh punishment is crucial to deter students from making threatening posts that multiply rapidly and obscure their original source.In many cases, especially in Tennessee, police are charging students for jokes and misinterpretations, drawing criticism from families and school violence prevention experts who believe a measured approach is more appropriate. Students are learning the hard way that they can't control where their social media messages travel. In central Tennessee last fall, a 16-year-old privately shared a video he created using artificial intelligence, and a friend forwarded it to others on Snapchat. The 16-year-old was expelled and charged with threatening mass violence, even though his school acknowledged the video was intended as a private joke. Other students have been charged with felonies for resharing posts they didn't create. As ProPublica wrote in May, a 12-year-old in Nashville was arrested and expelled this year for sharing a screenshot of threatening texts on Instagram. He told school officials he was attempting to warn others and wanted to feel heroic."In Greene County, the cheerleaders' video sent waves through the small rural community, especially since it was posted several days after the fatal Apalachee High School shooting one state away. The Georgia incident had spawned thousands of false threats looping through social media feeds across the country. Lawing told ProPublica and WPLN at the time that his officers had fielded about a dozen social media threats within a week and struggled to investigate them. We couldn't really track back to any particular person," he said.But the cheerleaders' video, with their faces clearly visible, was easy to trace.Jackson understands that the video was in very poor taste," but she believes the police overreacted and traumatized her granddaughter in the process. I think they blew it completely out of the water," she said. To me, it wasn't serious enough to do that, to go to court."That perspective is shared by Makenzie Perkins, the threat assessment supervisor of Collierville Schools, outside of Memphis. She is helping her school district chart a different path in managing alleged social media threats. Perkins has sought specific training on how to sort out credible threats online from thoughtless reposts, allowing her to focus on students who pose real danger instead of punishing everyone.The charges in Greene County, she said, did not serve a real purpose and indicate a lack of understanding about how to handle these incidents. You're never going to suspend, expel or charge your way out of targeted mass violence," she said. Did those charges make that school safer? No."When 16-year-old D.C. saw an advertisement for an AI video app last October, he eagerly downloaded it and began roasting his friends. In one video he created, his friend stood in the Lincoln County High School cafeteria, his mouth and eyes moving unnaturally as he threatened to shoot up the school and bring a bomb in his backpack. (We are using D.C.'s initials and his dad's middle name to protect their privacy, because D.C. is a minor.)D.C. sent it to a private Snapchat group of about 10 friends, hoping they would find it hilarious. After all, they had all teased this friend about his dark clothes and quiet nature. But the friend did not think it was funny. That evening, D.C. showed the video to his dad, Alan, who immediately made him delete it as well as the app. I explained how it could be misinterpreted, how inappropriate it was in today's climate," Alan recalled to ProPublica.It was too late. One student in the chat had already copied D.C.'s video and sent it to other students on Snapchat, where it began to spread, severed from its initial context.That evening, a parent reported the video to school officials, who called in local police to do an investigation. D.C. begged his dad to take him to the police station that night, worried the friend in the video would get in trouble - but Alan thought it could wait until morning.The next day, D.C. rushed to school administrators to explain and apologize. According to Alan, administrators told D.C. they understood it was a dumb mistake," uncharacteristic for the straight-A student with no history of disciplinary issues. In a press release, Lincoln County High School said administrators were made aware of a prank threat that was intended as a joke between friends."But later that day, D.C. was expelled from school for a year and charged with a felony for making a threat of mass violence. As an explanation, the sheriff's deputy wrote in the affidavit, Above student did create and distribute a video on social media threatening to shoot the school and bring a bomb."During a subsequent hearing where D.C. appealed his school expulsion, Lincoln County Schools administrators described their initial panic when seeing the video. Alan shared an audio recording of the hearing with ProPublica. Officials didn't know that the video was generated by AI until the school counselor saw a small logo in the corner. Everybody was on pins and needles," the counselor said at the hearing. What are we going to do to protect the kids or keep everybody calm the next day if it gets out?" The school district declined to respond to ProPublica's questions about how officials handled the incident, even though Alan signed a privacy waiver giving them permission to do so.Alan watched D.C. wither after his expulsion: His girlfriend broke up with him, and some of his friends began to avoid him. D.C. lay awake at night looking through text messages he sent years ago, terrified someone decades later would find something that could ruin his life. If they are punishing him for creating the image, when does his liability expire?" Alan wondered. If it's shared again a year from now, will he be expelled again?"Alan, a teacher in the school district, coped by voraciously reading court cases and news articles that could shed light on what was happening to his son. He stumbled on a case hundreds of miles north in Pennsylvania, the facts of which were eerily similar to D.C.'s.In April 2018, two kids, J.S. and his friend, messaged back and forth mocking another student by suggesting he looked like a school shooter. (The court record uses J.S. instead of his full name to protect the student's anonymity.) J.S. created two memes and sent them to his friend in a private Snapchat conversation. His friend shared the memes publicly on Snapchat, where they were seen by 20 to 40 other students. School administrators permanently expelled J.S., so he and his parents sued the school.In 2021, after a series of appeals, Pennsylvania's highest court ruled in J.S.'s favor. While the memes were mean-spirited, sophomoric, inartful, misguided, and crude," the state Supreme Court justices wrote in their opinion, they were plainly not intended to threaten Student One, Student Two, or any other person."The justices also shared their sympathy with the challenges schools faced in providing a safe and quality educational experience" in the modern age. We recognize that this charge is compounded by technological developments such as social media, which transcend the geographic boundaries of the school. It is a thankless task for which we are all indebted."After multiple disciplinary appeals, D.C.'s school upheld the decision to keep him out of school for a year. His parents found a private school that agreed to let him enroll, and he slowly emerged from his depression to continue his straight-A streak there. His charge in court was dismissed in December after he wrote a 500-word essay for the judge on the dangers of social media, according to Alan.Thinking back on the video months later, D.C. explained that jokes about school violence are common among his classmates. We try to make fun of it so that it doesn't seem as serious or like it could really happen," he said. It's just so widespread that we're all desensitized to it."He wonders if letting him back to school would have been more effective in deterring future hoax threats. I could have gone back to school and said, You know, we can't make jokes like that because you can get in big trouble for it,'" he said. I just disappeared for everyone at that school."When a school district came across an alarming post on Snapchat in 2023, officials reached out to Safer Schools Together, an organization that helps educators handle school threats. In the post, a pistol flanked by two assault rifles lay on a rumpled white bedsheet. The text overlaid on the photo read, I'm shooting up central I'm tired of getting picked on everyone is dying tomorrow."Steven MacDonald, training manager and development director for Safer Schools Together, recounted this story in a virtual tutorial posted last year on using online tools to trace and manage social media threats. He asked the school officials watching his tutorial what they would do next. How do we figure out if this is really our student's bedroom?"According to MacDonald, it took his organization's staff only a minute to put the text in quotation marks and run it through Google. A single local news article popped up showing that two kids had been arrested for sharing this exact Snapchat post in Columbia, Tennessee - far from the original district.We were able to reach out and respond and say, You know what, this is not targeting your district,'" MacDonald said. Administrators were reassured there was a low likelihood of immediate violence, and they could focus on finding out who was recirculating the old threat and why.In the training video, MacDonald reviewed skills that, until recently, have been more relevant to police investigators than school principals: How to reverse image search photos of guns to determine whether a post contains a stock image. How to use Snapchat to find contact names for unknown phone numbers. How to analyze the language in the social media posts of a high-risk student.We know that why you're here is because of the increase and the sheer volume of these threats that you may have seen circulated, the non-credible threats that might have even ended up in your districts," he said. Between last April and this April, Safer Schools Together identified drastic increases in threat related behavior" and graphic or derogatory social media posts.Back in the Memphis suburbs, Perkins and other Collierville Schools administrators have attended multiple digital threat assessment training sessions hosted by Safer Schools Together. I've had to learn a lot more apps and social media than I ever thought," Perkins said.The knowledge, she said, came in handy during one recent incident in her district. Local police called the district to report that a student had called 911 and reported an Instagram threat targeting a particular school. They sent Perkins a photo of the Instagram profile and username. She began using open source websites to scour the internet for other appearances of the picture and username. She also used a website that allows people to view Instagram stories without alerting the user to gather more information.With the help of police, Perkins and her team identified that the post was created by someone at the same IP address as the student who had reported the threat. The girl, who was in elementary school, confessed to police that she had done it.The next day, Perkins and her team interviewed the student, her parents and teachers to understand her motive and goal. It ended up that there had been some recent viral social media threats going around," Perkins said. This individual recognized that it drew in a lot of attention."Instead of expelling the girl, school administrators worked with her parents to develop a plan to manage her behavior. They came up with ideas for the girl to receive positive attention while stressing to her family that she had exhibited extreme behavior" that signaled a need for intensive help. By the end of the day, they had tamped down concerns about immediate violence and created a plan of action.In many other districts, Perkins said, the girl might have been arrested and expelled for a year without any support - which does not help move students away from the path of violence. A lot of districts across our state haven't been trained," she said. They're doing this without guidance."Watching the cheerleaders' TikTok video, it would be easy to miss Allison Bolinger, then the 19-year-old assistant coach. The camera quickly flashes across her standing and smiling in the corner of the room watching the pretend-dead girls.Bolinger said she and the head coach had been next door planning future rehearsals. Bolinger entered the room soon after the students began filming and didn't think anything of it." Cheerleading practice went forward as usual that afternoon. The next day, she got a call from her dad: The cheerleaders were suspended from school, and Bolinger would have to answer questions from the police.I didn't even know the TikTok was posted. I hadn't seen it," she said. By the time I went to go look for it, it was already taken down." Bolinger said she ended up losing her job as a result of the incident. She heard whispers around the small community that she was responsible for allowing them to create the video.Bolinger said she didn't realize the video was related to school shootings when she was in the room. She often wishes she had asked them at the time to explain the video they were making. I have beat myself up about that so many times," she said. Then again, they're also children. If they don't make it here, they'll probably make it at home."Jackson, the grandmother of the 11-year-old in the video, blames Bolinger for not stopping the middle schoolers and faults the police for overreacting. She said all the students, whether or not their families hired a lawyer, got the same punishment in court: three months of probation for a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge, which could be extended if their grades dropped or they got in trouble again. Each family had to pay more than $100 in court costs, Jackson said, a significant amount for some.Jackson's granddaughter successfully completed probation, which also involved writing and submitting a letter of apology to the judge. She was too scared about getting in trouble again to continue on the cheerleading team for the rest of the school year.Jackson thinks that officials' outsize response to the video made everything worse. They shouldn't even have done nothing until they investigated it, instead of making them out to be terrorists and traumatizing these girls," she said. Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed reporting.

by ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. The continents are rapidly drying out and the earth's vast freshwater resources are under threat, according to a recently released study based on more than 20 years of NASA satellite data. Here are the report's key findings and what they portend for humankind: Much of the Earth is suffering a pandemic of continental drying," affecting the countries containing 75% of the world's population, the new research shows. The study, published in the journal Science Advances, examined changes to Earth's total supply of fresh water and found that nearly 6 billion people live in the 101 countries facing a net decline in water supply, posing a critical, emerging threat to humanity." Mining of underground freshwater aquifers is driving much of the loss. According to the study, the uninhibited pumping of groundwater by farmers, cities and corporations around the world now accounts for 68% of the total loss of fresh water at the latitudes where most people live. Much of the water taken from aquifers ends up in the oceans, contributing to the rise of sea levels. Mined groundwater rarely seeps back into the aquifers from which it was pumped. Rather, a large portion runs off into streams, then rivers and ultimately the oceans. According to the researchers, moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the oceans. Water From Land Has Become a Leading Driver of Sea Level Rise Most of the water lost from drying regions is from groundwater pumping, which ultimately shifts fresh water from aquifers into the oceans. Note: Glaciers refer to the parts of the continents covered in glaciers but excludes the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Drying land and aquifers refer to the water lost by the continents in areas not covered by glaciers, including river flow and evaporation. Groundwater loss accounts for 68% of the drying in those places. As droughts grow more extreme, farmers increasingly turn to groundwater. Worldwide, 70% of fresh water is used for growing crops, with more of it coming from groundwater as droughts grow more extreme. Only a small amount of that water seeps back into aquifers. Research has long established that people take more water from underground when climate-driven heat and drought are at their worst. Drying regions of the planet are merging. The parts of the world drying most acutely are becoming interconnected, forming what the study's authors describe as mega" regions. One such region covers almost the whole of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia. Drying of the Earth has accelerated in recent years. The study examines 22 years of observational data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, satellites, which measure changes in the mass of the earth and have been applied to estimate its water content. Since 2002, the sensors have detected a rapid shift in water loss across the planet. Around 2014, the study found the pace of drying appears to have accelerated. It is now growing by an area twice the size of California each year. The Drying of the Earth Accelerated in Recent Years The dramatic depletion of groundwater and surface water plus the melting of glaciers between 2014-24 has connected once-separate arid places, forming mega-drying" regions that stretch across whole continents. Watch video Note: Data is for February 2003 to December 2013 and January 2014 to April 2024. The first time period contains seven more months of data than the second. Water pumped from aquifers is not easily replaced, if it can be at all. Major groundwater basins underlie roughly one-third of the planet, including about half of Africa, Europe and South America. Many of those aquifers took millions of years to form and might take thousands of years to refill. The researchers warn that it is now nearly impossible to reverse the loss of water on human timescales." As continents dry and coastal areas flood, the risk for conflict and instability increases. The accelerated drying, combined with the flooding of coastal cities and food-producing lowlands, heralds potentially staggering" and cascading risks for global order, the researchers warn. Their findings all point to the likelihood of widespread famine, the migration of large numbers of people seeking a more stable environment and the carry-on impact of geopolitical disorder. Data Source: Hrishikesh. A. Chandanpurkar, James S. Famiglietti, Kaushik Gopalan, David N. Wiese, Yoshihide Wada, Kaoru Kakinuma, John T. Reager, Fan Zhang (2025). Unprecedented Continental Drying, Shrinking Freshwater Availability, and Increasing Land Contributions to Sea Level Rise. Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adx0298Graphics by Lucas Waldron

by Abrahm Lustgarten, Graphics by Lucas Waldron, Illustrations by Olivier Kugler for ProPublica As the planet gets hotter and its reservoirs shrink and its glaciers melt, people have increasingly drilled into a largely ungoverned, invisible cache of fresh water: the vast, hidden pools found deep underground.Now, a new study that examines the world's total supply of fresh water - accounting for its rivers and rain, ice and aquifers together - warns that Earth's most essential resource is quickly disappearing, signaling what the paper's authors describe as a critical, emerging threat to humanity." The landmasses of the planet are drying. In most places there is less precipitation even as moisture evaporates from the soil faster. More than anything, Earth is being slowly dehydrated by the unmitigated mining of groundwater, which underlies vast proportions of every continent. Nearly 6 billion people, or three quarters of humanity, live in the 101 countries that the study identified as confronting a net decline in water supply - portending enormous challenges for food production and a heightening risk of conflict and instability.The paper provides a glimpse of what the future is going to be," said Hrishikesh Chandanpurkar, an earth systems scientist working with Arizona State University and the lead author of the study. We are already dipping from a trust fund. We don't actually know how much the account has." The research, published on Friday in the journal Science Advances, confirms not just that droughts and precipitation are growing more extreme but reports that drying regions are fast expanding. It also found that while parts of the planet are getting wetter, those areas are shrinking. The study, which excludes the ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland, concludes not only that Earth is suffering a pandemic of continental drying" in lower latitudes, but that it is the uninhibited pumping of groundwater by farmers, cities and corporations around the world that now accounts for 68% of the total loss of fresh water in those areas, which generally don't have glaciers.Groundwater is ubiquitous across the globe, but its quality and depth vary, as does its potential to be replenished by rainfall. Major groundwater basins - the deep and often high-quality aquifers - underlie roughly one-third of the planet, including roughly half of Africa, Europe and South America. But many of those aquifers took millions of years to form and might take thousands of years to refill. Instead, a significant portion of the water taken from underground flows off the land through rivers and on to the oceans.The researchers were surprised to find that the loss of water on the continents has grown so dramatically that it has become one of the largest causes of global sea level rise. Moisture lost to evaporation and drought, plus runoff from pumped groundwater, now outpaces the melting of glaciers and the ice sheets of either Antarctica or Greenland as the largest contributor of water to the oceans. Water From Land Has Become a Leading Driver of Sea Level Rise Most of the water lost from drying regions is from groundwater pumping, which ultimately shifts fresh water from aquifers into the oceans. Note: Glaciers refer to the parts of the continents covered in glaciers but excludes the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica. Drying land and aquifers refer to the water lost by the continents in areas not covered by glaciers, including river flow and evaporation. Groundwater loss accounts for 68% of the drying in those places. The study examines 22 years of observational data from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, satellites, which measure changes in the mass of the earth and have been applied to estimate its water content. The technique was groundbreaking two decades ago when the study's co-author, Jay Famiglietti, who was then a professor at the University of California, at Irvine, used it to pinpoint where aquifers were in decline. Since then, he and others have published dozens of papers using GRACE data, but the question has always lingered: What does the groundwater loss mean in the context of all of the water available on the continents? So Famiglietti, now a professor at Arizona State University, set out to inventory all the land-based water contained in glaciers, rivers and aquifers and see what was changing. The answer: everything, and quickly.Since 2002, the GRACE sensors have detected a rapid shift in water loss patterns around the planet. Around 2014, though, the pace of drying appears to have accelerated, the authors found, and is now growing by an area twice the size of California each year. It's like this sort of creeping disaster that has taken over the continents in ways that no one was really anticipating," Famiglietti said. (Six other researchers also contributed to the study.) The parts of the world drying most acutely are becoming interconnected, forming what the study's authors describe as mega" regions spreading across the earth's mid-latitudes. One of those regions covers almost the whole of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia. The Drying of the Earth Accelerated in Recent Years The dramatic depletion of groundwater and surface water plus the melting of glaciers between 2014-24 has connected once-separate arid places, forming mega-drying" regions that stretch across whole continents. Watch video Note: Data is for February 2003 to December 2013 and January 2014 to April 2024. The first time period contains seven more months of data than the second. In the American Southwest and California, groundwater loss is a familiar story, but over the past two decades that hot spot has also spread dramatically. It now extends through Texas and up through the southern High Plains, where the Ogallala aquifer is depended on for agriculture, and it spreads south, stretching throughout Mexico and into Central America. These regions are connected not because they rely on the same water sources - in most cases they don't - but because their populations will face the same perils of water stress: the most likely, a food crisis that could ultimately displace millions of people.This has to serve as a wake-up call," said Aaron Salzberg, a former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center and the former director of the Water Institute at the University of North Carolina, who was not involved with the study.Research has long established that people take more water from underground when climate-driven heat and drought are at their worst. For example, during droughts when California has enforced restrictions on delivery of surface water to its farmers - which the state regulates - the enormous agriculture enterprises that dominate the Central Valley have drilled deeper and pumped harder, depleting the aquifer - which the state regulates less precisely - even more.For the most part, such withdrawals have remained invisible. Even with the GRACE data, scientists cannot measure the exact levels or know when an aquifer will be exhausted. But there is one foolproof sign that groundwater is disappearing: The earth above it collapses as the ground compresses like a drying sponge. The visible signs of such subsidence around the world appear to match what the GRACE data says. Mexico City is sinking as its groundwater aquifers are drained, as are large parts China, Indonesia, Spain and Iran, to name a few. A recent study by researchers at Virginia Tech in the journal Nature Cities found that 28 cities across the United States are sinking - New York, Houston and Denver, among them - threatening havoc for everything from building safety to transit. In the Central Valley, the ground surface is nearly 30 vertical feet lower than it was in the first part of the 20th century. Ground subsidence around the world is one of the clearest ways to identify where groundwater is overdrawn. When so much water is pumped, it has to drain somewhere. Just like rivers and streams fed by rainfall, much of the used groundwater makes its way into the ocean. The study pinpoints a remarkable shift: Groundwater drilled by people, used for agriculture or urban supplies and then discarded into drainages now contributes more water to the oceans than melting from each of the world's largest ice caps.People aren't just misusing groundwater, they are flooding their own coasts and cities in the process, Famiglietti warns. That means they are also imperiling some of the world's most important food-producing lowlands in the Nile and Mekong deltas and cities from Shanghai to New York. Once in the oceans, of course, groundwater will never again be suitable for drinking and human use without expensive and energy-sucking treatment or through the natural cycle of evaporating and precipitating as rain. But even then, it may no longer fall where it is needed most. Groundwater is an intergenerational resource that is being poorly managed, if managed at all," the study states, at tremendous and exceptionally undervalued cost to future generations."That such rapid and substantial overuse of groundwater is also causing coastal flooding underscores the compounding threat of rising temperatures and aridity. It means that water scarcity and some of the most disruptive effects of climate change are now inextricably intertwined. And here, the study's authors implore leaders to find a policy solution: Improve water management and reduce groundwater use now, and the world has a tool to slow the rate of sea level rise. Fail to adjust the governance and use of groundwater around the world, and humanity risks surrendering parts of its coastal cities while pouring out finite reserves it will sorely need as the other effects of climate change take hold. How Groundwater Becomes Ocean Water

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Last week, Microsoft announced that it would no longer use China-based engineering teams to support the Defense Department's cloud computing systems, following ProPublica's investigation of the practice, which cybersecurity experts said could expose the government to hacking and espionage.But it turns out the Pentagon was not the only part of the government facing such a threat. For years, Microsoft has also used its global workforce, including China-based personnel, to maintain the cloud systems of other federal departments, including parts of Justice, Treasury and Commerce, ProPublica has found.This work has taken place in what's known as the Government Community Cloud, which is intended for information that is not classified but is nonetheless sensitive. The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, the U.S. government's cloud accreditation organization, has approved GCC to handle moderate" impact information where the loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability would result in serious adverse effect on an agency's operations, assets, or individuals." The Justice Department's Antitrust Division has used GCC to support its criminal and civil investigation and litigation functions, according to a 2022 report. Parts of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education have also used GCC.Microsoft says its foreign engineers working in GCC have been overseen by U.S.-based personnel known as digital escorts," similar to the system it had in place at the Defense Department.Nevertheless, cybersecurity experts told ProPublica that foreign support for GCC presents an opportunity for spying and sabotage. There's a misconception that, if government data isn't classified, no harm can come of its distribution," said Rex Booth, a former federal cybersecurity official who now is chief information security officer of the tech company SailPoint. With so much data stored in cloud services - and the power of AI to analyze it quickly - even unclassified data can reveal insights that could harm U.S. interests," he said.Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency, said foreign intelligence agencies could leverage information gleaned from GCC systems to swim upstream" to more sensitive or even classified ones. It is an opportunity that I can't imagine an intelligence service not pursuing," he said.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has deemed China the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks." Laws there grant the country's officials broad authority to collect data, and experts say it is difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement.Microsoft declined interview requests for this story. In response to questions, the tech giant issued a statement that suggested it would be discontinuing its use of China-based support for GCC, as it recently did for the Defense Department's cloud systems.Microsoft took steps last week to enhance the security of our DoD Government cloud offerings. Going forward, we are taking similar steps for all our government customers who use Government Community Cloud to further ensure the security of their data," the statement said. A spokesperson declined to elaborate on what those steps are.The company also said that over the next month it will conduct a review to assess whether additional measures are needed."The federal departments and agencies that ProPublica found to be using GCC did not respond to requests for comment.The latest revelations about Microsoft's use of its Chinese workforce to service the U.S. government - and the company's swift response - are likely to fuel a rapidly developing firestorm in Washington, where federal lawmakers and the Trump administration are questioning the tech giant's cybersecurity practices and trying to contain any potential national security fallout. Foreign engineers - from any country, including of course China - should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote in a post on X last Friday.Last week, ProPublica revealed that Microsoft has for a decade relied on foreign workers - including those based in China - to maintain the Defense Department's computer systems, with oversight coming from U.S.-based digital escorts. But those escorts, we found, often don't have the advanced technical expertise to police foreign counterparts with far more advanced skills, leaving highly sensitive information vulnerable. In response to the reporting, Hegseth launched a review of the practice.ProPublica found that Microsoft developed the escort arrangement to satisfy Defense Department officials who were concerned about the company's foreign employees, given the department's citizenship requirements for people handling sensitive data. Microsoft went on to win federal cloud computing business and has said in earnings reports that it receives substantial revenue from government contracts."While Microsoft has said it will stop using China-based tech support for the Defense Department, it declined to answer questions about what would replace it, including whether cloud support would come from engineers based outside the U.S. The company also declined to say whether it would continue to use digital escorts.Microsoft confirmed to ProPublica this week that a similar escorting arrangement had been used in GCC - a dynamic that surprised some former government officials and cybersecurity experts. In an increasingly complex digital world, consumers of cloud products deserve to know how their data is handled and by whom," Booth said. The cybersecurity industry depends on clarity."Microsoft said it disclosed details of the GCC escort arrangement in documentation submitted to the federal government as part of the FedRAMP cloud accreditation process. The company declined to provide the documents to ProPublica, citing the potential security risk of publicly disclosing them, and also declined to say whether the China-based location of its support personnel was specifically mentioned in them.ProPublica contacted other major cloud services providers to the federal government to ask whether they use China-based support. A spokesperson for Amazon Web Services said in a statement that AWS does not use personnel in China to support federal contracts." A Google spokesperson said in a statement that Google Public Sector does not have a Digital Escort program. Instead, its sensitive systems are supported by fully trained personnel who meet the U.S. government's location, citizenship and security clearance requirements." Oracle said it does not use any Chinese support for U.S. federal customers."

by Avi Asher-Schapiro and Jeff Ernsthausen ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. On Monday, the Department of Defense announced that it had awarded a massive new contract to build the nation's largest migrant detention camp on the Fort Bliss military base, a facility that will play a key role in the Trump administration's deportation plans.Unmentioned was that one of the subcontractors slated to work on the project, Disaster Management Group, is owned by Nathan Albers, who previously co-owned a company that pleaded guilty in 2019 to a scheme to hire undocumented workers and conceal them from immigration authorities. Albers is a big-time Republican donor who has spent time at Mar-a-Lago.Two people with direct knowledge of the award and two familiar with the company told ProPublica that Disaster Management Group would help build the new facility, receiving a substantial chunk of the more than $1.2 billion the government has allocated for the project.The idea that you could use illegal labor and then sell services to ICE, the irony is thick," said Scott Shuchart, a former official with the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during President Donald Trump's first term and later under President Joe Biden, referring to the immigration case involving TentLogix, the company Albers once co-owned.In response to questions from ProPublica, a spokesperson for Disaster Management said that Albers and Disaster Management had been dropped from the DHS' investigation of TentLogix and exonerated. Upon learning of illegal actions by TentLogix's co-founder, the spokesperson said, Mr. Albers parted ways as a minority and non-operating owner of TentLogix."The spokesperson didn't directly answer questions about Disaster Management's role in the detention camp at Fort Bliss, saying only that the company is proud to support projects of national importance for nearly 20 years."The White House didn't answer questions about Disaster Management or Albers, referring ProPublica to the DOD and DHS, neither of which provided comment.The new migrant detention camp near El Paso, Texas, is expected to hold up to 5,000 people. The prime contractor is Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics, and people with direct knowledge of the work at Fort Bliss told ProPublica that Amentum, a major engineering and technology services contractor, will be another subcontractor. Neither Acquisition Logistics nor Amentum replied to questions from ProPublica about the project.Disaster Management specializes in building temporary structures. Since 2020, it's won over $500 million in government contracting work, mostly to construct lodgings for a U.S. program to resettle Afghan refugees.Last year, the Department of Labor announced that it had found Disaster Management and subcontractors it worked with on the Afghan refugee contract violated federal labor laws, including those on minimum wages and overtime. The agency recovered nearly $16 million in pay for workers, and Disaster Management signed a compliance agreement with the agency designed to prevent further violations. The company didn't respond to questions about the case.Albers' ties to TentLogix wouldn't have excluded him or Disaster Management from other government contracting work, explained Scott Amey, the general counsel at the Project On Government Oversight.TentLogix reported its criminal conviction in the federal contracting database, but Albers and his other businesses are considered separate legal entities. Companies awarded federal contracts are required to certify that they operate with a satisfactory record of business ethics, but a lot of things are not required to be reported," Amey said. I don't even think this would appear on the radar of a contracting officer."Still, there's a web of connections between TentLogix and Disaster Management. Albers was one of TentLogix's two directors when it pleaded guilty to violating immigration law. The other, Gary Hendry, co-founded Disaster Management with Albers, and the two were once brothers-in-law. When immigration authorities raided TentLogix in 2018, it shared an address with Disaster Management.The raid followed a 2016 Homeland Security Investigations audit of Tentlogix, which found the company had 96 undocumented employees on its books. According to court records, Hendry then attempted to deceive investigators by creating a shell company and transferring the undocumented workers to that entity to conceal them from Homeland Security Investigations auditors. But the agency discovered the scheme and found undocumented workers at the company's site when officials raided it in 2018. That year, Albers was listed as one of four officers on the company's corporate filings.In 2019, Hendry pleaded guilty to immigration charges alongside another company officer and was sentenced to a year in prison. (He served a little over three months, then was granted an early release because of the pandemic.) TentLogix, the corporate entity, also pleaded guilty and was ordered to forfeit over $3 million. Although Albers was not personally charged, he signed off on the company's guilty plea, court records show. The company filed for bankruptcy in 2020.Hendry did not respond to a request for comment.Disaster Management's federal contracting work has been lucrative for Albers. Last year, he purchased a $30 million house in Jupiter, Florida, that then ranked as the area's most expensive home.Albers also has recently become a large donor to Republican campaigns, to which he's given more than $150,000 in the last year alone. He and his wife spent election night at Mar-a-Lago in 2024 and once co-chaired a charity fundraiser at the Trump National Golf Club with the president's son, Eric, and his wife. They attended the Crypto Ball," a cryptocurrency event sponsored by Trump supporters in the digital currency industry; participants paid between $2,500 and $1 million for tickets. (The Trump Organization did not respond to questions from ProPublica.) Kimberly Albers, center, posted photos on Instagram showing her and her husband, Nathan, right, at Mar-a-Lago on election night last year. (Screenshot by ProPublica) Since late last year, Disaster Management has spent $210,000 lobbying Congress and the administration on immigration-related issues, including funding related to temporary facilities." The company had no prior history of lobbying, according to federal disclosures.Disaster Management's share of the immigration detention contract for Fort Bliss could rank among the company's largest contracts. The Fort Bliss award comes as immigration arrests have soared in recent months and ICE is running low on space to hold everyone it has detained. In the past, those arrested by ICE would mostly be housed in brick-and-mortar detention facilities.But in its urgency to increase deportations, the Trump administration has turned to contractors to build so-called soft-sided facilities - tents with rigid structures inside - that can be set up much more quickly.The administration has eyed military bases as locations to set up these new detention camps. In April, ICE announced a $3.8 billion award to build such a facility to Deployed Resources, which had operated the lion's share of the soft-sided facilities used in the past to temporarily house immigrants entering the country along the southern border.ICE abruptly canceled that contract just days after it was announced without explanation. Now it appears Disaster Management could do much of that work. An industry insider estimated to ProPublica that Disaster Management's slice of the $1.2 billion contract at Fort Bliss could be worth hundreds of millions for the company in the next year, though it's not clear how the three contractors will split the work. Bloomberg first reported the total value of the Fort Bliss contract.The facility at Fort Bliss is expected to be the first of many. Earlier in the month, Trump signed a spending bill that allocates $45 billion to build new migrant detention sites. Experts estimate this could roughly double the country's capacity for immigration detention from around 50,000 people to more than 100,000. Mica Rosenberg contributed reporting. Pratheek Rebala, Kirsten Berg and Mario Ariza contributed research.

by Sergio Hernandez ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. We updated our Supreme Connections database with newly released financial disclosures from eight Supreme Court justices on Friday, covering the 2024 calendar year.Supreme Connections is our database that makes it easy for anyone to browse justices' financial disclosures and to search for connections to people and companies mentioned within them. This update includes disclosures filed in May and made public late last month. Justice Samuel Alito received a 90-day extension, and his disclosure is expected later this summer.The latest update details millions in book income, almost 40 trips and one gift.Among the disclosures:

by Zach Despart, The Texas Tribune This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues. One day in late May 2024, lawyer Zina Bash spent 6 1/2 hours working on a case against Facebook parent company Meta on behalf of the state of Texas. She reviewed draft legal filings. She participated in a court-ordered mediation session and then discussed the outcome with state Attorney General Ken Paxton.In her previous job as senior counsel on Paxton's leadership team, that labor would have cost Texas taxpayers $641.But Bash had moved to private practice. Paxton hired her firm to work on the Meta case, allowing her to bill $3,780 an hour, so that day of work will cost taxpayers $24,570.In the past five years, Paxton has grown increasingly reliant on pricey private lawyers to argue cases on behalf of the state, rather than the hundreds of attorneys who work within his office, an investigation by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica found. These are often attorneys, like Bash, with whom Paxton has personal or political ties.In addition to Bash, one such contract went to Tony Buzbee, the trial lawyer who successfully defended Paxton during his 2023 impeachment trial on corruption charges. Three other contracts went to firms whose senior attorneys have donated to Paxton's political campaigns. Despite these connections and what experts say are potential conflicts of interest, Paxton does not appear to have recused himself from the selection process. Although he is not required to by law, this raises a concern about appearing improper, experts who study attorneys general said.Paxton appears to have also outsourced cases more frequently than his predecessors, available records show. And he's inked the kind of contingent-fee contracts, in which firms receive a share of a settlement if they win, far more often than the attorneys general in other large states, including California, New York and Pennsylvania. Since 2015, the New York and California attorneys general have awarded zero contingent-fee contracts; Pennsylvania's has signed one. During that period, Paxton's office approved 13.One of those was with Bash's firm, Chicago-based Keller Postman, at the time known as Keller Lenkner, which she joined as partner in February 2021 after resigning from her job at the attorney general's office. Paxton had signed a contract with the company two months earlier to investigate Google for deceptive business practices and violations of antitrust law. A little more than a year later, Bash's firm won a state contract to work on the Meta litigation, alleging its facial recognition software violated Texans' privacy. This time, Bash was the co-lead counsel.Meta, which called the lawsuit meritless, settled the case for $1.4 billion in the summer of 2024. It was a windfall for Keller Postman. The firm billed $97 million, the largest fee charged by outside counsel under Paxton's tenure. Bash's work alone accounted for $3.6 million of that total. A letter from Zina Bash to the Texas attorney general's office informs the office that the state owes her firm, Keller Postman, almost $97 million for its work on the state's case against Meta. (Obtained by The Texas Tribune. Highlighted by ProPublica.) Bash, a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, said in a statement she is honored the attorney general's office partnered with Keller Postman based on the firm's first-rate attorneys and extensive experience."We have a record of taking on the most significant litigation in the country against the most powerful defendants in the world," Bash said.Keller Postman did not respond to a request for comment.There is little to stop Paxton, or any other occupant of his office, from handing these contracts out. The attorney general can award them without seeking bids from other law firms or asking anyone's permission.Asked to provide competitive-bid documents for the contingent-fee contracts it has awarded, the attorney general's office said it had none because state law exempts the OAG from having to do all of the solicitation steps when hiring outside counsel."Given the high-profile nature of representing an attorney general and the potential for a big payday, many qualified firms would be eager to compete for this work, said Paul Nolette, a professor of political science at Marquette University who studies attorneys general.I'd be curious to know what the justification is for this not going on the open market," Nolette said. Paxton declined interview requests for this story. He has publicly defended the practice of hiring outside law firms, arguing that his office lacks the resources in-house to take on massive corporations like tech companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers.These parties have practically unlimited resources that would swamp most legal teams and delay effective enforcement," Paxton told the Senate finance committee during a budget hearing in January.A spokesperson for Paxton said in a statement that the outside lawyers hired by the office are some of the best in the nation. With the contingent-fee settlements to date, more than $2 billion, the state could not have gotten a better return on its investment," the statement said.Chris Toth, former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General, questioned why so much extra help is needed. Outside counsel is appropriate for small states, he said, that only have so many lawyers with so many levels of expertise."The Texas attorney general's office, one of the largest in the country, has more than 700 attorneys.Large states typically don't hire outside counsel," Toth said. They should have the people in-house that should be able to go toe-to-toe with the best attorneys that are out there."A Troubled HistoryWhen a Texas attorney general previously made a practice of giving lucrative contracts to private counsel, it didn't end well.Dan Morales was the last Democrat to hold the office. He became embroiled in scandal after he used outside firms to help secure a $17 billion settlement in Big Tobacco litigation in 1998.Republicans, including then-Gov. George W. Bush, blasted the $3.2 billion payout to the outside lawyers as exorbitant. Their attacks grew more intense when Morales sought to steer $500 million of that sum to a lawyer, a personal friend, who did very little work on the case. Morales pleaded guilty in 2003 to related federal corruption charges. He served 3 1/2 years behind bars.John Cornyn, the Republican who succeeded Morales in 1999, criticized his predecessor's handling of the tobacco case during his campaign for the office. In an interview for this story, Cornyn said he never hired outside counsel as attorney general because he focused on recruiting talented in-house lawyers that he felt could handle all the office's cases.Paxton is challenging Cornyn, now a four-term U.S. senator, in next year's Republican primary.Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican who led the office after Cornyn, appears to have rarely used private lawyers. The attorney general's office was able to produce records for only part of Abbott's 12-year term because state law allows the files to be deleted after so many years. The office signed nine outside counsel contracts between 2010 and 2014, all pro bono or for hourly rates rather than contingency. Abbott did not respond to an interview request.Paxton also seldom outsourced cases during his first five years in office. Through 2019, he awarded only nine outside counsel contracts, all pro bono or hourly rate. The most expensive contract capped fees at $500,000 -far less than $143 million the state paid to the two firms, including Bash's, that handled the Meta case.He changed course in 2020.That summer, the attorney general's office was gearing up to file its first case against Google. It related to allegations that the company monopolized the online advertising market, raising costs for advertisers, who increased the price of their products for average consumers as a result. Paxton initially had no plans to hire outside counsel for the litigation, three former deputy attorneys general told the Tribune and ProPublica.But before the case was filed, the attorney general's office was thrown into upheaval. At the end of September, seven of Paxton's senior advisers reported him to the FBI, concerned his relationship with an Austin real estate investor had crossed the line into bribery and corruption. State House members would later impeach Paxton on counts related to the accusations; state senators eventually acquitted him. The federal criminal investigation into Paxton did not result in any criminal charges.Over fall 2020, each of the lawyers in his office who had accused Paxton of wrongdoing quit or was fired. That included Darren McCarty, the head of civil litigation who was supposed to lead the Google litigation before he reported his boss to the FBI. He resigned on Oct. 26.Less than two months later, on Dec. 16, Paxton signed contracts with The Lanier Law Firm and Keller Postman to investigate Google. They filed the lawsuit against the tech giant in federal court the same day.Paxton replaced the lawyers who complained to the authorities. The staffing of the antitrust and consumer protection divisions, which would have handled these cases, remained constant at more than 80 employees in the following years. Yet Paxton continued to outsource lawsuits against large corporations to private lawyers.Under Keller Postman's contract, the firm would be paid only if it secured a settlement or won at trial. These contingent-fee cases have the potential to be far more profitable for the outside firms than those in which they bill at a regular hourly rate. In a successful case, the contracts say that firms are paid either a percentage of a settlement or the sum of hours billed by the firm times four, whichever is less.In the Meta case, Keller Postman was entitled to 11% of the state's settlement, a share that totaled $154 million. But because the firm's fees and expenses totaled $97 million, it billed that sum.In multiple legislative sessions, Paxton has testified that outsourcing was the only way his office could stand toe-to-toe with corporate titans.If Paxton has a shortage of qualified in-house attorneys, Cornyn told the newsrooms, that's because of the damage the whistleblower scandal did to the reputation of the attorney general's office as a home for ambitious young lawyers.He's a victim of his own malfeasance and mismanagement because people did not want to work for him anymore," Cornyn said. And if you run off your best lawyers because you engage in questionable ethical conduct, then you're left with very few options. But this shouldn't be a way to reward bad behavior."Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said he was surprised Paxton began hiring contingent-fee outside lawyers only after the scandal, since those contracts, with their potential for high profits, are tougher to ethically defend.I would have thought it would have been the other way around - that he got more careful after he got the whistle blown on him," said Goddard, a Democrat. But it looked like he got more reckless." Attorney General Ken Paxton, right, sits with lawyer Tony Buzbee on the ninth day of Paxton's's impeachment trial at the Texas Capitol in Austin on Sept. 15, 2023. (Julius Shieh/The Texas Tribune) Connections to Contract RecipientsPaxton's style of procurement also benefited Buzbee, the man who successfully defended him during his impeachment trial, which stemmed from allegations the whistleblowers raised.The attorney general chose to skip most of the proceedings, so for the 10 days of trial in the Texas Senate, his most vociferous advocate was the loquacious Buzbee. The pair sat side by side when the attorney general did attend.A little more than a year later, Paxton hired The Buzbee Law Firm to pursue an antitrust suit against the investment firms BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard that accuses the companies of manipulating the coal market in a way that allegedly increased electricity prices for Texans. The firms deny wrongdoing.Buzbee is a successful litigator and one of Houston's most famous plaintiffs' attorneys. Among other victories, he won settlements for victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and $73 million for Gulf of Mexico oil drillers in a 2001 antitrust case. But he's known primarily for personal injury work, not antitrust litigation.His firm, one of two hired for this latest attorney general's office contingent-fee case, could collect 10% of any judgment or settlement. The case is in its early stages, though the Trump administration in May filed a brief in the case in support of Texas.Buzbee downplayed the potential for a big payday in an email to the newsrooms and argued there is no buddy system at play, noting he believed other law firms also interviewed with Paxton's office for the job. (The attorney general's office did not confirm this.) He said his firm has to pay for significant expenses up front, without any guarantee of payment.The current arrangement may be a good deal for other lawyers, but in all candor, it's not for me," Buzbee said, adding that his normal hourly rate is $2,250. Frankly, the only reason I'm even doing it is that I am proud to represent the state in such a landmark case." A page from an outside counsel contract, signed by both Buzbee and Paxton, shows The Buzbee Law Firm was hired to represent the state in litigation against BlackRock Inc., State Street Corp. and The Vanguard Group Inc. (Obtained by The Texas Tribune) The connections between Paxton and the lawyers he has hired also extend to other firms. The attorney general's office hired the firm Norton Rose Fulbright, one of the largest in the country with more than 3,000 lawyers on staff, to work on separate Google cases for the state, focusing on consumer protection allegations.The attorney general's office has awarded three contracts to the firm since 2022 for cases against the tech giant. Three times during that period, Joseph Graham, the firm's lead counsel on the Google litigation, contributed $5,000 to Paxton's campaign for attorney general. Twice, the donations came within 16 days of Graham signing one of the firm's contracts with the attorney general.The firm and its attorneys have contributed $39,500 to Paxton's campaign since he took office. Neither Graham nor Norton Rose Fulbright responded to requests for comment.Mark Lanier, founder of The Lanier Law Firm, which the state hired to work on a separate Google case, is a large donor to Texas elected officials. He has contributed $31,000 to Paxton's campaigns since 2015. The largest contribution, for $25,000, came six months after Lanier signed his firm's Google contract.The Lanier contract is slightly different from the others the attorney general's office awarded, in that the firm's payment is partially based on a basic hourly rate but it could also be paid more if it wins the case, as in the contingent-fee model. Lanier noted in an emailed statement to the newsrooms that he took a reduced fee on this case and maintained that the attorney general's office needed the kind of firepower his team can bring against an opponent like Google.The Texas AG office and its lawyers are good, but specialists are needed in a war like this. And it is a war," Lanier wrote. It would be irresponsible to pursue Google on behalf of Texans without bring[ing] the fullest resources you can."A competitive, open process for awarding contracts can be a strong defense against accusations of favoritism, Goddard said.Unlike some other states, Texas does not require these contracts be put out to competitive bid.Florida, for example, has one of the most robust laws in the country for procuring outside counsel, requiring the attorney general to explain in writing why a contingent-fee contract is necessary. It also mandates most contracts be put out to competitive bid and caps contingent-fee payouts at $50 million.Texas has no such cap.It also has virtually no method for state lawmakers to truly supervise this kind of practice. State law mandates only that the attorney general notify the Legislature when his office awards a contingent-fee contract, and certify that no in-house lawyers or private attorneys at an hourly rate can handle the task. Paxton has done so in boilerplate two-page letters that all say outside attorneys are needed because of the scope and enormity" of the cases.If lawmakers are concerned about these contracts, there is no mechanism for them to challenge Paxton's determination that private counsel is needed.Having lawyers bid for work would eliminate the appearance of impropriety that hangs over Paxton's hires, Goddard said.A couple look like paybacks, which is extraordinarily improper, in other words to award a contract to someone who's a major contributor or has recently left your office," he said. All of those would not be allowed in our state."Officials in other states have said they can still secure big wins for their constituents without relying on private firms.California, for example, reached a $93 million settlement with Google in 2023 over claims that the company was clandestinely tracking users' locations. A year earlier, in a case with similar allegations, Oregon and Nebraska led a 40-state coalition that won a $392 million settlement against the company. Texas was not part of this suit.The latter agreement required Google to make new privacy disclosures to consumers, restricted its ability to share users' location information with advertisers and required the company to prepare an annual report detailing how it was complying with the settlement terms.Doug Peterson, the Republican attorney general of Nebraska at the time, said negotiating the financial penalty - Nebraska's share was $11.9 million - was a secondary goal of the settlement.The most important thing we're trying to do is to stop the bad behavior," Peterson said.McCarty, one of the attorney general employees who blew the whistle on Paxton, said private lawyers can be talented, but they have an incentive to fixate on the financial portion of settlements - which is tied to their compensation - rather than enforcement provisions that may best protect a state's residents.Government enforcers, especially in the antitrust context, can focus on more effective solutions," McCarty said.Norton Rose Fulbright has yet to send its final billing records to the attorney general's office but is likely to be rewarded handsomely. The firm helped the state secure a $1.38 billion settlement with Google in May. Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said the Texas settlement, which has not been finalized, will contain no new restrictions on the company's practices.Under the terms of its contracts, the firm's fees could exceed $350 million.

by Richard A. Webster, Verite News This article was produced for ProPublica's Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. Louisiana passed a new police accountability law following allegations of civil rights violations against a sheriff's deputy caught on video dragging a Black woman by her hair and slamming her head into the ground.The woman, Shantel Arnold, sued the deputy and the sheriff, accusing the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office of conspiring to cover up the 2021 assault. The Sheriff's Office agreed in March to pay Arnold $300,000 after three days of trial but before jury deliberations began, Arnold's attorney said.After the incident, ProPublica, in partnership with WRKF, WWNO and The Times-Picayune, published an investigation detailing the long history of excessive-force complaints against Jefferson Parish sheriff's Deputy Julio Alvarado. Alvarado, a 20-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, was employed by the department as of March.Arnold's attorney, state Sen. Gary Carter, D-New Orleans, said he introduced the legislation after it emerged that Alvarado had failed to write a report about his encounter with Arnold despite his department's policy that officers document each time they use force. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto said during his testimony in the March trial over Arnold's lawsuit that Alvarado's commanders instructed him against writing such a report after video of his actions spread across social media.Arnold's run-in with Alvarado, which was captured in a 14-second video, left the woman with bruises and scratches across her body, a busted lip and recurring headaches, according to her subsequent account to police investigators.Had it not been for a bystander capturing how this officer beat up Shantel Arnold, there would be no report, there would be no evidence of it, there would be no indication that it ever happened," Carter said in a recent interview.The new law, passed unanimously by state legislators and signed by Gov. Jeff Landry in June, will require all law enforcement agencies to report every time an officer's use of force results in serious injury. It directs the Council on Peace Officer Standards and Training, which certifies police officers, to adopt a policy on mandatory use-of-force reporting by Jan. 1. Details of how the process will work have not been spelled out, nor has the penalty for failing to comply. The bill was introduced as Shantel Arnold's Law," but Carter said that name was removed because Sheriff Lopinto got very upset about that, and that almost killed the bill."Neither the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office nor Alvarado's attorney responded to requests for comment or an interview.Alvarado came across Arnold in September 2021, when the officer responded to a 911 call about a fight among 25 people in Jefferson Parish. When the deputy pulled up in his patrol car, Alvarado saw Arnold, covered in dirt, walking down the street. Arnold told the deputy she was attacked by a group of boys who frequently bullied her. When Alvarado ordered her to stop, Arnold said she just wanted to go home and kept walking. That's when the deputy jumped out of his vehicle, grabbed Arnold and slammed her into the sidewalk, according to several witnesses.In a video taken by a bystander, Alvarado drags Arnold along the pavement, holds her by her braids and slams her repeatedly onto the pavement. Arnold was not charged with a crime and was later taken to a hospital. The Sheriff's Office did not use body cameras at the time but has since begun using them.The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office denied wrongdoing. A 2022 internal investigation by the Sheriff's Office determined Alvarado's actions against Arnold were both reasonable and acceptable." Alvarado received an approximately" 40-hour suspension for failing to file a written report, Lopinto said in his March testimony.Arnold alleged in her 2022 lawsuit that the Sheriff's Office knew Alvarado had a propensity for violence against Black people and other minority groups yet continued to have him patrol such communities, putting the public in danger.Lopinto attributed Alvarado's history of complaints to his working a high-crime beat, according to a 2022 Times-Picayune interview. It's not like he's getting a complaint every month," Lopinto said. During that same interview, Lopinto dismissed Arnold's account and accused her of looking for a paycheck."Alvarado's alleged misdeeds fit a broader pattern in the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office, as the yearlong investigation into the Sheriff's Office by ProPublica, WRKF and WWNO found. Between 2013 and 2021, deputies disproportionately discharged guns against Black people. Of the 40 people shot at by Jefferson Parish deputies during that time, 73% were Black, more than double their share of the population. Twelve of the 16 people who died after being shot or restrained by deputies during that time were Black.Alvarado has been named in at least 10 federal civil rights lawsuits since 2007, all involving the use of excessive force; eight of the plaintiffs were members of minority groups.The Sheriff's Office settled three of those lawsuits. Arnold's $300,000 payout is the third - and largest - settlement involving Alvarado. Five other lawsuits were closed in favor of the Sheriff's Office, one was dismissed on a legal technicality and one was indefinitely delayed.The Sheriff's Office said in filings responding to the eight lawsuits that were not dismissed or delayed that officers' actions were reasonable under the circumstances" and characterized the claims as frivolous."Prior to the 2021 incident involving Arnold, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office had settled a 2016 lawsuit accusing Alvarado of grabbing a 14-year-old Hispanic boy by the neck and slamming his head against the concrete as the child screamed, Why are you doing this to me?" A woman had called the police complaining that the boy and a friend were wrestling in a parking lot. Alvarado then threatened to have the boy and his family deported, according to the suit. The Sheriff's Office, which paid the boy's family $15,000, said in court filings that Alvarado's actions were reasonable under the circumstances."In 2018, another lawsuit claimed Alvarado and three deputies beat Atdner Casco, a Honduran native, and stole more than $2,000 from him during a traffic stop the year before, then conspired to have him deported. Casco claimed Alvarado beat and choked him until he agreed to keep silent about being robbed. The Sheriff's Office denied wrongdoing but settled that case in 2020 for $50,000.Both incidents were cited in Arnold's lawsuit as evidence that Alvarado has exhibited a pattern of behavior throughout his career that made him unfit for duty. Carter, Arnold's attorney, raised yet another incident during the March trial in which sheriff detectives in December 2019 witnessed Alvarado patronizing a massage parlor that was being investigated for suspected prostitution. Alvarado denied he went there to have a sexual act performed on him." He was demoted from sergeant to deputy for bringing the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in disrepute" and for patronizing an illegitimate business while on duty and neglecting your responsibilities to detectives under your command," Carter said during the trial, citing an internal police report.Carter said in an interview that Lopinto's continued defense and employment of Alvarado represented a permissive attitude toward questionable behavior.He stood by" Alvarado, who shows no contrition, no remorse," Carter said.

by Perla Trevizo, Melissa Sanchez, Mica Rosenberg and Maryam Jameel Leer en espanol. The Trump administration sent more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, and accused them of being members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang. For the past four months, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have been reporting on these men, their backgrounds and how they ended up in custody. We've written about how the administration knew before removing them that the vast majority had not been convicted of any crimes in the U.S., contradicting its claims that the men were the worst of the worst," and how, by and large, they were abiding by the immigration system and not absconding from authorities. Now that they've been returned to Venezuela, we're continuing to report on who the men are and what they went through. Do you have information about the men or about the operation in which they were deported that you can share? Fill out this form or contact us via Signal at 917-512-0201 or WhatsApp at 917-327-4868. We appreciate you sharing your story and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering this information for the purposes of our reporting, and we will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.

by Mark Olalde ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Ka'ila Farrell-Smith grew up in a community that was deeply involved in the fight for Indigenous rights, protesting broken treaties and other mistreatment of Native American people. Members of the movement, she said, understood that law enforcement agencies were surveilling their activities.I've been warned my entire life, The FBI's watching us,'" said Farrell-Smith, a member of the Klamath Tribes in Oregon.Government records later confirmed wide-ranging FBI surveillance of the movement in the 1970s, and now the agency is focused on her and a new generation of Indigenous activists challenging development of a mine in northern Nevada. Farrell-Smith advises the group People of Red Mountain, which opposes a Canadian company's efforts to tap what it says is one of the world's largest lithium deposits.Law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have for years worked alongside private mine security to surveil the largely peaceful protesters who oppose the mine, called Thacker Pass, according to more than 2,000 pages of internal law enforcement communications reviewed by ProPublica. Officers and agents have tracked protesters' social media, while the mining company has gathered video from a camera above a campsite protesters set up on public land near the mine. An FBI joint terrorism task force in Reno met in June 2022 with a focus on Thacker Pass," the records also show, and Lithium Americas - the main company behind the mine - hired a former FBI agent specializing in counterterrorism to develop its security plan. We're out there doing ceremony and they're surveilling us," Farrell-Smith said.They treat us like we're domestic terrorists," added Chanda Callao, an organizer with People of Red Mountain.All told, about 10 agencies have monitored the mine's opponents. In addition to the FBI, those agencies include the Bureau of Land Management, Humboldt County Sheriff's Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Nevada State Police Highway Patrol, Winnemucca Police Department and Nevada Threat Analysis Center, the records show.Andrew Ferguson, who studies surveillance technology at the American University Washington College of Law, called the scrutiny of Indigenous and environmental protesters as potential terrorists chilling."It obviously should be concerning to activists that anything they do in their local area might be seen in this broad-brush way of being a federal issue of terrorism or come under the observation of the FBI and all of the powers that come with it," Ferguson said.The FBI did not respond to requests for comment. The Bureau of Land Management, which coordinated much of the interagency response, declined to comment. Most of the law enforcement activity has focused on monitoring, and one person has been arrested to date as a result of the protests.Mike Allen, who served as Humboldt County's sheriff until January 2023, said his office's role was simply to monitor the situation at Thacker Pass. We would go up there and make periodic patrol activity," he said.Allen defended the joint terrorism task force, saying it was where we would just all get together and discuss things." (The FBI characterizes such task forces, which include various agencies working in an area, as the front line of defense against terrorism.) In this May 2022 email, an FBI special agent invites Nevada's Humboldt County Sheriff's Office to a joint terrorism task force meeting focused on Thacker Pass. (Records obtained by Siskiyou Rising Tide and Information for Public Use. Highlighted and redacted by ProPublica.) Tim Crowley, Lithium Americas' vice president of government and external affairs, said in a statement: Protestors have vandalized property, blocked roads and dangerously climbed on Lithium Americas' equipment. In all those cases, Lithium Americas avoided engagement with the protestors and coordinated with the local authorities when necessary for the protection of everyone involved."Crowley noted that Lithium Americas has worked with Indigenous communities near the mine to study cultural artifacts and is offering to build projects worth millions of dollars for the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, such as a community center and greenhouse.But individuals and the community groups opposed to the mine don't want money. They worry mining will pollute local sources of water in the nation's driest state and harm culturally significant sites, including that of an 1865 massacre of Indigenous people.We understand how the land is sacred and how much culture and how much history is within the McDermitt Caldera," Callao said of the basin where Thacker Pass is located. We know how much it means to not only the next generation, but the next seven generations." First image: Construction at Lithium Americas' Thacker Pass mine near Orovada, Nevada. Second image: Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, center, and Rep. Mark Amodei, left, tour the site of a future housing facility for miners in Winnemucca, Nevada. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent) A Familiar ConflictIndigenous groups are increasingly at odds with mining companies as climate change brings economies around the globe to an inflection point. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are contributing to increasingly intense hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and droughts. The solution - powering the electrical grid, vehicles and factories with cleaner energy sources - brings tradeoffs.Massive amounts of metals are required to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy infrastructure. Demand for lithium will skyrocket 350% by 2040, largely to be used in electric vehicles' rechargeable batteries, according to the International Energy Agency.The U.S. produces very little lithium - and China controls a majority of refining capacity worldwide - so development of Thacker Pass enjoys bipartisan support, receiving a key permit in President Donald Trump's first administration and a $2.26 billion loan from President Joe Biden's administration. (Development ran into issues in June, when a Nevada agency notified the company that it was using groundwater without the proper permit. Company representatives have said they are confident that they will resolve the matter.)Many minerals needed to produce cleaner energy are found on Indigenous lands. For example, 85% of known global lithium reserves are on or near Indigenous people's lands, according to a 2022 study by researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia, the University of the Free State in South Africa and elsewhere. The situation has put Indigenous communities at odds with mining industries as tribes are asked to sacrifice land and sovereignty to combat climate change.Luke Danielson is a mining consultant and lawyer who for decades has researched how mining affects Indigenous lands. What I fear would be we set loose a land rush where we're trampling over all the Indigenous people and we're taking all the public land and essentially privatizing it to mining companies," he said.If companies or governments attempt to force mining on such communities, it can slow development, noted Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh, a professor emeritus of Australia's Griffith University and author of Indigenous Peoples and Mining."If there are bulldozers coming down the road and they are going to destroy an area that is central to people's identity and their existence, they are going to fight," he said. The solution is you actually put First Peoples in a position of equal power so that they can negotiate outcomes that allow for timely, and indeed speedy, development." Environmental activists Will Falk, left, and Max Wilbert led early opposition to the mine, after which the Bureau of Land Management fined them tens of thousands of dollars for the cost of monitoring them. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent) We're Not There for an Uprising"Most of the documents tracing law enforcement's involvement at Thacker Pass were obtained via public records requests by two advocacy groups focused on climate change and law enforcement, Siskiyou Rising Tide and Information for Public Use. They shared the records with ProPublica, which obtained additional documents through separate public records requests to law enforcement agencies.Given the monitoring of mining's opponents highlighted in the records, experts raised questions about authorities' role: Is the government there to support industrial development, protect civil liberties or act as an unbiased arbiter? At Thacker Pass, the documents show, law enforcement has helped defend the mine.Protests have at times escalated.A small group of more radical environmentalists led by non-Indigenous activists propelled the early movement, setting up a campsite on public land near the proposed mine site in January 2021. In June 2022, a protester from France wrote on social media, We'll need all the AR15s We can get on the frontlines!" Tensions peaked in June 2023, when several protesters entered the worksite and blocked bulldozers, leading to one arrest.That group - which calls itself Protect Thacker Pass - argued that its actions were justified. Will Falk, one of the group's organizers, said that, in any confrontation, scrutiny unfairly falls on protesters instead of companies or the government. As a culture, we've become so used to militarized police that we don't understand that, out of the group of people gathered, the people who are actually violent are the ones with the guns," he said.Falk and another organizer were, as a result of their participation in protests, barred by court order from returning to Thacker Pass and disrupting construction, and the Bureau of Land Management fined them for alleged trespass on public lands during the protest. The agency charged them $49,877.71 for officers' time and mileage to monitor them, according to agency records Falk shared with ProPublica. Falk said his group tried to work with the agency to obtain permits and is disputing the fine to a federal board of appeals.None of us are armed. We're not there for an uprising," said Gary McKinney, a spokesperson for People of Red Mountain, which parted ways with Falk's group before the incident that led to an arrest.McKinney, a member of the Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute Tribe, leads annual prayer rides, journeying hundreds of miles across northern Nevada on horseback with other Native American activists to Thacker Pass. He described the rides, intended to raise awareness of mining's impact on tribes and the environment, as a way to exercise rights under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which protects tribes' ability to practice traditional spirituality. Still, the group feels watched. A trail camera once mysteriously appeared near their campsite along the path of the prayer ride. They also crossed paths with security personnel.Beyond the trail rides, the FBI tracks McKinney's activity, the records show. The agency informed other law enforcement when he promoted a Fourth of July powwow and rodeo on his reservation, and it flagged a speech he delivered at a conference for mining-affected communities.We're being watched, we're being followed, we're under the microscope," McKinney said. First image: Then-Humboldt County Sheriff Mike Allen questioned whether Raymond Mey, a Lithium Americas security contractor, had a state private investigator's license in a June 2021 email. Second image: Mey pushed the Bureau of Land Management, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office and others for a coordinated law enforcement strategy to address protests at Thacker Pass in a June 2021 email. (Records obtained by Siskiyou Rising Tide and Information for Public Use. Highlighted, redacted and excerpted by ProPublica.) The records show security personnel hired by Lithium Americas speaking as if an uprising could be imminent. To date, there has been no violence or serious property destruction, however, the activities of these protest groups could change to a more aggressive actions and violent demeanor at any time," Raymond Mey, who joined Lithium Americas' security team for a time after a career with the FBI, wrote to law enforcement agencies in July 2022.Mey also researched protesters' activities, sharing his findings with law enforcement. In an April 2021 update, for example, he provided an aerial photograph of the protesters' campsite. Law enforcement agencies worked with Mey, and he pushed to make that relationship closer, seeking an integrated and coordinated law enforcement strategy to deal with the protestors at Thacker Pass." The records indicate that the FBI was open to him attending its joint terrorism task force.Mey is not licensed with the Nevada Private Investigators Licensing Board, which is required to perform such work in the state, according to agency records.Mey said that he didn't believe he needed a license because he wasn't pursuing investigations. He said that his advice to the company was to avoid direct conflict with protesters and only call the police when necessary. First image: Gary McKinney, spokesperson for People of Red Mountain. Second image: Members of the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, People of Red Mountain, the Burns Paiute Tribe and others march in Reno, Nevada, to oppose the Thacker Pass mine. (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent) We Shouldn't Have to Accept the Burden of the Climate Crisis"The battle over Thacker Pass reflects renewed strife between mining and drilling industries and Indigenous people. Two recent fights at the heart of this clash have intersected with Thacker Pass - one concerning an oil pipeline in the Great Plains and the other over a copper mine in the Southwest.Beginning in 2016 and continuing for nearly a year, a large protest camp on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation sought to halt construction of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline. Members of the Indigenous-led movement contended that it threatened the region's water. The protest turned violent, leading to hundreds of arrests. Law enforcement eventually cleared the camp and the pipeline was completed.Law enforcement agencies feared similar opposition at Thacker Pass, the records show.In April 2021, Allen, then the local sheriff, and his staff met with Mark Pfeifle, president and CEO of the communications firm Off the Record Strategies, to discuss lessons learned" from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Pfeifle, who helped the Bush administration build support for the second Gulf War, had more recently led a public relations blitz to discredit the Standing Rock protesters. This involved suggesting using a fake news crew and mocking up wanted posters for activists, according to emails obtained by news organizations. Pfeifle sent Allen presentations about the law enforcement response at Standing Rock, including one on Examples of Fake News' and disinformation" from the protesters. As always, we stand ready to help your office and your citizens," he wrote to the sheriff.The department appears not to have hired Pfeifle, although Allen directed his staff to also meet with Pfeifle's colleague who worked on the Standing Rock response.Around July 2021, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office held a meeting to plan for the reality of a large-scale incident at Thacker Pass" similar to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Police referred to the ongoing protests on public land at Thacker Pass as an occupation."Allen said he didn't remember meeting with Pfeifle but said he wanted to be prepared for anything. We didn't know what to expect, but from what we understand, there were professional protestors up there and more were coming in," he said.Pfeifle didn't respond to requests for comment.Members of People of Red Mountain have also traveled to Arizona to object to the development of a controversial copper mine that's planned in a national forest east of Phoenix. There, some members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe oppose the development because it would destroy an area they use for ceremonies. (In May, the Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing a land transfer, removing the final key obstacle to the mine.)On these trips, Callao and others have frequently found a notice of baggage inspection" from the Transportation Security Administration in their checked luggage. She provided ProPublica with photos of five such notices.An agency spokesperson said that screening equipment does not know to whom the bag belongs when it triggers an alarm, and officers must search it.To Callao, the surveillance, whether by luggage inspection, security camera or counterterrorism task force, adds to the weight placed on Indigenous communities amid the energy transition.We shouldn't have to accept the burden of the climate crisis," Callao said, We should be able to protect our ancestral homelands."

by Abe Streep ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Despite the Trump administration's public pronouncements that it has hired enough wildland firefighters, documents obtained by ProPublica show a high vacancy rate, as well as internal concern among top officials as more than 1 million acres burn across 10 states.Less than a month ago, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that the Trump administration had done a historically good job preparing the nation for the summer fire season. We are on track to meet and potentially exceed our firefighting hiring goals," said Rollins, during an address to Western governors. Rollins oversees the wildland firefighting workforce at the U.S. Forest Service, a subagency of the Department of Agriculture. Rollins had noted in her remarks that the administration had exempted firefighters from a federal hiring freeze, and she claimed that the administration was outdoing its predecessor: We have reached 96% of our hiring goal, far outpacing the rate of hiring and onboarding over the past three years and in the previous administration."Since then, the Forest Service's assertions have gotten even more optimistic: The agency now claims it has reached 99% of its firefighting hiring goal.But according to internal data obtained by ProPublica, Rollins' characterization is dangerously misleading. She omitted a wave of resignations from the agency this spring and that many senior management positions remain vacant. Layoffs by the Department of Government Efficiency, voluntary deferred resignations and early retirements have severely hampered the wildland firefighting force. According to the internal national data, which has not been previously reported, more than 4,500 Forest Service firefighting jobs - as many as 27% - remained vacant as of July 17. A Forest Service employee who is familiar with the data said it comes from administrators who input staffing information into a computer tool used to create organization charts. The employee said that while the data could contain inaccuracies in certain forests, it broadly reflects the agency's desired staffing levels. The employee said the data showing active" unfilled positions was current and up-to-date for last week." The Department of Agriculture disputes that assessment, but the figures are supported by anecdotal accounts from wildland firefighters in New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, California and Wyoming. According to a recent survey by Forest Service fire managers in California, 26% of engine captain positions and 42% of engineer positions were vacant. A veteran Forest Service firefighter in California characterized the Trump administration's current estimate of the size of its firefighting workforce as grossly inaccurate."Last week, Tom Schultz, the chief of the Forest Service, circulated a letter to high-ranking officials in the agency that underscored the dire moment. As expected, the 2025 Fire Year is proving to be extremely challenging," wrote Schultz in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by ProPublica. We know the demand for resources outpaces their availability." Schultz at once directed staff to employ full suppression - stomping out fires as quickly as possible, instead of letting them burn for the sake of landscape management - and acknowledged that the resources necessary to pursue such an aggressive strategy were lacking. All options were on the table, he wrote, including directing human-resources employees to fight fires and asking recently departed employees with firefighting qualifications to return to work.When asked about the discrepancy between Schultz's memo and Rollins' public statements on firefighting staffing at the Forest Service, an agency spokesperson said that Schultz was referring to employees who can be called on to bolster the agency's response as fire activity increases," while Rollins was pointing only to full-time firefighters. The Forest Service remains fully equipped and operationally ready to protect people and communities from wildfire," the spokesperson said, noting that many individuals that have separated from the Agency either through retirements or voluntary resignations still possess active wildland fire qualifications and are making themselves available to support fire response operations."The federal government employs thousands of wildland firefighters, but the precise number is opaque. Throughout the Department of the Interior, which is overseen by Secretary Doug Burgum, there are about 5,800 wildland firefighters in four agencies that have been impacted by cuts. An employee at a national park in Colorado that is threatened by wildfire said that they were severely understaffed during the Biden administration on most fronts, and now it's so much worse than it's ever been."But the Forest Service is by far the largest employer of wildland firefighters, and it has long used gymnastic arithmetic to paint an optimistic picture of its staffing. Last summer, ProPublica reported that the Forest Service under President Joe Biden had overstated its capacity. Robert Kuhn, a former Forest Service official who between 2009 and 2011 co-authored an assessment of the agency's personnel needs, recently said that the practice of selectively counting firefighters dates back years. What the public needs to understand is, that is just a very small number of what is needed every summer," he said. Riva Duncan, a retired Forest Service fire chief and the vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a labor advocacy organization, said staffing is a constant frustration for managers on the ground. We have engines that are completely unstaffed," said Duncan, who remains active in wildland firefighting, having worked in temporary roles this summer. We have vacant positions in management."That said, there is a difference this fire season from years past. Officials in the previous administration publicly acknowledged the danger presented by an exodus of experienced wildland firefighters. The Trump administration has taken a different approach - claiming to have solved the problem while simultaneously exacerbating it. When asked about the staffing cuts, Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, wrote, President Trump is proud of all Secretary Rollins has accomplished to improve forest management, including by ending the 2001 Roadless Rule for stronger fire prevention, and Secretary Burgum's great work protecting our nation's treasured public lands."In March, Congress finally codified a permanent raise for federal wildland firefighters via the appropriations process, a change that advocates have sought for years. In her remarks in June, Rollins credited the president: Out of gratitude for the selfless service of our Forest Service firefighters, President Trump permanently increased the pay for our federal wildland firefighters."But in February, the Trump administration laid off about 700 employees who support wildland fire operations, from human-resource managers to ecologists and trail-crew workers. Those employees possess what are known as red cards - certifications that allow them to work on fire crews. Many were subsequently rehired, but the administration then pushed Forest Service employees to accept deferred resignations and early retirements.Last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to combine their firefighting forces. For the moment, it's unknown what form that restructuring will take, but many Forest Service firefighters are anticipating further staffing cuts. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior wrote, We are taking steps to unify federal wildfire programs to streamline bureaucracy."Administration officials have maintained that employees primarily assigned to wildland fire were exempted from the resignation offers this spring. But according to another internal data set obtained by ProPublica, of the more than 4,000 Forest Service employees who accepted deferred resignations and early retirements, approximately 1,600 had red cards. (A spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture wrote that the actual number was 1,400, adding that 85 of them have decided to return for the season.")Even those figures don't account for all the lost institutional knowledge. The departures included meteorologists who provided long-range forecasts, allowing fire managers to decide where to deploy crews. One of the meteorologists who left was Charles Maxwell, who had for more than 20 years interpreted weather models predicting summer monsoons at the Southwest Coordination Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, an interagency office. The thunderstorms can fuel wildfire, with lightning and wind, and extinguish them, with great rains. Lately, according to Maxwell, the monsoons have become less and less reliable, and understanding their nuances can be challenging. Maxwell said that he'd already been planning to retire next year. But he also said he was concerned with the degree of chaos, the potential degradation of services and what would happen to my job."Maxwell noted that his work had been covered by knowledgeable fill-ins from out of state. But another firefighter who worked on blazes in New Mexico said that Maxwell's understanding of the monsoon had been missed. A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior, which oversees the interagency office where Maxwell worked, wrote, We do not comment on personnel matters."The monsoon season is now here and has brought deadly flash flooding along old burn scars in Ruidoso, New Mexico, while distributing sporadic rain in the state's Gila National Forest.It is shaping up to be a severe fire season. On Monday, federal firefighters reported 86 new fires across the West; by Tuesday, there were 105 more. And there's already been some criticism of the federal response. Arizona's governor and members of Congress have called for an investigation into the Park Service's handling of a blaze this month that leveled a historic lodge on the Grand Canyon's North Rim. Last month, Rollins acknowledged, Fires don't know Republican or Democrat, or which side of the aisle you are on." This much, at least, is true. Ellis Simani contributed data analysis.

by Heather Vogell and Topher Sanders ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. The Trump administration is considering slashing rules meant to protect the environment and the public during commercial rocket launches, changes that companies like Elon Musk's SpaceX have long sought.A draft executive order being circulated among federal agencies, and viewed by ProPublica, directs Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to use all available authorities to eliminate or expedite" environmental reviews for launch licenses. It could also, in time, require states to allow more launches or even more launch sites - known as spaceports - along their coastlines.The order is a step toward the rollback of federal oversight that Musk, who has fought bitterly with the Federal Aviation Administration over his space operations, and others have pushed for. Commercial rocket launches have grown exponentially more frequent in recent years.Critics warn such a move could have dangerous consequences.It would not be reasonable for them to be rescinding regulations that are there to protect the public interest, and the public, from harm," said Jared Margolis, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit that works to protect animals and the environment. And that's my fear here: Are they going to change things in a way that puts people at risk, that puts habitats and wildlife at risk?"The White House did not answer questions about the draft order.The Trump administration is committed to cementing America's dominance in space without compromising public safety or national security," said White House spokesperson Kush Desai. Unless announced by President Trump, however, discussion about any potential policy changes should be deemed speculation."The order would give Trump even more direct control over the space industry's chief regulator by turning the civil servant position leading the FAA's Office of Commercial Space Transportation into a political appointment. The last head of the office and two other top officials recently took voluntary separation offers. The order would also create a new adviser to the transportation secretary to shepherd in deregulation of the space industry.The draft order comes as SpaceX is ramping up its ambitious project to build a reusable deep-space rocket to carry people to Earth's orbit, the moon and eventually Mars. The rocket, called Starship, is the largest, most powerful ever built, standing 403 feet tall with its booster. The company has hit some milestones but has also been beset by problems, as three of the rockets launched from Texas this year have exploded - disrupting air traffic and raining debris on beaches and roads in the Caribbean and Gulf waters.The draft order also seeks to restrict the authority of state coastal officials who have challenged commercial launch companies like SpaceX, documents show. It could lead to federal officials interfering with state efforts to enforce their environmental rules when they conflict with the construction or operation of spaceports.Derek Brockbank, executive director for the Coastal States Organization, said the proposed executive order could ultimately force state commissions to prioritize spaceport infrastructure over other land uses, such as renewable energy, waterfront development or coastal restoration, along the coastline. His nonprofit represents 34 coastal states and territories.It's concerning that it could potentially undermine the rights of a state to determine how it wants its coast used, which was the very fundamental premise of the congressionally authorized Coastal Zone Management Act," he said. We shouldn't see any president, no matter what their party is, coming in and saying, This is what a state should prioritize or should do.'"SpaceX is already suing the California Coastal Commission, accusing the agency of political bias and interference with the company's efforts to increase the number of Falcon 9 rocket launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base. The reusable Falcon 9 is SpaceX's workhorse rocket, ferrying satellites to orbit and astronauts to the International Space Station.The changes outlined in the order would greatly benefit SpaceX, which launches far more rockets into space than any other company in the U.S. But it would also help rivals such as Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and California-based Rocket Lab. The companies have been pushing to pare down oversight for years, warning that the U.S. is racing with China to return to the moon - in hopes of mining resources like water and rare earth metals and using it as a stepping stone to Mars - and could lose if regulations don't allow U.S. companies to move faster, said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Space Federation, a trade group that represents eight launch companies, including SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab.It sounds like they've been listening to industry, because all of those things are things that we've been advocating for strongly," Cavossa said when asked about the contents of the draft order.Cavossa said he sees some sort of environmental review process" continuing to take place. What we're talking about doing is right-sizing it," he said.He added, We can't handle a yearlong delay for launch licenses."The former head of the FAA's commercial space office said at a Congressional hearing last September that the office took an average of 151 days to issue a new license during the previous 11 years.Commercial space launches have boomed in recent years - from 26 in 2019 to 157 last year. With more than 500 total launches, mostly from Texas, Florida and California, SpaceX has been responsible for the lion's share, according to FAA data.But the company has tangled with the FAA, which last year proposed fining it $633,000 for violations related to two of its launches. The FAA did not answer a question last week about the status of the proposed fine.SpaceX, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and the FAA did not respond to requests for comment.Currently, the FAA's environmental reviews look at 14 types of potential impacts that include air and water quality, noise pollution and land use, and provide details about the launches that are not otherwise available. They have at times drawn big responses from the public.When SpaceX sought to increase its Starship launches in Texas from five to 25 a year, residents and government agencies submitted thousands of comments. Most of the nearly 11,400 publicly posted comments opposed the increase, a ProPublica analysis found. The FAA approved the increase anyway earlier this year. After conducting an environmental assessment for the May launch of SpaceX's Starship Flight 9 from Texas, the FAA released documents that revealed as many as 175 airline flights could be disrupted and Turks and Caicos' Providenciales International Airport would need to close during the launch.In addition to seeking to cut short environmental reviews, the executive order would open the door for the federal government to rescind sections of the federal rule that seeks to keep the public safe during launches and reentries.The rule, referred to as Part 450, was approved during Trump's first term and aimed to streamline commercial space regulations and speed approvals of launches. But the rule soon fell out of favor with launch companies, which said the FAA didn't provide enough guidance on how to comply and was taking too long to review applications.Musk helped lead the charge. Last September, he told attendees at a conference in Los Angeles, It really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than paper can move from one desk to another." He called for the resignation of the head of the FAA, who stepped down as Trump took office.Other operators have expressed similar frustration, and some members of Congress have signaled support for an overhaul. In February, Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., signed a letter asking the Government Accountability Office to review the process for approving commercial launches and reentries. In their letter, Babin and Lofgren wrote they wanted to understand whether the rules are effectively and efficiently accommodating United States commercial launch and reentry operations, especially as the cadence and technological diversity of such operations continues to increase.The draft executive order directs the secretary of transportation to reevaluate, amend, or rescind" sections of Part 450 to enable a diversified set of operators to achieve an increase in commercial space launch cadence and novel space activities by an order of magnitude by 2030."The order also directs the Department of Commerce to streamline regulation of novel space activity, which experts say could include things like mining or making repairs in space, that doesn't fall under other regulations. Brandon Roberts and Pratheek Rebala contributed data analysis.

by Lexi Churchill and Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues. Sixteen months had passed since Hurricane Harvey tore through the Texas coast in August 2017, killing more than 80 people and flattening entire neighborhoods. And when Texas lawmakers gathered in Austin for their biennial session, the scale of the storm's destruction was hard to ignore.Legislators responded by greenlighting a yearslong statewide initiative to evaluate flood risks and improve preparedness for increasingly frequent and deadly storms. If we get our planning right on the front end and prevent more damage on the front end, then we have less on the back end," Charles Perry, a Republican senator from Lubbock who chairs a committee overseeing environmental issues, said at the time.In the years that followed, hundreds of local officials and volunteers canvassed communities across Texas, mapping out vulnerabilities. The result of their work came in 2024 with the release of Texas' first-ever state flood plan.Their findings identified nearly $55 billion in proposed projects and outlined 15 key recommendations, including nine suggestions for legislation. Several were aimed at aiding rural communities like Kerr County, where flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend killed more than 100 people. Three are still missing.But this year, lawmakers largely ignored those recommendations.Instead, the legislative session that ended June 2 was dominated by high-profile battles over school vouchers and lawmakers' decision to spend $51 billion to maintain and provide new property tax cuts, an amount nearly equal to the funding identified by the Texas Water Development Board, a state agency that has historically overseen water supply and conservation efforts.Although it had been only seven years since Hurricane Harvey, legislators now prioritized the state's water and drought crisis over flooding needs. Legislators allocated more than $1.6 billion in new revenue for water infrastructure projects, only some of which would go toward flood mitigation. They also passed a bill that will ask voters in November to decide whether to approve $1 billion annually over the next two decades that would prioritize water and wastewater over flood mitigation projects. At that pace, water experts said that it could take decades before existing mitigation needs are addressed - even without further floods.Even if they had been approved by lawmakers this year, many of the plan's recommendations would not have been implemented before the July 4 disaster. But a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of legislative proposals, along with interviews with lawmakers and flood experts, found that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact key measures that would help communities prepare for frequent flooding.Such inaction often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities hardest because they lack the tax base to fund major flood prevention projects and often cannot afford to produce the data they need to qualify for state and federal grants, environmental experts and lawmakers said.Over the years, legislators have declined to pass at least three bills that would create siren or alert systems, tools experts say can be especially helpful in rural communities that lack reliable internet and cell service. A 2019 state-commissioned report estimated flood prevention needs at over $30 billion. Since then, lawmakers have allocated just $1.4 billion. And they ignored the key recommendations from the state's 2024 flood plan that are meant to help rural areas like Kerr County, which is dubbed Flash Flood Alley" due to its geography. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, left, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, right, look on as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs an emergency proclamation during a press conference in Kerrville. (Ronaldo Bolanos/The Texas Tribune) Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, did not answer questions about why the plan's recommendations were overlooked but defended the Legislature's investment in flood mitigation as significant. They pointed to millions more spent on other prevention efforts, including flood control dam construction and maintenance, regional flood projects, and increased floodplain disclosures and drainage requirements for border counties. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not respond to questions.This week, the Legislature will convene for a special session that Abbott called to address a range of priorities, including flood warning systems, natural disaster preparation and relief funding. Patrick promised that the state would purchase warning sirens for counties in flash flood zones. Similar efforts, however, have previously been rejected by the Legislature. Alongside Burrows, Patrick also announced the formation of committees on disaster preparedness and flooding and called the move just the beginning of the Legislature looking at every aspect of this tragic event." Burrows said the House is ready to better fortify our state against future disasters."But Rep. Ana-Maria Rodriguez Ramos, a Democrat from Richardson, near Dallas, said state lawmakers have brushed off dire flood prevention needs for decades.The manual was there, and we ignored it, and we've continued to ignore these recommendations," said Rodriguez Ramos, who has served on the House Natural Resources Committee overseeing water issues for three sessions. It's performative to say we're trying to do something knowing well we're not doing enough."One recommendation from the 2024 flood plan would have cost the state nothing to enact. It called for granting counties the authority to levy drainage fees, including in unincorporated areas, that could fund local flood projects. Only about 150 of 1,450 Texas cities and counties have dedicated drainage fees, according to a study cited in the state assessment.Kerr, a conservative county of 53,000 people, has struggled to gain support for projects that would raise taxes. About a week after the flooding, some residents protested when county commissioners discussed a property tax increase to help cover the costs of recovery efforts.The inability to raise such fees is one of the biggest impediments for local governments seeking to fund flood mitigation projects, said Robert R. Puente, a Democrat and former state representative who once chaired the state committee responsible for water issues. Lawmakers' resistance to such efforts is rooted in fiscal conservatism, said Puente, who now heads the San Antonio Water System.It's mostly because of a philosophy that the leadership in Austin has right now, that under no circumstances are we going to raise taxes, and under most circumstances we're not even going to allow local governments to have control over how they raise taxes or implement fees," he said.Another one of the flood plan's recommendations called for lawmakers to allocate money for a technical assistance program to help underresourced and rural governments better manage flood prone areas, which requires implementing a slew of standards to ensure safe development in those hazardous zones. Doing this work requires local officials to collect accurate mapping that shows the risk of flooding. Passing this measure could have helped counties like Kerr with that kind of data collection, which the plan recognized is especially challenging for rural and economically disadvantaged communities.Insufficient information impacts Texas's ability to fully understand flood risks statewide. The water board's plan, for example, includes roughly 600 infrastructure projects across Texas in need of completion. But its report acknowledged that antiquated or missing data meant another 3,100 assessments would be required to know whether additional projects are needed.In the Guadalupe River region, which includes Kerr County, 65% of areas lacked adequate flood mapping. Kerrville, the county seat, was listed among the areas identified as having the greatest known flood risks and mitigation needs." Yet of the 19 flood needs specific to the city and county, only three were included in the state plan's list of 600. They included requests to install backup generators in critical facilities and repair low-water crossings, which are shallow points in streets where rainwater can pool to dangerous levels.At least 16 other priorities, including the county's desire for an early warning flood system and potential dam or drainage system repairs, required a follow-up evaluation, according to the state plan. County officials tried to obtain grants for the early warning systems for years, to no avail. Trees uprooted by floodwaters lie across a field in Hunt in Kerr Country on July 5. (Brenda Bazan for The Texas Tribune) Gonzales County, an agriculture-rich area of 20,000 people along the Guadalupe River, is among the rural communities struggling to obtain funding, said emergency management director Jimmy Harless, who is also the county's fire marshal. The county is in desperate need of a siren system and additional gauges to measure the river's potentially dangerous flood levels, Harless said, but doesn't have the resources, personnel or expertise to apply for the burdensome" state grant process.It is extremely frustrating for me to know that there's money there and there's people that care, but our state agency has become so bureaucratic that it's just not feasible for us," Harless said. Our folks' lives are more important than what some bureaucrat wants us to do."For years, Texas leaders have focused more on cleaning up after disasters than on preparing for them, said Jim Blackburn, a professor at Rice University specializing in environmental law and flooding issues.It's no secret that the Guadalupe is prone to flash flooding. That's been known for decades," Blackburn said. The state has been very negligent about kind of preparing us for, frankly, the worst storms of the future that we are seeing today because of climate change, and what's changing is that the risks are just greater today and will be even greater tomorrow, because our storms are getting worse and worse." At a news conference this month, Abbott said state committees would investigate ways to address this," though he declined to offer specifics. When pressed by a reporter about where the blame for the lack of preparedness should fall, Abbott responded that it was the word choice of losers."It shouldn't have taken the Hill Country flooding for a special session addressing emergency systems and funding needs, said Usman Mahmood, a policy analyst at Bayou City Waterkeeper, a Houston nonprofit that advocates for flood protection measures.The worst part pretty much already happened, which is the flooding and the loss of life," he said. Now it's a reaction to that." Misty Harris contributed research.

by Renee Dudley ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Microsoft says it has stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud computing systems after ProPublica revealed the practice in an investigation this week.In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services," the company's chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, announced on X Friday afternoon.Microsoft's announcement came hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said his agency would look into Microsoft's use of foreign-based engineers to help maintain the highly sensitive cloud systems.Foreign engineers - from any country, including of course China - should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems," Hegseth wrote in a post on X Friday.In its investigation, ProPublica detailed how Microsoft uses engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department's computer systems - with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel - leaving some of the nation's most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking or spying from its leading cyber adversary. The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government's cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.But these workers, known as digital escorts," often lack the technical expertise to police the work of foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found.Earlier Friday, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, cited ProPublica in a letter to Hegseth asking for details about which DOD contractors use Chinese personnel to maintain the department's information and computing systems.China poses one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by its infiltrations of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks and supply chains," Cotton wrote in the letter, which he posted on X. DOD must guard against all potential threats within its supply chain, including those from subcontractors." Since 2011, cloud computing companies like Microsoft that wanted to sell their services to the U.S. government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with federal data would have the requisite access authorizations" and background screenings. Additionally, the Defense Department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.This presented an issue for Microsoft, which relies on a vast global workforce with significant operations in India, China and the European Union.So the tech giant enlisted staffing companies to hire U.S.-based digital escorts, who had security clearances that authorized them to access sensitive information, to take direction from the overseas experts. An engineer might briefly describe the job to be completed - for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then, with little review, an escort would copy and paste the engineer's commands into the federal cloud.We're trusting that what they're doing isn't malicious, but we really can't tell," one escort told ProPublica.In an earlier statement in response to ProPublica's investigation, Microsoft said that its personnel and contractors operate in a manner consistent with US Government requirements and processes."The company's global workers have no direct access to customer data or customer systems," the statement said. Escorts with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment."In addition, Microsoft said it has an internal review process known as Lockbox" to make sure the request is deemed safe or has any cause for concern."Insight Global - a contractor that provides digital escorts to Microsoft - said it evaluates the technical capabilities of each resource throughout the interview process to ensure they possess the technical skills required" for the job and provides training. Doris Burke contributed research.

by Jesse Coburn ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is preparing to shut down seven major investigations and cases concerning alleged housing discrimination and segregation, including some where the agency already found civil rights violations, according to HUD records obtained by ProPublica.The high-profile cases involve allegations that state and local governments across the South and Midwest illegally discriminated against people of color by placing industrial plants or low-income housing in their neighborhoods, and by steering similar facilities away from white neighborhoods, among other allegations. HUD has been pursuing these cases - which range from instances where the agency has issued a formal charge of discrimination to newer investigations - for as many as seven years. In three of them, HUD officials had determined that the defendants had violated the Fair Housing Act or related civil rights laws. A HUD staffer familiar with the other four investigations believes civil rights violations occurred in each, the official told ProPublica. Under President Donald Trump, the agency now plans to abruptly end all of them, regardless of prior findings of wrongdoing.Four HUD officials said they could recall no precedent for the plan, which they said signals an acceleration of the administration's retreat from fair housing enforcement. No administration previously has so aggressively rolled back the basic protections that help people who are being harmed in their community," one of the officials said. The civil rights protections that HUD enforces are intended to protect the most vulnerable people in society." In the short term, closing the cases would allow the local governments in question to continue allegedly mistreating minority communities, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. In the long term, they said, it could embolden local politicians and developers elsewhere to take actions that entrench segregation, without fear of punishment from the federal government.HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett declined to answer questions, saying HUD does not comment on active Fair Housing matters or individual personnel."Three of the cases involve accusations that local governments clustered polluting industrial facilities in minority neighborhoods.One concerned a protracted dispute over a scrap metal shredding plant in Chicago. The facility had operated for years in the largely white neighborhood of Lincoln Park. But residents complained ceaselessly of the fumes, debris, noise and, occasionally, smoke emanating from the plant. So the city allegedly pressured the recycling company to close the old facility and open a new one in a minority neighborhood in southeast Chicago. In 2022, HUD found that relocating the Facility to the Southeast Site will bring environmental benefits to a neighborhood that is 80% White and environmental harms to a neighborhood that is 83% Black and Hispanic." Chicago's mayor called allegations of discrimination preposterous," then settled the case and agreed to reforms in 2023. (The new plant has not opened; its owner has sued the city.)In another case, a predominantly white Michigan township allowed an asphalt plant to open on its outskirts, away from its population centers but near subsidized housing complexes in the neighboring poor, mostly Black city of Flint. The township did not respond to a ProPublica inquiry about the case.Still another case involved a plan pushed by the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, to build a water desalination plant in a historically Black neighborhood already fringed by oil refineries and other industrial facilities. (Rates of cancer and birth defects in the area are disproportionately high, and average life expectancy is 15 years lower than elsewhere in the city, researchers found.) The city denied the allegations. Construction of the plant is expected to conclude in 2028.Three other cases involve allegations of discrimination in municipal land use decisions. In Memphis, Tennessee, the city and its utility allegedly coerced residents of a poor Black neighborhood to sell their homes so that it could build a new facility there. In Cincinnati, the city has allegedly concentrated low-income housing in poor Black neighborhoods and kept it out of white neighborhoods. And in Chicago, the city has given local politicians veto power over development proposals in their districts, resulting in little new affordable housing in white neighborhoods. (Memphis, its utility and Chicago have disputed the allegations; Cincinnati declined to comment on them.)The last case involved a Texas state agency allegedly diverting $1 billion in disaster mitigation money away from Houston and other communities of color hit hard by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and toward more rural, white communities less damaged by the storm. The agency has disputed the allegations.All of the investigations and cases are now slated to be closed. HUD is also planning to stop enforcing the settlement it reached in the Chicago recycling case, the records show.The move to drop the cases is being directed by Brian Hawkins, a recent Trump administration hire at HUD who serves as a senior adviser in the Fair Housing Office, two agency officials said. Hawkins has no law degree or prior experience in housing, according to his LinkedIn profile. But this month, he circulated a list within HUD of the seven cases that indicated the agency's plans for them. In the cases that involve Cincinnati, Corpus Christi, Flint and Houston, the agency would find no cause on [the] merits," the list reads. In the two Chicago cases and the one involving Memphis, HUD would rescind letters documenting the agency's prior findings. Hawkins did not respond to a request for comment.The list does not offer a legal justification for dropping the cases. But Hawkins also circulated a memo that indicates the reasoning behind dropping one - the Chicago recycling case. The memo cites an executive order issued by Trump in April eliminating federal enforcement of disparate-impact liability," the doctrine that seemingly neutral policies or practices could have a discriminatory effect. Hawkins' memo stated that the Department will not interpret environmental impacts as violations of fair housing law absent a showing of intentional discrimination." Four HUD officials said such a position would be a stark departure from prior department policy and relevant case law.The reversal on the Chicago recycling case also follows behind-the-scenes pressure on HUD from Sen. Jim Banks. In June, Banks, a Republican from Indiana, wrote a letter to HUD Secretary Scott Turner and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin in which he criticized the administration of President Joe Biden's handling of the case as brazen overreach." Noting that the Chicago plant would supply metal to Indiana steel mills, Banks asked the Trump appointees to take any actions you deem necessary to remedy the situation." Banks did not respond to a request for comment.That case and others among the seven had also received scrutiny from other federal and state agencies, including the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice. The EPA declined to say whether it was still pursuing any of the cases. The DOJ did not respond to the same inquiry.The case closures at HUD would be the latest stage in a broad rollback of fair housing enforcement under the Trump administration, which ProPublica reported on previously. That rollback has continued in other ways as well. The agency recently initiated a plan to transfer more than half of its fair housing attorneys in the office of general counsel into unrelated roles, compounding prior staff losses since the beginning of the year, four HUD officials told ProPublica.The officials fear long-lasting ramifications from the changes. Fair housing laws shape our cities, shape where housing gets built, where pollution occurs, where disaster money goes," one official said. Without them, we have a different country."

by Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica; Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune; Mica Rosenberg and Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica; Ronna Risquez, Alianza Rebelde Investiga; and Adrian Gonzalez, Cazadores de Fake News Leer en espanol. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans, and Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News. On Feb. 15, Jose Manuel Ramos Bastidas called his wife from inside a Texas immigration detention facility.He asked her to record a message so there would be some lasting evidence of his story.They detained me simply because of my tattoos. I am not a criminal."The Trump administration had sent dozens of Venezuelan immigrants to Guantanamo. He was afraid the same would happen to him.Just in case something happens to me, so you can be aware."Uncertain about his fate, Ramos wanted to make sure there was a record of what happened to him.A month later, he was gone.Ramos never set foot in the U.S. - at least not as a free man. He left Venezuela in January 2024, hoping to earn enough money to pay for his newborn son's medical needs. Born with a respiratory condition, the family's milagrito," or little miracle," had severe asthma and repeatedly needed to be hospitalized. The cost of treatment had become impossible to manage on the meager wages Ramos made washing cars in Venezuela's collapsed economy, so he trekked thousands of miles through a half dozen countries to reach the U.S. border. When Ramos arrived, he didn't sneak into the country. He followed the rules established by the Biden administration for immigrants seeking asylum. He signed up for an appointment through a government app and, when he was granted one, turned himself in to request protection. An immigration official and a judge determined he didn't qualify, and Ramos didn't fight the decision.The government kept him in detention until he could be deported back to Venezuela.In the months that followed, Donald Trump was elected president for a second term and began his mass deportation campaign. Among his first actions was to fly groups of Venezuelan immigrants whom he had labeled dangerous gang members to a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Ramos, 30, panicked and called his wife to say he was worried that the same was going to happen to him. On a video call his wife recorded, he held up a document he said was proof that immigration authorities had agreed to deport him to Venezuela. But he worried that they would not honor that promise. I have a family," he said, staring directly into the camera. I am simply a hard-working Venezuelan. I haven't committed any crimes. I don't have a criminal record in my country nor anywhere else."A month later, a more upbeat Ramos called again. He seemed confident that U.S. officials would send him home. Ramos' family started preparing for his return. They planned to bake him a cake, cook his favorite chicken dish and go to church together to thank God for bringing him home safely.They never heard from him again. First image: Bastidas rests with Ramos' son and her grandson, Jared, at their home in Venezuela. Second image: Rodriguez holds her phone, showing a photo of her husband. (Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune) On March 15, a day after that call, Ramos and more than 230 other Venezuelan men were sent to the CECOT maximum-security prison in El Salvador, one of the most notorious in the Western Hemisphere. Without publicly providing evidence, the administration accused each of them of being members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang it designated a terrorist organization.In the months since the mass deportation - one of the most consequential in recent history - the Trump administration has released almost no details about the backgrounds of the people it deported, calling them monsters," sick criminals" and the worst of the worst." Several news organizations have reported that most of the men did not have criminal records. ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of Venezuelan journalists from Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates) and Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) went further, finding that the government's own records showed that it knew the vast majority of the men had not been convicted of violent crimes in the U.S. We also searched records in South America and found that only a few had committed violent crimes abroad.Now, a case-by-case examination of each of the deportees, along with interviews with their lawyers and family members, reveals another jarring reality: Most of the men were not hiding from federal authorities but were instead moving through the nation's immigration system. They were either in the middle of their cases, which normally should have protected them from deportation, or they had already been ordered deported and should have first been given the option to be sent back to a country they chose.Like Ramos, more than 50 of the men had used the government app called CBP One to make an appointment with border officials to try to enter the country. Others had crossed illegally and then surrendered to border agents, often the first step in seeking asylum in immigration court.According to our analysis, almost half of the men were deported even though their cases hadn't been decided yet. More than 60 of them had pending asylum claims, including several who were only days away from a hearing where a judge could have ruled on whether they would be allowed to stay. Judges or federal officials had issued deportation orders for about 100 of the men, and a handful had even agreed to pay their own way home. Others, like Ramos, had spent their entire time in the U.S. in detention. They had no opportunity to commit crimes in the U.S.Meanwhile, many of those who were allowed into the country had been appearing at their court hearings and immigration check-ins. At least nine had been granted temporary protected status, which gives people from countries affected by disasters or other extraordinary conditions permission to live and work in the U.S.By and large, these were men who had been playing by the rules of the country's immigration system.Then, the Trump administration changed the rules. Rodriguez reviews the video she recorded of her husband before he was sent to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. (Alejandro Bonilla Suarez for ProPublica) A day before the administration deported the men to El Salvador, Trump invoked an obscure 18th-century law called the Alien Enemies Act and declared that Tren de Aragua was invading the country. Administration officials argued that the declaration authorized them to take extraordinary measures to remove anyone it had determined was a member of the gang and to make sure they would not threaten the U.S. again.Following the March 15 deportations, the Trump administration moved to shut down their pending immigration cases. Since then, more than 95 cases have been dismissed, terminated or otherwise closed by judges, according to our analysis. They disappear from the dockets, some marked as dismissed just hours before a scheduled hearing.Michelle Brane, who served as a senior Department of Homeland Security official in the Biden administration, said it was very un-American" to deport people who followed the immigration rules at the time. You can't retroactively say that those people were acting illegally and now punish them for that," she added.Lawyers for the Venezuelan men have filed several lawsuits against the administration, calling the summary removals from the country a gross violation of their clients' rights. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in June that the move deprived the men of their constitutional rights and called their plight Kafkaesque. He wrote that the men never had any opportunity to challenge the Government's say-so," and that they languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations."The government has appealed the ruling.Meanwhile, Ramos' mother, Crisalida del Carmen Bastidas de Ramos, waits anxiously for any news about her oldest child. What is my son thinking? Is my son eating well? Is my son sleeping? Is he cold?"Is he alive?" Rodriguez plays with her son at their home in Venezuela. (Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune) Although the Trump administration routinely describes the men as criminals and terrorists, it has not provided evidence to support the claim. Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at DHS, defended sending them to the Salvadoran prison. They may not have criminal records in the U.S., beyond breaking our laws to enter the country illegally," she said in a statement, but many of these illegal aliens are far from innocent."For example, she said one of the TPS holders sent to El Salvador admitted he had previously been convicted of murder. We obtained Venezuelan court records confirming that the man had been convicted of murder and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. McLaughlin said his case proved that immigrants had been granted status in the U.S. under Biden without being thoroughly vetted. Three former DHS officials from the Biden administration said the vetting process has remained standard across administrations, including during the first Trump term, and that many governments do not share criminal background histories with U.S. officials.Trump has moved to strip TPS protections from hundreds of thousands of people.Ramos, McLaughlin said, was a terrorist who was flagged as a Tren de Aragua member in a law enforcement database at his CBP One appointment. His family denies he has anything to do with the gang. His lawyers said in court records that U.S. authorities wrongly identified him as a gang member based on his tattoos and an unsubstantiated" report from Panamanian officials. A spokesperson for the Panamanian security ministry said he could not locate any documents about Ramos.At least 163 men who were deported had tattoos, we found. Law enforcement officials in the U.S., Colombia, Chile and Venezuela with expertise in the Tren de Aragua told us that tattoos are not an indicator of gang membership. Albert Jesus Rodriguez Parra had applied for asylum and worked at Chicago's Wrigley Field before he was detained in November. He was deported to El Salvador in March, where he remains imprisoned. (Courtesy of the Cook County public defender's office in Chicago) Days before Albert Jesus Rodriguez Parra was whisked away, he appeared in immigration court and tried to convince a judge that his tattoos did not mean he was part of the gang.He had come to the U.S. with a brother in 2023, applied for asylum and settled in Chicago. He told his mother that it was difficult to find work, but that he'd gotten an electric razor, learned to cut hair and offered trims on the street. In January 2024, he was arrested at a Walmart in the Chicago suburbs for shoplifting about $1,000 worth of food, laundry detergent, shampoo and other items. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, served a two-day jail sentence and tried to move on.Rodriguez Parra, 28, got a job working in concessions at Wrigley Field, moved in with his girlfriend and sent money home to his mother to buy a refrigerator and a stove. Then, in November, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents picked him up at his apartment. McLaughlin said he was in the country illegally and was a Tren de Aragua member. Rodriguez Parra continued his asylum case from immigration detention in Indiana.He told his family he believed he would be released soon. But in early March, he was transferred to a jail in Missouri, then to one in Central Texas, then another in Laredo, in South Texas, each move bringing him closer to the border. Uncertainty began creeping into his calls home.Despite the transfers, Rodriguez Parra's attorney, Cruz Rodriguez, who works for a small immigration unit at the Cook County public defender's office in Chicago, said he was confident in the merits of the asylum case. He felt optimistic when he logged into his client's virtual bond hearing before Judge Eva Saltzman on March 10.At the hearing, a government attorney asked Rodriguez Parra about a TikTok video he'd made of himself dancing to a popular audio clip of someone shouting, Te va agarrar el Tren de Aragua," which means, The Tren de Aragua is going to get you." Close to 60,000 users on TikTok have shared the clip.Rodriguez Parra scoffed at the notion that a real gang member would make such a video. It would be like they were outing themselves," he said in Spanish. The audio clip has been used by Venezuelans to ridicule the widespread suggestion that everyone from the country is a gangster.The government attorney also asked Rodriguez Parra about the tattoos that covered his neck, arms and chest - a rose, a wolf, carnival masks and an angel holding a gun. In my country, it's very normal to have tattoos," he responded. Each one represents a story about my life."He was also questioned about a suspected Tren de Aragua gang member who had crossed the border at the same time as him. Rodriguez Parra said he did not know the man.At the end of the hearing, he pleaded with the judge to free him on bond. I'm a good person," he told her. If I was in a gang, I wouldn't have applied for asylum. I came fleeing my country."Saltzman denied Rodriguez Parra's request, citing his shoplifting conviction. But she offered him a sliver of hope, reminding him that his final hearing was just 10 days away. If she granted him asylum, he'd be released and could continue his life in the U.S.You're not facing a particularly lengthy detention without a bond," she told him.Five days later, he was gone. At what was supposed to be his final asylum hearing on March 20, Rodriguez Parra's lawyer sounded despondent. He had barely slept. He didn't know where the authorities had taken his client, but he'd seen a video posted online of shackled men being frog-marched into CECOT. The attorney had visited El Salvador and was aware of that country's reputation for mistreating prisoners. He feared his client would face a similar fate.He felt powerless. At the hearing, he turned to the government lawyer on the call. For his family's sake," he told her, would you happen to know what country he was sent to?"The government's lawyer had little to say.I'm operating under the same information as you," she responded. I have no further information to provide." Update, July 18, 2025: More than 230 men the Trump administration sent to a prison in El Salvador were returned to Venezuela on Friday in a prisoner swap. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele posted on X that he had handed over all of the men. In exchange, he said, a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners" and Americans held by Venezuela were freed. The Trump administration had accused the men of being members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio also confirmed the exchange. Design and development by Anna Donlan and Allen Tan of ProPublica. Agnel Philip of ProPublica contributed data reporting. Gabriel Sandoval of ProPublica contributed research. Adriana Nunez and Carlos Centeno contributed reporting.

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. Off a two-lane stretch of U.S. Route 1 in rural Caribou, Maine, sits a white ranch-style house that's been consumed by weeds and vines.The house was once the fulfillment of a dream. The owner had purchased it in 2006 through a federal mortgage program designed specifically for people like her: impoverished, first-time homeowners who live in the most rural parts of the United States. The loan, which came directly from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, required no down payment.But things started going wrong from the day she moved in. First, the basement flooded. Then the furnace stopped working. As major repair costs accumulated over the next six years, the woman's health deteriorated until she was forced to leave her job as a manager at Kmart. Her disability check was not enough to cover medical expenses and the upkeep required for the house - let alone the $855 monthly mortgage.So in 2012 she drove to a USDA office 20 miles away and tried to give the house back. She said staff there would not accept her keys, telling her instead to call a toll-free number for help, as agency protocol requires. She left a message and did not hear back. She stopped paying her mortgage and moved out.Her dream home sat abandoned for more than a decade.USDA guidance says the agency should act quickly when borrowers fall behind on payments to minimize any potential loss to the Government and to the borrower." A prompt sale keeps the government from having to pay the legal and administrative costs associated with foreclosure down the road and may protect the borrower from incurring a major blemish on their credit history.But that did not happen. Rather, 13 years passed before a sheriff's deputy knocked on the door of the woman's public housing apartment in May and served her with foreclosure papers on the now dilapidated ranch home that's been overtaken by squatters. The government's delay hurt the value of its investment and left the woman with a bill far greater than the cost of the loan she initially took out - with additional interest and other fees that had accumulated over those years. The woman, now 68, declined to be interviewed, but her attorney, Tom Cox, said she allowed him to share her experience on the condition that she not be named to protect her privacy.Since March, the USDA has filed 56 foreclosures in the federal court system against properties purchased with a rural development mortgage, also known as a Section 502 direct loan. All but one were in Maine. The borrowers have been in default for an average of nearly nine years.As in the case of the Caribou homeowner, the USDA's delays in those cases have resulted in borrowers racking up more debt because of the interest and fees that piled up in the intervening years, according to a Bangor Daily News and ProPublica examination of the foreclosure cases and interviews with former USDA officials and legal experts.On average, borrowers in the 55 Maine cases owe $110,000 more than they would have had the agency moved to take possession of the properties when they first defaulted, the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica found. This includes what the USDA calls preservation and inspection" fees, a broad category on the foreclosure filings that can include home repairs and yard maintenance, among other things.Borrowers who can't pay risk having the government garnish their wages or federal benefits such as Social Security. The Caribou woman had her disability checks garnished six times since 2015 to offset her debt before the USDA even foreclosed on her property, according to her lawyer. The best way to keep the government from garnishing federal benefits is to file for bankruptcy, attorneys said.It really undermines the concept of giving access to homeownership to a population who might not otherwise have been able to afford it," said Rhiannon Hampson, former USDA rural development director for Maine who stepped down in January before President Donald Trump was inaugurated. The irony, with all of these fees piled on, is that they can't afford to get out of it."The recent wave of foreclosure filings in Maine underscores the government's failure to monitor a mortgage program that since its founding in 1949 has poured tens of billions of tax dollars into giving the poorest Americans a shot at homeownership.The USDA does not publicly report how often it files foreclosures. U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat and member of a House appropriations subcommittee overseeing the USDA's direct loan program, has proposed language in the House agriculture appropriations report for the 2026 fiscal year calling on the agency to regularly report the number of foreclosures and abandoned properties related to the direct loan program. The bill awaits a vote before the full House of Representatives.The USDA regularly filed foreclosures in Maine prior to the coronavirus pandemic but has rarely done so in recent years, according to Richard H. Broderick Jr., a Maine attorney with whom the agency had contracted to file foreclosures until 2022. Kevin Crosman, the Maine attorney now filing foreclosures on behalf of the USDA, would not comment on why the agency started doing so again.Reporters visited 12 of the 55 homes in the Bangor Daily News' core coverage area in May. At least five appeared to be abandoned and in disrepair - with windows boarded up or a sign affixed to the door saying it was being cared for by a New York company - raising doubts that the government will recoup its investments.The USDA is supposed to take custody of properties purchased with a Section 502 direct loan and begin the foreclosure process when the homeowner becomes incapacitated, dies or has abandoned it, according to the agency's handbook. Otherwise the properties may languish and lose value. It really undermines the concept of giving access to homeownership to a population who might not otherwise have been able to afford it. -Rhiannon Hampson, former USDA rural development director for Maine Agency guidelines do not specify how soon the government should step in after a loan falls into delinquency, but under federal law, lenders cannot foreclose on a property until borrowers have been in default for 120 days.Nearly a fifth of the USDA's 159,208 Section 502 direct loans in its active national portfolio - 30,496 - were delinquent as of March, according to internal agency data obtained by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica. That rate is double what a 1993 internal agency report said was acceptable. But neither the USDA nor the White House would say why the agency is focusing on foreclosures in Maine. Vermont is the only other state in which the USDA has filed a single foreclosure, according to federal court filings.The foreclosures started just before Trump's Justice Department sued the state of Maine in April over its inclusion of transgender athletes in girls' sports, part of a larger spat between Trump and Maine Gov. Janet Mills. The White House would not say whether the foreclosures are connected in any way to those ongoing conflicts.The Trump administration is seeking to eliminate the 76-year-old rural homeownership program in the White House's budget proposal for the 2026 fiscal year. Some of his predecessors, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, have also sought to cut back the $880 million direct mortgage program, which has bipartisan support in Congress.A USDA spokesperson said the Trump administration is in the process of reviewing the loans to understand the magnitude of the problems it has inherited." The agency noted that in Maine alone, more than 800 properties are considered delinquent and nearly 400 homes are being tracked for foreclosure. The USDA did not respond to additional questions.Hopelessly in Debt"In 2013, months after the Caribou woman had abandoned her property, she received a letter at her new residence from the USDA informing her that she had to pay the government $22,000 in missed mortgage payments and late fees or she'd lose the Caribou home, said Cox, her lawyer. He said she did not pay because she did not want the house anymore. The USDA sent her nearly a dozen letters between 2014 and 2015 claiming foreclosure was imminent, but a decade passed before she was served with foreclosure papers this spring.A sign on the front door says the property is being maintained by a New York City company, which did not return calls seeking comment. A green tarp stretches across missing sections of the roof. Inside, piles of garbage and feces litter the floor. The dilapidated state of the house a woman bought with a USDA mortgage in Caribou, Maine (Courtesy of Tom Cox) A real estate broker who inspected the home in June with Cox estimated the value of the house to be around $40,000, a steep depreciation from the 2006 purchase price of $144,000.During the time since she abandoned the property, what the woman owes USDA continued to balloon, Cox said.His client now owes the government $393,463, according to court documents - nearly 10 times what the home is worth. Nearly 60% of that comprises interest that accumulated after she defaulted, as well as $91,304 in preservation and inspection" fees.If the USDA had dealt with this back in 2012, they might have gotten most or all of their money back by selling the home" before it deteriorated, Cox said. They're not going to collect it now. It's a huge waste of government resources and money to let this happen."Other USDA borrowers simply continue living in their homes long after they default on their loans, accumulating more debt with each passing year that the government does not move to collect. It's a huge waste of government resources and money to let this happen. -Attorney Tom Cox Christine Ogden had stopped paying the $465-a-month mortgage for her blue saltbox home in the coastal Maine town of Searsport in 2013, according to court documents. She said she told the USDA at the time to take her home after the agency threatened her with foreclosure if she did not pay.But it took the government until 2019 to attempt to foreclose upon her property. The case was dismissed in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Five years later, in April, she received a summons to appear in federal court to start foreclosure proceedings again.Ogden now owes $203,787 on what had been a $66,200 mortgage, according to court documents. Half of her debt comprises interest that accumulated after she defaulted, as well as other fees she would not have had to pay had the USDA addressed the delinquency sooner, an analysis by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica found.Ogden, who has lived rent-free in the house for 12 years, says she is unable to pay the burgeoning debt and does not know what will happen. The foreclosure will hurt her credit, making it harder for her to get another loan or find rental housing, she said.I'm 59," Ogden said. I'll be homeless, basically."Little Government OversightThe owners of another property, in Norridgewock in central Maine, also stopped paying their mortgage - and moved out of the house - years before the USDA foreclosed on the home this spring, court records show. The owners have not appeared to live at the property since at least 2014, according to property tax records, and defaulted on their loan in 2019 - but the government did not file for foreclosure until April.The owners, it turned out, were violating USDA rules by renting out their home. The tenant, who answered the door when a reporter visited in May after the foreclosure was filed in federal court, would not share his name but estimated that he has paid $100,000 in rent to the owners during the 12 years he said he has lived there. USDA guidelines allow borrowers to rent their homes for up to three years, and only under very narrow circumstances.Properties purchased under the 502 direct loan program are supposed to be the borrower's permanent residence and not meant to generate income, according to USDA guidelines. Homeowners can rent out their properties only due to certain life events such as if their families outgrow their current home or if they are moving for a job. But the borrower must still pay the mortgage every month.The USDA says the owners of the Norridgewock home owe the agency $276,191. The homeowners live in Tennessee, according to foreclosure summons and other court records filed this year by the USDA; they did not respond to calls made to phone numbers listed under their names.USDA staff based in Maine who once were in close touch with borrowers when they ran into financial trouble now have little to no oversight of Section 502 loans. That's because a major restructuring in the 1990s eliminated many of the county offices that had managed all aspects of the loans and centralized the servicing of these loans to an office in St. Louis, said Leslie Strauss, a senior policy analyst for the Housing Assistance Council, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit focused on affordable rural housing.These changes came on the heels of an internal study in 1991 concluding that centralizing the administration of these loans would result in better service and a lower delinquency rate of about 10%, according to a 1993 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. More than three decades later, the delinquency rate for Section 502 direct loans has nearly doubled to 19%.Hampson, Maine's former USDA rural development official who now leads economic development for the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, said she had been pushing the agency to allow local staff to regain oversight of borrowers' financial situations so that we can go out and monitor what's going on, so that we aren't caught by surprise."But her effort did not gain traction, Hampson said.As the foreclosures accumulated in Maine in recent months, the USDA website published an advisory directing struggling Maine borrowers to call the St. Louis office for help. But fewer staff members are available to respond after Trump's recent cuts to the federal workforce.As of early May, 1,536 employees - nearly a third of the rural development office - had taken the buyout, according to USDA documents outlining the results of the Trump administration's two financial incentive offers to quit. Of those, 197 worked in the St. Louis office.We can't afford failure," Hampson said of the long-delayed foreclosures leading to insurmountable debt. The onus is on the government to make sure that we're providing the right kind of safety nets to prevent this sort of thing from happening." Michael Shepherd, Sasha Ray and Paula Brewer of BDN contributed reporting. Mariam Elba of ProPublica contributed research.

by Eric Umansky 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: Former New York Police Department Commissioner Thomas Donlon sued Mayor Eric Adams and other top police officials on Wednesday, accusing Adams of running the force as a criminal enterprise" that the mayor used to consolidate power, obstruct justice and punish dissent."In the 251-page complaint, Donlon said the mayor used the department's Community Response Team for political gain. CRT became the enforcement arm of Defendant Adams' political strategy," the complaint says, a tool for projecting tough on crime' optics at the expense of civil rights and constitutional law."It also calls the CRT a rogue" unit that answered only to City Hall."The suit drew extensively from a recent ProPublica investigation, which detailed how the mayor championed the CRT despite concerns within the Police Department about the unit. Adams, former officials said, was so close to the unit he had access to a little-known livestream of the CRT's body-worn camera footage, a detail that Donlon cited in his legal complaint.What They Said: The Community Response Team speaks to the culture under Adams of willfully violating the constitutional rights of civilians and officers," John Scola, Donlon's lawyer, told ProPublica. That culture is: We'll do whatever we want."Background: In 2023, a senior NYPD official wrote a scathing internal audit after finding that CRT officers were wrongfully stopping New Yorkers and failing to document the incidents. Weeks later, Adams took to Instagram to boost the unit. Turning out with the team," he wrote, showing a photo of him wearing a wide smile and khaki pants, CRT's official uniform.The official who wrote that audit was pushed out months later. He and other top former commanders recently sued Adams alleging favoritism and misconduct, charges the mayor denies.Why It Matters: Donlon, a former FBI agent who held the job of police commissioner for only two months, from September to November 2024, lobbed his accusations against Adams as the mayor has been waging an uphill battle to keep his job. Adams was indicted last fall on federal charges of bribery, fraud and illegally taking campaign contributions from foreigners. He pleaded not guilty. He avoided trial by making a deal with President Donald Trump, who dropped the prosecution in exchange for Adams working with the administration on immigration enforcement. Still, he remains unpopular in the city and is running for reelection as an independent against a popular Democrat, Zohran Mamdani.Response: In a statement, the mayor's office dismissed Donlon's claims.These are baseless accusations from a disgruntled former employee who - when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world - proved himself to be ineffective," the statement said. This suit is nothing more than an attempt to seek compensation at the taxpayer's expense after Mr. Donlon was rightfully removed from the role of interim police commissioner."Previously, Adam has defended the CRT. Asked about the unit at a press conference this spring, the mayor said, CRT is here." He continued, I support all my units."The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment about the suit.

by Patricia Callahan ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation's childhood immunization system.Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic.In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effects from shots - without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent. Congress created the program in the 1980s when lawsuits drove vaccine makers from the market. A special tax on immunizations funds the awards, and manufacturers benefit from legal protections that make it harder to win big-money verdicts against them in civil courts.Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccination group and previously accused the pharmaceutical industry of inflicting unnecessary and risky vaccines" on children for profits, has long argued that the program removes any incentive for the industry to make safe products. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy condemned what he called corruption in the program and said he had assigned a team to overhaul it and expand who could seek compensation. He didn't detail his plans but did repeat the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and suggested, without citing any evidence, that shots could also be responsible for a litany of chronic ailments, from diabetes to narcolepsy.There are a number of ways he could blow up the program and prompt vaccine makers to stop selling shots in the U.S., like they did in the 1980s. The trust fund that pays awards, for instance, could run out of money if the government made it easy for Kennedy's laundry list of common health problems to qualify for payments from the fund.Or he could pick away at the program one shot at a time. Right now, immunizations routinely recommended for children or pregnant women are covered by the program. Kennedy has the power to drop vaccines from the list, a move that would open up their manufacturers to the kinds of lawsuits that made them flee years ago.Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, who served as New Jersey's state epidemiologist and then spent a dozen years as a vaccine executive at Merck, is among those worried.If his unstated goal is to basically destroy the vaccine industry, that could do it," said Bresnitz, who retired from Merck and has consulted for vaccine manufacturers. I still believe, having worked in the industry, that they care about protecting American health, but they are also for-profit companies with shareholders, and anything that detracts from the bottom line that can be avoided, they will avoid."A spokesperson for PhRMA, a U.S. trade group for pharmaceutical companies, told ProPublica in a written statement that upending the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program would threaten continued patient access to FDA approved vaccines."The spokesperson, Andrew Powaleny, said the program has compensated thousands of claims while helping ensure the continued availability of a safe and effective vaccine supply. It remains a vital safeguard for public health and importantly doesn't shield manufacturers from liability."Since its inception, the compensation fund has paid about $4.8 billion in awards for harm from serious side effects, such as life-threatening allergic reactions and Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune condition that can cause paralysis. The federal agency that oversees the program found that for every 1 million doses of vaccine distributed between 2006 and 2023, about one person was compensated for an injury.Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has turned the staid world of immunizations on its ear. He reneged on the U.S. government's pledge to fund vaccinations for the world's poorest kids. He fired every member of the federal advisory group that recommends which shots Americans get, and his new slate vowed to scrutinize the U.S. childhood immunization schedule. Measles, a vaccine-preventable disease eliminated here in 2000, roared back and hit a grim record - more cases than the U.S. has seen in 33 years, including three deaths. When a U.S. senator asked Kennedy if he recommended measles shots, Kennedy answered, Senator, if I advised you to swim in a lake that I knew there to be alligators in, wouldn't you want me to tell you there were alligators in it?"Fed up, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies sued Kennedy last week, accusing him of dismantling the longstanding, Congressionally-authorized, science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure that has prevented the deaths of untold millions of Americans." (The federal government has yet to respond to the suit.)Just about all drugs have side effects. What's unusual about vaccines is that they're given to healthy people - even newborns on their first day of life. And many shots protect not just the individuals receiving them but also the broader community by making it harder for deadly scourges to spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that routine childhood immunizations have prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations among the generation of Americans born between 1994 and 2023.To most people, the nation's vaccine system feels like a solid, reliable fact of life, doling out shots to children like clockwork. But in reality it is surprisingly fragile.There are only a handful of companies that make nearly all of the shots children receive. Only one manufacturer makes chickenpox vaccines. And just two or three make the shots that protect against more than a dozen diseases, including polio and measles. If any were to drop out, the country could find itself in the same crisis that led President Ronald Reagan to sign the law creating the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986.Back then, pharmaceutical companies faced hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the vaccine protecting kids from whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus caused unrelenting seizures that led to severe disabilities. (Today's version of this shot is different.) One vaccine maker after another left the U.S. market.At one point, pediatricians could only buy whooping cough vaccines from a single company. Shortages were so bad that the CDC recommended doctors stop giving booster shots to preserve supplies for the most vulnerable babies.While Congress debated what to do, public health clinics' cost per dose jumped 5,000% in five years.We were really concerned that we would lose all vaccines, and we would get major resurgences of vaccine-preventable diseases," recalled Dr. Walter Orenstein, a vaccine expert who worked in the CDC's immunization division at the time.A Forbes headline captured the anxiety of parents, pediatricians and public health workers: Scared Shotless." So a bipartisan group in Congress hammered out the no-fault system.Today, the program covers vaccines routinely recommended for children or pregnant women once Congress approves the special tax that funds awards. (COVID-19 shots are part of a separate, often-maligned system for handling claims of harm, though Kennedy has said he's looking at ways to add them to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.)Under program rules, people who say they are harmed by covered vaccines can't head straight to civil court to sue manufacturers. First, they have to go through the no-fault system. The law established a table of injuries and the time frame for when those conditions must have appeared in order to be considered for quicker payouts. A tax on those vaccines - now 75 cents for every disease that a shot protects against - flows into a trust fund that pays those approved for awards. Win or lose, the program, for the most part, pays attorney fees and forbids lawyers from taking a cut of the money paid to the injured.The law set up a dedicated vaccine court where government officials known as special masters, who operate like judges, rule on cases without juries. People can ask for compensation for health problems not listed on the injury table, and they don't have to prove that the vaccine maker was negligent or failed to warn them about the medical condition they wound up with. At the same time, they can't claim punitive damages, which drive up payouts in civil courts, and pain and suffering payments are capped at $250,000.Plaintiffs who aren't satisfied with the outcome or whose cases drag on too long can exit the program and file their cases in traditional civil courts. There they can pursue punitive damages, contingency-fee agreements with lawyers and the usual evidence gathering that plaintiffs use to hold companies accountable for wrongdoing.But a Supreme Court ruling, interpreting the law that created the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, limited the kinds of claims that can prevail in civil court. So while the program isn't a full liability shield for vaccine makers, its very existence significantly narrows the cases trial lawyers can file.Kennedy has been involved in such civil litigation. In his federal disclosures, he revealed that he referred plaintiffs to a law firm filing cases against Merck over its HPV shot in exchange for a 10% cut of the fees if they win. After a heated exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren during his confirmation proceedings, Kennedy said his share of any money from those cases would instead go to one of his adult sons, who he later said is a lawyer in California. His son Conor works as an attorney at the Los Angeles law firm benefiting from his referrals. When ProPublica asked about this arrangement, Conor Kennedy wrote, I don't work on those cases and I'm not receiving any money from them."In March, a North Carolina federal judge overseeing hundreds of cases that alleged Merck failed to warn patients about serious side effects from its HPV vaccine ruled in favor of Merck; an appeal is pending.The Vaccine Injury Compensation Program succeeded in stabilizing the business of childhood vaccines, with many more shots developed and approved in the decades since it was established. But even ardent supporters acknowledge there are problems. The program's staff levels haven't kept up with the caseload. The law capped the number of special masters at eight, and congressional bills to increase that have failed. An influx of adult claims swamped the system after adverse reactions to flu shots became eligible for compensation in 2005 and serious shoulder problems were added to the injury table in 2017.The quick and smooth system of payouts originally envisioned has evolved into a more adversarial one with lawyers for the Department of Justice duking it out with plaintiffs' attorneys, which Kennedy says runs counter to the program's intent. Many cases drag on for years.In his recent interview with Carlson, he described the lawyers of the Department of Justice, the leaders of it" working on the cases as corrupt. They saw their job as protecting the trust fund rather than taking care of people who made this national sacrifice, and we're going to change all that," he said. And I've brought in a team this week that is starting to work on that."The system is supposed to be generous and fast and gives a tie to the runner," he told Carlson. In other words, if there's doubts about, you know, whether somebody's injury came from a vaccine or not, you're going to assume they got it and compensate them."Kennedy didn't identify who is on the team reviewing the program. At one point in the interview, he said, We just brought a guy in this week who's going to be revolutionizing the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program."The HHS employee directory now lists Andrew Downing as a counselor working in Kennedy's office. Downing for many years has filed claims with the program and suits in civil courts on behalf of clients alleging harm from shots. Last month, HHS awarded a contract for Vaccine Injury Compensation Program expertise" to Downing's firm, as NOTUS has reported.Downing did not respond to a voicemail left at his law office. HHS didn't reply to a request to make him and Kennedy available for an interview and declined to answer detailed questions about its plans for the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. In the past, an HHS spokesperson has said that Kennedy is not anti-vaccine - he is pro-safety."While it's not clear what changes Downing and Kennedy have in mind, Kennedy's interview with Carlson offered some insights. Kennedy said he was working to expand the program's three-year statute of limitations so that more people can be compensated. Downing has complained that patients who have certain autoimmune disorders don't realize their ailments were caused by a vaccine until it's too late to file. Congress would have to change the law to allow this, experts said.A key issue is whether Kennedy will try to add new ailments to the list of injuries that qualify for quicker awards.In the Carlson interview, Kennedy dismissed the many studies and scientific consensus that shots don't cause autism as nothing more than statistical trickery. We're going to do real science," Kennedy said.The vaccine court spent years in the 2000s trying cases that alleged autism was caused by the vaccine ingredient thimerosal and the shot that protects people from measles, mumps and rubella. Facing more than 5,000 claims, the court asked a committee of attorneys representing children with autism to pick test cases that represented themes common in the broader group. In the cases that went to trial, the special masters considered more than 900 medical articles and heard testimony from dozens of experts. In each of those cases, the special masters found that the shots didn't cause autism.In at least two subsequent cases, children with autism were granted compensation because they met the criteria listed in the program's injury table, according to a vaccine court decision. That table, for instance, lists certain forms of encephalopathy - a type of brain dysfunction - as a rare side effect of shots that protect people from whooping cough, measles, mumps and rubella. In a 2016 vaccine court ruling, Special Master George L. Hastings Jr. explained, The compensation of these two cases, thus does not afford any support to the notion that vaccinations can contribute to the causation of autism."Hastings noted that when Congress set up the injury table, the lawmakers acknowledged that people would get compensated for some injuries that were not, in fact, truly vaccine-caused."Many disabling neurological disorders in children become apparent around the time kids get their shots. Figuring out whether the timing was coincidental or an indication that the vaccines caused the problem has been a huge challenge.Devastating seizures in young children were the impetus for the compensation program. But in the mid-1990s, after a yearslong review of the evidence, HHS removed seizure disorder from the injury table and narrowed the type of encephalopathy that would automatically qualify for compensation. Scientists subsequently have discovered genetic mutations that cause some of the most severe forms of epilepsy.What's different now, though, is that Kennedy, as HHS secretary, has the power to add autism or other disorders to that injury table. Experts say he'd have to go through the federal government's cumbersome rulemaking process to do so. He could also lean on federal employees to green-light more claims.In addition, Kennedy has made it clear he's thinking about illnesses beyond autism. We have now this epidemic of immune dysregulation in our country, and there's no way to rule out vaccines as one of the key culprits," he told Carlson. Kennedy mentioned diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, seizure disorders, ADHD, speech delay, language delay, tics, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, peanut allergies and eczema.President Donald Trump's budget estimated that the value of the investments in the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program trust fund could reach $4.8 billion this year. While that's a lot of money, a life-care plan for a child with severe autism can cost tens of millions of dollars, and the CDC reported in April that 1 in 31 children is diagnosed with autism by their 8th birthday. The other illnesses Kennedy mentioned also affect a wide swath of the U.S. population.Dr. Paul Offit, a co-inventor of a rotavirus vaccine and director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, for years has sparred with Kennedy over vaccines. Offit fears that Kennedy will use flawed studies to justify adding autism and other common medical problems to the injury table, no matter how much they conflict with robust scientific research.You can do that, and you will bankrupt the program," he said. These are ways to end vaccine manufacturing in this country."If the trust fund were to run out of money, Congress would have to act, said Dorit Reiss, a law professor at University of California Law San Francisco who has studied the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Congress could increase the excise tax on vaccines, she said, or pass a law limiting what's on the injury table. Or Congress could abolish the program, and the vaccine makers would find themselves back in the situation they faced in the 1980s.That's not unrealistic," Reiss said.Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, last year proposed the End the Vaccine Carveout Act, which would have allowed people to bypass the no-fault system and head straight to civil court. His press release for the bill - written in September, before Kennedy's ascension to HHS secretary - quoted Kennedy saying, If we want safe and effective vaccines, we need to end the liability shield."The legislation never came up for a vote. A spokesperson for the congressman said he expects to introduce it again in the very near future."Renee Gentry, director of the George Washington University Law School's Vaccine Injury Litigation Clinic, thinks it's unlikely Congress will blow up the no-fault program. But Gentry, who represents people filing claims for injuries, said it's hard to predict what Congress, faced with a doomsday scenario, would do.Normally Democrats are friends of plaintiffs' lawyers," she said. But talking about vaccines on the Hill is like walking on a razor blade that's on fire."

by Megan Rose and Debbie Cenziper ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. U.S. inspectors have uncovered new and dangerous breakdowns in drugmaking at an Indian factory owned by Sun Pharma that produces generic medications for American consumers.The latest problems come 2 1/2 years after the Food and Drug Administration gave the facility a special pass to continue sending certain drugs made there to the United States, even after the factory was officially banned from the U.S. market.The factory failed to investigate the source of bacteria found in test vials or deal with damaged equipment that had caused drugs to be contaminated with metal particles, according to the June inspection report, which ProPublica obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.Workers improperly handled vials and stoppers meant for sterile medications and, in some cases, failed to disinfect manufacturing areas and equipment, according to the report. One FDA inspector saw a worker put on a sterile gown and then brush up against a waste bin and use their hands to push down the overflowing trash. Investigators also saw liquid dripping through ceiling cracks and the growth of what appeared to be fungus and mold in a storage area for samples used for testing.The FDA in late 2022 had banned the factory in the city of Halol from shipping drugs to the United States because of similar manufacturing failures.ProPublica reported last month that a low-profile group inside the agency at the same time exempted some medications from that ban, ostensibly to prevent drug shortages. The FDA has granted similar exemptions for drugs made at more than 20 other foreign factories that violated critical standards in drugmaking and were barred from the U.S. market.The FDA kept the practice largely hidden from the public. The agency did not regularly test drugs coming from the banned factories or proactively monitor reports about potential harm among consumers, ProPublica found. In Sun's case, more than a dozen drugs were initially excluded from the Halol import ban. The company is still allowed to send five to the United States, government records show, including vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxer used during surgery, and the cancer drug doxorubicin. Also excluded are divalproex delayed release tablets, which treat seizures and other conditions; leuprolide injection, used by people with prostate cancer, endometriosis and other conditions; and temozolomide capsules, for brain cancer.The inspection last month marked the first time the FDA had been back to the factory in the 2.5 years since it imposed the import ban and Sun started sending exempted drugs to the United States. Inspectors found that procedures designed to prevent microbiological contamination of sterile drugs were not established or followed and that equipment wasn't maintained to prevent malfunctions that would alter the safety, identity, strength, quality or purity of the drug product," according to the report.Some of the concerns focused on the exempted drugs still being sent to the United States, according to a person familiar with the situation who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The FDA blacked out the names of the drugs that were potentially compromised on its publicly released inspection report, including a medication made on a manufacturing line in which several batches had to be rejected because they were filled with black particles. A portion of the FDA's June inspection report redacted the names of potentially compromised drugs manufactured by Sun that continue to be released to the U.S. market. (Obtained by ProPublica) It's disappointing to see issues continue to come up at this site given the site's role in potentially manufacturing critical drugs for U.S. consumers," said the person familiar with the inspection findings.Sun did not respond to questions about the latest inspection or its regulatory history with the FDA. In an email, the company said that adherence to quality standards is a top priority for Sun, and we maintain a relentless focus on quality and compliance to ensure the uninterrupted supply of medicines to our customers and patients worldwide. We continue to work proactively with the US FDA and remain committed to achieve full resolution of any FDA regulatory issues at our facilities."The FDA said factories that receive exemptions from import bans are required to conduct extra testing on drugs with third-party oversight before they are sent to the United States, helping to ensure patient safety. Sun's Halol plant, however, was cited in 2022 and again last month for failing to thoroughly investigate unexplained quality problems, including impurities, found during drug testing. The FDA did not respond to a request for comment about the latest Sun inspection.U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, who recently co-sponsored a bill to lower prescription drug costs, said in a statement to ProPublica that the FDA has a responsibility to ensure that drugs coming into the country are safe.We need full transparency about the extent to which exemptions enabled sub-par, unsafe, or ineffective drugs to be distributed to American patients," she said. Medill Investigative Lab student Katherine Dailey contributed reporting.

by Logan Jaffe In late September 2000, longtime Kerr County, Texas, resident W. Thornton Secor Jr. sat down with an oral historian to tell his story. Like many of the residents recorded as part of a decadeslong effort by the Kerr County Historical Commission to document the community's history, Secor had a lot to say about the area's floods.It always seems to happen at night too," Secor said of local floods he and his family had experienced. Can't see most of it."Secor, who died in 2022, was a third-generation manager of a lodge that still operates along the Guadalupe River. His oral history shares family memories of floods going back to 1932 - like the time a flood that year washed away most of the cabins his grandfather built.Now, Secor's daughter, Mandi Secor Lipscomb, is left considering the future of the lodge in the aftermath of another devastating flood, on July 4. Secor Lipscomb is the fourth-generation owner and operator of the same lodge, Waltonia on the River.Often when I try to understand a place or process a big news event, I look for records kept by local historical societies and libraries. In archived documents, preserved photographs and oral history collections, one can start to see how a community understands itself. So, as news reports about the floods in the Central Texas Hill Country poured in throughout the week, I went looking for historical context. What local knowledge is held by people who live, or have lived, in what's repeatedly described as Flash Flood Alley"? How have people in Kerr County's past contended with floods of their own time?A trove of more than 70 oral histories recorded by the Kerr County Historical Commission begins to answer those questions. The recordings document memories of floods going back to 1900, but oral histories alone rarely tell a full or accurate story. Still, there's at least one conclusion to draw: Everything has a history. The flood that killed more than 130 people in the Kerr County area this month is not the first time a flash flood on the Guadalupe River took lives of people, including children. The front page of a local newspaper, the Kerrville Daily Times, on July 20, 1987. A flash flood killed 10 campers as they tried to evacuate. (Kerrville Daily Times via Newspapers.com) I keep this history in mind when I hear local and state officials say no one could have seen this coming. Take this exchange between a reporter and Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly:Reporter: Why weren't these camps evacuated?Kelly: I can't answer that. I don't know.Reporter: Well you're the judge. I mean you're the top official here in this county. Why can't you answer that? There are kids missing. These camps were in harm's way. We knew this flood was coming.Kelly: We didn't know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States. And we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be anything like what's happened here. None whatsoever.My colleague Jennifer Berry Hawes wrote last week about the uncanny similarities between the Texas floods and Hurricane Helene, which struck North Carolina last year. In both disasters, weather forecasts predicted the potential devastation, yet people were left in harm's way.And as another colleague, ProPublica editor Abrahm Lustgarten, pointed out in a piece about how climate change is making disasters like the flood in Texas more common, there will be tireless - and warranted - analysis of who is to blame for this heart-wrenching loss" in the weeks to come.Should Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred, have installed warning sirens along that stretch of the waterway, and why were children allowed to sleep in an area prone to high-velocity flash flooding?" Lustgarten wrote. Why were urgent updates apparently only conveyed by cellphone and online in a rural area with limited connectivity?" As we wait for answers - or as journalists dig for them - the oral histories show Kerr County residents have warned one another, as well as newcomers and out-of-towners, about flooding for a long time. In his 2000 oral history, Secor said he remembered a time in the spring of 1959 when his father tried to warn one new-to-town woman about building a house so close to the river.He took her out and showed her the watermarks on the trees in front of our house and all," Secor said, likely referring to the watermarks from the flood of 1932, which a local newspaper described at the time as the most disastrous flood that ever swept the upper Guadalupe Valley." The flood killed at least seven people.Oh,' she says, that will never happen again,'" Secor recalled.He said her body was found in a tree a few months later after a flood swept her and the roof she stood on away.It's going to surprise newcomers when we get another flood like the '32 flood," Secor said in 2000.It'll get us again someday." As the Guadalupe River rose over the July 4 weekend, the 16-cabin lodge his daughter owns was sold out and full of guests. All of them escaped the floods, said Secor Lipscomb. They ran, some barefoot in the mud, up a steep hill beyond the property's retaining wall. They took shelter in a barn.Later, Secor Lipscomb assessed the damage to her family property. What she saw left her in tears: Four cabins had water up to the ceiling. Another two had flooded about 5 feet. But among the wreckage was a crew of nearly 40 volunteers, ready to help with the cleanup.By the time I reached out to her to ask her about her father's oral history, six cabins and the main camp office were already demolished.The cabin her great-grandfather and grandfather built together more than 100 years ago still stood. But it won't for much longer. It is so damaged with water that it, too, will have to go.This is our family history, our family legacy," Secor Lipscomb told me. Of course we're going to rebuild."When they do, their customers will be ready. Many of the families who survived the flood already told her they'll be first in line to book for the next available July 4.

by Audrey Dutton ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Clayton Strong pulled up to a tiny hospital in Idaho, walked through the emergency room doors and told a clerk that his wife's body was outside in their SUV.A sheriff's deputy was at the hospital talking to Strong by the time the coroner arrived. This was an unattended" death: one where no doctor could attest to a medical reason for the person's demise. That made it the coroner's job to determine how and why she died.Strong, a stocky man with white hair and bushy eyebrows, explained that he and his wife lived in an RV park on the edge of the woods nearby. He said his wife had been bedridden for years with Parkinson's disease. That morning she'd woken up and asked for peanut butter and water, Strong told the deputy. He found her dead some time later.The coroner looked over Betty Strong's body. It was thin and frail. He didn't see a reason to suspect anything other than a natural death for this 75-year-old woman. The sheriff's deputy seemed to be satisfied with the explanation too. So, the coroner ruled that Betty Strong died around 8:40 a.m. on Dec. 14, 2016, from complications of Parkinson's, and he signed off on allowing cremation of her body.Less than five years later, Clayton Strong's next wife turned up dead, too: shot in the chest in Texas.It turns out that both marriages had a history of domestic unrest, with visits from police who documented threats to each woman's safety.It's impossible to know whether a different approach to investigating Betty Strong's death would have uncovered foul play. What is certain is that clues and evidence in the case were lost forever - and Idaho's system for death investigation let it happen.Family members of both women believe a more thorough investigation of the death in Idaho might have saved the life of Clayton Strong's next wife in Texas.Someone shows up with a dead body and just says they died of natural causes," said Amy Belanger, one of Betty Strong's children. I mean, really, do you just take their word for it?"The answer is no, according to five of six national death investigation experts ProPublica consulted. They said the coroner should have obtained medical records to confirm Betty Strong was diagnosed with Parkinson's, examined the trailer where her husband said she died, or both.You can think of all sorts of scenarios - criminal, accidental or natural - that could have occurred there," said Jennifer Snippen, a death investigator, educator and consultant in Oregon. But my argument is, if you don't go to the scene and you don't look at the medical records, you just don't know."Most of the county coroners in Idaho are part-time elected officials with tiny budgets and no oversight or state funding to support their work. The national experts said that kind of system is more prone to cursory investigations like the one into Betty Strong's death.The failure to reform death investigations in Idaho has raised alarms for more than 70 years, according to current and former Idaho coroners and previous ProPublica reporting.A national magazine called Idaho the best place in the nation for a criminal to get away with murder' in the literal sense" because of the state's antiquated county coroner's system," the Idaho Statesman newspaper reported in 1951.Asked whether murderers have escaped prosecution in Idaho's coroner system, Rich Riffle, coroner for the county that includes Boise, said, My humble opinion? Yes." That almost happened in 2019 when one inexperienced Idaho coroner decided to take the word of Chad Daybell that his wife, Tammy Daybell, had died in her sleep after chronic health problems, vomiting and a cough. Her body was later exhumed after his next wife's children went missing. An autopsy by the Utah medical examiner's office found what medical records would have shown, had the Idaho coroner requested them: Tammy Daybell was healthy. A jury convicted Chad Daybell of murdering her by asphyxiation and of killing his next wife's two youngest children. The case is under appeal.At trial, coroner Brenda Dye said she had regrets. Her voice shaking, Dye told the court she would have ordered an autopsy if she'd known better, but at that time, with my limited training and being new, I did the best I could." She declined ProPublica's interview request, citing the case's effect on her mental health. The community set up a memorial to two children who Chad Daybell was convicted of murdering; he was also convicted of killing his previous wife Tammy. The coroner originally believed Chad Daybell when he said that Tammy had died in her sleep. (John Roark/Post Register via AP) Idaho isn't the only place where death investigations fall short. Because there is no uniform federal system, the rigor with which your death is investigated depends on where you die. Other states lack enough forensic pathologists to do autopsies. And many local systems like Idaho County's are squeezed for money.But even among its short-staffed, underfunded peers, Idaho stands out. One measure is the state's autopsy rate: third-lowest for autopsies in all deaths, last in the nation for autopsies in known cases of homicide.Gov. Brad Little said in January that he would support more state resources to help Idaho's coroners do their jobs. But he never got the chance; coroner-related bills passed by the Idaho Legislature this year contained no funding or other assistance for coroners and death investigations.So for now, each of Idaho's 44 coroners will bear costs that other states help cover: driving a body hundreds of miles to an autopsy; paying for some of those autopsies; or trying to recruit one more person to join Idaho's statewide forensic pathology workforce of three.If you don't care enough about how death investigations are done in your jurisdiction to invest in the people doing it, to provide them with the resources or to have high enough standards for the people that you hire to do this, you're going to get what you get, what you accept," said Snippen. You're going to get what you allow to happen."Florida, 2010-2015Betty Brock was a mother of seven who enjoyed singing and art, long bicycle rides, organizing family photos and researching her ancestry.She was caring for her terminally ill husband in 2010 when Clayton Strong befriended her on the internet, according to Belanger, her daughter. Strong claimed to be basically destitute and living in his car," a backstory that appealed to a woman with a soft spot for taking in wounded people" and trying to heal them with love, Belanger said.Strong drove hundreds of miles from Southwest Florida and showed up at the Brocks' property in the Florida panhandle. They agreed he could sleep in his car there as long as he helped with caregiving and housework. Soon he was sleeping in an outbuilding on the property, then in the house.Betty's children were puzzled as this newcomer became a fixture in their mother's life. They wanted to give Strong a chance, but they soon grew suspicious.Betty Brock's husband died in August 2010. By January, she was Betty Strong.After their courthouse marriage, Clayton Strong used their now-shared funds to buy a Ford truck and an Airstream trailer and took his bride on the road, Belanger said. The couple visited national parks that Betty had always wanted to see. They camped and hiked their way across the continent. They bought mining claims and panned for gold in the remote Idaho wilderness. Betty and Clayton Strong. Betty's children say Clayton isolated her, threatened them when they tried to visit her, kept her from seeing her doctor, then took her to Idaho, where she died. (Courtesy of Amy Belanger) After that honeymoon, the walls around Betty Strong grew impenetrable, her children said. According to what two of her children told ProPublica and to statements two others made to police, Clayton became the gatekeeper of all communication with their mother, and he padlocked the doors of their Florida home and held the key.The last time Betty Strong saw her primary care doctor in Florida was in May 2013, according to records her son obtained after the death. Before that, she hadn't been in since 2010, the year Clayton Strong entered her life. The notes from the 2013 checkup show health issues common in older adults but no Parkinson's diagnosis, and neither Parkinson's nor other neurodegenerative diseases were listed in the family history section.The children watched from afar as the marriage devolved over the next two years. Between January 2014 and February 2015, police went to the couple's residence for welfare checks and domestic disturbances at least six times, according to police reports that Belanger provided to ProPublica.Her children told police that Clayton Strong threatened to shoot them if they set foot on the property, threatened to hurt their mother if they didn't back off, and prevented her from seeing a doctor.In the first of those police visits, in January 2014, the records show that Belanger's sister, who lived nearby, called the sheriff while standing outside the Strong residence, a brown house surrounded by oak trees and pines on a winding country road. A deputy arrived to find Belanger's sister and Clayton Strong in a stalemate, then talked to everyone outside, according to a sheriff's office report. The deputy then watched as Betty Strong turned to her husband to ask him for permission" to hug her daughter, and Clayton Strong removed a set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the porch entrance gate so Betty could go in the yard" for the hug.The report says the deputy made a referral to Florida Department of Children and Families, the agency that investigates possible abuse of vulnerable adults, and that the department opened a case.A similar scene played out when one of Betty Strong's sons went to the house to check on her in February 2015. For two years, Clayton Strong turned the son away when he tried to visit, and this time Strong threatened to shoot him with a gun if he did not leave," the son told a sheriff's deputy. Clayton Strong denied that, the deputy's report says.The deputy found Betty Strong alone on a bed in an RV parked behind the home, the report says. She said she had Parkinson's disease and couldn't get around well. Clayton wasn't holding her against her will, she told the deputy, but she couldn't take care of herself without him.She had a walkie-talkie. The deputy asked: Is Clayton using that radio and telling you what to say? Betty answered no" while nodding her head yes." It was a chilly afternoon, and the deputy noticed Betty had a blanket but no heater.Betty's demeanor, living conditions, and the controlling behavior by Clayton" warranted a referral to the Florida Department of Children and Families, the deputy wrote.Asked for the outcome of that referral, a spokesperson told ProPublica the department investigates all allegations of abuse, neglect, or exploitation" but that records of those investigations are confidential under state law.Days after the referral in February 2015, police were again dispatched to the Florida home. This time, it wasn't one of Betty Strong's children who called; it was someone from adult protective services in need of police backup. According to the dispatch log, the worker said Clayton Strong has threatened before to pull a gun on her and is very anti-law enforcement."The couple left town a month later. Betty Strong's children never heard from her again. Betty Strong early in her relationship with Clayton Strong. Within a few years of this trip, Clayton told authorities she'd died of Parkinson's, but her children say she never had the disease. (Courtesy of Amy Belanger) Idaho, December 2016By the time Betty Strong died in Idaho County in December 2016, she hadn't been seen in Florida in 21 months.Idaho County's elected coroner, Cody Funke, had been in the job about as long.He knew the county well. Its vast forests, mountains and meadows stretch across more land than Massachusetts. Rugged and remote, it attracts people who want to be left alone and who distrust both government and conventional medicine.Funke, pronounced funk," was in his late 20s in 2014 when he learned his part-time job at a funeral home was being eliminated. His boss asked: Had he considered running for coroner? The coroner at the time was retiring and urged Funke to do it. So did Funke's boss from his other part-time job, as an EMT. What sealed the deal for Funke: As coroner, he would get health insurance.Funke started the job with a feeling of good luck, godspeed, you're gonna need it." There was no apprenticeship or ride-along to watch seasoned pros, like he'd gotten when he trained to be an EMT. There was a training conference he attended in Las Vegas before taking office, and Funke received more than double the 24 hours of coroner education required by Idaho law. Even so, he isn't sure it was enough to prepare him.Funke learned on his first day that he wasn't getting a vehicle to move bodies from a death scene. If the local funeral home's vehicle was occupied, Funke had to use his family truck. A year after Betty Strong's death, the county commission got the coroner a vehicle: a pickup truck the sheriff's office didn't need anymore.The office he inherited also had no camera, and the county hadn't budgeted to give him one. He'd have to use his phone to take pictures of bodies and death scenes.There was no morgue.The Idaho County coroner's office didn't even have an actual office.Funke's predecessors kept their files on paper, at home, he learned. The previous coroner's house had flooded, so when Funke took over, all that remained fit in two manila folders.The coroner's entire budget this year is $85,651. By comparison, coroner's offices serving small populations had an average budget of $280,000 in 2018, according to a national study.Paid $13,000 a year, Funke is on call 24 hours a day and, last year, investigated and ruled on 71 deaths, about one every five days. Papers on an additional 102 deaths of people under a doctor's care came through needing his signature for cremation.Funke does the coroner work on top of a full-time job. When a call comes in during business hours, he dips out to go to a death scene. If someone dies at dinnertime, he might not see his family until morning.He must decide with each death what the circumstances require: a simple phone call; an all-out investigation with autopsy, witness interviews, tissue samples and more; or something in the middle.To examine a death scene, Funke might have to drive three hours or longer each way. Whenever he orders an autopsy, Funke or his deputies have to take the body to the nearest autopsy center, a trip that takes a full day and usually demands an overnight stay. His current budget can cover 10 autopsies a year. Cody Funke, the Idaho County coroner, also worked full time as a city wastewater treatment operator. He now works for the state prison system while remaining the coroner. (Liesbeth Powers for ProPublica) In those first years as coroner, Funke often leaned on police.Funke found it strange that Clayton Strong had loaded his wife's body into their SUV and driven to the hospital. Most people call 911 to report a death and wait for help to arrive, Funke said. But Strong offered an explanation that seemed to satisfy the sheriff's deputy: He didn't know many people in town and wasn't sure what to do.Strong had said his wife hadn't seen a doctor because she stuck to homeopathic remedies. That's not unusual for Funke to hear.The widower gave Funke the impression a coroner and sheriff's deputy wouldn't be welcome inside the trailer where she died. That's not so outside the norm for Idaho County either, Funke said.Betty Strong's death looked like an easy call. So Funke helped move her body to a cot to be taken from the hospital to a local funeral home.According to a later report from the sheriff's office, Clayton Strong showed up at the funeral home that day, said he wanted her cremated and paid $2,310 in cash. The way Funke heard it from a funeral home employee a few days later, Strong paid in $100 bills out of a lunch box.The detail struck Funke as peculiar. But he let it go.Florida, 2017The couple's Airstream trailer showed up one day in January 2017, parked outside their house in Florida. A neighbor called Amy Belanger with the news, and she dispatched her brother, Daniel, who lived nearby. They'd spent almost two years fearing the worst.The only person at the house was Clayton Strong.The family's matriarch had died a few weeks ago in Harpster, Idaho, Strong said. Then he told his son-in-law to get off the property.Amy Belanger started making calls the next day. One of the first people she reached was Funke, the county coroner. She was perplexed, she said. Why hadn't anyone called her or her siblings? Why didn't he question whether Betty Strong had actually succumbed to a disease or if something else had killed her? Belanger told Funke about the history of police calls in Florida and concerns about their mother's safety.Funke thought back to what he'd heard from the funeral home. A lunch box of cash for a cremation? That image never sat quite right. Now he had solid ground for suspicion. Funke told Belanger he'd talk to the county prosecutor and see what could be done.The prosecutor and the sheriff's office initially told Belanger they had opened a homicide investigation, according to a detailed timeline she created at the time. But the death scene - the Strongs' trailer - was long gone, the body cremated. The sheriff's investigator and prosecutor ultimately didn't seem to think there was enough evidence for a homicide investigation, Funke told ProPublica.(The prosecutor and sheriff's investigator did not return phone calls, emails or certified letters from ProPublica requesting comment on their decisions following Betty Strong's death.)Notes from Belanger's timeline quote a Florida detective saying he was sorry the death had occurred outside his jurisdiction. He explained to her that in Florida, deputies would have had the medical examiner's office verify medical records and take a blood sample."The year Betty Strong died, 20% of natural deaths investigated by a medical examiner in the part of Florida where she had lived underwent autopsies before the examiner decided the cause of death was natural. About 65% of all deaths taken in by Florida's medical examiner that year were autopsied. Both numbers dwarf Idaho's coroner autopsy rates.It's not just Florida. Many states have more sophisticated systems for investigating deaths than Idaho's. In much of the country, centralized state medical examiner offices oversee all death investigations or provide a backstop to elected coroners in each county.Idaho's rural neighbor Montana has a hybrid system of medical examiners and coroners, supported by a coroner liaison who works with death investigators to make the process more consistent statewide. And next door in Wyoming, a state board sets rules for coroners to follow. The rules spell out what each death investigation should include: scene investigation, toxicology sample, DNA sample, photographs, external examination of the body and an inventory of property, evidence and medications.Jennifer Snippen, the death investigator in Oregon, was one of the experts who drafted the National Institute of Justice's 2024 death-scene investigation guidebook.She said death investigations are more likely to be thorough when states and counties give their investigators enough funding and education, so that they have the motivation and the ability to get to as many scenes, and get as much information about every single death, as possible."Those who study the work of coroners and medical examiners in the U.S. have learned that the deaths of elderly people are especially likely to be written off as age-related, without considering whether the person may have also been a victim of abuse or neglect.Snippen's research in 2023 is one of the most recent studies to confirm that. She reviewed data from thousands of cases. The person least likely to get a scene investigation or autopsy? An elderly woman who dies at home.Lauri McGivern, a nationally recognized expert in death investigations, said national standards would have Funke verify Betty Strong's Parkinson's diagnosis and ask more questions of Clayton Strong as the sole caregiver of a vulnerable adult. McGivern, who coordinates medicolegal death investigations in Vermont, reviewed the facts that Funke was given at the time of Betty Strong's death and his subsequent report at ProPublica's request.To follow national standards, McGivern said, Funke also would have gone to the Airstream trailer or asked law enforcement to examine the death scene and report back to him.But McGivern and other experts said they understand why Funke didn't follow those national guidelines - because they've seen it happen so many times in places like rural Idaho.He's doing what he was shown how to do," McGivern said. And probably doing the best he can, with no budget and no support and no education." When Funke took over from Idaho County's previous coroner in 2015, there was no equipment. Over the years, Funke had to get county commissioners to approve purchases like a radio to take coroner calls. (Liesbeth Powers for ProPublica) Frustrated by how little Idaho officials knew and why they hadn't dug further into her mother's death, Amy Belanger channeled her grief into trying to find answers on her own.She followed a trail of public records left by Clayton Strong. Had he harmed other women? Had he been in a relationship with anybody who went missing? I was looking into his past to see if there was a pattern like that," Belanger said. Something she could share with officials in Idaho.Then she stumbled across a document: a recent marriage license.Three months after depositing Betty Strong's body at a hospital in Idaho, Clayton Strong wed a woman from Texas.Belanger needed to warn her.Texas, 2017-2021Shirley Weatherley had a lot in common with Betty Strong. She was a mother and grandmother. She'd been married before. She lived in a small, modest home on a large piece of land in a rural locale, where she'd been caring for a terminally ill former spouse when Strong contacted her on Facebook.They'd known each other as teenagers in Lubbock. Their reconnection after he arrived at her house in Weatherford, a suburb of Fort Worth, eventually began to worry her children.He isolated her," saidJamie Barrington, Weatherley's son with a previous husband. He wouldn't let grandkids, my brother - anybody'd come over, he just kept them at arm's length." Shirley Weatherley (Courtesy of Jamie Barrington) Barrington said he and other members of Weatherley's family had suspicions about Strong. Then they connected with Belanger and heard what happened in Florida and Idaho.Belanger urged the family to tell their mother everything they'd heard. She actually was pleading with us to watch out," Barrington recalled.Knowing another family was worried helped fuel Amy Belanger's quest for the truth about her mother's death. Her siblings chipped in to help Belanger rent a van and drive across the country in search of clues - anything that could shed light on her mother's death.Once she got to Idaho, Belanger spent more than a week investigating. She met with the coroner and sheriff. She went to the mining claims the Strongs had purchased. She stayed at the RV park where Betty Strong died and interviewed the people who'd owned it in 2016; they remembered talking to each other about how hinky" the death and Clayton Strong's reaction to it seemed.Back in Texas, Weatherley's family tried to warn her.When they relayed the story about Betty Strong to her, Weatherley chalked it up to a grieving family trying to cope with loss by grasping for an explanation, Barrington said. After all, Strong had a death certificate that listed natural causes.The details Barrington later learned from family members and police about his mother's life with Strong were pretty horrific," he said. Weatherley had reported that Strong threatened to kill her, but no charges were filed. Then at one point, in the midst of an argument with Strong, Weatherley lobbed the accusations about Betty Strong's death at him, Barrington said. Strong flew into a rage.Weatherley called police in July 2021. She and Strong were splitting up, and he shoved her while moving his stuff out of the house, Weatherley told the officer. Strong had hurt her" in the past, so she called police to make sure it didn't happen again, the officer's report says. The officer got Strong's side of the story - she was running him off," but he didn't push her - and stuck around until Strong agreed to leave.Police would later document finding two items in the house. The first was a copy of Weatherley's will that left everything to Strong, on which she'd written VOID," the second was a digital camera hidden in their bedroom. The camera contained selfies of injuries to her face and chest and a video of Strong putting his arm around her neck as she screamed for help.Strong persuaded Weatherley to let him back into their home once more on Aug. 4, 2021, according to police records.Four days later, Weatherley's son and grandson found her body wrapped in a gray tarp near the front steps to her home. She'd been shot in the chest. Authorities matched shell casings at the scene to an AK-47-style rifle, which security footage showed Strong ditching in a shopping cart outside a Walmart.Picked up later by police in Mexico, Strong died of cardiac arrest while awaiting extradition in Weatherley's killing. Mexican police booked Clayton Strong on gun charges in 2021. After the arrest, they discovered he was a suspect in the murder of his wife in Texas. (Parker County Sheriff's Office via Facebook) TodayJamie Barrington, Shirley Weatherley's son, was reluctant at first to speak publicly about his mother's death in Texas, even years later. He agreed to talk with ProPublica, he said, because he wants Idaho's coroner system to improve. He said he never imagined that a death like Betty Strong's could be ruled natural" based on what a spouse told authorities.I truly believe that if there had been a proper investigation and not taking his word for it," Barrington said, that it probably would have made a big difference" in what happened to Shirley Weatherley.Word of Weatherley's murder eventually reached Funke, the coroner in Idaho. He said in hindsight, Strong's actions in Idaho County seem more suspicious than they did at the time to his inexperienced eyes and ears.Now, after 10 years as coroner, I would have pushed a little bit harder" to have an officer or deputy follow up or go to the RV park with him. He would have asked police to use a national database - one he didn't know about at the time - to find Betty Strong's family members and learn more about her background. I have trust issues after cases like this," he said.Funke said the story of Betty Strong's death needs to be told, even if it shows that he and Idaho County made mistakes, because it can help lawmakers understand what is wrong with the state's system.Idaho's coroners need more funding, he said, because right now they're an afterthought in county budgets. Most counties set a coroner salary at what amounts to less than minimum wage, so it's impossible for someone like Funke to be coroner without a second, full-time job.These offices should be fully staffed," he said. Maybe we have one or two people that are here full time to answer questions and respond to these calls, versus, Hey, I've got to take time off work, boss.'"And he believes new coroners who lack experience should be required to learn how to work a case from start to finish before they're called out to a death like Betty Strong's.Daniel Belanger, one of Betty Strong's children, came away from his interactions with Idaho County officials convinced that the only way deaths like his mother's will be properly investigated is through legislation forcing coroners and law enforcement agencies to change their approaches.They completely dropped the ball," he told ProPublica.Amy Belanger said her family has reclaimed very few of her mother's possessions from the Airstream trailer. Strong emptied the Florida house of family heirlooms after their mother's death, Belanger said. Most of the family photo albums her mother toiled over are gone.The brown house on the winding road in Florida is still there. Belanger's memories of family cookouts and holiday gatherings linger in the house; they weren't wiped away by the police visits and padlocked doors. But the family home isn't the family's anymore. Years later, it is stuck in legal limbo - the deed still in the name of Clayton Strong and Shirley Weatherley, the woman he married after the death of Betty Strong.

by ProPublica ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. For nearly a decade, Microsoft has used engineers in China to help maintain highly sensitive Defense Department computer systems. ProPublica's investigation reveals how a model that relies on digital escorts" to oversee foreign tech support could leave some of the nation's most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary.Here are the key takeaways from that report: Only U.S. citizens with security clearances are permitted to access the Defense Department's most sensitive data. Since 2011, cloud computing companies that wanted to sell their services to the U.S. government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with federal data would have the requisite access authorizations" and background screenings. Additionally, the Defense Department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.This presented an issue for Microsoft, which relies on a vast global workforce with significant operations in India, China and the European Union. Microsoft established its low-profile digital escort" program to get around this prohibition. Microsoft's foreign workforce is not permitted to access sensitive cloud systems directly, so the tech giant hired U.S.-based digital escorts," who had security clearances that authorized them to access sensitive information, to take direction from the overseas experts. The engineers might briefly describe the job to be completed - for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then the escort copies and pastes the engineer's commands into the federal cloud.The problem, ProPublica found, is that digital escorts don't necessarily have the advanced technical expertise needed to spot problems.We're trusting that what they're doing isn't malicious, but we really can't tell," said one current escort. The escorts handle data that, if leaked, would have catastrophic" effects. Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government's most sensitive information that falls below classified." According to the government, this includes data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin." The loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability" of this information could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect" on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said.Defense Department data in this category includes materials that directly support military operations. The program could expose Pentagon data to cyberattacks. Because the U.S.-based escorts are taking direction from foreign engineers, including those based in China, the nation's greatest cyber adversary, it is possible that an escort could unwittingly insert malicious code into the Defense Department's computer systems.A former Microsoft engineer who worked on the system acknowledged this possibility. If someone ran a script called fix_servers.sh' but it actually did something malicious, then [escorts] would have no idea," the engineer, Matthew Erickson, told ProPublica.Pradeep Nair, a former Microsoft vice president who said he helped develop the concept from the start, said a variety of safeguards including audit logs, the digital trail of system activity, could alert Microsoft or the government to potential problems. Because these controls are stringent, residual risk is minimal," Nair said. Digital escorts present a natural opportunity for spies, experts say. If I were an operative, I would look at that as an avenue for extremely valuable access. We need to be very concerned about that," said Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency. Coker, who also was national cyber director during the Biden administration, added that he and his former intelligence colleagues would love to have had access like that."Chinese laws allow government officials there to collect data as long as they're doing something that they've deemed legitimate," said Jeremy Daum, senior research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Microsoft's China-based tech support for the U.S. government presents an opening for Chinese espionage, whether it be putting someone who's already an intelligence professional into one of those jobs, or going to the people who are in the jobs and pumping them for information," Daum said. It would be difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement." Microsoft says the program is government-approved. In a statement, Microsoft said that its personnel and contractors operate in a manner consistent with US Government requirements and processes."The company's global workers have no direct access to customer data or customer systems," the statement said. Escorts with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment."Insight Global - a contractor that provides digital escorts to Microsoft - said it evaluates the technical capabilities of each resource throughout the interview process to ensure they possess the technical skills required" for the job and provides training. Microsoft says it disclosed details of the escort program to the government. Former Pentagon officials said they'd never heard of it. Microsoft told ProPublica that it described the escort model in documents submitted to the government as part of cloud vendor authorization processes. Former defense and intelligence officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. Even the Defense Department's IT agency didn't know about it until reached for comment by ProPublica.I probably should have known about this," said John Sherman, who was chief information officer for the Defense Department during the Biden administration. He said the system is a major security risk for the department and called for a thorough review by [the Defense Information Systems Agency], Cyber Command and other stakeholders that are involved in this."DISA said, Experts under escort supervision have no direct, hands-on access to government systems; but rather offer guidance and recommendations to authorized administrators who perform tasks." There were warnings early on about the risks. Multiple people raised concerns about the escort strategy over the years, including while it was still in development. A former Microsoft employee, who was involved in the company's cybersecurity strategy, told an executive they opposed the concept, viewing it as too risky from a security perspective.Around 2016, Microsoft engaged contacts from Lockheed Martin to hire escorts. The project manager says they told their counterpart at Microsoft they were concerned the escorts would not have the right eyes" for the job given the relatively low pay.Microsoft did not respond to questions about these points. Other cloud providers wouldn't say if they also use escorts. It's unclear whether other major cloud service providers to the federal government also use digital escorts in tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

by Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published. Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department's computer systems - with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel - leaving some of the nation's most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government's cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.But these workers, known as digital escorts," often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.We're trusting that what they're doing isn't malicious, but we really can't tell," said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.The system has been in place for nearly a decade, though its existence is being reported publicly here for the first time.Microsoft told ProPublica that it has disclosed details about the escort model to the federal government. But former government officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. The program appears to be so low-profile that even the Defense Department's IT agency had difficulty finding someone familiar with it. Literally no one seems to know anything about this, so I don't know where to go from here," said Deven King, spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency.National security and cybersecurity experts contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China's digital prowess as a top threat to the country.The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has called China the most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks." One of the most prominent examples of that threat came in 2023, when Chinese hackers infiltrated the cloud-based mailboxes of senior U.S. government officials, stealing data and emails from the commerce secretary, the U.S. ambassador to China and others working on national security matters. The intruders downloaded about 60,000 emails from the State Department alone.With President Donald Trump and his allies concerned about spying, the State Department announced plans in May to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students" - a pledge that the president seems to have walked back. The administration is also trying to arrange the sale of the popular social media platform TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company that some lawmakers believe could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing and fuel misinformation with its content recommendations. But experts told ProPublica that digital escorting poses a far greater threat to national security than either of those issues and is a natural opportunity for spies.If I were an operative, I would look at that as an avenue for extremely valuable access. We need to be very concerned about that," said Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency. Coker, who also was national cyber director during the Biden administration, added that he and his former intelligence community colleagues would love to have had access like that."It is difficult to know whether engineers overseen by digital escorts have ever carried out a cyberattack against the U.S. government. But Coker wondered whether it could be part of an explanation for a lot of the challenges we have faced over the years."Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government's most sensitive information that falls below classified." According to the government, this high impact level" category includes data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin." The loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability" of this information could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect" on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as Impact Level" 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.John Sherman, who was chief information officer for the Department of Defense during the Biden administration, said he was surprised and concerned to learn of ProPublica's findings. I probably should have known about this," he said. He told the news organization that the situation warrants a thorough review by DISA, Cyber Command and other stakeholders that are involved in this."In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists," but the agency did not respond to ProPublica's questions regarding the digital escorts' qualifications.It's unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.Microsoft declined to make executives available for interviews for this article. In response to emailed questions, the company provided a statement saying its personnel and contractors operate in a manner consistent with US Government requirements and processes."Global workers have no direct access to customer data or customer systems," the statement said. Escorts with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment." In addition, Microsoft said it has an internal review process known as Lockbox" to make sure the request is deemed safe or has any cause for concern." A company spokesperson declined to provide specifics about how it works but said it's built into the system and involves review by a Microsoft employee in the U.S.Over the years, various people involved in the work, including a Microsoft cybersecurity leader, warned the company that the arrangement is inherently risky, those people told ProPublica. Despite the presence of an escort, foreign engineers are privy to granular details about the federal cloud - the kind of information hackers could exploit. Moreover, the U.S. escorts overseeing these workers are ill equipped to spot suspicious activity, two of the people said.Even those who helped develop the escort system acknowledge the people doing the work may not be able to detect problems.If someone ran a script called fix_servers.sh' but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea," Matthew Erickson, a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the scope of systems they could disrupt" is limited. The Defense Department requires anyone working with its most sensitive data to be a U.S. citizen, U.S. national or permanent resident. No Foreign persons may have such access," according to the department's cloud security requirements. Microsoft, however, has a global workforce, so it created the digital escort system as a work-around. Here's an example of how it works and the risk it poses:Tech support is needed on a Microsoft cloud product.A Microsoft engineer in China files an online ticket" to take on the work.A U.S.-based escort picks up the ticket.The engineer and the escort meet on the Microsoft Teams conferencing platform.The engineer sends computer commands to the U.S. escort, presenting an opportunity to insert malicious code.The escort, who may not have advanced technical expertise, inputs the commands into the federal cloud system.Illustrations for ProPublica A Microsoft contractor called Insight Global posted an ad in January seeking an escort to bring engineers without security clearances into the secured environment" of the federal government and to protect confidential and secure information from spillage," an industry term for a data leak. The pay started at $18 an hour.While the ad said that specific technical skills were highly preferred" and nice to have," the main prerequisite was possessing a valid secret" level clearance issued by the Defense Department.People are getting these jobs because they are cleared, not because they're software engineers," said the escort who agreed to speak anonymously and who works for Insight Global.Each month, the company's roughly 50-person escort team fields hundreds of interactions with Microsoft's China-based engineers and developers, inputting those workers' commands into federal networks, the employee said.In a statement to ProPublica, Insight Global said it evaluates the technical capabilities of each resource throughout the interview process to ensure they possess the technical skills required" for the job, and provides training. The company noted that escorts also receive additional cyber and insider threat awareness" training as part of the government security clearance process.While a security clearance may be required for the role, it is but one piece of the puzzle," the company said.Microsoft did not respond to questions about Insight Global.The Path of Least Resistance"When modern cloud technology emerged in the 2000s, offering on-demand computing power and data storage via the internet, it ushered in fundamental changes to federal government operations.For decades, federal departments used computer servers owned and operated by the government itself to house data and power networks. Shifting to the cloud meant moving that work to massive off-site data centers managed by tech companies.Federal officials believed that the cloud would provide greater power, efficiency and cost savings. But the transition also meant that the government would cede some control over who maintained and accessed its information to companies like Microsoft, whose employees would take over tasks previously handled by federal IT workers.To address the risks of this revolution, the government started the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, known as FedRAMP, in 2011. Under the program, companies that wanted to sell their cloud services to the government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with sensitive federal data would have the requisite access authorizations" and background screenings. On top of that, the Defense Department had its own cloud guidelines, requiring that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.This presented an issue for Microsoft, given its reliance on a vast global workforce, with significant operations in India, China and the European Union. So the company tapped a senior program manager named Indy Crowley to put federal officials at ease. Known for his familiarity with the rules and his ability to converse in the government's acronym-heavy lingo, colleagues dubbed him the FedRAMP whisperer."In an interview, Crowley told ProPublica that he appealed directly to FedRAMP leadership, arguing that the relative risk from Microsoft's global workforce was minimal. To make his point, he said he once grilled a FedRAMP official on the provenance of code in products supplied by other government vendors such as IBM. The official couldn't say with certainty that only U.S. citizens had worked on the product in question, he said. The cloud, Crowley argued, should not be treated any differently.Crowley said he also met with prospective customers across the government and told ProPublica that the Defense Department was the one making the most demands." Concerned about the company's global workforce, officials there asked him who from Microsoft would be behind the curtain" working on the cloud. Given the department's citizenship requirements, the officials raised the possibility of Microsoft hiring a bunch of U.S. citizens to maintain the federal cloud" directly, Crowley told ProPublica. For Microsoft, the suggestion was a nonstarter, Crowley said, because the increased labor costs of implementing it broadly would make a cloud transition prohibitively expensive for the government.It's always a balance between cost and level of effort and expertise," he told ProPublica. So you find what's good enough." Hiring virtual escorts to supervise Microsoft's foreign workforce emerged as the path of least resistance," Crowley said.Microsoft did not respond to ProPublica's questions about Crowley's account.When he brought the concept back to Microsoft, colleagues had mixed reactions. Tom Keane, then the corporate vice president for Microsoft's cloud platform, Azure, embraced the idea, according to a former employee involved in the discussions, as it would allow the company to scale up. But that former employee, who was involved in cybersecurity strategy, told ProPublica they opposed the concept, viewing it as too risky from a security perspective. Both Keane and Crowley dismissed the concerns, said the former employee, who left the company before the escort concept was deployed.People who got in the way of scaling up did not stay," the former employee told ProPublica.Crowley said he did not recall the discussion. Keane did not respond to requests for comment.On its march to becoming one of the world's most valuable companies, Microsoft has repeatedly prioritized corporate profit over customer security, ProPublica has found. Last year, the news organization reported that the tech giant ignored one of its own engineers when he repeatedly warned that a product flaw left the U.S. government exposed; state-sponsored Russian hackers later exploited that weakness in one of the largest cyberattacks in history. Microsoft has defended its decision not to address the flaw, saying that it received multiple reviews" and that the company weighs a variety of factors when making security decisions.A Skills Gap From the StartThe idea of an escort wasn't novel. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which serves as the federal government's standards-setting body, had established recommendations on how IT maintenance should be performed on-site, such as in a restricted government office. Maintenance personnel that lack appropriate security clearances or are not U.S. citizens" must be escorted and supervised by approved organizational personnel who are fully cleared, have appropriate access authorizations, and are technically qualified," the guidelines state.The government at the time specified the intent of the recommendation: to deny individuals who lack appropriate security clearances ... or who are not U.S. citizens, visual and electronic access to" sensitive government information.But escorts in the cloud wouldn't necessarily be able to meet that goal, given the gap in technical expertise between them and the Microsoft counterparts they would be taking direction from.That imbalance, though, was baked into the escorting model.Erickson, the former Microsoft engineer who worked on the model, told ProPublica that escorts are somewhat technically proficient," but mainly are just there to make sure the employees don't accidentally or intentionally view" passwords, customer data or personally identifiable information. If there are problems with the underlying" cloud services, then only the people who work on those services at Microsoft would have the requisite knowledge to fix it," he said.Advanced threats from foreign adversaries weren't on the radar for Erickson, who said he didn't have any reason to suspect someone more just based on their country of origin."I don't think there is any extra threat from Microsoft employees based in other countries," he said. (Illustration by Andrea Wise/ProPublica. Source images: Bevan Goldswain/Getty Images, kontekbrothers/Getty Images, amgun/Getty Images.) Pradeep Nair, a former Microsoft vice president who said he helped develop the concept from the start, said that the digital escort strategy allowed the company to go to market faster," positioning it to win major federal cloud contracts. He said that escorts complete role-specific training before touching any production system" and that a variety of safeguards including audit logs, the digital trail of system activity, could alert Microsoft or the government to potential problems.Because these controls are stringent, residual risk is minimal," Nair said.But legal and cybersecurity experts say such assumptions ignored the massive cyber threat from China in particular. Around the time that Microsoft was developing its escort strategy, an attack attributed to Chinese state-sponsored hackers resulted in the largest breach of U.S. government data up to that point. The theft initially targeted a government contractor and eventually compromised the personal information of more than 22 million people, most of them applicants for federal security clearances.Chinese laws allow government officials there to collect data as long as they're doing something that they've deemed legitimate," said Jeremy Daum, senior research fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School. Microsoft's China-based tech support for the U.S. government presents an opening for espionage, whether it be putting someone who's already an intelligence professional into one of those jobs, or going to the people who are in the jobs and pumping them for information," Daum said. It would be difficult for any Chinese citizen or company to meaningfully resist a direct request from security forces or law enforcement."Erickson acknowledged that having an escort doesn't prevent foreign developers from doing bad' things. It just allows for there to be a recording and a witness." He said if an escort suspects malicious activity, they will end the session and file an incident report to investigate further.How much of this information federal officials understood is unclear.A Microsoft spokesperson said the company described the digital escort model in the documents submitted to the government as part of cloud vendor authorization processes. However, it declined to provide those records or to tell ProPublica the exact language it used in them to describe the escort arrangement, citing the potential security risk of publicly disclosing it.In addition to a third-party auditor, Microsoft's documentation theoretically would have been reviewed by multiple parties in the government, including FedRAMP and DISA. DISA said the materials are not releasable to the public." The General Services Administration, which houses FedRAMP, did not respond to requests for comment.The Right Eyes" for the Job?In June 2016, Microsoft announced that it had received FedRAMP authorization to work with some of the government's most sensitive data. Matt Goodrich, then FedRAMP director, said at the time that the accreditation was a testament to Microsoft's ability to meet the government's rigorous security requirements."Around the same time, Microsoft put the escort concept into practice, engaging contacts from defense giant Lockheed Martin to hire cloud escorts, two people involved in the contract told ProPublica.A project manager, who asked for anonymity to describe confidential discussions, told ProPublica that they were skeptical of the escort arrangement from the start and voiced those feelings to their Microsoft counterpart. The manager was especially concerned that the new hires would not have the right eyes" for the job given the relatively low pay set by Microsoft, but the system went ahead anyway.Lockheed Martin referred questions to Leidos, a company that took over Lockheed's IT business following a merger in 2016. Leidos declined to comment.As Microsoft captured more of the government's business, the company turned to additional subcontractors, typically staffing companies, to hire more digital escorts.Analyzing profiles on LinkedIn, ProPublica identified at least two such firms: Insight Global and ASM Research, whose parent company is consulting giant Accenture. While the scope of each firm's business with Microsoft is unclear, ProPublica found more workers identifying themselves as digital escorts at Insight Global, many of them former military personnel, than at ASM. ASM and Accenture did not respond to requests for comment.Concerns About ChinaSome Insight Global workers recognized the same problem as the former Lockheed manager: a mismatch in skills between the U.S.-based escorts and the Microsoft engineers they are supervising. The engineers might briefly describe the job to be completed - for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then, with limited inspection, the escort copies and pastes the engineer's commands into the federal cloud.They're telling nontechnical people very technical directions," the current Insight Global escort said, adding that the arrangement presents untold opportunities for hacking. As an example, they said the engineer could install an update allowing an outsider to access the network.Will that get caught? Absolutely," the escort told ProPublica. Will that get caught before damage is done? No idea."The escort was particularly concerned about the dozens of tickets a week filed by workers based in China. The attack targeting federal officials in 2023 - in which Chinese hackers stole 60,000 emails - underscored that fear.The federal Cyber Safety Review Board, which investigated the attack, blamed Microsoft for security lapses that gave hackers their opening. Its published report did not mention digital escorts, either as playing a role in the attack or as a risk to be mitigated. Sherman, the former chief information officer for the Defense Department, and Coker, the former intelligence official, who both also served as members of the CSRB, told ProPublica that they did not recall the board ever discussing digital escorting, which they said they now consider a major threat. The Trump administration has since disbanded the CSRB.In its statement, Microsoft said it expects escorts to perform a variety of technical tasks," which are outlined in its contracts with vendors. Insight Global said it evaluates prospective hires to ensure they have those skills and trains new employees on all applicable security and compliance policies provided by Microsoft."But the Insight Global employee told ProPublica the training regimen doesn't come close to bridging the knowledge gap. In addition, it is challenging for escorts to gain expertise on the job because the type of work they oversee varies widely. It's not possible to get as trained up as you need to be on the wide array of things you need to look at," they said.The escort said they repeatedly raised concerns about the knowledge gap to Microsoft, over several years and as recently as April, and to Insight Global's own attorneys. They said the digital escorts' relative inexperience - combined with Chinese laws that grant the country's officials broad authority to collect data - left U.S. government networks overly exposed. Microsoft repeatedly thanked the escort for raising the issues while Insight Global said it would take them under advisement, the escort said. It is unclear whether Microsoft or Insight Global took any steps to address them; neither company answered questions about the escort's account.In its statement, Microsoft said it meets regularly with its contractors to discuss operations and surface questions or concerns." The company also noted that it has additional layers of security and monitoring controls" including automated code reviews to quickly detect and prevent the introduction of vulnerabilities."Microsoft assumes anyone that has access to production systems, regardless of location or role, can pose a risk to the system, whether intentionally or unintentionally," the company said in its statement.Another Warning, a Growing RiskLast year, about three months after government investigators released their report on the 2023 hack into U.S. officials' emails, a former Insight Global contractor named Tom Schiller contacted a Defense Department hotline and wrote to several federal lawmakers to warn them about digital escorting. He had become familiar with the system while briefly working for the company as a software developer. By last July, Schiller's complaints wound their way to the Defense Information Systems Agency Office of the Inspector General. Schiller told ProPublica that the office conducted a sworn interview with him, and separately with three others connected to Insight Global. In August, the inspector general wrote to Schiller to say it had closed the case.We conducted a preliminary analysis into the complaint and determined this matter is not within the avenue of redress by DISA IG and is best addressed by the appropriate DISA management," the assistant inspector general for investigations said in the letter. We have referred the information you provided to management."A spokesperson for the inspector general - whose office is supposed to operate independently in order to investigate potential waste, fraud and abuse - told ProPublica they were not authorized to speak about the issue and directed questions to DISA public affairs.If the public information office contacts me and wants to collaborate to formulate a response through their office, I'll be more than happy to do that," the spokesperson said. But I will not be responding to any kind of media request concerning OIG business without speaking with the public information office."DISA public affairs did not answer questions about the matter. After a spokesperson initially said that he couldn't find anyone who had heard of the escort concept, the agency later acknowledged in a statement to ProPublica that escorts are used in select unclassified environments" at the Defense Department for advanced problem diagnosis and resolution from industry subject matter experts." Echoing Microsoft's statement, it continued, Experts under escort supervision have no direct, hands-on access to government systems; but rather offer guidance and recommendations to authorized administrators who perform tasks."It is unclear what, if any, discussions have taken place among Microsoft, Insight Global and DISA, or any other government agency, regarding digital escorts.But David Mihelcic, DISA's former chief technology officer, said any visibility into the Defense Department's network poses a huge risk."Here you have one person you really don't trust because they're probably in the Chinese intelligence service, and the other person is not really capable," he said.The risk may be getting more serious by the day, as U.S.-China relations worsen amid a simmering trade war - the type of conflict that experts say could result in Chinese cyber retaliation.In testimony to a Senate committee in May, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the company is continually pushing Chinese out of agencies." He did not elaborate on how they got in, and Microsoft did not respond to follow-up questions on the remark.

by Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott doesn't want to reveal months of communications with Elon Musk or representatives from the tech mogul's companies, arguing in part that they are of a private nature, not of public interest and potentially embarrassing.Musk had an eventful legislative session in Texas this year. In addition to his lobbyists successfully advocating for several new laws, Abbott cited the Tesla and SpaceX CEO as the inspiration for the state creating its own efficiency office and has praised him for moving the headquarters for many of his businesses to the state in recent years.As part of an effort to track the billionaire's influence in the state Capitol, The Texas Newsroom in April requested Abbott and his staff's emails since last fall with Musk and other people who have an email address associated with some of his companies.Initially, the governor's office said it would take more than 13 hours to review the records. It provided a cost estimate of $244.64 for the work and required full payment up front. The Texas Newsroom agreed and cut a check.After the check was cashed, the governor's office told The Texas Newsroom it believed all of the records were confidential and asked Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office referees disputes over public records, to allow the documents to be kept private.Matthew Taylor, Abbott's public information coordinator, gave several reasons the records should not be released. He argued they include private exchanges with lawyers, details about policy-making decisions and information that would reveal how the state entices companies to invest here. Releasing them to the public, he wrote, would have a chilling effect on the frank and open discussion necessary for the decision-making process."Taylor also argued that the communications are confidential under an exception to public records laws known as common-law privacy" because they consist of information that is intimate and embarrassing and not of legitimate concern to the public, including financial decisions that do not relate to transactions between an individual and a governmental body."He did not provide further details about the exact content of the records. The language Abbott's office used appears to be fairly boilerplate. Paxton's office, in an explanation of the common-law privacy exception on its website, mentions that personal financial information" that doesn't deal with government transactions is generally highly intimate or embarrassing and must be withheld."But Bill Aleshire, a Texas-based attorney specializing in public records law, was appalled that the governor is claiming that months of emails between his office and one of the world's richest people are all private.Right now, it appears they've charged you $244 for records they have no intention of giving you," Aleshire said. That is shocking."Aleshire said it's not unusual for government agencies to tap the common-law privacy exception in an attempt to withhold records from the public. But he's used to it being cited in cases that involve children, medical data or other highly personal information - not for emails between an elected official and a businessman.You're boxing in the dark," Aleshire said. You can't even see what the target is or what's behind their claim."Aleshire added that due to a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling, there is effectively no way to enforce public records laws against Abbott and other top state officials. He called the decision an ace card" for these politicians.The case dealt with requests to release Abbott and Paxton's communications in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde. The high court ruled that it is the only body that can review whether these officials are in compliance with public records laws.Kevin Bagnall, a lawyer representing Musk's rocket company SpaceX, also wrote a letter to Paxton's office arguing the emails should be kept secret. He cited one main reason: They contain commercial information whose disclosure would cause SpaceX substantial competitive harm." Most of the rest of Bagnall's letter, which further explained SpaceX's argument, was redacted.Musk and representatives for his companies did not respond to requests for comment for this story.Abbott's spokesperson did not respond to specific questions about the records, including whether The Texas Newsroom would be refunded if Paxton withholds them.In a statement, he said, The Office of the Governor rigorously complies with the Texas Public Information Act and will release any responsive information that is determined to not be confidential or excepted from disclosure."The office of the attorney general has 45 business days to determine whether to release Abbott's records. Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org. Sign up for KUT newsletters.

by Jennifer Berry Hawes ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Nine months ago, Hurricane Helene barreled up from the Gulf of Mexico and slammed into the rugged mountains of western North Carolina, dumping a foot of rain onto an already saturated landscape. More than 100 people died, most by drowning in floodwaters or being crushed by water-fueled landslides.We had no idea it was going to do what it did," said Jeff Howell, the now-retired emergency manager in Yancey County, North Carolina, a rural expanse that suffered the most deaths per capita.A week ago, the remnants of Tropical Storm Barry slipped up from the coast of Mexico, drawing moisture from the Gulf, then collided with another system and inundated rivers and creeks in hilly south central Texas. More than 100 people are confirmed dead, many of them children, with more missing.We had no reason to believe that this was going to be anything like what's happened here - none whatsoever," said County Judge Rob Kelly, the top elected official in Kerr County, Texas, where most of the deaths occurred.The similarities between North Carolina and Texas extend beyond the words of these two officials. In both disasters, there was a disconnect between accurate weather alerts and on-the-ground action that could have saved lives.Officials in each of those places were warned. The National Weather Service sent urgent alerts about potentially life-threatening danger hours in advance of the flash floods, leaving time to notify and try to evacuate people in harm's way.In Texas, some local officials did just that. But others did not.Similarly, a ProPublica investigation found that when Helene hit on Sept. 27, some local officials in North Carolina issued evacuation orders. At least five counties in Helene's path, including Yancey, did not. Howell said the enormity of the storm was far worse than anyone alive had ever seen and that he notified residents as best he could.The National Weather Service described Helene's approach for days. It sent out increasingly dire alerts warning of dangerous flash flooding and landslides. Its staff spoke directly with local emergency managers and held webinar updates. A Facebook message the regional office posted around 1 p.m. the day before Helene hit warned of significant to catastrophic, life-threatening flooding" in the mountains. This will be one of the most significant weather events to happen in the western portions of the area in the modern era."Similarly, in Texas, the weather service warned of potential for flash flooding the day before. Also that day, the state emergency management agency's regional director had personally contacted" county judges, mayors and others in that area and notified them all of potential flooding," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick later said at a press conference.AccuWeather, a commercial weather forecasting service, issued the first flash flood warning in Kerr County at 12:44 a.m. on July 4, roughly three hours before the catastrophic flooding. A half-hour later, at 1:14 a.m., the National Weather Service sent a similar warning to two specific areas, including central Kerr County, where the Guadalupe River's banks and hills are dotted with vacation homes, summer camps and campgrounds - many filled with July 4 vacationers slumbering in cabins and RVs.Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly," the weather service alert said. Impacts could include life threatening flash flooding of creeks and streams."A severity descriptor on that alert sent it to weather radios and the nation's Wireless Emergency Alerts system, which blasts weather warnings to cellphones to blare an alarm.AccuWeather's chief meteorologist, Jonathan Porter, was dismayed to hear news later that all the children attending youth camps in Kerr County had not been ushered to higher ground despite those warnings.At Camp Mystic, a beloved century-old Christian summer camp for girls, at least 27 campers and counselors were killed. Six still haven't been found. Its director also died, while trying to rescue children. (People at the camp said they received little to no help from the authorities, according to The New York Times.)I was very concerned to see that campers were awoken not by someone coming to tell them to evacuate based on timely warnings issued but rather by rapidly rising water that was going up to the second level of their bunkbeds," Porter said.In the area, known as Flash Flood Alley, Porter called this a tragedy of the worst sort" because it appeared camps and local officials could have mobilized sooner in response to the alerts.There was plenty of time to evacuate people to higher ground," Porter said. The question is, Why did that not happen?" But Dalton Rice, city manager of Kerrville, the county seat, said at a press conference the next day that there wasn't a lot of time" to communicate the risk to camps because the floodwaters rose so rapidly.Rice said that at 3:30 a.m. - more than two hours after the flash flood warnings began - he went jogging near the Guadalupe River to check it out but didn't see anything concerning.But 13 miles upriver from the park where he was jogging, the river began - at 3:10 a.m. - to rise 25 feet in just two hours.At 4:03 a.m., the weather service upgraded the warning to an emergency"- its most severe flash flood alert - with a tag of catastrophic." It singled out the Guadalupe River at Hunt in Kerr County: This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!"The local sheriff said he wasn't made aware of the flooding until 4 to 5 a.m. He has declined to say whether the local emergency manager, who is responsible for alerting the public to approaching storms, was awake when the flash flood warnings went out starting at 1 a.m. The Texas Tribune reported that Kerrville's mayor said he wasn't aware of the flooding until around 5:30 a.m., when the city manager called and woke him up.Local officials have refused to provide more details, saying they are focused on finding the more than 100 people still missing and notifying loved ones of deaths. First image: Hurricane Helene's aftermath in Asheville, North Carolina, last September. Second image: A search-and-rescue worker looks through debris on July 6 after flash flooding in Hunt, Texas. (First image: Sean Rayford/Getty Images. Second image: Jim Vondruska/Getty Images) One challenge as disasters approach is that weather alerts often don't reach the people in harm's way.In rural areas across Texas and North Carolina alike, cellphone service can be spotty on the best of days, and some people turn off alert notifications. In North Carolina's remote mountains, many people live at least somewhat off the grid. The cell service isn't great everywhere, and many aren't glued to phones or social media. In Texas, Kerr County residents posted on Facebook complaints that they didn't receive the weather service's alerts while others said their phones blared all night with warnings.Many counties also use apps to send their own alerts, often tailored to their specific rivers and roads. But residents must opt in to receive them. Kerr County uses CodeRed, but it isn't clear what alerts it sent out overnight.Pete Jensen has spent a long career in emergency management, including responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. He served as an official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina and often ponders why more people don't receive - and heed - weather alerts.There's an awful lot of denial," Jensen said. Disasters happen to someone else. They don't happen to me." That can include local officials who don't always understand what their responsibilities are. They very often react like most humans do - in denial."There is one big difference between the disasters in Texas and North Carolina. In Texas, residents, journalists and others have demanded accountability from local officials. Gov. Greg Abbott has called the Legislature into special session starting July 21 to discuss flood warning systems, flood emergency communications and natural disaster preparation.But that hasn't happened in North Carolina. The state legislature has yet to discuss possible changes, such as expanding its Know Your Zone evacuation plan beyond the coast, or boost funding for local emergency managers. (Instead, lawmakers went home in late June without passing a full budget.) Many emergency managers, including in Yancey County, operate in rural areas with small tax bases and skeleton staffs.There still has not been an outcry here for, How do we do things differently?" said state Sen. Julie Mayfield, a Democrat from Asheville. It still feels like we're very much in recovery mode."North Carolina's emergency management agency commissioned a review of its handling of the disaster. The report found the state agency severely understaffed, but it didn't examine issues such as evacuations or local emergency managers' actions before Helene hit.Erika Andresen also lives in Asheville, a mountain city in the heart of Helene's destruction, where she helps businesses prepare for disasters. A lawyer and former Army judge advocate, she also teaches emergency management. After Helene, she was among the few voices in North Carolina criticizing the lack of evacuations and other inactions ahead of the storm.I knew right away, both from my instinct and from my experience, that a lot of things went terribly wrong," Andresen said. When she got pushback against criticizing local authorities in a time of crisis, she countered, We need accountability." Clarification, July 11, 2025: This story has been clarified to specify where AccuWeather issued the first flash flood warning.

by Katherine Mangan, 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. When the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights notified George Mason University on July 1 that it was opening an antisemitism investigation based on a recent complaint, the university's president, Gregory Washington, said he was perplexed."Compared with other campuses, where protesters had ransacked buildings and hunkered down in encampments, George Mason had been relatively quiet over the past year, he said. His administration had taken extensive steps to improve relations with the Jewish community, had enacted strict rules on protests and had communicated all of that to the OCR during a previous antisemitism investigation that remained open.By the next day, though, there were signs that the new investigation was part of a coordinated campaign to oust him.One piece of evidence: the speed with which conservative news outlets reported on the OCR's action, which hadn't been publicly announced. The OCR letter was embedded in a July 2 article published by a right-wing news outlet, The Washington Free Beacon. The next day, the City Journal, published by the influential and conservative Manhattan Institute, ran an opinion essay headlined George Mason University's Disastrous President." The article accused Washington, the university's first Black president and a first-generation college graduate, of backing racially discriminatory DEI programs" - referring to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts - and failing to address campus antisemitism. It concluded that Washington's track record warrants his resignation or dismissal."The similarities to recent events at another public university in Virginia were hard to ignore. The OCR's George Mason investigation was opened just four days after the University of Virginia's president, James E. Ryan, announced that he was resigning to help settle a federal probe into the university's DEI commitments.That happened after a group of conservative University of Virginia alumni, the Jefferson Council, published blog entries and newspaper ads decrying the president - in part for focusing too heavily on diversity efforts - and demanding that he resign. The council's connections to board members and Justice Department lawyers led many observers in higher education to conclude that Ryan's forced resignation was the result of a coordinated assault.Now, Washington is feeling the same heat coming from similar sources.The temperature cranked up several degrees Thursday morning, when the Education Department notified George Mason that it's opening a second investigation - this one alleging the university illegally considers race in hiring and promoting employees. The department said it was acting on complaints from multiple professors" at GMU.In a press statement Thursday, Craig Trainor, the Education Department's acting assistant secretary for civil rights, suggested that the agency has already reached sweeping conclusions about the university's hiring practices. Despite the leadership of George Mason University claiming that it does not discriminate on the basis of race, it appears that its hiring and promotion policies and practices from 2020 to the present, implemented under the guise of so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,' not only allow but champion illegal racial preferencing in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This kind of pernicious and wide-spread discrimination - packaged as anti-racism' - was allowed to flourish under the Biden Administration, but it will not be tolerated by this one," he wrote.The university rebutted those accusations in a statement saying it is complying with all federal and state mandates and does not discriminate. The university received a new Department of Education letter of investigation this morning as it was simultaneously released to news outlets, which is unprecedented in our experience," the statement said. As always, we will work in good faith to give a full and prompt response."Meanwhile, dozens of Jewish faculty members at GMU have signed on to a statement condemning an attack on our university community and our GMU President that is quickly intensifying under a false, racially divisive, and deeply cynical claim of combating antisemitism." Even before Thursday's announcement, Washington said he had detected a pattern that's been playing out at other universities targeted by President Donald Trump's administration: Multiple investigations are filed in quick succession and word leaks to news organizations.It seems like this is orchestrated," Washington said during an interview Wednesday. The same people who are kind of aligned that got rid of Jim Ryan are aligned against me."He finds the timing of the attacks against him and his university troubling.Given that the Office for Civil Rights doesn't publicly announce who is under investigation, we were wondering how these conservative outlets even got the information in the first place," Washington said. The almost hateful discussions of me" in the City Journal article looked like a concerted effort to try to paint the institution in a negative light."Washington said the piece seemed to be urging the Trump administration to take the investigation to the next level, the Department of Justice, which could levy punishments against the university.Many faculty members at George Mason agree. They worry that despite the OCR's insistence in its letter to the university that its investigation will be unbiased, the Trump administration has already reached a verdict on the institution's president and wants him out. As evidence, they point to a web of ties between right-wing news organizations and politicians - including Virginia's Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin - as well as some George Mason board members.The same unfounded and coordinated attacks that pushed Ryan out of UVa are now being leveled at GMU President Greg Washington," the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors wrote in an online post. We think the DOJ, Governor Youngkin, and Youngkin's appointees" to GMU's governing board are trying to force President Washington out so they can hire an ideological ally who will impose the Governor's political ideologies on Mason's governance and curriculum."Late Wednesday, Virginia's two Democratic U.S. senators, Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, doubled down on those warnings, publishing an opinion piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch saying that the Trump administration appears to be eyeing its next target" with George Mason's president.The accusations - which are pushed by bloggers with ties to ultra-conservative groups with histories of false claims about Mason and advocacy for the removal of university presidents - are eerily similar to those lodged against Ryan," they wrote. They include vague and politically charged accusations centered around DEI' and suggestions that the university's administration has been insufficiently responsive to concerns raised by Jewish students about their safety on campus. That's despite the fact that the university's leaders have repeatedly and publicly condemned antisemitism and actually been praised by the local Jewish Relations Council and campus Hillel for their leadership and commitment to Jewish members of Mason's community."The education department's July 1 letter notified George Mason that it was investigating a complaint, filed in June, that Jewish students and faculty members faced a hostile environment at the Virginia university between October 2023 and the end of the 2024-2025 academic year. It gave the university until July 21 to turn over voluminous information about its response to antisemitism complaints.It also assured the university it would take a neutral stance in evaluating the information.Warner and Kaine are skeptical that the investigation will be fair and impartial: In their opinion piece, they said it's more likely to serve as yet another smokescreen to punish universities and leaders who don't align with their ideological goals."Some George Mason faculty members share these concerns.When you start seeing these hit pieces come out one after another in a matter of days, you know it's coordinated," Bethany L. Letiecq, a professor in the College of Education and Human Development, said in an interview.Indeed, higher education leaders have accused the Department of Justice's Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, which officially oversees investigations by several federal agencies, of ignoring procedures intended to provide due process, racing toward predetermined results, and then punishing universities by stripping them of billions of research dollars.Washington's critics have ties to right-wing advocates of eliminating diversity efforts and other examples of what they see as higher education's woke" policies. The author of the essay calling Washington a disastrous" president, Ian Kingsbury, has co-published articles promoting conservative causes with Jay P. Greene, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation. Christopher F. Rufo, one of the nation's most aggressive and influential opponents of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, is among the contributing editors at City Journal.Such critics are well represented in George Mason's leadership as well.Youngkin, the governor, appointed most of GMU's governing board, known as the board of visitors. The university's general counsel, Anne Gentry, is married to a longtime conservative activist and executive with the Koch Foundation, Letiecq pointed out. At Mason, the foxes are in the henhouse," she said. It's an inside job."Letiecq worries that Youngkin might exert the same kind of influence that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican, has in trying to reshape higher education to fit a conservative playbook. Neither Youngkin nor the board of visitors immediately responded to requests for comment.I have suspected that Youngkin, in his quest for political capital, has been following the DeSantis playbook and sees Mason as a potential New College that they can take over and take down," she said. New College of Florida, once a progressive institution, underwent substantial changes to its curriculum and staff beginning in 2023 when DeSantis stacked its board with conservative members.Neither Kingsbury, the author of the City Journal piece, nor the Department of Education responded to inquiries about the patterns Washington saw. Eliana Johnson, editor of the Washington Free Beacon, said in a statement that our reporting speaks for itself." City Journal did not respond to requests for comment.Washington defended his record in a public statement on July 3. As we prepare a response to the complaint, it is important that we all have an accurate understanding of how safe and welcoming the George Mason community is, particularly as we prepare to welcome tens of thousands of students to campus in just a few short weeks," he wrote.George Mason has not been marred by the sort of violence that has rocked so many other campuses elsewhere in Virginia and around the nation following the Hamas attacks of 2023. It is a distinction we are proud of, and work hard each day to maintain."In 11 messages that were sent to the campus community detailing the university's responses to the Hamas attacks and that were shared with The Chronicle of Higher Education, his office denounced craven acts of terrorism as we have seen in Israel," urged civil discourse, understanding, and peaceable assembly" on campus and denounced the disgusting behavior" of those who were attempting to distribute antisemitic leaflets. University leaders coordinated with law enforcement to respond to two violent antisemitic actions.It's been more than a year since the last campus demonstration related to Gaza, Washington said. That protest remained safe and legal and did not disrupt university business. No encampments have ever formed at George Mason, and we will not permit them in the future," Washington said. The university was one of the first to introduce a comprehensive safety and well-being plan, which remains in effect.Our data continues to show that our environment has dramatically improved since the horrific Hamas attacks of 2023, so we are perplexed to be receiving this investigation at this time. Nevertheless, we will respond in a forthright, direct, and timely manner to this and any inquiry."In the 2023-2024 academic year, the university received 31 bias-incident reports based on antisemitism, according to Rose Pascarell, vice president for university life. Last year, that number dropped to 12.Plus, she said, the university responded fully" to a previous OCR complaint related to antisemitism - but never heard back from the government.Letiecq said that, in her view, Washington has overreacted, not underreacted, to complaints of antisemitism, instituting restrictions on protests and punishments for protesters that she considers oppressive."This is an insatiable campaign on the right and it seems there's nothing you can do to satisfy them," she said.George Mason, with more than 40,000 students, is the most racially diverse public research university in the state, university officials say. To comply with Trump's executive orders, the university has repurposed its DEI office to focus on compliance and community. It has cut six positions, eliminated diversity training and expanded a program in constructive dialogue. All of those changes are outlined in a lengthy report to the board. Washington insists, though, that the university won't abandon its commitments to the underlying principles its diversity efforts support.When you are a diverse institution, you have to operate from that diverse framework," Washington said. I don't run away from that. I run toward it."DEI expenditures represent 0.1% of the university's budget, GMU officials say.Asked why he agreed to speak out publicly when so many presidents have stayed silent to avoid angering the administration, Washington said the attacks were too personal to avoid.My philosophy is: Sunlight is disinfectant. We're going to be transparent with the community throughout the process," including the back-and-forth with OCR, he said.Washington says if the university is asked to make significant changes without a standard investigation and discussion of the facts, it will deal with that as necessary. We will work in good faith to move through this," Washington said. We will know if we're given due process by how they manage our particular case." Katherine Mangan is a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education.