Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Susan Collins Dismissed Our Reporting as Old News. Some of Her Claims Aren’t True.

 

at 9/23/26 4:34pm

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at the U.S. Capitol in August Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images As the scandal over Susan Collins’ relationship with Hawaii defense contractor Navatek became the central issue in her hotly contested senate campaign, she and her top aides mustered a defense with a series of incorrect and misleading claims. Read More The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way On Tuesday, ProPublica published an investigation into the senior senator from Maine’s relationship with Martin Kao, the former Navatek CEO and a major donor who told law enforcement he exchanged campaign cash for government contracts. His confession came after his guilty plea for campaign finance and loan fraud. The ProPublica story revealed that the FBI had been circling the senator, her top aides and a pro-Collins super PAC in recent years, asking questions about their relationship with Navatek. Since returning to office, President Donald Trump fired or pushed out most of the federal agents and lawyers investigating high-profile federal corruption matters, including those working on the Kao case. The dismissals ended the corruption review, which was in its early stages. After the story published, Collins and her campaign denied any wrongdoing in numerous media appearances. Some of the statements made by Collins and her representatives are not accurate. Collins: “In 2021, the Biden Justice Department found there was no wrongdoing by anyone on my campaign staff, my office or me.” Collins: “The Biden-led Justice Department and FBI totally cleared my office, my campaign and me five years ago of these seven-year-old allegations.” An FBI spokesperson told ProPublica the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign.” But the investigation at the center of ProPublica’s story was based on claims Kao made between 2022 through 2024 — not seven years ago, as Collins states. That investigation did not conclude under President Joe Biden but under Trump, in 2025, after his administration purged the agents and Department of Justice attorneys assigned to the case. Collins is referring to the FBI’s initial investigation of Kao, which started in 2021. No one in Collins’ orbit was charged as a result of that earlier investigation.  FBI records reviewed by ProPublica show the agency remained interested in the conduct of Collins and her staff right up until the most recent phase of their investigation was shut down under Trump. The documents show that Kao was still answering agents’ questions as late as September 2024, when he sat for a two-day interview with FBI agents at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu. During that interview, Kao provided them with a 50-page document offering many new allegations about his interactions with elected officials, including Collins. And in early 2025, FBI agents were still examining Kao’s relationship with Collins, her staffers and employees of the super PAC, ProPublica found. Annie Clark, deputy chief of staff to Collins: “The FBI and the Court obviously did not believe Kao.” The judge in Kao’s sentencing ultimately offered him no benefit for his cooperation with federal authorities, sentencing him to 87 months in federal prison. While Kao had credibility issues — as a convicted felon — FBI documents seen by ProPublica show that agents were able to corroborate some of his claims. “Pursuant to a Grand Jury Subpoena issued to Navatek, related to the previous investigation, hundreds of thousands of documents were provided to the FBI,” agents wrote in a December 2024 document. “Several emails and other documents corroborate Kao’s statements made to the FBI.” In addition, people familiar with the investigation told ProPublica that FBI agents found Kao to be credible. Clark: “ProPublica took the word of someone who pled guilty to five counts of money laundering, three counts of wire fraud, one count of bank fraud, and making false submissions to the FEC.” ProPublica did not simply take Kao at his word but reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI. It also examined thousands of pages of legal records and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations and the FBI inquiry to independently corroborate much of Kao’s account. For instance, Kao said that Scott Reed, the head of the Collins super PAC, promised to make the senator aware that Kao was the person behind a large, anonymous donation to the super PAC made through a shell company. We published emails between Reed and Kao showing that Kao told Reed the name of the shell company he was using to anonymize his $150,000 donation. And we included an email from someone working for Reed to a Navatek representative asking for Kao’s number so Collins could thank him for the donation. These are consistent with Kao’s version of events. Steve Abbott, Collins’ campaign manager, said at a Wednesday press conference, “We have no record of her calling him.” But he added that such a phone call would not be unusual: “We routinely thank people for contributions. … We try to thank everybody.” Reed did not answer detailed questions about the $150,000 donation but said he didn’t speak to Collins about Kao. He added, “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison.” Do You Have Information About Political Dealmaking in Washington? We’re still reporting on pay-for-play arrangements between powerful companies and elected officials. William Turton I want to hear from you. Please feel free to send tips or story ideas. The best way to reach me is on Signal at 804-295-7201. Contact Me The post Susan Collins Dismissed Our Reporting as Old News. Some of Her Claims Aren’t True. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Politics]

— The Federal Agency That’s Supposed to Protect Consumers Just Made Another Business-Friendly Move

 

at 9/23/26 3:00am

The Trump administration announced it would stop publishing complaint narratives submitted to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Every year, millions of complaints flow to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from people across the country. The complaints, which range in focus from debt collection to credit reporting to payday loans and more, long served as a window into Americans’ gripes and struggles with various companies. For over a decade, consumers could opt in to have what they wrote published as public information in a CFPB database. But last month, the Trump administration announced that it would stop publishing those complaint narratives, a decision that aligns the agency with corporations that have critiqued the system for years.  “Publishing such narratives in the Database provides a less-than-representative sample of one-sided experiences,” the CFPB said in a press release. In the big picture, the move is part of a trend of the administration taking a friendlier approach with businesses — even at the federal agency tasked with guarding consumers from unfair and deceptive practices. The complaint system helps consumers get responses from companies about their problems, and sometimes even fixes. It has also given the public — as well as federal investigators and regulators— access to information that serves as a warning or to help spot problems. As a ProPublica data reporter, I’ve used the complaints time and time again as a tool for accountability-driven reporting. I appreciated reading about people’s raw frustration, written in their own words, which can often point to larger trends. It was a rare federal dataset that captured human emotions. Some were grievances like being unable to get help after spending far too much time calling or emailing customer service. Sometimes complaints had more urgency: desperation to fix crushing high-interest debt, a frozen bank account or a credit score tanked from a reporting error.  With the recent loss of a crucial piece of the public database, I wanted to share with you some of ProPublica’s reporting using those complaints. And, while these stories about financial harm have often led to some accountability, revisiting the complaints also offers a taste of what we’ll be missing.    1. A Wisconsin Tribe Built a Lending Empire Charging 600% Annual Rates to Borrowers I’ve used the complaints to report on high-interest tribal loans that skirt state interest rate caps to charge 600% interest or more. CFPB complaints helped point me and my colleague Megan O’Matz to an opaque but massive lending operation based in Wisconsin, which we estimated to be involved in thousands of bankruptcies nationwide each year.  “THIS IS THE TEXTBOOK DEFINITION ON LOANSHARKING.”Consumer complaint about a tribal loan company, June 2023 The borrower also argued that “no one should be expected to pay over $11,000 for a $1,200 loan,” calling the 790% rate “beyond predatory.” In emails to ProPublica, the tribe’s president, John Johnson Sr., defended the tribe’s lending business as legal and said the loans help people “without access to traditional financial services.” He added that many borrowers have had positive experiences. A few months after ProPublica reported on the operation, the tribe settled a civil suit filed by Minnesota’s attorney general. The tribe denied the allegations but agreed to stop lending to Minnesotans and forgive outstanding loans to the state’s residents.  2. Credit Bureaus Are Leaving More Mistakes on Frustrated Consumers’ Reports Under Trump’s CFPB In March, I reported that two of the big three credit bureaus, Experian and TransUnion, provided relief to a substantially smaller portion of consumers last year. The credit bureaus are by far the most common subject of consumers’ woes in the database, with over 4 million complaints filed about them in 2025. A Texan filed a complaint to each of the three credit bureaus, Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, writing that a fraudulent account remained on their credit report despite their disputes: “I have an important deal that I need to complete that is important for the safety and survival of my family, and this issue has damaged my credit score.”Consumer complaint, August 2025 In response to the story, four Democratic senators wrote letters to the credit bureaus demanding answers on how they handle disputes and complaints. The CFPB’s acting director at the time, Russell Vought, also tacitly acknowledged the reporting during his congressional testimony in July, saying that “with credit reporting agencies we saw things in the news that were concerning to us. We reached out to them.” The credit bureaus did not comment on specific complaints, but told ProPublica that many complaints are illegitimate, including a large volume filed by credit repair organizations that charge customers to challenge negative information on their reports. (CFPB records show that Equifax provided relief in response to the Texan’s complaint, while TransUnion and Experian did not.) 3. The Trump Administration’s Plan for Protecting Consumers? Politely Ask Companies to Behave. Last month, my colleague Andy Kroll reported on the Trump CFPB’s light-touch approach to oversight, focusing on its ask-nicely strategy of holding the fintech startup Bilt accountable after it threw users’ accounts into chaos twice in quick succession. The story included complaints about how Bilt’s artificial intelligence support system gave information that was: “completely wrong” and“demonstrably … false.”Consumer complaints about Bilt, March and April 2026 (In a statement at the time, Bilt said its new card had “attracted unexpectedly high demand, and some of our members experienced gaps in service that are simply unacceptable to us.” The company told ProPublica it resolved all problems related to the new cards “months ago.” The CFPB did not respond to any questions or requests for comment.) Kroll’s recent story also examined how the agency has changed under the Trump administration. Under Vought’s leadership, the CFPB attempted to fire roughly 90% of its staff in April 2025 before a federal court ruling stymied the move. When the efforts to dismantle the agency failed, Vought and his allies instead refashioned it into an industry-friendly regulator. The loss of the public complaint narratives is another example of that. And it is a win for groups such as the Consumer Data Industry Association, which represents the credit bureaus and has argued that publishing complaint narratives would “harm the brands of legitimate, law-abiding companies” by presenting unverified, self-selected negative anecdotes. More recently, the group argued in a January public comment letter that the complaint portal has become “a sort of ‘Yelp for Financial Services,’” and that the CFPB doesn’t have the authority to publish complaint data in the first place.  Although the CFPB has been subject to partisan fights, the complaint system has been used by Americans across the country. GOP lawmakers even referred thousands of constituents to the CFPB’s complaint system to get help. Still, those same lawmakers voted last year to slash the agency’s budget by nearly half. While the complaint system is required by law, the agency isn’t mandated to make it public. In theory, a future administration could go back to publishing the complaint narratives, but the agency has removed the option for consumers to consent to making public what they wrote. That means that any complaints filed in the near term cannot be retroactively published. The complaint narratives will still be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, but getting them could be time-consuming and challenging.  As the CFPB turns away from its watchdog role, it’s making it harder for all of us to watch as well. The post The Federal Agency That’s Supposed to Protect Consumers Just Made Another Business-Friendly Move appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Regulation, Trump Administration]

— The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way

 

at 9/22/26 3:00am

Beatrice Caciotti for ProPublica. Source images: U.S. Sen. Susan Collins’ official Facebook page. In the final weeks of 2019, a top fundraiser for Sen. Susan Collins walked into a perilous meeting at a Corner Bakery in Washington, D.C. For the first time in her two-decade Senate career, the Republican lawmaker from Maine was in danger of losing her seat. President Donald Trump’s dismal approval ratings were dragging her down in the polls, and she was falling behind her likely 2020 Democratic challenger in fundraising. Scott Reed, head of the Collins super PAC, was on a mission to close that gap. Reed was meeting that day with three executives from a Hawaiian defense contractor, Navatek. A year earlier, Collins had helped their company land a multimillion-dollar Navy research contract in Maine. Now, seated at a coffee shop not far from the U.S. Capitol, Reed asked them for a $500,000 donation. Government contractors are banned from making political contributions. More consequentially, for the company to offer donations to Collins in exchange for an official action, or for Collins to accept, would constitute criminal bribery. But the company did have such a proposal: Navatek was hungry for more government contracts in Maine. If they cut a big check, the CEO told Reed, Navatek wanted Collins to guarantee tens of millions of dollars in additional federal funding. To skirt campaign finance laws and conceal the source of the funds, Navatek planned to funnel the donation through a shell company. The CEO wanted assurance that Collins would know where the money came from. Reed confirmed that she would, the executive said — and that Navatek would get its government contracts. After the Corner Bakery meeting, Navatek’s CEO, Martin Kao, sent an initial $150,000 to the Collins super PAC using the shell company. Two months later, he told Navatek executives that Collins committed to getting the company $32 million in naval contracts, according to an internal company email reviewed by ProPublica. Three years later, Kao holed up in a conference room to recount the Corner Bakery meeting to a group of four FBI agents and federal prosecutors. The FBI had seen through his shell company ruse, and in 2022 a grand jury indicted him for making illegal campaign contributions. No one working for Collins was charged. Facing years in prison, Kao hoped to do less time by revealing the entire scheme. What he told them has never before become public. The Corner Bakery meeting, he asserted, was just one episode in a sprawling pay-to-play operation that embroiled some of the most powerful figures in Congress. Over three days at the U.S. attorney’s office in Honolulu, Kao laid out in devastating detail how his operation worked. He gave agents a 50-page document naming dozens of lobbyists, congressional staffers and members of Congress who he said helped him trade cash for contracts. Kao and his close associates had donated nearly $900,000 to dozens of politicians, allowing Navatek to establish operations in half a dozen states with over $40 million a year in government funding. Do You Have Information About Political Dealmaking in Washington? We’re still reporting on pay-for-play arrangements between powerful companies and elected officials. William Turton I want to hear from you. Please feel free to send tips or story ideas. The best way to reach me is on Signal at 804-295-7201. Contact Me Most damningly, Kao told FBI agents and prosecutors, the company’s work for the government was of no real value. Navatek’s research under his stewardship never resulted in products the military wanted to buy, ProPublica found. Kao’s tell-all interviews with the FBI lasted into late 2024. His confessions opened up an entirely new phase of the investigation. Agents sifted through hundreds of thousands of records seized during Kao’s arrest and found that many were consistent with his account of widespread influence peddling. Kao had credibility issues. He was now a felon trying to avoid a lengthy prison sentence. And there were other challenges. Building a corruption case against elected officials requires extraordinary proof of a quid pro quo arrangement, in part because the Supreme Court has narrowed what counts as bribery. Even so, by the end of 2024, the agents had enough evidence to pursue a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers of both political parties. They asked their supervisors to approve a new investigation and contemplated using undercover operatives to gather more evidence. Although their effort was in its early stages, and it was unclear where it would lead, FBI agents asked Kao extensive questions about his dealings with Collins and her office. Then Trump returned to the White House. Consumed by a campaign of vengeance, he stacked the Department of Justice with his personal lawyers and demanded a purge of anyone who had ever investigated him. The specialized FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption investigations, some of which were involved in Trump-related cases, were eviscerated. One of the agents who had taken Kao’s confession was pushed out as retribution for her role in investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Dozens of agents and prosecutors quit amid the department’s destruction, including the career attorney assigned to Kao’s case. Trump’s Justice Department no longer takes on public corruption in any meaningful fashion, former officials said. The investigation sparked by Kao’s revelations is dead. And the government is no longer talking to an informant who had offered a road map to corruption in Congress. The White House referred ProPublica to the FBI. FBI spokesperson Ben Williamson said the agency had investigated claims against Collins years ago “and ultimately found nothing implicating Senator Collins or Senator Collins’ campaign. Any suggestion otherwise is totally false.” Williamson said the Trump administration has removed agents only “if they have been found to have acted unethically, undermined the mission, or engaged in weaponization of law enforcement.” Williamson did not respond to questions about the new investigation launched in 2024 based on Kaos previously unreported cooperation with the FBI. ProPublica is revealing the existence of the case for the first time. We reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI and thousands of pages of legal records, and interviewed dozens of people familiar with Navatek, its Washington operations, and the FBI inquiry to conduct our own investigation. We independently corroborated much of Kao’s account. Whether or not Kao’s dealings with politicians amount to criminal bribery, the Trump Justice Department has little interest in finding out, and his sheer success reveals how easily influence is purchased in Washington today. This is the first in a series of stories drawn from our reporting. Of all the politicians Navatek courted under Kao’s leadership, Collins was its most important patron. The senator’s office steered government contracts worth millions toward the company while her campaign was pumping Kao and his network for donations, according to emails seen by ProPublica. Sometimes they cut checks within 24 hours of the annual defense spending bill, which funds military contracts, clearing a key Senate hurdle. Republican Sen. Susan Collins walks in the annual Moxie Day Parade in July in Lisbon, Maine. Scott Eisen/Getty Images Collins’ office did not specifically address questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the senator’s relationship with Kao and the millions she helped appropriate for Navatek. Annie Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica in an email that Collins’ office “vigorously” denies allegations of bribery and pay-for-play made by Kao, calling his claims “outlandish.” Collins’ campaign was not part of the discussions between Kao and the super PAC, and her office “fully cooperated” with the FBI investigation, Clark said. “The fact that the FBI and Biden-led Department of Justice thoroughly examined the Navatek matter demonstrates this,” Clark wrote. “These issues were resolved in 2021 and concluded when the Collins campaign disgorged the illegal contributions that Martin Kao had made without our knowledge.” Collins is once again fighting to keep her seat, in a race that could determine control of the Senate. On the campaign trail, she spotlights the funding she directs to Maine while leading the appropriations committee, which she calls “the most powerful committee in the Senate.” She demonstrated that power with Navatek. After the budgets became law, Collins’ office pushed the Navy to award specific contracts to Navatek, emails seen by ProPublica show, even though awards are supposed to be competitive. “I spoke with Sen. Collins office regarding the $8M,” a naval official wrote in an email on Feb. 6, 2019. “The interested company is Navatek.” In a meeting with Collins and two campaign officials, Kao said, the officials told him the senator expected his ongoing support. Collins told him: “You’ve seen me deliver,” Kao said. Reed knew Kao was behind the $150,000 anonymous donation, emails showed, because Kao told Reed he planned to donate through a shell company. “Very smart,” Reed replied in an email viewed by ProPublica. Reed did not respond to detailed questions about the Corner Bakery meeting, the $150,000 donation and Kao’s allegations. “I understand Martin Kao is now sitting in federal prison,” Reed wrote in a brief email. “I never had any communications with Senator Collins [or] her staff about Martin Kao and/or Navatek.” But an email seen by ProPublica suggests that someone must have relayed the news of Kao’s donation to Collins, just like Reed promised to do in Kao’s recounting of the Corner Bakery meeting. Seven days after the super PAC cashed the check from Kao’s shell company, one of Reed’s subordinates emailed a Navatek lobbyist asking for Kao’s phone number: “Senator Collins would like to call Martin to thank him.” Martin Kao, second from left, with Collins, center, at a publicity event at Navatek’s Maine headquarters in August 2019. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins via Facebook The Navatek Method Before Kao’s doomed reign as CEO, Navatek was a sleepy Hawaiian engineering company with a few dozen employees. It was founded in 1978 by Steven Loui, a talented engineer and scion of a powerful Hawaiian shipping family. Navatek was not a profit center but a vehicle for Loui’s passion projects, like an experimental catamaran for navigating Hawaii’s choppy waters. The company benefited from the largesse of the legendary Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, multiple former Navatek executives and employees said, whose family had been close to the Loui family for generations. Inouye was a master of earmarks, a practice that allowed lawmakers to insert funding for specific companies by name in the federal budget. The self-styled “King of Pork” steered hundreds of millions in federal dollars to Hawaii. Former Navatek employees say he was affectionately referred to as “Uncle Dan.” “Before Inouye took an interest, Congress didn’t even know our companies existed,” a longtime Loui lieutenant wrote in a 1998 op-ed. In response to ProPublica questions, Loui said that money appropriated by Inouye made up “a minority” of Navatek’s revenue. Inouye’s death in 2012 made the company’s future uncertain. Not only was Navatek’s direct line to Capitol Hill gone, but Congress was doing away with the abuse-riddled earmark process. Now companies would nominally have to compete on the merits for government contracts. Kao joined Navatek in 2008 as its chief financial officer. Loui charged him with replacing Navatek’s rainmaker and eventually named Kao CEO. He sold Kao the company in return for a share of the profits. Kao was an unusual figure among the company’s low-key naval engineers and boat aficionados. He seemed to be aping a Wall Street tycoon, telling employees they could either be “a beast or a bitch,” a former executive said. He drove to work in a Ferrari and abruptly fired subordinates who displeased him — one time, in the middle of the night. “He had very little interest in the technology,” one former employee recalled. “Martin was only interested in dollar signs.” Kao also exaggerated and lied. He told different people he had stepbrothers whose parents died in a fishing accident or an avalanche, a former employee recalled. He lied to Loui about having law degrees from both the University of California, Los Angeles and New York University. He once told a lobbyist who raised quarter horses that he owned a herd of polo ponies, just to one-up him. Despite his erratic behavior, former employees agree Kao hit upon an effective way to replace the lost earmarks. If the company could not rely on a benefactor like Inouye, it would develop a stable of them. Navatek targeted the powerful members who sat on the House and Senate appropriations committees. These members could no longer earmark money for specific military contractors. But they retained the power to budget millions of dollars for equipment or bespoke research and development. Because Pentagon budgets run thousands of pages and are largely prepared in secret, it is easy for appropriators to add a line item intended for a contractor like Navatek without leaving any fingerprints. Soon, Kao had refined a playbook. Navatek would concoct a research project in partnership with a university in a member’s district or home state, and Kao would make a large initial campaign donation. Working with a team of pricey, well-connected lobbyists, Navatek would get meetings on Capitol Hill to pitch the research to congressional staff. Navatek kept spreadsheets, reviewed by ProPublica, that listed members of Congress as the “specialty” of certain lobbyists. Separately, Kao later told the FBI, there would be a meeting of just the key players. One engineer, who traveled with Kao to D.C. to explain the technical side of a project, recalled being sent out of the room once the subject of money came up. Sometimes in these smaller meetings, members of Congress directly asked Kao for donations, he told the FBI. In other cases, he said, Navatek’s lobbyists would relay a request from an intermediary for a specific dollar amount. Kao told the FBI that the lawmakers, lobbyists and Navatek brass understood these donations were bribes and that the payments were essential to the entire scheme. Kao believed he was buying Navatek’s way into the annual defense budget, not winning over members with innovative engineering proposals. “I’m not red or blue, I’m green,” he would tell congressional staffers, a former Navatek employee recalled. While a deal was being struck, Navatek and congressional staffers worked closely on the legislative process. Every year, Congress prefaces the defense budget with massive reports describing the purpose of inscrutable line items. Staffers would include a project description so specific that Navatek would be the only logical pick. Often, Navatek composed language that ended up, word for word, in Senate funding requests, former employees said. In 2019, for example, Navatek’s priorities were tucked into page 185 of the 307-page report released by the Senate Appropriations Committee. The committee set aside $21.5 million for “hybrid composite structures research for enhanced mobility,” “electric propulsion for military craft and advanced planing hulls” and a “test bed for autonomous ship systems.” Although Navatek’s name does not appear on the page, these were all projects the company requested, according to internal documents and interviews with former employees. Once the budget passed, lawmakers’ staff leaned on Navy officials to award Navatek the money. Former contracting officers told ProPublica they felt pressure to go along because money from those contracts funded their office — and because members of Congress had confronted dissenting naval officials in the past. “There’s only so many battles you can fight,” one said. So Congress sometimes got its way even when Navatek’s projects made little sense. Inside Navatek, employees referred to this strategy as “the method.” And it enabled the company to string together tens of millions of dollars in contracts. The result was the same as getting earmarks: a reliable, growing revenue stream bankrolled by U.S. taxpayers. “It was a simple enough play. Let’s find the small states that have complementary universities … [and] let’s get access to their senators,” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, told ProPublica. “I’ve met Susan Collins. You can get access to Susan Collins. Once we got the first things working with Maine, then we said, ‘Well, let’s keep reaching.’ And so we did.” In a statement to ProPublica, Navatek founder Loui said Kao’s “unethical and illegal method of winning contracts” was a departure from how he operated the company prior to Kao’s ownership. Kao boosted Navatek’s annual revenue from $10 million around the time Loui sold him the company to almost $40 million when he was arrested in 2020. In the second half of 2019 alone, Navatek paid a roster of five lobbying shops more than $500,000. Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. ‘Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,’” Schiff said. The key players in Kao’s pay-to-play deals went to great lengths to meet in person and leave no trace of an actual quid pro quo, he told agents. “That is why I literally had to fly to D.C. almost every week,” Kao later told the FBI. “Sometimes for a 15-minute meeting.” But the FBI compiled emails, which ProPublica reviewed, that were suggestive of illegal bargains. Navatek executives and lobbyists spoke openly as if they were buying lawmakers’ assistance. In one back-and-forth, a lobbyist and a company executive described another senator as “fundamentally transactional” and having “a reputation as a pay-to-play office.” In another message, Andy Winer, who former executives said was Navatek’s chief strategist, reminded Kao to budget money for political contributions based on how much the company wanted in congressional funding the following year. “Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale.”Eric Schiff, former Navatek executive Winer was his guide to the political underbelly, Kao said. A consummate insider, Winer had parlayed six years as chief of staff to Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii into a lucrative lobbying career with a firm called Strategies 360. One of Winer’s former colleagues compared him to the slick lobbyist on the Netflix show “House of Cards” who toggles between the political and corporate worlds. In another email exchange scrutinized by the FBI, Kao asked Winer about making a $5,600 donation to nudge along a senator who seemed keen to work with Navatek: “Would that ‘help?’” Winer, who had already donated himself, replied, “With my contribution, I think it sends the right message.” He suggested Kao split up his donation to be “less conspicuous.” The method didn’t always work. Once, Kao complained that a senator had reneged on a deal and he ought to get his donations back. “You should not feel aggrieved nor should you ever put that in writing,” Todd Webster, another lobbyist Navatek hired, replied. Webster did not respond to detailed questions. Winer said he stopped working with Navatek following Kao’s arrest. “The political contributions I discussed with Kao were understood by me to be lawful political contributions. I never participated in, witnessed, or had knowledge of any illegal political contribution, bribe, or agreement to exchange a political contribution for an appropriation, contract, or other official action,” Winer said in an email to ProPublica. “I never advised Kao to make a contribution in exchange for official action.” Strategies 360 has new ownership that did not oversee Winer while he represented Navatek, its CEO, John Oceguera, said. Navatek employees began to notice members of Congress visiting their East Coast offices. “You would be like, ‘Oh, there’s this senator walking around,’ and we would get a picture with them,” one engineer recalled. While some projects involved potentially meaningful research, Navatek’s bread and butter was R&D that went nowhere. As a slideshow prepared by an executive explained, “We thrive in the valley of death,” the term for the bureaucratic gap where research languishes without being developed into a product. The slideshow noted that none of the technology had ever actually been deployed. The Office of Naval Research did not respond to a request for comment. In Maine, Navatek was studying ways to modify small boats to reduce the “slamming” impact felt by passengers at high speeds. With the help of the University of Maine’s giant 3D printer, Navatek made a prototype and unveiled it at a press conference where a Guinness World Records representative declared it the world’s largest 3D-printed boat. But Navatek executives knew the Navy had no plans to use the new design, former employees said. “[The work] got rolled into a few PowerPoint slides and a white paper, and that was the deliverable,” recalled one who worked on the project. “The boats weren’t delivered to the Navy — the Navy didn’t even want them.” Kao to Collins: “Here to Help” The first time Kao came face-to-face with Collins, in 2018, he told the FBI, he had to pay for the privilege. Collins would not meet unless he agreed to donate to her campaign, he said. While it is not illegal for politicians to exchange face time for contributions — in this case, just a few thousand dollars — it was not the last time Collins would seek Kao’s support. Navatek had been eager to expand beyond Hawaii, and Maine was a perfect beachhead — a small, coastal state hungry for high-tech jobs that happened to be represented by a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Collins, more than most appropriators, likes to trumpet the dollars she brings home. To work with Collins, Navatek hired a lobbyist, Glen Mandigo, who also lobbied for the University of Maine and was tight with her office. Mandigo asked how much Navatek wanted in funding and how much Kao was willing to support Collins, Kao told the FBI. The University of Maine did not reply to a request for comment. In that first meeting with Collins and her staff, Kao pitched an $8 million boat hull research project for Navatek and the university. Collins seemed supportive. Not long after, Mandigo called Kao and said Collins wanted him to bundle tens of thousands of dollars for her reelection, suggesting Navatek throw a fundraiser, Kao said. In an email to ProPublica, Mandigo denied taking part in a pay-to-play arrangement. “I did not advise Navatek officials, nor would I advise any client, that support from Sen. Collins was contingent on campaign donations,” Mandigo wrote. He said that in his 25 years of working with Collins and the Maine delegation, “I never saw or heard of such behavior from the Senator or her staff.” Clark, Collins’ deputy chief of staff, told ProPublica it was “wholly inaccurate” to say Mandigo was close to their office. FBI agents had collected voluminous corporate records and email correspondence between Navatek and Collins’ inner circle. Much of that evidence aligned with the story they were now getting directly from Kao. The FBI had spotted his out-of-the-blue donations in the summer of 2018, just before Collins included $8 million for Navatek’s proposal in the defense budget. Emails showed her staff made it clear to the Navy that it should send the money to Navatek. FBI agents also had evidence of Kao and Mandigo planning a fundraiser starting in April 2019. Their emails — with her scheduler and her campaign’s finance director — freely mixed talk of Navatek’s Collins-backed contract with plans to raise money for her. The principals settled on hosting Collins for a publicity event at Navatek’s Maine headquarters in August 2019, where she posed for pictures with Kao and a model of the company’s experimental boat. Behind the scenes, the FBI saw in emails and company records, Kao orchestrated over $40,000 in donations from extended family in advance of the event. To avoid the legal cap on individual campaign contributions, the emails show, he told Collins’ team to reallocate his excess contributions to his father — which an agent highlighted and noted is against election law in a presentation to prosecutors — and sent them his father’s full name and address. “This is perfect,” Amy Abbott, the reelection campaign finance director, emailed Kao after discussing his father’s contribution. “We are so grateful for ALL the Kao support!” Before the event, Kao said, Collins, Abbott and another staffer met with him in private. One of the staffers told Kao the campaign expected more donations. It was in this meeting that Collins said, “You’ve seen me deliver,” he told the FBI. Less than one month after the event, the Senate released a draft of the defense budget containing $21.5 million for Navatek’s pet projects in Maine. Kao emailed a Collins campaign fundraiser — who would in theory have nothing to do with a government contract — four days later, saying, “Thanks again for all the support from Sen Collins.” “I’ve been involved in many tight races in the past and understand last minute ‘needs’ come up,” he continued. “We are here to help anyway we can … financially or whatever.” Kao’s desire to donate even more money led to the fateful Corner Bakery meeting with the head of the Collins super PAC, called the 1820 PAC, Kao told the FBI. Unlike Collins’ campaign, which could accept only $5,600 per election from individuals, the super PAC could accept unlimited contributions. The super PAC emailed Kao a memo before the meeting stressing the need to raise money with “urgency.” At the meeting, Kao and Reed, the super PAC’s chair, hammered out a deal for a six-figure donation, Kao told the FBI. Over email, Kao informed Reed of his shell company scheme, saying he had cleared it with his lawyer. “They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on,” Kao reassured him. “Thanks for doing this,” Reed replied. Emails Between Martin Kao and Scott Reed, Discussing Contributions to the Susan Collins Super PAC, 1820 PAC “Hi Scott: Had a chance to discuss 1820 with my CFO and attorney last night. They are suggesting setting up a separate new LLC to make the donations. Name of new LLC: Society of Young Women Scientists and Engineers. In my personal real estate investments, we often use LLCs that can be set up to facilitate transactions. They are super vague and very difficult to get any background info on. Totally legal and typically used in real estate transactions to conceal the identity of buyer/seller. Wanted to get your thoughts/concerns.”—email from Martin Kao to Scott Reed, Nov. 22, 2019“Very smart and glad your counsel understands. Thanks for doing this.”—email from Scott Reed to Martin Kao, Nov. 22, 2019“Great! We will proceed on getting this set up ASAP. Have a nice weekend.”—email from Martin Kao to Scott Reed, Nov. 22, 2019 The FBI spoke to the other Navatek executives at Corner Bakery, who confirmed the meeting took place. One, David Kring, the company’s top scientist, told ProPublica he had no memory of what was discussed. The other, Duke Hartman, told an FBI agent it was just “a get to know you meeting” with the chair of the super PAC and they did not discuss the “particulars of a donation.” Agents, records show, came to believe Hartman was lying about his role in Kao’s pay-to-play operation and would name him as a formal subject of a future investigation. Hartman was not charged. He did not respond to a detailed request for comment. A few weeks after the $150,000 check to the Collins super PAC cleared, in February 2020, Kao and his team met with Collins’ office and secured a new round of funding. “We were very warmly received,” Kao reported to his colleagues in an email obtained by the FBI. “Excellent meeting. Total of $32M will be supported.” Records show the Senate allocated at least $10 million that year based on Navatek’s proposals. Navatek’s ambitions peaked in mid-2020. As the company waited to see if Collins would survive her reelection campaign, executives prepared to ask their champion on the appropriations committee for even more funding the following spring, internal documents show. Other documents from that time show the company was courting senators from seven additional states and gunning for more than $200 million in new appropriations. Navatek expected to have offices in more than a dozen states by the end of the following year, including a new 15,000-square-foot facility in the Portland, Maine, harbor. Kao, meanwhile, closed on a $4.5 million beachside home in an exclusive Honolulu neighborhood; the backyard pool had a waterfall feature. He renamed the company Martin Defense Group after himself, joking that it would simplify his future takeover of Lockheed Martin. “It was working well, and it would have continued to work well,” said Schiff, the former executive. “Martin got greedy. Just got damn greedy.” Downfall, Cover-up In early 2020, the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit good government group, noticed something strange in the public filings for the Collins super PAC. The PAC had received a $150,000 donation from a newly created LLC with a typo in its name: the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers, with no S at the end of “Scientist.” This was the $150,000 Kao donated after the Corner Bakery meeting. The money had come from Navatek’s account, not Kao’s, violating a ban on government contractors making donations. A check for $150,000 to the Collins super PAC 1820 from the Society of Young Women Scientist and Engineers — a shell company that obscured the actual donor. PacMar Technologies LLC, fka Martin Defense Group, LLC v. Kao The center suspected the society was not a real group but a pass-through to hide the identity of a major political donor. It filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission. It took only a few days for a Hawaii journalist to discover Kao’s wife’s name on the society’s paperwork, linking the shell company to Navatek. Inside Navatek, Kao shifted into damage control mode. He spoke to Reed and the super PAC’s lawyer, Cleta Mitchell, and began to hatch a cover-up. In an email released in civil litigation, Mitchell suggested the society make charitable donations — preferably in Maine — which would make it seem like a legitimate nonprofit. “I want to be sure that the LLC proceeds with the ideas we discussed — giving scholarships and recognition to women in engineering, etc.,” wrote Mitchell. “That would help both of us, I think.” Mitchell added, “We should develop a plan and timetable, so there are some scholarships given over the next several months, and particularly, perhaps in Maine, where the bad press was.” Mitchell, who later played a major role in Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, did not respond to requests for comment. Kao and his team settled on donating scholarships to women in STEM. They offered between $5,000 and $25,000 apiece to state universities where they were angling to win government contracts — that way, the cover-up would benefit them politically, too. But Navatek’s and Kao’s problems were just beginning. Undeterred by scrutiny from the FEC, Kao defrauded the COVID-era Paycheck Protection Program newly passed by Congress. He inflated Navatek’s payroll to amass loans of $13 million, according to a federal indictment. The Navatek founder, Loui, had long since soured on his chosen successor. This was the final straw. He reported Kao to federal authorities. “This is not how Navatek behaved or conducted business before I sold the company to Martin Kao,” Loui wrote to ProPublica. He said Navatek was successful before Kao’s ownership and had many sources of government funding. After Kao’s arrest, he added, the company fully cooperated with law enforcement. Loui has since regained control of the company and renamed it PacMar. He is dedicated to restoring its reputation and ability to execute government contracts, he continued. Loui said he fired employees hired during Kao’s tenure who were “not capable of performing quality, professional engineering and science tasks.” “The company received no Collins-supported funding after Martin Kao’s arrest, nor should it,” Loui added. “What Martin Kao and his cabal did was wrong.” On Sept. 30, 2020, law enforcement raided Navatek’s Honolulu offices and arrested Kao for fraud. Federal agents in windbreakers seized his laptop and ordered the company’s IT staff to copy the company’s internal servers. Navatek’s public flameout attracted the attention of Michelle Ball and Kevin Gounaud, two experienced agents in the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit. Gounaud was a 20-year FBI veteran who had worked on elaborate undercover operations. Ball had made a name for herself taking on politically sensitive cases. In 2018, she led the investigation into Maria Butina, the Russian agent convicted of infiltrating the National Rifle Association in an attempt to influence the Trump campaign. The agents began digging through thousands of records for details of Navatek’s lobbying operation, donation strategy and ties to politicians. They zeroed in on Kao’s relationship with Collins. In a 60-slide presentation agents prepared for prosecutors, they highlighted contributions that Kao and his wife made to the senator in 2018, right before Collins placed the $8 million in research funding into the federal budget. Kao had also given Navatek money to various relatives to donate to Collins in 2019, sending her around $33,000 through these illegal straw donors, the indictment said. Kao’s wife and father did not reply to requests for comment. Collins christens a Navatek-designed boat at a University of Maine engineering lab in October 2019. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins via Facebook The government charged Kao in two separate cases: one for defrauding the loan program and another for his campaign finance crimes. His love of talking like a wheeler-dealer — including over email — was a gift to investigators. In one email, he all but admitted the scholarships to young women were a diversion. “Whatever… just a pack of bitches getting free $,” he wrote. In the face of overwhelming evidence, Kao pleaded guilty in both cases in the fall of 2022. Navatek by then was under court-ordered new management. Awaiting sentencing, Kao worked as a line cook at a Cheesecake Factory. He began meeting with the same FBI agents and prosecutors who brought him down. For the agents, he was a rare witness: a contractor with deep ties to elected officials saying he would speak candidly about how Washington works. Kao faced nearly a decade in prison. “My world and life imploded,” he would later recall in a letter to the Hawaii U.S. District Court. “I was fooled and foolish enough to believe that the power elected officials wielded, and [were] actively willing to sell to anyone wealthy enough to pay, was….‘smart business.’” Over the next two years, Kao sat with agents for at least three dayslong interviews. He told them that politicians, Collins in particular, had been willing participants in his scheme. “It takes two to tangle,” he told them. Taxpayers funded Navatek’s entire political operation, Kao said. “Most companies of our size do not have the resources to endlessly hire expensive lobbyists and make political donations,” he told the FBI. Navatek solved this by using money from government contracts to hire lobbyists and make campaign contributions, according to interviews, court testimony and internal company records. Diverting money from contracts for lobbying and political donations can be illegal. For their final meeting, in September 2024, Kao handed the FBI the 50-page document detailing Navatek’s dealings with more than a dozen members of Congress and their staff. It was not only a confession but a road map, with the email addresses and phone numbers of people Kao thought agents ought to subpoena. Last year, Kao was sentenced to 87 months in prison. The judge in his case offered no leniency based on his cooperation with the FBI. Loui is battling Kao in court to recover the millions he contends Kao stole from the company. Both Scott Reed and Amy Abbott remain in Collins’ inner circle. Abbott is the finance director for her 2026 reelection effort, and Reed again chairs the main Collins super PAC. Abbott, who is married to Collins’ campaign manager, referred questions to the senator’s communications staff. Clark told ProPublica that Abbott and other campaign staff were interviewed by the FBI and that the campaign was never a target of the investigation. Earlier this year, Kao agreed to meet a ProPublica reporter at the Federal Prison Camp in Yankton, South Dakota, where he is incarcerated. But on two occasions when guards summoned Kao over the intercom, he refused to enter the visitation room. Over email, he said he was no longer willing to meet, citing the ongoing litigation. He declined through his lawyer to respond to detailed questions. By late 2024, Ball and Gounaud, the FBI agents, had come to believe there was enough evidence to warrant a broader investigation into bribery of members of Congress, according to a memo seen by ProPublica. Before they could embark on their new mission, however, they became casualties of Trump’s retribution campaign. Ball and Gounaud worked for the FBI’s elite anti-corruption unit known as CR-15, which specialized in investigating misconduct by elected officials. When Trump retook power, his new FBI director, Kash Patel, purged the unit agent by agent. Ball was targeted for her work on the special counsel investigation of Trump’s failed bid to overturn the 2020 election. She was fired in October 2025 in a one-page letter stating she had “weaponized” the Justice Department. She is challenging her firing in a lawsuit. Gounaud was pushed out in early 2026. Both agents declined to comment through their attorney. Trump also targeted the Justice Department attorneys who worked with CR-15. The team, known as the Public Integrity Section, collapsed spectacularly in February 2025 after staff were ordered to drop a case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Trump ally. The unit’s leadership quit en masse. Trump appointees ordered the remaining prosecutors to halt new corruption cases, just months after Kao made his detailed confession. Before Ball was fired, however, she managed to take a key step forward. Based on all the evidence, she persuaded her supervisors to approve a new investigation. It centered on South Carolina, one of the states Navatek eyed for a rapid expansion. The FBI had questions about a steak dinner Kao shared with Sen. Lindsey Graham. Do You Have Information About Political Dealmaking in Washington? We’re still reporting on pay-for-play arrangements between powerful companies and elected officials. Send Us a Tip The post The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Politics]

— Watch: The New Supreme Court

 

at 9/21/26 3:00am

Source image: Bryan Dozier/NurPhoto via AP The Supreme Court continues to make consequential rulings in the shadows. I analyzed tens of thousands of case files from the court’s online archives, parsing through filings to separate simple requests for deadline extensions from challenges to long-established constitutional rights. I discovered that in the term that ended in 2025, the justices issued more substantive decisions on their emergency docket than in cases argued in open court. Experts told me this was likely the first time this has happened in the court’s modern history.  Representatives from the Supreme Court did not respond to my questions.  Since I reported that story in July, more major rulings have been made on the emergency docket, often called the “shadow docket,” where justices rarely hear arguments and often issue unsigned orders that don’t explain how they arrived at their decisions or even how they voted. These decisions are continuing to come down even after the court began its summer recess. For example: On Aug. 31, the court allowed construction to continue on a ballroom at the White House. Requests like this one from the president are a big reason why the number of cases being handled on the court’s shadow docket has been so high.  On Sept. 10, a decision blocked Missouri from using a redrawn congressional map crafted by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature. The legislature had redrawn the maps at President Donald Trump’s request — part of a string of middecade redistricting efforts that could determine control of Congress. Like most shadow docket decisions, no opinion was issued and there is no record of how the justices voted. On Sept. 14, the court stopped the U.S. Postal Service from imposing new regulations on voting by mail that the Trump administration was seeking to impose. Less than a month earlier, the court had said it was too early for states to challenge those regulations. The court rulings came just weeks before most states begin sending out ballots by mail. Though experts told me rulings on the shadow docket have generally enabled Trump, he has not won them all. The USPS ruling, for one, has not pleased the president. Last week, in a post on Truth Social, the social media website he owns, Trump criticized the justices he nominated, writing that they “are not the people I interviewed to serve.  “It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history,” Trump wrote. Every decision the court has made since July has been on its shadow docket. That will remain the case until the court starts its new term on Oct. 5.  Watch our explainer to learn more about what I uncovered and how the shadow docket works. The post Watch: The New Supreme Court appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Courts]

— “Our Dear Friend Umar”: How We Uncovered That a Russian Oligarch Bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s Wedding

 

at 9/19/26 3:00am

Photo collage by ProPublica. Source images: Laura Gordon Photography, Telegram. My colleagues and I had been digging for days. We’d heard a rumor that a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin named Umar Kremlev had attended Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding this past May in the Bahamas. But to confirm that, we needed visual proof.  First, we scoured everything the Trumps had released from the event, held on a pair of private islands. On social media and in the pages of tabloids such as Page Six and Hello! magazine, official photos from the weekend showed an intimate chapel ceremony alongside lavish beach parties. Several photos depicted guests, including Jared Kushner and Eric Trump, and we scanned them all for signs of Kremlev. Still, nothing had turned up yet. We then turned to Kremlev’s social media profiles on the off chance that he’d posted about the wedding. Incredibly, on Telegram, Kremlev had posted videos over the same weekend as Trump Jr.’s wedding that appeared to be from someplace tropical. In one, a single detail caught our attention: As Kremlev speaks in Russian to the camera, the frame gives a partial view of an outdoor patio setting. It wasn’t palm trees or crystal water we noticed, but the wicker furniture. The wicker patio furniture in the background of a video posted by Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev the same weekend as Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding provided a clue as to his whereabouts. Via Umar Kremlev’s Telegram account The chair and its affixed cushion in Kremlev’s post matched what we’d seen in photos of the private islands elsewhere online, such as the promotional image below: A promotional photo taken at one of the islands that was the site of Trump Jr.’s wedding events depicted the same wicker patio furniture as seen in Kremlev’s video background. But of course, we couldn’t hang such a big claim — that this Russian oligarch had attended the president’s son’s intimate wedding weekend — on a wicker chair analysis. The Trump family appeared to be curating the wedding’s visual footprint, and not much seemed to exist outside of its control.  So when my colleagues Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and I finally found a photo that confirmed what we’d been looking for, we were floored. The proof had been hiding in an Instagram gallery posted months earlier by a swimsuit model and friend of the bride, nestled among glamour shots and lifestyle photos. The sunset group shot on a white sand beach shows wedding guests, barefoot and smiling against a backdrop of palms. One guest throws up a shaka. Front and center is the president’s eldest son and his bride, Bettina Trump, surrounded by close friends and family. A group photo posted on Instagram by a swimsuit model and friend of the bride shows wedding guests. Instagram But in the back row, just behind the newlyweds, the top half of a man’s shaved head is visible. We recognized him instantly: Kremlev. That photo was at the center of our story this week, in which we revealed that Kremlev secretly bankrolled much of Trump Jr.’s wedding weekend, paying to rent out a private island, among other big-ticket items, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the events. The photo also showed two others associated with Kremlev, part of a larger group of Russians whose presence puzzled some attendees. That made their absence from all other official wedding photos all the more noteworthy — especially for a gathering of only 50 or so guests. Kremlev is visible in the back of a group photo from the wedding weekend. Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram The story spread quickly. Within hours of publication, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee opened an investigation into Trump Jr.’s relationship with Kremlev, asking for communications between the two and records of “all purchases made for your wedding by foreign nationals.” (Trump Jr. did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation.) It also prompted Bettina Trump to post a joint statement with Trump Jr. on her Instagram, which included even more photos from the wedding weekend. In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesperson said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with.” In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship,” and they first met “a couple of years ago.” Other than the photo we’ve shared, the images from that weekend remain tightly curated and don’t seem to tell the full story. So we thought we’d share a few examples with the added context from our findings. Sometimes, what — or, in this case, who — isn’t pictured is just as important as what is. The Setting The island where the reception party was held can rent for about $100,000 per night. Kremlev paid for multiple nights. Little Pipe Cay/Lux Hospitality Bahamas The weekend festivities were spread across two ultra-exclusive private islands in the Exumas, a chain of storybook Caribbean destinations with white sand beaches and brilliant turquoise water. Islands there have been owned by the likes of Johnny Depp, David Copperfield and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault. People arrived by helicopter and seaplanes to infinity pools and oceanfront villas.  The island where Trump Jr. and his bride exchanged vows on Friday was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and “Casino Royale.” (Kremlev was not present for the Friday ceremony, which involved an even smaller group.)  On a second nearby island, about 10 minutes by boat from where the ceremony took place, a reception party was held. This island can rent for around $100,000 per night, and Kremlev paid for multiple nights.  The Caribbean-Themed Party The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride. Laura Gordon Photography via Hello! On the second night, more guests arrived for a party on the same island where the ceremony took place. The evening was Caribbean themed, with a beachside DJ and a performance by a Junkanoo band. On Instagram, Bettina Trump described the night as “an unforgettable night of pure joy, music, sunset, and dancing barefoot in the sand, surrounded by nothing but love in paradise…It was everything we dreamed of and more… pure magic.” “Paper Trail” Podcast Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.” Among the guests was Kremlev, arriving just days after accompanying Putin in China as part of a Russian delegation, according to Chinese state media. (Kremlev’s press office said that he was not part of Putin’s “official delegation” in China.) Kremlev’s ties to Putin and the Russian security services prompted the Ukrainian government to impose sanctions on him personally.  In their joint statement on Instagram, the couple said that Kremlev paid for the parties on both the second and third night of their wedding weekend, but they drew a distinction between the ceremony itself and the rest of the events.  “Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding. It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful,” the couple wrote. The First Dance Kremlev paid for the Sunday night wedding party during which the couple shared their first dance. Kremlev paid for the Saturday night party, too. Laura Gordon Photography via Hello! On Sunday, the newlyweds shared their first dance to Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Photos published in Hello! magazine showed the couple on the dance floor underneath disco balls strung up among palm trees. They embraced as guests watched. Bettina Trump wore her wedding dress. The night was nautical themed, complete with a seafood boat buffet, an illusionist and scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor outfits. The Sunday night party that Kremlev paid for featured a seafood boat buffet. Laura Gordon Photography via Hello! Scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor outfits perform for guests at the Sunday night party, which Kremlev paid for. Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram The wedding payments came from a Dubai entity affiliated with the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that Kremlev heads. The IBA has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. Kremlev picked up the tab for the festivities on Saturday and Sunday. Kremlev’s press office described him as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. It said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The Fireworks Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, watch fireworks paid for by Kremlev. Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller Design At the Sunday reception, Trump Jr. and his new wife stood on the beach, gazing out as a barge launched a spectacular fireworks display over the ocean. It was an extravagant cap off the wedding weekend.  Kremlev picked up the tab for the fireworks display. The company that put it on typically charges around $70,000 for such shows. There are still lingering questions we didn’t get to the bottom of. Among the most pressing: Why did a Russian oligarch who is close to Putin pay for much of the president’s son’s wedding? What is the nature of Trump Jr.’s relationship with Kremlev, and, importantly, how might it change over time? Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles, put it this way: “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something.” Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.? We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch. Alex Mierjeski Contact Me The post “Our Dear Friend Umar”: How We Uncovered That a Russian Oligarch Bankrolled Donald Trump Jr.’s Wedding appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Trump Administration]

— Judge Denies Efforts to End Oversight of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as Racial Profiling of Latinos Persists

 

at 9/18/26 11:10am

Robert Warshaw, left, a court-appointed monitor, and Maricopa Sheriff Jerry Sheridan speak before a legally required community outreach meeting in the Sunnyslope neighborhood of Phoenix in 2025. Ash Ponders for ProPublica A federal judge has denied efforts to remove oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, saying the agency continues to show racial disparities in traffic arrests of Latinos — and that there is not enough evidence that efforts to improve would stick without legal monitoring. In his 72-page ruling issued Sept. 10, U.S. District Judge G. Murray Snow stressed Sheriff Jerry Sheridan’s role in the department’s racial profiling since the start of the case more than a decade ago, including fighting court-ordered reforms and stymieing investigations. Sheridan was the No. 2 under former Sheriff Joe Arpaio when the county was found out of compliance with federal law. “Then Chief Deputy, now Sheriff, Sheridan in particular was found to have abused his authority over MCSO’s internal affairs process by obstructing and manipulating misconduct investigations and disciplinary proceedings — including those involving himself — to shield deputies and Command Staff from accountability and undermine the enforcement of remedies designed to address the constitutional violations against the Plaintiff class,” the judge wrote in an opinion that mentions Sheridan 30 times. The department declined to comment on Snow’s statements about Sheridan. But the sheriff previously told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica that he disagreed with Snow. “I was very truthful. To this day, I think he got that wrong about me,” Sheridan said. In his ruling, Snow said it may no longer be necessary for the court to track some areas originally identified for oversight in the 2013 decision, recognizing the “burdens” that go into monitoring certain elements.  County leaders have repeatedly cited costs as they’ve called for an end of court oversight. Maricopa County filed the motion in December, with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office later joining, arguing the violations were no longer occurring. The yearslong federal monitorship of Arizona’s largest sheriff’s office dates back to a 2007 class action racial profiling lawsuit that found the department under Arpaio had violated the constitutional rights of Latinos in the states most populous county. Today, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, there are an estimated 1.5 million Latino or Hispanic people living in Maricopa County — all of whose rights are protected under the lawsuit. In 2013, Snow ordered the department to document all traffic stops to detect any patterns of racial bias and to employ additional investigators to probe reports of deputy misconduct. Snow also appointed a monitor to oversee compliance with the settlement. In the 13 years since, the department has yet to convince the judge that its deputies don’t racially profile Latino drivers and that it adequately investigates deputies’ alleged misconduct. In denying the recent motion, Snow cited data showing that sheriff’s deputies in Maricopa County continue to search and arrest Latino drivers at a higher rate than white drivers, echoing the racial disparities that first led to court oversight of the department. “Those disparities remain,” Snow added. A key part of the judge’s analysis results from traffic reports collected by the sheriff’s office. An analysis of those reports on behalf of the plaintiffs by a professor of computer science from the University of California, Berkeley approximates that Hispanic motorists are 40% more likely to be arrested than white motorists, are stopped 30% longer than white motorists and are 2.5 times more likely to be searched than white motorists.  The responsibility is on the defendants to explain the stark disparities for Latino drivers, Snow said. “They have failed to do so.” To end court oversight, the sheriff’s office must be in full compliance with the reforms continuously for three years. An investigation by Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica found that despite the monitor’s annual reviews showing ongoing racial disparities in traffic stops, Sheridan and county leaders continued to press for an end to court oversight.  Arpaio’s wide-ranging, illegal traffic sweeps prompted the lawsuit, known originally as Melendres v. Arpaio, named for Manuel de Jesus Melendres Ortega, a legal resident who was arrested in such a sweep. Under Arpaio, Maricopa County became an early testing ground for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s 287(g) program, which lets local police enforce federal immigration laws. Many Arizonans say abuses from that time, including profiling of Latino motorists, foreshadowed what’s playing out now under the Trump administration’s expanded use of 287(g) and its mass deportation system. The arrests of hundreds of American citizens by immigration authorities since President Donald Trump returned to the White House have prompted widespread accusations of racial profiling. In response, the Department of Homeland Security told ProPublica that agents do not racially profile or target Americans. “We don’t arrest US citizens for immigration enforcement,” wrote spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. The decade-plus of legal oversight of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department, criminal justice experts have said, offers insight into the difficulties of reforming law enforcement agencies charged with endemic racial bias. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office holds a town hall at a community center in Gila Bend, Arizona, in 2025. Jesse Rieser for ProPublica Sheridan, a Republican, was found in civil contempt in 2016 for denying knowledge of Snow’s court order to stop making illegal immigration arrests. Sheridan has said he was always truthful. He inherited the settlement when he took office in January 2025.  A 2025 evaluation by the monitor found the department complied with more than 90% of the requirements but fell short in the two areas that most directly impact Latino drivers: eliminating racial bias in traffic stops and quickly investigating allegations of deputy misconduct. In trying to end federal oversight, Sheridan and county supervisors argued that racially biased Arpaio-era policies were no longer written department policy and there were few complaints of misconduct by deputies against Hispanic drivers.“MCSO has reformed its policies, improved its workforce, and implemented mechanisms to assure that racial profiling never occurs. This litigation has been a success, and the time has come to allow MCSO to stand on its own two feet, freed of oversight,” the countys original motion said. Since joining the Melendres case and settlement in 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice had supported Snows federal oversight and the reforms. But with Trump back in the White House, an attorney with the DOJs Civil Rights Division informed the court in January that the department supported ending oversight. Maricopa County Board of Supervisors Chair Kate Brophy McGee and Vice Chair Debbie Lesko, both Republicans, as well as a spokesperson with Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, said they were disappointed by the judge’s ruling. Steve Gallardo, the county’s lone Democrat on the five-member board, has opposed ending oversight, advocating for continued progress toward eliminating racial bias in policing. “The court has maintained an unelected and unaccountable federal monitor over MCSO – creating bureaucracy and regulatory burdens that have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. That ‘oversight’ comes at the cost of public safety, as the county must pay the monitor and his staff by foregoing other critical services,” said a joint statement from McGee and Lesko.  Following complaints by Sheridan and Republican county supervisors that oversight costs topped $200 million, the court ordered an audit of the sheriff’s office spending. Court findings, shared in 2025, showed that nearly 72% of the sheriff’s office spending was misattributed or misappropriated. Only $63 million was appropriately charged to the settlement, they said.  Officials with the sheriff’s office, however, welcomed parts of the judge’s latest ruling. “We believe MCSO has implemented durable remedies for violations that occurred 19 years and three administrations ago,” Sgt. Joaquin Enriquez said. “We are encouraged that the Court has provided a framework on eliminating portions of the Order that are no longer necessary and focusing compliance efforts on the remaining issues to be addressed.”  Speaking to a Phoenix-area radio station, Sheridan said he saw positive elements of the judge’s order but wondered whether his office could ever satisfy all parties to the lawsuit.   “We at the sheriff’s office feel we’re in compliance with all the” court’s orders, Sheridan told KTAR News. “But the court-appointed monitor does not believe so. It’s a matter of us making a pitch to the court directly, not through the monitor.”  Raul Piña in Phoenix’s Encanto Park in 2025 Jesse Rieser for ProPublica Notably, the judge’s ruling said, there was no evidence that the department would continue to remedy the violations should oversight to ensure Latinos’ constitutional rights end.  “The record does not support a finding that, absent federal monitoring, Defendants are unlikely to resume the conduct that necessitated the Courts injunctive Orders,” the ruling stated.  Raul Piña, a member of a court-mandated community advisory board tasked with helping the sheriff’s office rebuild trust with Latinos, said the problems at the department went beyond one specific leader, to multiple systems that have allowed biased policing long-term. To change that, Piña said, you need a broader overhaul. “You can paint the house, but if the foundation is broken you will have the same problem,” he told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica.  The American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, which originally filed the lawsuit on behalf of citizens and legal residents caught in Arpaio’s sweeps, celebrated the current ruling.  “Any other decision would have had a devastating impact on Maricopa County’s Latino residents, Christine Wee, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Arizona, said in a statement. The Court’s decision recognizes that any current and future misconduct committed by MCSO will not be tolerated. Simply put, MCSO is not ready for the court-ordered reforms to end.” The post Judge Denies Efforts to End Oversight of Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office as Racial Profiling of Latinos Persists appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice, Immigration, Police, Racial Justice]

— Tennessee Lawmakers Demand Answers on Safety in State Youth Prisons

 

at 9/18/26 9:00am

The halls of Mountain View Academy in Dandridge, Tennessee. ProPublica and WPLN reporting found that Wayne Halfway House, which operates Mountain View, failed to report multiple abuse incidents to the state as required. Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica Four Democratic Tennessee state lawmakers sent a letter to the Department of Children’s Services demanding answers about safety and oversight in the state’s juvenile justice facilities. The letter cites a recent WPLN and ProPublica investigation that found that juvenile justice facilities run by Tennessee businessman Jason Crews repeatedly failed to report abuse of children and other serious incidents to the state as required. The reporting involved interviews with dozens of former staff and youth, along with a review of emergency call logs, company records and state documents. Crews and his company Wayne Halfway House run all three of the state’s highest-security youth prisons.  “The allegations that serious physical and sexual abuse, dangerous restraints, injuries, and other critical incidents have gone unreported by WHH demand an urgent, transparent, and independently verifiable response from the Department of Children’s Services,” lawmakers wrote.  After WPLN and ProPublica sent a copy of the letter to the company, a spokesperson said that Wayne Halfway House “continues to meet or exceed performance standards set by Tennessee,” citing state audits. The spokesperson also said that Wayne Halfway House has helped more than 200 youth earn a high school diploma or equivalent in the last three years. In emailed statements to WPLN and ProPublica about the previous reporting, the company said it follows state policy and law and “vehemently denies” that Crews or his company ever discouraged staff from reporting serious or life-threatening incidents to the state. It described former employees who spoke with us as “untrustworthy sources” with a “clear bias” against the company and called their allegations “substantially flawed.” Lawmakers are asking for answers to several questions raised by this investigation, including what steps the department is taking to address the allegations, how much money the state spends to place youth in Wayne Halfway House facilities, and who is being considered to operate new juvenile facilities the department is building.  “We also request an opportunity to meet with Department leadership to discuss these issues, review the Department’s response, and identify the legislative and administrative actions necessary to ensure that no child’s safety depends on abuse first becoming a news story,” lawmakers wrote. In response to the news organizations’ initial investigation, DCS said it is looking into incidents that were uncovered by the reporting. DCS did not respond to a request for comment on the letter. Lawmakers noted that the latest investigation joins a “long and deeply troubling record of reports” on juvenile justice facilities across the state. They referenced previous reporting from WPLN and ProPublica that found a county-run East Tennessee juvenile detention center was locking kids in solitary confinement in violation of state law. The department said it would take steps to address the findings from the 2023 investigation, and the superintendent of the facility, Richard Bean, later stepped down.  Read More “They’re Putting Kids’ Lives at Risk”: How Abuse in a Tennessee Businessman’s Juvenile Prisons Remained Under Wraps State Sen. Heidi Campbell, who signed onto the letter, also pushed for independent oversight of juvenile justice facilities in 2024, after WPLN and ProPublica’s reporting from East Tennessee. Campbell and others working on that bill said a lobbyist for Wayne Halfway House asked them to exempt privately run facilities from oversight. The oversight bill eventually failed. A lobbyist for Wayne Halfway House told the news organizations at the time that the company was concerned about giving regulatory power to an outside agency “without more extensive consideration.” Lawmakers are also worried about the state’s increased spending on juvenile justice, especially as Tennessee plans to spend more than $400 million to build more facilities. The cost to hold 31 youth at a Wayne Halfway House facility for a year is roughly the same amount it would take the state to expand grocery benefits for 700,000 school-aged children during the summer, lawmakers wrote.  “Given the amount of money Tennessee is currently spending, and plans to invest, in juvenile justice and residential facilities, we have serious concerns about repeated findings and allegations of lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability in these facilities,” lawmakers wrote. The post Tennessee Lawmakers Demand Answers on Safety in State Youth Prisons appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice]

— “A Clear Watering Down”: Drug Transparency Bill Stripped of Critical Provisions Ahead of Senate Vote

 

at 9/18/26 4:00am

Grace Cary/Getty Images Landmark legislation designed to alert consumers to where their drugs were made is headed for a full Senate vote, but safety experts say the transparency bill has been stripped of two of its most critical provisions. The Clear Labels Act was introduced earlier this year by Sens. Rick Scott, R-Fla., and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., after lawmakers and drug safety experts called for more transparency in the industry. Last year, a ProPublica investigation revealed that the U.S. kept importing generic drugs from foreign factories after inspectors had identified quality and safety lapses at the sites, including leaks, mold and contaminated water. Medications made at these facilities were linked to thousands of reported adverse reactions in patients. The bill aims to allow doctors and patients to see on the label exactly where a medication was made — details that had largely been withheld until now, even from Congress. Current generic drug labels often include only the location of the packager or distributor, which can be thousands of miles away from the actual manufacturer.  One provision made the law particularly strong, experts said: The label was supposed to include a unique code that the Food and Drug Administration uses to identify factories. That code would have made it easier for researchers and the public to track the regulatory histories of specific facilities.  The requirements also were supposed to take effect as early as a year after the bill’s passage. Senators have now struck both of those provisions. People familiar with the deliberations said lawmakers worried the requirements would raise drug prices and weaken national security by revealing the precise locations where lifesaving medications are made.  The unique identifier requirement has been removed from the bill, and the timeline for companies to come into compliance was extended to five years. “Its just a clear watering down of the original bill,” said retired Army Col. Vic Suarez, a former medical supply-chain commander who has been leading a push for more domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing.  He and others also questioned why drug companies need multiple years to comply. “Five years after it passes might as well be a lifetime,” said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine and health policy at Stanford University who has researched the economic pressures that lead to poor-quality generic drugs. “Why is it that the supply chain, the medical distributors and the retailers dont want to make sure that they supply the highest-quality product?” In a joint press release, Scott and Gillibrand praised the bill’s progress in the Senate, calling it a “massive win for consumer safety and transparency,” but did not address the changes. A representative from Gillibrand’s office said the five-year delay is meant to give the FDA time for rulemaking, which is a complicated, often yearslong process used to introduce new regulations. The delay would also give manufacturers time to come into compliance and redesign their labels, the representative said. But Peter Baker, a former FDA inspector whose work involved the very companies impacted by the bill, said that amount of time is unnecessary.  If they wanted to do it in one year, they could,” Baker said. “I would love to hear their justification on why they need five years to develop some rules and guidance on transparency. … I mean, it’s a simple label change.” The new version of the legislation also removes the key requirement to include a unique facility identification number on labels, called a DUNS number, which would have allowed the public to more easily trace a generic drug and its active ingredients to the factories where they were made. In some cases, that identifier could also be used to find FDA inspection reports that describe contamination and other safety breakdowns on factory floors. Read More Look Up Where Your Generic Prescription Drugs Were Made ProPublica used that ID number to collect data for Rx Inspector, a first-of-its-kind tool that allows consumers and doctors to look up where more than 40,000 generic drugs are made. Pharmacists and patients are already using the tool to learn more about the drugs they take and prescribe. Under the bill’s updated language, drug labels will only be required to include factory addresses, which can be inconsistent and hard to trace to a manufacturing facility. A single address in India, for example, can house multiple factories, each producing its own drugs, or each with a slight variation on the same address.  ProPublica reporters ran into this issue when collecting data for the Rx Inspector tool. In 69% of prescription drug labels, reporters found a generic drug manufacturers DUNS number and were able to directly connect it to a specific facility. However, when only a manufacturers address was available, linking a drug to a particular facility became much harder, requiring a complicated process of automated address verification, geolocation and extensive manual review. Experts also worried about certain language in the legislation that could allow manufacturers to avoid identifying where their factories are at all. Representatives for the bill’s sponsors have said that manufacturers are required to identify the factory where drugs were made, but the legislation only mentions a “place of business.” Drugmakers could potentially list the address for their headquarters or a subsidiary location in the United States rather than a factory overseas. “If, in fact, ‘place of business’ can be interpreted as the location of the importer or the headquarters or something like that, it would be no different than what we have today,” said Ohio State University professor John Gray, who testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, led by Scott and Gillibrand. “Then well be right back to where we are,” Gray said. “Itll say ‘Manufactured for So-and-So in New York City,’ but its actually made somewhere else around the world.” “Paper Trail” Podcast Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.” People familiar with negotiations over the bill’s language said they are confident that manufacturers won’t have a loophole. The changes to the bill were primarily made as a compromise between committee offices and stakeholders, they said, and the FDA will have final say in what counts as an acceptable address. The Association for Accessible Medicines, the generic drug lobbying group, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A spokesperson for the association previously spoke out against the bill to ProPublica, saying the additional requirements would cause “significant costs in exchange for limited return.” The lobbying group spent over $1 million between January and July on healthcare and generics-related bills, including the Clear Labels Act, according to its public filings.  The trade group for brand-name manufacturers did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, a spokesperson for the brand-name trade group said the industry would “welcome conversations about how to strengthen the biopharmaceutical supply chain.”  The bill faced pushback from some lawmakers on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H, raised the national security concerns, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-K.Y., said he worried about creating an additional hurdle to drug production. Ultimately, the revised bill passed the committee in July, with only Paul dissenting. The full Senate is set to take up the measure; a date has not yet been scheduled. Congress will work with the FDA to make sure the law is properly interpreted and enforced, according to those familiar with the negotiations. Baker said the burden of ensuring compliance will fall to already-overworked inspectors, who will be forced to determine whether manufacturers are skirting the address requirement. It would be easier to require the unique identifier, he said, because inspectors could more easily verify the information. “The more flexibility they allow, the more complex it is to enforce it,” Baker said. Baker also pushed back against concerns about a potential national security threat. He said data about where U.S. drugs come from is already well known, so including factory information on labels wouldn’t pose a significant risk. “Its a public health concern over a national security concern,” he said. “I would say that those risks outweigh the national security concerns.” Read More Threat in Your Medicine Cabinet: The FDA’s Gamble on America’s Drugs The Clear Labels Act Would Change What You Know About Your Prescription Medication The post “A Clear Watering Down”: Drug Transparency Bill Stripped of Critical Provisions Ahead of Senate Vote appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Health Care, Regulation]

— Why ProPublica Is Leaning Into Sports Investigations

 

at 9/18/26 3:00am

The Rafael Baez Baseball Academy practices in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.    Christopher Gregory-Rivera for ProPublica If you have seen the headlines of the major investigation we recently published, “The Dominican Baseball Factory,” you may have wondered: Why is ProPublica, with its serious-sounding mission of accountability and its focus on abuses of power, reporting on baseball? The answer would be: Exactly. Baseball fans have long marveled at how the Dominican Republic, a tiny island nation with a population akin to Ohio, has produced so many brilliant players — roughly 10% of the major league. Major League Baseball and the owners of its 30 teams have regularly harvested bumper crops of sluggers to build their rosters and their fanbase, including most recently the Toronto Blue Jays’ Vladimir Guerrero Jr., the New York Mets’ Juan Soto and the San Diego Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr., whose playing contracts total more than $1.6 billion.   But as with many such tales of extraordinary success, the origin story is much darker.  When we hired reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts from The Washington Post as our first reporter dedicated to sports, he arrived with an idea: He’d long heard that the Dominican Republic system that had churned out so many stars was deeply problematic. Garcia-Roberts wanted to dig into that world, not just to explain how it operated but to identify the individuals who were taking advantage of the young players and those who were allowing it to happen. What if he was afforded the time to track a promising young player — a potential superstar — as he was plucked from obscurity by a major league team? Even prepped, Garcia-Roberts was surprised by what he found: For generations, poor parents in the Dominican Republic have shunted their children into an unforgiving juggernaut of baseball academies praying for a chance at a life-altering signing bonus from an MLB team. Since the bonus could not be delivered until age 16, teams had begun locking up talent younger and younger with verbal IOUs. As for the kids who don’t make the cut, well, they paid with their childhoods, and sometimes with their health. Garcia-Roberts also detailed the rapacious industry that had sprung up around these young players and their parents: Trainers and moneylenders, he found, were siphoning away those signing bonuses with predatory, high-interest loans and other, often questionable, claims before they even arrived. Significantly, Garcia-Roberts found, MLB itself has long known about the often brutal world surrounding its youngest prospects. The players union has as well; Dominican players, led by former Boston Red Sox star David “Big Papi” Ortiz, have argued against efforts to establish an international draft — a move that would end early bonuses, cutting off a revenue stream for moneylenders. Ortiz told players, according to an audio message, that an international draft would be “trouble” for people in the Dominican Republic. In a statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz told Garcia-Roberts that his opposition to the proposal “was never motivated by personal interests.”  Read More The Dominican Baseball Factory The Rising Baseball Star, a Fatal Car Crash and the Fixer There’s big money in sports, and with it lots of reasons to explore how it is being wielded and who is paying the cost. And that is why ProPublica is diving in. These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a slice of society untouched by the Big Money tentacles of the sports industry — and the lack of accountability that often goes along with them. Got a gleaming new stadium in town? Your tax dollars likely paid for much or all of it, despite its billionaire owners (while you may not be able to afford a ticket — unless it’s to a Mets game). Got a kid in youth sports? You may have experienced the boggling cost of travel teams or noted that private equity is buying up leagues and tournaments. Watch sports on TV? The ads for online gambling can seem as ubiquitous as the score, luring legions into a new scourge of addiction. And the Los Angeles Lakers just sold for $12.5 billion! With a B, amid, of course, a scandal about how the previous owner financed his purchase. All of that big money is ramping up just as the landscape of sports journalism has contracted along with the larger media industry. What ProPublica brings to sports is the time, the skill set and the resources to go beyond the games and the individual stories. Our approach to investigative reporting required Garcia-Roberts to get inside the system, to find out how it works and who is being harmed, and then reveal who is responsible and who is preventing the problems from being fixed.  Without the expectation to cover games or daily sports news, reporters like Garcia-Roberts won’t be hamstrung by what one of my colleagues called “the conundrum of access.” You dig out the unsightly bits and suddenly your sources dry up and with them your scoops. And we haven’t covered a topic so long that we have become blind to its flaws.  This isn’t ProPublica’s first dive into sports investigations. In 2021, reporters Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott and Ellis Simani were scrutinizing a trove of federal tax data and noticed that the billionaire owners of the nation’s sports teams were taking fat write-offs on team assets, from media deals to player contracts.  In 2015, former ProPublica reporter David Epstein wrote about how one of the most powerful track coaches in the world was accused of experimenting with testosterone and pressuring athletes to use prescription medications they didn’t need to gain a performance benefit. The story touched off an investigation by the United States Anti-Doping Agency that eventually led to the coach’s four-year ban. And most recently, Molly Hensley-Clancy, in partnership with The Washington Post, published an investigation that found a youth sports giant failed to put in place promised reforms to prevent child abuse.  You can expect to see more of ProPublica’s reporting on sports in coming months, and like the box scores, they will be spelling out who is winning and who is losing. That’ll just likely mean something different to us. If you’d like to read those stories, we’d love to send our Big Story newsletter right to your inbox. In the meantime, if you have a story tip for a terrific sports investigation, or just something sports-related you think we should know, we’d love to hear it. Please get in touch with reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts or contact ProPublica via any of these secure methods. The post Why ProPublica Is Leaning Into Sports Investigations appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Sports]

— Oregon Lawmakers Seek to Open Up Affordable Housing Records Following ProPublica’s Reporting

 

at 9/17/26 3:00am

Illustration by Jovelle Tamayo/ProPublica. Source images: Records obtained by ProPublica, iStock. Two Oregon lawmakers want to end an unusual exemption in the state’s records law that has kept the public from learning how hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money is spent on subsidized housing — and the effort has already landed key industry support. Rep. Pam Marsh, chair of Oregon’s House Committee on Housing and Homelessness, told ProPublica that she plans to introduce legislation next year to eliminate a law that shields key details of state spending on low-income housing. The southern Oregon Democrat said she didn’t realize the documents were being kept secret until reading about it in a ProPublica story. She said previous leaders of her committee told her they were also unaware. “I think this is an issue that will have very broad interest,” Marsh said. State Sen. Khanh Pham, a Portland Democrat and chair of the Senate Committee on Housing and Development, said she also wants the Legislature to tackle the issue in its next session. Meanwhile, a lobbying group for low-income housing developers, lenders and related businesses, Housing Oregon, said it strongly supports repealing the secrecy provision; the organization has asked the state to disclose more about projects that it funds in the meantime. “Oregon’s affordable housing providers share the public’s interest in ensuring that public investments in housing are used effectively, responsibly, and with visibility,” said Kevin Cronin, a spokesperson for the group. “The questions raised in your recent ProPublica article regarding development costs deserve serious attention.” Cronin said Oregon can increase transparency around development costs “while still protecting genuinely proprietary or competitively sensitive information.” “More consistent reporting of costs and outcomes will help policymakers, providers, researchers, and the public understand where the system is working and where it needs improvement,” Cronin said. ProPublica highlighted Oregon’s secrecy around low-income housing in August. Since 2021, our story noted, Oregon has given developers an unprecedented $1.4 billion, and the cost of developing each low-income apartment has nearly doubled, to $540,000. Dozens of projects are lined up for another $850 million in future state funding, and costs are expected to continue rising. Read More Oregon Is Spending More Than Ever on Low-Income Housing. A State Law Keeps the Details Secret. “We are spending, as you said, a lot of money on the development of affordable housing,” Marsh said. “We really need to understand what it is that we’re funding, how much it costs, why it costs that much, and be able to justify the investments that we’re making.” In other states, researchers and journalists have used the financial records from subsidized housing projects to investigate their spiraling costs and the drivers behind the growing price tag. Marsh said after reading the ProPublica story that she “pretty much immediately” looked up the provision in Oregon public records law that officials cite for keeping cost details secret. She said financial documents that show where a project’s money is coming from and what it’s going to should be public and easily accessed. She said she would like to see them posted online as part of the public materials that Oregon’s Housing Stability Council receives for each project before awarding subsidies. Pham, in a written statement, said: “It’s imperative that Oregonians can trust that our state government is investing in affordable housing as cost-effectively as possible. I appreciated ProPublicas reporting on Oregons inadequate public records law that hinders our ability to monitor how affordable housing funds are being spent, and Im hopeful legislators can address this next year.” Oregon’s Sunshine Committee, which reviews public records exemptions and recommends ones that could be rolled back, is also examining the exemption for housing financials as a result of ProPublica’s coverage, co-chair Charlie Fisher said. It’s not clear where opposition to repeal efforts, if any, might arise. Officials in Washington and California, where the details of state spending on subsidized housing are available to the public, have said it hasn’t interfered with low-income housing efforts. Oregon Housing and Community Services, the state housing agency that persuaded lawmakers to create the records exemption in 1997, cited the law in redacting major sections of developers’ cost reports that ProPublica requested in May. The agency’s current executive director, Andrea Bell, told ProPublica in July that she is committed to transparency but that the agency is following the law as it stands today.  Asked to comment this week about whether the agency would support efforts to change the law, a spokesperson said by email that state agencies don’t take positions on bills. “OHCS appreciates the opportunity to review the legislation” that’s introduced in 2027, the spokesperson wrote. The post Oregon Lawmakers Seek to Open Up Affordable Housing Records Following ProPublica’s Reporting appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Real Estate, Regulation]

— What to Know About Mail-In Voting for the 2026 Midterms

 

at 9/16/26 11:15am

Voting stickers at an election operations facility in Martinez, California, in May Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images This week, the Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s plans to impose new rules for mail-in voting for the midterm elections in November.  In a March executive order, President Donald Trump had instructed the U.S. Postal Service to create rules for election officials sending mail-in ballots to voters. If a state didn’t comply with the new rules, the Postal Service wouldn’t deliver the ballots to voters. State officials said it would have been impossible to comply in time, and two federal judges blocked the rule for the November elections. Lawyers for the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene. In a brief, unsigned order on Monday, the court’s majority denied the administration’s request, writing that the “Government is unlikely to succeed on the merits of its challenge.” Justice Samuel Alito wrote an eight-page dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, saying he would have allowed the rules to go into effect. The court has not yet decided whether the rules can move forward after the November election. Trump criticized the Supreme Court’s order in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, calling it “a big loss for Republicans, and America itself.” The result of the Supreme Court order is that nothing has changed for states.  “State and local election administrators all across the country will continue to do what they always do, which is run safe, secure and transparent elections,” said Barbara Smith Warner, a senior adviser for the Institute for Responsive Government, a think tank working on election issues. “Everyone can and should be sure that they can vote in this election.” We’ve been reporting for months on the Trump administration’s efforts to issue new regulations on mail-in voting, gather state voter data and investigate voter eligibility ahead of the November elections. We spoke with experts on mail-in voting to answer practical questions about voting by mail. Why is Trump trying to restrict mail-in voting? Mail-in voting has become more common over the decades. Roughly a third of Americans cast their ballots through the mail nowadays, according to the Brookings Institute. Trump himself voted by mail twice this year. But mail-in voting varies dramatically from state to state. While more than 95% of voters cast their ballots by mail in Oregon and Washington state, which have all-mail elections, less than 3% of voters vote by mail in West Virginia and Tennessee. Trump has attacked mail-in voting for years, calling it “cheating” and “corrupt.” And as Trump has tried to exert more federal control over elections, he’s also sought to impose new restrictions on mail-in voting and voter eligibility. The president has claimed, without evidence, that voting by noncitizens is rampant. He’s pushed Congress to create stricter voter identification requirements, and with legislation stalled on Capitol Hill, he set out to regulate mail-in voting through an executive order. White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said in a statement that the president wants “commonsense exceptions” for Americans to vote by mail because of an illness, a disability, travel or service in the military. And she said Trump’s use of mail-in ballots to participate in Florida elections while living in the White House “is a nonstory.” But “universal mail-in voting should not be allowed because it’s highly susceptible to fraud,” she added. Studies have consistently found voter fraud is exceedingly rare.  What did the USPS rule say? Trump’s order instructed the Postal Service to set criteria for mail-in ballots. The USPS finalized the rule in August. If it went into effect, the Postal Service wouldn’t mail ballots for states that failed to comply.  The USPS rule set design standards that required envelopes for mail-in ballots to include the official election mail logo and a unique bar code. States were required to upload lists of their eligible voters’ names and mailing addresses to a portal that’s still being built. (On Sept. 1, the Postal Service said the portal would be available soon.) The bar codes on the envelopes needed to match the voter information in the lists states uploaded to the portal. If the ballot envelope failed to fit the criteria, USPS would reject and return the mail to election officials. In August, an anonymous federal employee filed a whistleblower disclosure with U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, calling the Postal Service’s new system untested and error-prone. The employee described the process as “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.” According to a September audit by the agency’s Office of Inspector General, some Postal Service facilities failed to properly handle ballots during this year’s primary elections. (In a response included with the findings of the audit, USPS wrote that “overall ballot mail performance is strong,” while acknowledging “we can always reinforce and amplify our internal processes and procedures.”) As ProPublica’s Jen Fifield reported, top USPS officials expressed concerns in meetings about how the new rules could delay or block ballots from reaching large swaths of eligible voters.  The rule change would’ve affected the people who rely on mail-in voting the most: older people, people with certain disabilities, and people who live in remote or rural areas, said Richard Hasen, a UCLA law professor and director of the school’s Safeguarding Democracy Project, in an interview before the Supreme Court order. On Sept. 3, a bipartisan group of 99 current and former state and local election officials said in a court brief that it would have been impossible for states to comply with the rules ahead of the midterms. The Trump administration said in its filing to the Supreme Court that the Postal Service rule “imposes only modest envelope-design and addressee-information requirements” on mail-in ballots. A spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service did not respond to a request for comment. In a previous statement, a spokesperson said the agency had spent months developing its system, in a manner consistent with federal court orders. The spokesperson added that the agency’s goal is to ensure “that Americans can have confidence that their election mail will be handled securely and delivered reliably.” In response to concerns raised by the whistleblower, Postmaster General David Steiner said in a statement that the agency “takes these concerns seriously” but added that “our standards for quality, security, and system integrity were not compromised.” In a concurring opinion with this week’s decision blocking the new mail-in ballot rules, Justice Brett Kavanaugh acknowledged that state and local election officials didn’t have enough time to implement the Postal Service changes before the November midterms. But Kavanaugh added that the rules may fall within the Postal Service’s authority, not ruling out that they could be implemented for future elections.  Can I vote by mail? State laws vary on who can vote by mail, and when. Your eligibility depends on the law in your state. Every state offers some version of voting by mail, but your state may require you to have a reason to vote absentee, such as an illness, a disability or travel out of state.  Check the rules for mail-in voting in your state. Take note of whether your state requires you to request a mail-in ballot ahead of the election and what the deadlines are for those requests, as well as when ballots must be returned in order to count. Before you request a mail-in ballot, make sure you’re registered to vote and the local election office has your address. Eight states and the District of Columbia proactively mail ballots to every registered voter. In 29 states, voters can request a mail-in ballot without providing a reason. The other 13 states require voters to provide an eligible excuse when they ask for an absentee ballot. How do I make sure my mail-in ballot counts? We asked experts what voters should know if they plan to vote by mail. Keep in mind that the rules for mail-in voting depend on where you live.   Read the directions carefully, Smith Warner said. Make sure you fill out the ballot completely and don’t leave any stray marks. Sign the ballot with your typical signature. Use the same signature you have on other government documents, such as your driver’s license, experts say. That signature is printed on your license, and you can pull it out to refresh your memory. Don’t miss the deadline to turn in your ballot. Deadlines for turning in absentee ballots vary by state. The U.S. Postal Service recommends voters mail their completed ballot at least a week before their state’s deadline to ensure it arrives in time.  The Postal Service’s routes may have changed, so delivery of your mail-in ballot may take longer, said Tammy Patrick, the chief programs officer at the Election Center. “So, make sure you get your ballot back as early as possible,” she said. Consider dropping off your ballot at a local election office. Election experts we spoke to recommend voters return their completed ballots to a ballot drop box or their local election office. Drop boxes are often found at city halls, libraries and schools. Check with your local election office to find locations near you. Track your ballot. State and local election officials often have online portals where you can check to see whether your ballot has been received, approved or rejected.  What if I change my mind and prefer to vote in person? It’s not unusual for people to vote at the polls after requesting a mail-in ballot, said David Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington that works with election officials and conducts research to build trust in the voting process. States have systems in place to prevent people from voting twice. Some states allow voters to bring completed mail-in ballots to polling places, but check with your local election office before relying on that method. If you decide you want to vote in person instead, experts recommend you bring your mail ballot and envelope so the poll workers can cancel or spoil it (mark it or rip it up). We also asked experts what to do if a voter has already sent in their mail-in ballot but wants to make changes. Experts said to avoid this if possible. Depending on where you live, if the mail-in ballot hasn’t yet been accepted and cast by election officials, voters may be able to change their mind and vote in person, Patrick said. “As long as it hasn’t gotten back to the elections office and it hasn’t been accepted,” she said, “then the voter can usually still be provided another ballot.” Read More New Mail Voting Rules Moved Forward Despite USPS Officials’ Concerns About Mass Disenfranchisement U.S. Postal Service Failed to Properly Handle Some Ballots During This Year’s Primary Elections, Audit Finds The post What to Know About Mail-In Voting for the 2026 Midterms appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Democracy]

— Arizona Lowered the Bar for Its English Fluency Test. Experts Say It Will Harm Students in the Long Run.

 

at 9/16/26 3:00am

Samantha Ramos teaches students in her English language development class at John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Samantha Ramos stood at the front of her second grade classroom, a small mic clipped to her lanyard amplifying her instructions as she began a phonics lesson. “Can we get our arms ready?” asked Ramos, who’s taught at the John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, for 15 years. She brought her right palm to her left shoulder as the students imitated her movements. Ramos, who specializes in teaching English as a second language, was leading a lesson that day on the short “i” sound. She told the students to pronounce each letter with a different gesture — touching the shoulder for the “w,” the elbow for the “i” and the hand for the double “l” — before sounding out the word “will.” They repeated the process for other short “i” words — “dig,” “wig” and “fit.” The lesson is part of a daily block of language instruction, ranging from two to four hours long, that Arizona students learning English as a second language are required to take. The students, most of them Spanish-speaking Latino children, remain in the program, separated for part of that time from their peers whose primary language is English, until they pass a test showing they’re fluent enough to learn in a mainstream classroom. The program is known as “structured English immersion,” or colloquially as “English-only” because all instruction is required to be in English. This limits their time for core subjects, like math and science, that are critical to academic success and college readiness. Arizona is the only state with English-only laws still in effect for its public schools. But the number of students enrolled in the curriculum has tumbled dramatically this year. At the Tucson Unified School District, where Ramos teaches, the percentage of test-taking students who scored high enough to be classified as proficient in English more than doubled — from 10% in 2025 to 24% in 2026. Rather than a big leap in fluency, however, the test results reflect the Arizona Department of Education lowering the grade needed to pass. The changes were approved by outgoing Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a longtime Republican defender of Arizona’s English-only policies. Experts warn this change will do lasting harm to tens of thousands of Arizona students who will exit the structured English immersion program before they know the language well enough to succeed. Such students are already part of the lowest-performing group on standardized tests, and the loss of specialized instruction could further harm their long-term academic success, according to education researchers. Past attempts by the Arizona Department of Education to reclassify large numbers of children learning English as fluent prompted federal investigations by the departments of Justice and Education. Federal officials contended placing such students in classrooms where they struggled because they lacked knowledge of English violated their civil and educational rights, and Arizona agreed to a settlement more than a decade ago. What’s happening now could be a repeat of that, said Katie Bernstein, an applied linguist and professor of early childhood education at Arizona State University. “If you’re put in a class where you don’t understand what’s going on at all, you’re not learning language or content,” she said. “And so those are the worst outcomes of all, are students who are not given any language services.” Ramos teaches her students phonics during a daily block of English-language immersion. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Nearly 1 in 10 students enrolled in Arizona public and charter schools marked in their school registration forms they speak a language other than English at home. State law mandates that they be assessed for fluency and placed in structured English immersion, and each spring they take the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment, or AZELLA, to measure their progress in reading, writing, speaking and listening. This approach has been required since Arizona voters passed a 2000 ballot initiative, Proposition 203, banning bilingual education in public schools. Still, officials have periodically made changes to the proficiency test. The U.S. departments of Justice and Education determined the version of AZELLA administered between 2006 and 2012 — coinciding with Horne’s first two terms as the state’s top education official — was “not a valid measure of English language proficiency and readiness.” As a result, the state had removed at least 28,000 students from structured English immersion who still lacked proficiency in reading and writing the language. The Arizona Department of Education was found to be in violation of civil rights laws that ban discrimination on the basis of race and national origin by schools that receive federal funds. The state voluntarily entered a settlement, which stressed that the law requires “education agencies to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede students’ equal participation in instructional programs.” Do You Have Experience With Arizona’s Structured English Immersion System, Also Called English-Only? Have stories to tell about how Arizona treats children learning English in public schools? Share your tips with Rafael Carranza at englishlearners@azluminaria.org. The settlement agreement stipulated that the state would immediately help school districts find the students who had been harmed and offer “reading and writing intervention services.” In the long term, the state was required to revamp the AZELLA test. Similar issues prompted a second voluntary settlement four years later, which instructed the state to raise the threshold for a test score to qualify as proficient in English. The state was also required to retest English-language learners using more rigorous standards, among other things. Ida Rose Florez, a psychologist and former professor and researcher at Arizona State University, conducted a study published in 2012 that found the AZELLA test was “ineffective and obsolete” and its results could be arbitrary. The research concluded there was no evidence the test could “accurately differentiate” between children who need English-language services and those who don’t. “What I examined, and what I saw, was a test that was absolutely not developed correctly,” Florez told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. “I dont see any basis for validity whatsoever.” After dropping during the pandemic, AZELLA passing rates held steady at 12% statewide for three school years, including in 2025, when more than 118,000 took the test and just over 14,000 scored well enough to be reclassified as proficient. After the Arizona Department of Education lowered the score needed to pass the test, the statewide reclassification rate for 2026 jumped to 26%, according to the department’s official tally announced to teachers at a September training. Nearly 113,000 students took the 2026 AZELLA, according to the department, resulting in the reclassification of about 30,000 students as proficient and their removal from English-language services this school year. Students in the structured English immersion program head to class on a recent August morning. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Students learning English as a second language in Arizona must pass a test in order to exit the immersion program and join their English-speaking peers. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica The state Department of Education said its decision to make it easier to pass the AZELLA came after it administered the test last year to 600 native English speakers. Each new version of the test is given to native speakers first and the results are used as a baseline, said Deputy Superintendent Margaret Dugan, who chaired the group that advocated for passage of Proposition 203 and has served with Horne during all three of his terms as superintendent. The department skipped this step in 2020, when it made the last major change to the test, following a State Board of Education decision granting more flexibility in how schools teach students English. “Because of COVID and all of that that went on in 2020, things were not done in order,” Dugan said. “When we walked in, it was a new test and they had never tested the native speakers, so now they had to.” When that version was belatedly administered to native English speakers, nearly half failed, said Adela Santa Cruz, who leads the Office of English Language Acquisition, which oversees the test. “With a native not being able to pass that test at a high percentage, theres something that was just quite awry,” she said. She said the issues were reflected in the pass rate of English learners plateauing at 12% for three years. Using this information, education officials adjusted the grading criteria for students learning English, requiring a lower score to pass all four portions of the test: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Previously, all students needed a combined score of at least 1,000 out of a possible 1,405 to pass. This year, the minimum passing score for all grade levels ranged from 962 for high schoolers to 944 for kindergartners. “My hope is that all of you will see an increase in proficiency,” Anju Kuriakose, the director of psychometrics at the Arizona Department of Education, told school district representatives upon announcing the changes in April. Kuriakose noted half of the native speakers who had been tested to inform the changes were in kindergarten and first grade. Students in fifth grade or higher accounted for less than one-fifth of test takers. Florezs 2012 study found that when scoring guidelines are based too heavily on the test results of native-speaking kindergartners — without enough data from older children with more advanced language skills — pass results can be artificially elevated. She sees similar problems with the 2026 changes. The Arizona Department of Education said Horne, who approved the changes, was unavailable for an interview. But he has played an outsize role in the state’s structured English immersion program.  This is Horne’s third nonconsecutive term as superintendent, having served from 2003 to 2011 before returning to the office in 2023. In a 2024 interview with Arizona Luminaria, he boasted that students’ reclassification rates were highest during his terms from 2003 to 2011. “After I left office, things deteriorated,” he said. “I implemented structured English immersion, and equally important, undertook intensive training for the teachers as to how to do it, and then we got it” — the reclassification rate — “up to 31% in three or four years,” he said. The Arizona auditor general, however, questioned the validity of the test’s results during Horne’s tenure. An audit released in 2011 found that “because data is either unavailable or unreliable, the effect of SEI models is unknown.” Horne lost his bid for reelection in July’s Republican primary and will leave office in December. Juana Casas was relieved when her son Arturo, a fourth grader at Tucson’s John B. Wright Elementary School, passed the AZELLA test this spring after three years in structured English immersion classes. Casas said she learned from the experience of her oldest daughter, who had struggled to learn English and fell behind her classmates. She and her husband sought after-school tutoring to help Arturo, and his two older sisters helped him learn English at home. “I couldn’t help my oldest daughter, and she really struggled,” Casas said in Spanish. “Their two experiences are totally different. Arturo doesn’t speak Spanish very well because they’ve always spoken to him just in English so that he wouldn’t have to struggle like my oldest struggled.” English learners already lag far behind their peers, resulting in lower rates of graduation and postsecondary attainment. In 2025, standardized reading tests administered to all Arizona third graders showed a 31% disparity between English-language learners and other students, according to the Center for the Future of Arizona’s Education Progress Meter. The standardized math exam administered to all Arizona eighth graders in 2025 showed a 23% disparity between English-language learners and other students. Student work is displayed in Ramos’ classroom. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Since Proposition 203 was debated 26 years ago, proponents have argued it helps students learn English more quickly and gets them into mainstream classes faster. There is limited research to support this. Ample studies, however, show students taught under English-only policies have bigger achievement gaps compared to students instructed using bilingual or multilingual education, which reinforces the student’s primary language while accelerating their learning in academic subjects and a second language. A landmark 32-year study spanning 16 states analyzed various language-learning models, including structured English immersion, and found that “the key to accelerated progress is for English learners to receive peer-equivalent, grade-level bilingual schooling,” according to researchers Virginia Collier and Wayne Thomas. Florez, the former ASU professor who studied Arizona’s model, said, “The fundamental problem with the AZELLA is that its trying to measure a system that should never be in place to begin with.” Bernstein, the ASU early childhood education professor, said, “There is no linguistic, educational, economic, or research-based reason why we shouldnt have dual-language programs in the state. And so I think that potentially leaves politics as the only answer to why.” With more students passing this year’s proficiency test, the Tucson Unified School District is preparing to continue supporting students like Arturo within the mandates approved by voters in 2000. Patricia Sandoval-Taylor, the district’s director for language development, said state law requires teachers to track reclassified students’ progress in their classrooms for two years and intervene with additional support like tutoring or summer school if needed. Arizona schools don’t receive additional funding for such services, as they do for students who are not proficient in English. And since part of the district’s funding for English learners is based on the number of students in structured English immersion, more students passing the 2026 AZELLA will mean less funding in the 2027 school year. “They’re not going to have the direct services to ensure they become fully English proficient,” Sandoval-Taylor said. At John B. Wright Elementary, Ramos is still getting to know her second graders’ abilities and adjusting her teaching methods accordingly. Teaching students who are learning English comes with additional responsibilities but no additional pay. Still, Ramos believes it’s where she can make the biggest difference. For her, that includes celebrating when students pass AZELLA and are classified as proficient in English. “I think they need to be celebrated because theyre going above and beyond,” she said. “Before they did the change to the cut scores, it was like, ‘Well they passed this really incredibly difficult test that even English speakers couldnt even pass themselves.’” The post Arizona Lowered the Bar for Its English Fluency Test. Experts Say It Will Harm Students in the Long Run. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— Arizona Made Its English Fluency Test Easier to Pass. Experts Say It Will Harm Students’ Ability to Succeed.

 

at 9/16/26 3:00am

Samantha Ramos teaches students in her English language development class at John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Samantha Ramos stood at the front of her second grade classroom, a small mic clipped to her lanyard amplifying her instructions as she began a phonics lesson. “Can we get our arms ready?” asked Ramos, who’s taught at the John B. Wright Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, for 15 years. She brought her right palm to her left shoulder as the students imitated her movements. Ramos, who specializes in teaching English as a second language, was leading a lesson that day on the short “i” sound. She told the students to pronounce each letter with a different gesture — touching the shoulder for the “w,” the elbow for the “i” and the hand for the double “l” — before sounding out the word “will.” They repeated the process for other short “i” words — “dig,” “wig” and “fit.” The lesson is part of a daily block of language instruction, ranging from two to four hours long, that Arizona students learning English as a second language are required to take. The students, most of them Spanish-speaking Latino children, remain in the program, separated for part of that time from their peers whose primary language is English, until they pass a test showing they’re fluent enough to learn in a mainstream classroom. The program is known as “structured English immersion,” or colloquially as “English-only” because all instruction is required to be in English. This limits their time for core subjects, like math and science, that are critical to academic success and college readiness. Arizona is the only state with English-only laws still in effect for its public schools. But the number of students enrolled in the curriculum has tumbled dramatically this year. At the Tucson Unified School District, where Ramos teaches, the percentage of test-taking students who scored high enough to be classified as proficient in English more than doubled — from 10% in 2025 to 24% in 2026. Rather than a big leap in fluency, however, the test results reflect the Arizona Department of Education lowering the grade needed to pass. The changes were approved by outgoing Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, a longtime Republican defender of Arizona’s English-only policies. Experts warn this change will do lasting harm to tens of thousands of Arizona students who will exit the structured English immersion program before they know the language well enough to succeed. Such students are already part of the lowest-performing group on standardized tests, and the loss of specialized instruction could further harm their long-term academic success, according to education researchers. Past attempts by the Arizona Department of Education to reclassify large numbers of children learning English as fluent prompted federal investigations by the departments of Justice and Education. Federal officials contended placing such students in classrooms where they struggled because they lacked knowledge of English violated their civil and educational rights, and Arizona agreed to a settlement more than a decade ago. What’s happening now could be a repeat of that, said Katie Bernstein, an applied linguist and professor of early childhood education at Arizona State University. “If you’re put in a class where you don’t understand what’s going on at all, you’re not learning language or content,” she said. “And so those are the worst outcomes of all, are students who are not given any language services.” Ramos teaches her students phonics during a daily block of English-language immersion. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Nearly 1 in 10 students enrolled in Arizona public and charter schools marked in their school registration forms they speak a language other than English at home. State law mandates that they be assessed for fluency and placed in structured English immersion, and each spring they take the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment, or AZELLA, to measure their progress in reading, writing, speaking and listening. This approach has been required since Arizona voters passed a 2000 ballot initiative, Proposition 203, banning bilingual education in public schools. Still, officials have periodically made changes to the proficiency test. The U.S. departments of Justice and Education determined the version of AZELLA administered between 2006 and 2012 — coinciding with Horne’s first two terms as the state’s top education official — was “not a valid measure of English language proficiency and readiness.” As a result, the state had removed at least 28,000 students from structured English immersion who still lacked proficiency in reading and writing the language. The Arizona Department of Education was found to be in violation of civil rights laws that ban discrimination on the basis of race and national origin by schools that receive federal funds. The state voluntarily entered a settlement, which stressed that the law requires “education agencies to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede students’ equal participation in instructional programs.” Do You Have Experience With Arizona’s Structured English Immersion System, Also Called English-Only? Have stories to tell about how Arizona treats children learning English in public schools? Share your tips with Rafael Carranza at englishlearners@azluminaria.org. The settlement agreement stipulated that the state would immediately help school districts find the students who had been harmed and offer “reading and writing intervention services.” In the long term, the state was required to revamp the AZELLA test. Similar issues prompted a second voluntary settlement four years later, which instructed the state to raise the threshold for a test score to qualify as proficient in English. The state was also required to retest English-language learners using more rigorous standards, among other things. Ida Rose Florez, a psychologist and former professor and researcher at Arizona State University, conducted a study published in 2012 that found the AZELLA test was “ineffective and obsolete” and its results could be arbitrary. The research concluded there was no evidence the test could “accurately differentiate” between children who need English-language services and those who don’t. “What I examined, and what I saw, was a test that was absolutely not developed correctly,” Florez told Arizona Luminaria and ProPublica. “I dont see any basis for validity whatsoever.” After dropping during the pandemic, AZELLA passing rates held steady at 12% statewide for three school years, including in 2025, when more than 118,000 took the test and just over 14,000 scored well enough to be reclassified as proficient. After the Arizona Department of Education lowered the score needed to pass the test, the statewide reclassification rate for 2026 jumped to 26%, according to the department’s official tally announced to teachers at a September training. Nearly 113,000 students took the 2026 AZELLA, according to the department, resulting in the reclassification of about 30,000 students as proficient and their removal from English-language services this school year. Students in the structured English immersion program head to class on a recent August morning. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Students learning English as a second language in Arizona must pass a test in order to exit the immersion program and join their English-speaking peers. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica The state Department of Education said its decision to make it easier to pass the AZELLA came after it administered the test last year to 600 native English speakers. Each new version of the test is given to native speakers first and the results are used as a baseline, said Deputy Superintendent Margaret Dugan, who chaired the group that advocated for passage of Proposition 203 and has served with Horne during all three of his terms as superintendent. The department skipped this step in 2020, when it made the last major change to the test, following a State Board of Education decision granting more flexibility in how schools teach students English. “Because of COVID and all of that that went on in 2020, things were not done in order,” Dugan said. “When we walked in, it was a new test and they had never tested the native speakers, so now they had to.” When that version was belatedly administered to native English speakers, nearly half failed, said Adela Santa Cruz, who leads the Office of English Language Acquisition, which oversees the test. “With a native not being able to pass that test at a high percentage, theres something that was just quite awry,” she said. She said the issues were reflected in the pass rate of English learners plateauing at 12% for three years. Using this information, education officials adjusted the grading criteria for students learning English, requiring a lower score to pass all four portions of the test: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Previously, all students needed a combined score of at least 1,000 out of a possible 1,405 to pass. This year, the minimum passing score for all grade levels ranged from 962 for high schoolers to 944 for kindergartners. “My hope is that all of you will see an increase in proficiency,” Anju Kuriakose, the director of psychometrics at the Arizona Department of Education, told school district representatives upon announcing the changes in April. Kuriakose noted half of the native speakers who had been tested to inform the changes were in kindergarten and first grade. Students in fifth grade or higher accounted for less than one-fifth of test takers. Florezs 2012 study found that when scoring guidelines are based too heavily on the test results of native-speaking kindergartners — without enough data from older children with more advanced language skills — pass results can be artificially elevated. She sees similar problems with the 2026 changes. The Arizona Department of Education said Horne, who approved the changes, was unavailable for an interview. But he has played an outsize role in the state’s structured English immersion program.  This is Horne’s third nonconsecutive term as superintendent, having served from 2003 to 2011 before returning to the office in 2023. In a 2024 interview with Arizona Luminaria, he boasted that students’ reclassification rates were highest during his terms from 2003 to 2011. “After I left office, things deteriorated,” he said. “I implemented structured English immersion, and equally important, undertook intensive training for the teachers as to how to do it, and then we got it” — the reclassification rate — “up to 31% in three or four years,” he said. The Arizona auditor general, however, questioned the validity of the test’s results during Horne’s tenure. An audit released in 2011 found that “because data is either unavailable or unreliable, the effect of SEI models is unknown.” Horne lost his bid for reelection in July’s Republican primary and will leave office in December. Juana Casas was relieved when her son Arturo, a fourth grader at Tucson’s John B. Wright Elementary School, passed the AZELLA test this spring after three years in structured English immersion classes. Casas said she learned from the experience of her oldest daughter, who had struggled to learn English and fell behind her classmates. She and her husband sought after-school tutoring to help Arturo, and his two older sisters helped him learn English at home. “I couldn’t help my oldest daughter, and she really struggled,” Casas said in Spanish. “Their two experiences are totally different. Arturo doesn’t speak Spanish very well because they’ve always spoken to him just in English so that he wouldn’t have to struggle like my oldest struggled.” English learners already lag far behind their peers, resulting in lower rates of graduation and postsecondary attainment. In 2025, standardized reading tests administered to all Arizona third graders showed a 31% disparity between English-language learners and other students, according to the Center for the Future of Arizona’s Education Progress Meter. The standardized math exam administered to all Arizona eighth graders in 2025 showed a 23% disparity between English-language learners and other students. Student work is displayed in Ramos’ classroom. Cassidy Araiza for ProPublica Since Proposition 203 was debated 26 years ago, proponents have argued it helps students learn English more quickly and gets them into mainstream classes faster. There is limited research to support this. Ample studies, however, show students taught under English-only policies have bigger achievement gaps compared to students instructed using bilingual or multilingual education, which reinforces the student’s primary language while accelerating their learning in academic subjects and a second language. A landmark 32-year study spanning 16 states analyzed various language-learning models, including structured English immersion, and found that “the key to accelerated progress is for English learners to receive peer-equivalent, grade-level bilingual schooling,” according to researchers Virginia Collier and Wayne Thomas. Florez, the former ASU professor who studied Arizona’s model, said, “The fundamental problem with the AZELLA is that its trying to measure a system that should never be in place to begin with.” Bernstein, the ASU early childhood education professor, said, “There is no linguistic, educational, economic, or research-based reason why we shouldnt have dual-language programs in the state. And so I think that potentially leaves politics as the only answer to why.” With more students passing this year’s proficiency test, the Tucson Unified School District is preparing to continue supporting students like Arturo within the mandates approved by voters in 2000. Patricia Sandoval-Taylor, the district’s director for language development, said state law requires teachers to track reclassified students’ progress in their classrooms for two years and intervene with additional support like tutoring or summer school if needed. Arizona schools don’t receive additional funding for such services, as they do for students who are not proficient in English. And since part of the district’s funding for English learners is based on the number of students in structured English immersion, more students passing the 2026 AZELLA will mean less funding in the 2027 school year. “They’re not going to have the direct services to ensure they become fully English proficient,” Sandoval-Taylor said. At John B. Wright Elementary, Ramos is still getting to know her second graders’ abilities and adjusting her teaching methods accordingly. Teaching students who are learning English comes with additional responsibilities but no additional pay. Still, Ramos believes it’s where she can make the biggest difference. For her, that includes celebrating when students pass AZELLA and are classified as proficient in English. “I think they need to be celebrated because theyre going above and beyond,” she said. “Before they did the change to the cut scores, it was like, ‘Well they passed this really incredibly difficult test that even English speakers couldnt even pass themselves.’” The post Arizona Made Its English Fluency Test Easier to Pass. Experts Say It Will Harm Students’ Ability to Succeed. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— Top Oversight Dem Opens Investigation of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian Oligarch-Funded Wedding

 

at 9/15/26 3:50pm

Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, at an event at the White House in June. Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee launched an investigation into Donald Trump Jr.’s relationship with a Russian oligarch who paid for much of Trump Jr.’s wedding earlier this year. Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., sent two letters on Monday to the White House and Trump Jr. requesting records related to Trump Jr.’s financial relationship with the oligarch, Umar Kremlev. “The secretive, close relationship between the son of a sitting U.S. President and a member of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s inner circle raises serious national security and public corruption concerns,” Garcia wrote. Garcia told Trump Jr. it “may be the most serious allegation against you to date.” The letter to Trump Jr. asked for documents including Trump Jr.’s communications with Kremlev and “financial records of all purchases made for your wedding by foreign nationals.” “Paper Trail” Podcast Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.” Trump Jr. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Garcia’s investigation. The letters were prompted by a ProPublica investigation published Monday, which revealed that Kremlev secretly covered hundreds of thousands of dollars of expenses for Trump Jr.’s wedding. That included renting out a private island in the Bahamas for multiple nights. The wedding guest list numbered around 50, including Jared Kushner and other members of the Trump family. Kremlev, who first met Trump Jr. recently, also attended the intimate affair with a large group of other Russians. Kremlev is close to Putin and serves as the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions. Kremlev’s press office previously told ProPublica that he and Trump Jr. “have a friendly relationship” and that they don’t talk politics. After ProPublica’s story was published, Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Trump, released a joint statement confirming Kremlev’s role. “Our dear friend Umar very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us,” they said in a statement published on her Instagram account. “It was an extraordinarily generous wedding gift from a friend, and something for which we were and remain incredibly grateful.” They added, “Friendship doesn’t require a political motive.” The couple also drew a distinction between the ceremony itself, which was just family, and the rest of the wedding weekend. In a statement released by the White House after the story was published, President Donald Trump echoed that. “I have no idea who Umar is, never heard of him, and he didn’t pay for Don and Bettina’s wedding, which took place at a totally different location, and on a different day from the wedding,” he said. “It was an ‘afterparty’ given in their honor. Not a big deal!” The couple exchanged vows on Friday, May 22, on a private island in the Bahamas. The wedding festivities then continued for two days. The Saturday, May 23, event, which Kremlev paid for, was held on the same island as the ceremony. (“Night 2. One Love!” Bettina Trump posted about the Saturday festivities on Instagram.) The Sunday reception was held a roughly 10-minute boat ride away on a neighboring private island, rented out by Kremlev. At the Sunday reception, the couple had their first dance, with Bettina Trump wearing her wedding dress, and ate a five-tier wedding cake topped with a miniature bride and groom.  Afterward, the couple’s wedding planner talked to Hello! magazine about planning the three-day affair with Bettina Trump. “She wanted a progression,” said the planner, Lewis Miller. “The ceremony was very serene and pretty and soft, and the dinner was very elegant, and then the next night was much more colorful, and then the last night was more kind of cool and fun tropical vibes.” Read More Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin The post Top Oversight Dem Opens Investigation of Donald Trump Jr.’s Russian Oligarch-Funded Wedding appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Trump Administration]

— Papa Johns, Propaganda and Putin: How a MAGA Influencer With Ties to Russia Became Trump’s Arctic Adviser

 

at 9/15/26 4:00am

Thomas Dans in Nuuk, Greenland, last February. The Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer was appointed chair of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission. Sarah Meyssonnier/Reuters For more than 40 years, the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has advised Congress and the president on what to study in the frigid and dynamic far north, from the environment to military security. It’s typically done so without making waves, led by people well-versed in science and public policy. That was until December, when President Donald Trump appointed a Texas venture capitalist and MAGA influencer with no formal background in science as the commission’s chair. Since then, Thomas Dans has traveled the globe generating headlines. Serving as the administration’s main voice on the Arctic, he’s advanced some of the president’s wildest ambitions, like a takeover of Greenland, and rankled NATO allies in the process. Yet as Dans holds forth in the U.S. and abroad, it’s not always clear where the administration’s agenda ends and his own begins. He has repeatedly said, for example, that the U.S. needs more icebreakers, ships that Trump has long viewed as critical to dominating the Arctic. In doing so, Dans has championed one shipbuilder in particular — Damen Shipyards, a Dutch company with which he had a business relationship. “They’re the largest builder of icebreakers and ice-class vessels in the world,” Dans said at an event in Anchorage, Alaska, in April. At the time, his consultancy was working to help Damen land an icebreaker contract with the federal government. As he’s spoken to audiences of government officials, diplomats, academics and journalists, Dans — who wears his Arctic commission lapel pin and exudes a professorial air — has also waded into foreign policy. In the media and at public events, he’s backed Trump’s push to take over Greenland. And he’s advocated enthusiastically for closer U.S. relations with Russia — even as a bipartisan group of lawmakers calls for tougher sanctions on the country and more aid to Ukraine. Dans and Damen have long done business in Russia, and Dans has regularly shared social media posts that reflect a pro-Kremlin viewpoint. “We want a peaceful Arctic, we want a peaceful world,” he said at an event a few days after he announced plans to travel to Moscow. “Russia and the United States gotta get along for that to happen.” A nuclear powered Russian icebreaker in the port of Murmansk after conducting ice trials in the Arctic Ocean in 2020. The Arctic’s melting ice has geopolitical consequences, with Russia and China conducting joint military exercises in the region. Pavel Lvov/Sputnik via AP Opining so broadly on foreign policy is “far beyond” the Arctic Research Commission’s scientific mandate, said Fran Ulmer, who served as commission chair for more than nine years before being replaced by Trump in 2020. “And certainly outside the bounds of what the U.S. Arctic Research Commission has done in the past.” Dans, whose consultancy Almiranta Strategies “advises investors and businesses working in the Arctic,” according to his profile on the Arctic commission’s website, is far from the first in the Trump administration to mingle public and personal interests. The finances of many senior officials and the industries they regulate have drawn scrutiny as Trump has disarmed government safeguards against conflicts. “It’s become standard for people to pursue their personal financial interest,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of the nonprofit watchdog Public Citizen. Under the law, Dans’ position gives him access to government information from other federal agencies — an arrangement that could benefit his private interests. Such potential conflicts are typically governed by federal ethics rules. But the nature of Dans’ role affords him more leeway than other appointees. Commission members are not considered government employees and thus not required to file an ethics form disclosing conflicts. Do You Know About U.S. Government Deals, Finance and Investments Abroad? We’re reporting on how the Trump administration is investing public dollars in private companies abroad. If you know more about this topic, please contact our reporting team. Heather Vogell I’m interested in hearing more about federal agencies’ finance partnerships abroad. If you’ve worked with the government or its private-sector partners, or otherwise have tips in this area, please get in touch. Contact Me Indeed, a White House official told ProPublica that Dans’ consulting work did not constitute a conflict of interest for that very reason. “Tom Dans is doing a great job leading the Arctic Research Commission, and his shipbuilding expertise has helped him succeed in this role,” said White House spokesperson Anna Kelly. “The President appreciates all he is doing to advance American interests in the Arctic.” The White House official said Dans is one of two commission members the law designates as representatives of “the interests of industry.” Even so, Dans’ lack of research experience stands out. The other industry rep is a Ph.D. and former director of the United States Geological Survey. Dans declined multiple requests to be interviewed for this story and did not respond to written questions from ProPublica, but he told The New York Times this year that his post did not preclude him from working in private business. The Arctic commission has arguably never been more important. The region is warming at unprecedented rates, accelerating sea-level rise and causing severe weather in the U.S. and elsewhere. The melting ice also has geopolitical consequences. Russia and China are conducting joint military exercises in the far north. New shipping lanes have opened there. And mineral deposits are becoming potentially more accessible. At a public appearance in July, Dans cited the commission’s four priorities: military and national security, energy security, economic development in the Arctic and “what we’ll call ‘community security.’” He did not define the term. From Russia, With Love Dans has long been taken with Russia, the country that has by far the most Arctic coastline. His fondness dates back at least to seventh grade, when he says he was recruited to learn Russian in his Maryland public school. He later visited Moscow as an exchange student, then returned to work in finance in the mid-1990s. He worked at a private equity fund financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which aimed to grow the private sector after the Soviet Union’s breakup. In a LinkedIn post last year, he reminisced about how he and Kirill Dmitriev, a Harvard-educated banker who now serves as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intermediary with Trump officials, traveled in the same circles early in their finance careers. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev last year. Dans has reminisced on social media about working in similar circles as Dmitriev after the fall of the Soviet Union. Dmitri Lovetsky/AP Decades later, in Trump’s first term as president, Dans landed a job in the Treasury Department as a senior policy adviser for international affairs. There, he served on a secret National Security Council task force on U.S. control of Greenland, a role first reported by The New Yorker. A former Trump administration official told ProPublica the group’s purpose was to strengthen the United States’ strategic position in Greenland and devise policies to bring the two closer. Perhaps because of that work, Trump named Dans to the Arctic Research Commission for the first time in late 2020. His tenure was short-lived. When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the new administration fired Dans and three other Trump appointees. Dans was angry. “We were fired without notice and anonymously slandered by the White House for ‘lacking relevant expertise,’” he wrote in The Hill. “At the time, I was the first commissioner in the agency’s 37-year history to speak fluent Russian, the language of the world’s largest Arctic nation.” Dans launched an investment firm with two other former Trump Treasury officials, but it was short-lived, closing in late 2023. That year, Dans said on Substack that he was the “first American” to launch an effort to buy the Helsinki Shipyard in Finland, where about half the global icebreaker fleet was built. One of its Russian owners at the time was a business partner of a former Putin deputy minister. The effort failed. He traveled the world, talking with officials in places like Uzbekistan, Ukraine and Romania. He lobbied on behalf of the Kazakhstan Embassy and that country’s state-owned national oil and gas company, records show. He devised policy recommendations “for Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction” as a visiting fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, his LinkedIn profile says. He also contributed to Heritage’s federal workforce-slashing Project 2025, of which his twin brother Paul was director. Then in May 2024, he launched a nonprofit called American Daybreak. Its goal was to foster ties between the U.S. and Greenland. After Trump’s victory, Dans promised in comments on Substack that “the next Trump Admin is going to Make America a Great Arctic (MAGA) nation!” In early January 2025, Dans and American Daybreak helped arrange a visit by Donald Trump Jr. and late conservative activist Charlie Kirk to the Arctic island. He then sought to bring Vice President JD Vance’s wife, Usha, to watch a popular dog sled race (the trip was scaled back after protests). Dans also enlisted Greenland’s most outspoken MAGA enthusiast, a bricklayer named Jørgen Boassen, whom Dans has called a “good friend,” to generate support for U.S. control of Greenland. “The Best Icebreakers in the World” Dans was not named to a new full-time post in the second Trump administration. But he remained in the Trump orbit. He was a frequent guest on conservative activist and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. He spoke for one episode from Romania, plugging far-right Romanian presidential candidate George Simion (who was later seen with Republicans at the Kennedy Center cutting up a cake shaped like Greenland with American flag frosting). “There’s a phenomenon here that’s the silent George Simion voter, kind of like your silent Trump voter,” Dans told Bannon. “And that’s significant.” (Simion lost and afterward unsuccessfully sought to have the election annulled.) By August of last year, Dans found another opportunity in the private sector. He posted on LinkedIn that he was “very excited to announce that I am working with Damen Shipyards Group, one of the world’s leading shipbuilders.” At the time, Dutch prosecutors were investigating the company for supplying Russia with equipment that they said could be used for military purposes, in violation of European sanctions. In his post, Dans shared a photo of himself arm-in-arm with three high-ranking company executives, including Rutger Dolk, who was later detained by Dutch authorities as part of the probe. The case is ongoing. (Dolk did not respond to a request for comment. In response to questions, Damen shared a press release that said it “has always acted in accordance with the applicable sanctions packages and that full transparency has been exercised about its activities.”) Dans’ LinkedIn post announcing his work with Damen Shipyards. Dutch prosecutors were investigating the company at the time for supplying Russia with equipment that could have been used for military purposes. Rutger Dolk, far right, a company executive, was later detained as part of the probe.  Screenshot and redactions by ProPublica Dans said he was working with the shipbuilder “to bring some of the best icebreakers in the world to the United States” and noted that the U.S. Navy had recently chosen Damen “to help it fast-track a new fleet” of a different type of vessel: up to 35 medium-sized ships to move troops and supplies to shorelines. According to records, the Navy bought the designs for the ship from Damen for $3.3 million without going through the typical bidding process, saying it would save time and money to go with a “proven” design. (The Navy did not respond to requests for comment.) In December, Trump appointed Dans to head the Arctic Research Commission. The announcement said Dans’ primary focus as a businessman was “shipbuilding and transportation where, among other projects, he is leading an effort to develop icebreakers and ice-class vessels for the United States while helping restore America’s Maritime Base.” Since then, Dans has championed Damen in conversations and at a public appearance. In April, he said that “outside of the commission, I wear a hat working for one of the world’s largest shipbuilders, which is a group called Damen.” While ProPublica was reporting this story, Damen terminated its agreement with Dans, which would have paid him if the company got a contract to build an icebreaker. If Dans was seeking to advance Damen’s interests, he may have been required under the law to register either as a lobbyist or a foreign agent, said Josh Rosenstein, an attorney who is an expert on the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Documents show he’d done neither. “It certainly would raise questions, you know, in my mind about what sort of interactions he, on behalf of Damen, had with the U.S. government,” Rosenstein said. “And with whom.” The White House pushed back. “These so-called ‘experts’ have no idea what they are talking about,” said Kelly, the spokesperson. Whether Dans has other business ties that could impact his government job is unclear. When at the Treasury, he reported holding a stake in Global Restaurant Management LLC, the parent company of a firm that operated multiple Papa Johns restaurants in Russia at the time. The status of that investment — which Dans reported had a value of between $250,000 and $500,000 — isn’t publicly known today because he’s no longer required to disclose his financial interests. Christopher Wynne, who headed Global Restaurant Management, said he could not discuss another person’s investments. Unlike most high-level presidential appointees, the Arctic commission chair — who is eligible only for a stipend of up to about $55,000 a year — is not a federal employee under the law. And while the commission has a policy seeking to prevent conflicts of interest, there are no penalties for violating it. Dans’ outside commitments could be problematic if he used his access to the federal government to improperly benefit another employer or country, said Virginia Canter, who served as an ethics lawyer at the White House and other agencies during Republican and Democratic presidencies. “The fact that he has foreign entanglements and access to government-wide information,” she said, “it should raise national security concerns.” ProPublica asked the White House about Canter’s comments but it did not respond. A Chilly Reception in Greenland Protesters gathered outside the U.S. Consulate this January in Nuuk after Trump threatened to annex Greenland. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Tensions over Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark, have flared since Dans returned to the Arctic commission. A month into Dans’ tenure as commission chair, Trump said he would take Greenland “one way or the other.” He initially refused to rule out military force. Dans echoed Trump, telling the BBC that month that “everything’s on the table.” While Dans is a minor player in the federal government, “when he speaks, international audiences and officials see him as representing U.S. policy,” said Heather Conley, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In his first five months as chair, Dans spoke often to the foreign press and traveled to locales that included Denmark, Norway, Italy and Canada — as well as Mar-a-Lago in Florida and the Explorer’s Club in New York City, records show. The commission spent about $87,000 on his travel expenses. He did not return to Greenland. But the administration’s rhetoric put Denmark on a war footing. The country sent soldiers to Greenland armed with explosives and plans to blow up airfields in the event of an American invasion. At one point, a Greenlandic politician told ProPublica, some schoolchildren were instructed to practice hiding under their desks in case of such an event. Greenlanders have repeated a refrain: Open for business, not for sale. Dans’ remarks only seem to have further deepened divisions. In February, while at a conference in Norway, he was caught on a hot mic telling a Greenlandic politician that “the check’s in the mail.” A former chairman of the Arctic Research Commission, Michael Sfraga, was at the same conference and publicly told the politician to “rip the check up.” Trump has continued to press the cause. In mid-July, he posted a picture on Truth Social of a map that included Greenland with the American flag superimposed on it. The rhetoric has had consequences for Arctic research. Several Danish researchers said they will no longer participate in research with the U.S. One noted that her colleagues avoided Dans at a recent conference. Dans’ current role in Greenland is unclear. He said at a recent conference he is not involved in talks among negotiators for the U.S., Greenland and Denmark that began earlier this year. In May, Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, and the U.S. ambassador to Denmark, Ken Howery, attended a business conference in the capital of Nuuk without Dans. Landry and Howery appeared for photo ops and opened a new, bigger consulate building, as protesters shouted outside. A White House official told ProPublica that Greenland is “critical from the standpoint of U.S. national security” and “we are very optimistic that we’re on a good trajectory” in the diplomatic talks. The official did not address Dans’ role. Reposting Russian Propaganda Official visits to Russia have been exceedingly rare since the U.S. and its European allies froze ties with the country after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, yet at his appearance in Anchorage in April Dans announced that he was planning to go to Moscow “probably in the next month” to discuss research cooperation. The trip never happened; the State Department’s official guidance on Russia is “Do Not Travel for Any Reason.” Asked about Dans’ push for reestablishing ties and travel plans, a State Department spokesperson referred questions to Dans. His social media feed on X is filled with foreign news accounts, sometimes from outlets sympathetic to the Kremlin. He reposted a story last October from Kazakh media on Putin’s warning that the U.S. would fracture relations with Russia if it supplied Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles. Dans’ repost on X of a Kazakh media outlet. The post reads: “Putin warned that supplies of ‘Tomahawk’ missiles to Kyiv would destroy relations between Russia and the United States.” Screenshot by ProPublica In May, he wrote of his grandfather’s participation in the perilous Murmansk Run to supply the Soviet Union during World War II. “Happy Victory Day,” Dans wrote in Russian and English, reposting a video of Putin from Russian state media laying flowers at a soldiers’ memorial. The original poster of the video has been called a source of Russian propaganda by the Ukrainian government. “Everyone obviously needs to be incredibly cautious when you’re reposting Russian information,” Conley said, because such posts could promote a narrative that is “against U.S. national interests.” Posting “Happy Victory Day” in Russian may sound innocuous, but it is “a super-loaded thing to do right now,” she added. Putin has conjured Russia’s World War II victory when talking about Ukraine, even equating Ukrainians to Nazis in Germany. The White House did not respond to questions about Dans’ Russia-related posts. Under Putin, Russia has tied its future to the Arctic and the region’s natural resources, including liquefied natural gas. U.S. sanctions, which targeted the country’s energy sector, have set those efforts back — something that Russia has sought to reverse in ongoing talks with the Trump administration. Dans has remarked on the developments on social meda, calling Dmitriev, the Russian who now serves as a key Putin negotiator with the Trump administration, “the Kremlin’s ace in the hole.” “We’re older now and have some grey hair, but it’s neat to see who the Trump Administration is negotiating with,” Dans wrote of Dmitriev, who rose to head one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds before being sanctioned by the Biden Treasury Department in 2022 for his ties to Putin and work raising funds from the U.S. Asked about Dans’ calls for cooperation, Kelly, the White House spokesperson, said: “President Trump and his entire administration are willing to work with anyone in order to advance American interests, including peace in the Russia-Ukraine War. This approach has helped the United States bring both sides of the conflict together for historic peace talks.” Dans seemed to downplay any differences with the Trump administration over Russia in one recent appearance, where he told an audience that included State Department officials, Russian Embassy personnel and Greenlandic diplomats that “getting Russia-Ukraine war ended, I think, is a priority. Stopping the killing.” But the following month, in July, Dans opened and closed his remarks at a conference in Aspen by calling Russia a “neighbor.” He again urged that the U.S. repair its relationship. “We need to be able to communicate with the Russians,” he said. “We’ve got some very important things to clear up with them with Ukraine, absolutely, but we have to work towards peace in the Arctic.” Kelly said there was “nothing controversial about Mr. Dans’ remarks calling for an end to years of bloodshed and expanded dialogue.” The post Papa Johns, Propaganda and Putin: How a MAGA Influencer With Ties to Russia Became Trump’s Arctic Adviser appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Trump Administration]

— Underage Players, Predatory Moneylenders: 7 Findings From Our Dominican Baseball Investigation

 

at 9/15/26 3:00am

Young players train at a baseball academy in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic. Baseball is everywhere in the Dominican Republic, which sends a disproportionate number of players to the American major and minor leagues, including Hall of Famers like Pedro Martínez and Adrian Beltré. Playing fields and training academies dot the country in villages where players who’ve made the leap to the pros are immortalized in murals. Get Involved Got a Connection to Dominican Baseball? Text Us on WhatsApp. For nearly half a century, the Dominican Republic has sent more players to the majors than any country outside the United States. The nation, which has a population roughly that of Ohio’s, had 144 players reach the major leagues last year. That’s about 10% of the league. The Dominican baseball factory is a volume business, with teams paying signing bonuses to about 450 prospects each year. Fewer than 10% of those young players will ever see a single pitch in the majors, but in a country as impoverished as the Dominican Republic those bonuses — worth several times the country’s average annual income — could be life-changing for the players and their families. Yet Major League Baseball has long allowed a corrosive system to fester that rigs the game against young players in favor of opportunistic trainers and predatory moneylenders. Here are the key highlights of ProPublica’s investigation into the Dominican baseball system. Trainers coach children in exchange for future earnings. Young baseball players in the United States and Canada must enter the major league system through its annual draft of young prospects. But in the Dominican Republic it’s a free-for-all, with players going to the highest bidder.  After MLB scouts began to recognize the Dominican Republic as a source of cheap talent, teams opened bare-bones training academies to develop young players. Eventually, the buscones — men relied on by teams to identify local talent — realized they could start their own academies. There are now hundreds of such facilities and, according to a national trade association, approximately 6,000 trainers.  In addition to coaching, the trainers who operate these academies generally provide room, board and equipment. Education often falls by the wayside. In return, they receive a share — typically 35% to 50% — of a player’s signing bonus. Most of those bonuses are valued at around $30,000, but they can be as high as six or seven figures. From 2012 through the beginning of 2026, major league teams paid Dominican prospects $1.042 billion in bonuses, according to a ProPublica analysis. But much of that money — up to half a billion dollars — is almost immediately siphoned off by trainers and lenders. Young players train and work on homework during a break at a baseball academy just outside Santo Domingo, in El Mamón. To get around league rules, MLB teams make handshake deals with underage players. Major league rules bar teams from making official deals with players under the age of 16, but teams have long circumvented this ban through the use of unwritten early agreements, or preacuerdos. In these handshake deals, typically arranged through a player’s trainer, the team pledges to pay a certain amount to the player once he is of legal age to be signed.  With players as young as 11 involved in such deals, it can be years before the prospect receives his bonus.  Moneylenders persuade families to sign over players’ bonuses for high-interest loans. Preacuerdos and the lure of these promised payouts have created a cottage industry of prestamistas, or moneylenders, who persuade players’ families to sign away portions of these impending bonuses in exchange for loans with sky-high interest rates.  The Dominican Republic repealed its usury laws 24 years ago. High-interest lenders advertise online, targeting young ballplayers and their families. One WhatsApp ad touted loans for “baseball players who have agreements.” Read More The Dominican Baseball Factory Belfi Rivera was 14 when he made a handshake deal with the Arizona Diamondbacks that would pay him $1.8 million after he turned 16. (The Diamondbacks did not respond to a request for comment.) Ultimately, he’d see very little of that money. The trainer who had brokered the deal got his share, worth $630,000. More than $950,000 went to someone who had no hand in teaching Belfi how to play baseball: Santo Caraballo, a lender who formed a business partnership with  Red Sox legend and Hall of Famer David Ortiz.In a statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz said that his business relationship with Caraballo “began to come to an end” more than 18 months ago.” He added that he ended his personal relationship with Caraballo “a year and a half to two years ago” after “noticing conduct by Mr. Caraballo that I considered inappropriate. I started distancing myself from him personally and placed the relevant matters in the hands of my legal advisors.”   However, in September 2025, Ortiz and Caraballo filmed themselves heading for Puerto Rico on a private jet, drinking and dancing on their way to a Bad Bunny concert.  In a brief conversation, Caraballo told ProPublica that his business was not the biggest or “that lucrative.” He added that the risk in loaning money to families is that “you never know if it will succeed or not because if the player doesn’t get signed, you don’t get paid.” Multiple attempts were made to reach him again, including sending him a summary of ProPublica’s findings. He never responded. Belfi Rivera saw only a small percentage of his bonus from the Arizona Diamondbacks after his trainer took his commission and a lender persuaded his parents to take out triple-digit interest loans against his future signing. One lender used a player’s deadly car crash to start his empire. Before becoming a fixture in the prestamista sphere and partnering with Ortiz, Caraballo played a shadowy role in salvaging the career of rising MLB prospect Oneil Cruz. In 2020, while Cruz was a player in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor league system, he crashed his Jeep into the back of a motorcycle, killing three people. Prosecutors initially said the ballplayer had been drinking, and he faced the possibility of three years in prison. According to numerous interviews and court records, Caraballo was brought in by Cruz’s parents and negotiated payments to the victims’ families. In exchange, they signed agreements withdrawing all claims against Cruz, who is currently the starting center fielder for the Pirates. The case against Cruz, who denied any wrongdoing, was dismissed. ProPublica made numerous attempts to reach Caraballo about his role, including sending him a summary of our findings. He never responded.Cruz declined a request for an interview. His lawyer, Amauris Vásquez Disla, called the accident “a profound tragedy for all parties involved, especially the victims’ families.” He went on to say that the court “issued an order of dismissal based on the findings, a legally binding decision that was a lawful resolution of this matter.” A spokesperson for the Pittsburgh Pirates said the team and Cruz “addressed this matter more than six years ago based on the information available and the outcome of the legal proceedings.” That lender then partnered with the Dominican Republic’s biggest baseball star. By 2021, records show that Caraballo and Ortiz had entered into a business partnership, with both men listed on corporation records of a Florida company called Big Papi Sports Group. The company was dissolved the next year. What, if anything, it did is not clear. Their financial and personal relationships, however, continued. Ortiz acknowledged to a ProPublica reporter that he had invested millions of dollars into Caraballo’s baseball business. He added that his business with Caraballo was limited to making loans to trainers, not kids. At Ortiz’s 2022 Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Caraballo sat with the retired player’s family. The grave of Daniela Perez Garcia, who was killed after a Jeep that Oneil Cruz was driving rear-ended a motorcycle she was riding on Why did David Ortiz oppose an international draft? Ortiz’s connection to Caraballo doesn’t just spotlight the power and influence that these moneylenders can attain in the Dominican Republic. It also raises questions about the Red Sox legend’s involvement in persuading major league players to oppose an international draft.  For more than a decade, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has made the case in favor of a draft for prospects from Latin America. Last year, during a visit to the Dominican Republic, he acknowledged that preacuerdos were “problematic” and argued that the “best solution to early deals is a draft.” Manfred and supporters of an international draft say it would make early agreements impossible.  The players union has opposed such a draft, arguing that it would restrict a prospect’s ability to choose his employer and eliminate bidding wars that drive up bonuses. The union has acknowledged that the Dominican system of early deals is troubled but has maintained for years that this is due to the league not enforcing its own rules.  During contract negotiations in 2022, the league was again pushing for an international draft, and the issue had become a major sticking point. But then, said people on both sides of the discussions, Ortiz got involved, sending a voice message to Dominican players and trainers, declaring a “red alert.”  Listen to Our “Paper Trail” Podcast The Predatory Industry Behind MLB’s Dominican Superstar Pipeline “If we allow the draft to happen here in the Dominican Republic, even your great-great-grandchildren, and everyone else’s, will be affected by it,” Ortiz said, according to an audio copy of the message obtained by ProPublica. “If we let them push that thing through here, we’ll be in deep trouble.”  In the message, Ortiz shared the phone number for Tony Clark, the union’s executive director, and urged everybody to express their opposition to the draft. What he didn’t share was that he had a financial interest in preserving the system.  When asked over the phone if his opposition to the draft had anything to do with his partnership with Caraballo, who profits from the current system, Ortiz didn’t answer and hung up shortly afterward. In a subsequent statement sent through his lawyer, Ortiz said his position regarding the international draft “was never motivated by personal interests.” The statement went on to say that his opposition “was based on my views regarding the development of Dominican players and the impact I believed such a system would have on baseball in our country.” “Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here.” Major League Baseball is a formidable economic and political presence in the Dominican Republic. But outside of the league’s push for an international draft, it’s done nothing that would put an end to or reform the early agreement system. It has never publicly warned or penalized a team for making an early deal, and its attempts to educate families about moneylenders have been ineffectual. A spokesperson for MLB declined to comment and referred to past statements by league officials calling for an overhaul of the Dominican system. “Major League Baseball knows how dirty the business is here,” said Piñao Ortiz, who was the Dominican commissioner of baseball from 1996 to 2000, “but it’s not doing anything to stop it.” The post Underage Players, Predatory Moneylenders: 7 Findings From Our Dominican Baseball Investigation appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Sports]

— Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin

 

at 9/14/26 3:00am

Donald Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson with their wedding party in the Bahamas Laura Gordon Photography via Instagram On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the islands before guests settled into their oceanfront villas. That night on the beach, Trump Jr. lifted his bride into the air while fireworks launched from a barge over the sea. “It was everything we dreamed of and more,” his wife later wrote on Instagram. That dream was heavily funded by a secret benefactor: Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin. “Paper Trail” Podcast Learn more about this story on ProPublica’s podcast “Paper Trail.” Kremlev footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses, according to records reviewed by ProPublica and interviews with three people familiar with the event. The oligarch paid to rent out one of the private islands, where a reception was held and where guests slept. He also covered other big-ticket items, like the fireworks show, and his team helped plan the event. Kremlev is the head of the International Boxing Association, a scandal-plagued sports group that has been financed by the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom. The wedding payments came from an IBA-affiliated entity in Dubai that the boxing association uses for financial transactions. The guest list numbered around 50. It included Trump Jr.’s brother-in-law Jared Kushner, Eric Trump — and Kremlev, an imposing man with a shaved head who speaks limited English. The oligarch was part of a large group whose presence puzzled other attendees. They sometimes stood off by themselves, speaking Russian. “It was really small, like, just really close friends,” Trump Jr. later said on his podcast. “Tried to keep it really tight. And it was just awesome.” Kremlev’s previously unreported relationship with Trump Jr. represents an extraordinary development: a member of Putin’s circle financially supporting the president’s son and gaining intimate access to the Trump family. For a decade, Putin’s government, regarded as a chief adversary of the U.S., has been accused of efforts to influence American elections. Attempts by Russia to make inroads with the Trumps before the 2016 election exploded into controversy that dogged much of the president’s first term. National security experts expressed alarm at Trump Jr. accepting the oligarch’s largesse, saying it raised an urgent question: What motivated Kremlev to spend a fortune cultivating the connection?  “If I’m paying for your wedding, at some point, you’re going to owe me something,” said Frank Montoya Jr., a retired career FBI official who held senior counterintelligence roles. Oligarchs like Kremlev often act in coordination with the Russian government. While it’s unclear if that happened here, Trump Jr. put himself in a precarious position, Montoya said. “This should be unthinkable for the son of the president. End of story.” Do You Have Information We Should Know About Donald Trump Jr.? We’re still reporting. If you know anything about Trump Jr., his businesses or his relationship with Umar Kremlev, please get in touch. Justin Elliott I’m always looking for under-covered stories about business and politics, no matter the specific subject. Contact me with tips, by email or securely on Signal. I take confidentiality seriously. Contact Me Holden Triplett, who served as Trump’s counterintelligence director on the National Security Council during his first term, said Russian intelligence frequently seeks to build ties with U.S. government officials and their family members. “Money is a tried-and-true method to gain access,” said Triplett, who also worked for the FBI in Moscow. In the days leading up to Trump Jr.’s wedding, Kremlev was in China as part of the delegation accompanying Putin, according to Chinese state media. The month before, Putin had bestowed him with a state honor, the Order of Friendship. The Ukrainian government has imposed sanctions on Kremlev personally, citing his closeness to Putin and Russian security services. It’s not clear why Kremlev helped pay for Trump Jr.’s wedding. The men appear to have met only recently. Public reporting suggests Trump Jr. could have afforded it himself, with Forbes recently estimating his net worth at roughly $300 million.  In response to detailed questions, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not dispute the wedding payments from Kremlev. “Umar is a personal friend of Don,” he said. The spokesman said that Kremlev is “not someone he has a business relationship with” and that the men met through a mutual friend in the hunting world and bonded over their love of boxing and the outdoors. A spokesperson for Trump Jr.’s brother Eric said of Kremlev: “Eric has absolutely no clue who this person is, nor has never heard his name.”  In a statement, Kremlev’s press office said, “Mr. Kremlev and Mr. Trump Jr have a friendly relationship” and they first met “a couple of years ago.” The press office described Kremlev as a businessman and philanthropist, adding, “Mr. Kremlev has never discussed political matters with any of his American friends and acquaintances,” including Trump Jr. They said the boxing organization itself did not incur expenses for the wedding but did not comment on the payments from the Dubai entity. The press office also said that when Putin and Kremlev were in China recently, Kremlev was not part of Putin’s “official delegation.” Kushner, who has been helping lead the U.S. government’s negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, did not respond to requests for comment. The White House and the Russian government did not respond either. The revelations come as Trump Jr. has emerged as a political power center in his own right. Beloved by the MAGA base, he reportedly played an active role in vetting White House cabinet picks for Trump’s second term and was dubbed his father’s “most essential political adviser” by The Wall Street Journal. “I certainly don’t think I’d be sitting here as the VP nominee without Don’s help,” Vice President JD Vance told the outlet in late 2024. This account is based on records and interviews with dozens of current and former IBA officials and contractors, wedding attendees and other people in Trump Jr.’s and Kremlev’s circles. Trump Jr. exchanged vows with socialite Bettina Anderson on a private island that was featured in “Pirates of the Caribbean” and the 2006 James Bond movie “Casino Royale.” They had their first dance on a second private island nearby that can rent for around $100,000 a night, paid for by Kremlev. The company that put on the fireworks display charges around $70,000 for such shows. (Kremlev did not attend the ceremony itself, which was held on the first day and had just 18 guests, Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said.) Donald Trump Jr. and his wife, Bettina Anderson, at their wedding, watching fireworks paid for by Umar Kremlev. Laura Gordon Photography via Lewis Miller Design The magazine Hello! shared an image of Trump Jr. wearing a Junkanoo headpiece while dancing with his new bride. Laura Gordon Photography/Hello! The atmosphere was Monte Carlo meets frat party — helicopters in and out, a beachside DJ set, beer pong tournaments. One day, the men went spearfishing. Artisans at the London fashion house Safiyaa spent 150 hours embroidering Anderson’s bespoke silk reception outfit. The president’s son had undergone treatment to better define his jawline for the occasion. Some longtime friends of Trump Jr. told associates they were disappointed not to be invited, though a few of his closest business partners — executives at the Trump family crypto company, World Liberty Financial, and the venture capital firm 1789 Capital — did make the cut. President Trump himself skipped it. (“He’d like me to go, but it’s going to be just a small, little private affair,” the president told reporters beforehand. “I said, you know, this is not good timing for me.”) But many of the guests were immediate family of the bride and groom. That made the large contingent of Russians all the more conspicuous. “What are they doing here?” one person recalled thinking. At least one of the Russian guests had been with Kremlev on his China trip: Alexander Lagutin, a businessperson who has served in senior roles at a Russian defense contractor and a state-backed energy company. Kremlev’s right hand at the IBA, Elena Sobol, attended the wedding too.  Since the wedding, the Trumps have released scores of photos and videos of the festivities. While they show many of the guests, the Russians have been absent from all of them. (The top of Kremlev’s head is visible in the back of one group photo posted on Instagram by a friend of the bride.) After the party was over, on his “Triggered” podcast, Trump Jr. emphasized the event’s privacy: “The people that were there — if you’re on that list, you weren’t talking.” In 2009, Umar Kremlev did not yet exist. He was in his late 20s, with a criminal record for extortion and battery, still going by his birth name, Umar Lutfulloyev, according to the Russian independent news outlet Proekt. But he was about to rapidly ascend in Russia to a position of wealth and influence, with the help of a powerful friend. (“Mr. Kremlev has a completely clean legal record,” his press office said.) Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, with Umar Kremlev, during an event in Moscow in September 2022 Sputnik/Reuters In 2010, he changed his name to Kremlev. He soon joined a Russian government-backed biker gang called the Night Wolves, eventually taking a leadership role, according to news reports. That is what first brought him close to Alexei Rubezhnoi, who now leads Putin’s presidential security service, Proekt reported. In 2017, Kremlev took over the Russian Boxing Federation, after Rubezhnoi personally intervened to put him at the helm. In 2020, Kremlev became president of the IBA. The association was something akin to FIFA but for boxing and had long overseen the sport in the Olympics. But it had been beset by corruption allegations and was on the brink of insolvency. Kremlev brought money to the table from Gazprom, the state-owned company that operates as an arm of Putin’s government. Gazprom publicly became the IBA’s financial backer, filling its coffers with tens of millions of dollars. Former high-level IBA officials said that Kremlev had a clear political agenda. “Umar is guided by Putin. It was using the sport for soft political power,” a former IBA board member told ProPublica. “It’s geopolitics. That it’s boxing is just happenstance.” Kremlev, 43, is also heavily involved in an organization called Healthy Fatherland, run by his 23-year-old wife’s twin sister. The group — which promotes healthy eating and youth sports — is under Ukrainian sanctions for its alleged role in a program of abducting Ukrainian children from occupied territories and relocating them under the guise of “rehabilitation.” (Healthy Fatherland did not respond to a request for comment.) Kremlev’s cozy relationship with the government has made him rich. Putin used the levers of the state to make Kremlev a dominant player in the Russian sports betting industry, according to Proekt, and one of his companies was chosen to operate the national lottery. After Putin nationalized Russia’s largest car dealership company in 2023, Kremlev became the owner of that too. He now flaunts that wealth through his boisterous public persona. In one video Kremlev posted on social media, he surprises a young mother by giving her a free car. In another, he criticizes his young female aide’s outfit as not feminine enough and makes her change. He shadowboxes with ostriches and brings in celebrities like Rick Ross and Naomi Campbell for IBA events; he praises Stalin and rides private jets. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. began to indict Russian oligarchs and seize yachts and other assets. Kremlev repeatedly told associates he was worried about being targeted by a U.S. government probe, according to a person close to IBA leadership. “He was very afraid of American sanctions,” the person added. (Kremlev does not appear on public U.S. sanction lists.) With the business environment in Europe growing more hostile to Russia, Kremlev moved much of the IBA’s operations from Switzerland to the United Arab Emirates. A new Dubai entity, IB Challenger, would later pay wedding expenses for Trump Jr. The current sources of the IBA’s funds are murky, and, in recent years, top executives have given conflicting accounts of the status of its relationship with Gazprom. (Kremlev’s press office told ProPublica the IBA’s sponsorship contract with Gazprom “expired long ago.”) People close to the organization said they understood that its money still comes from Russia. In 2023, the International Olympic Committee stripped Kremlev’s IBA of its role organizing Olympic boxing. It has cited a host of governance issues and the group’s refusal to “transparently explain the sources of its financing or to explain its full financial dependency, at the time, on a single state-owned company.”  It was a major setback that deprived the IBA of a key source of its international influence. Kremlev has raged against the Olympic committee ever since and has said that his IBA predecessor, who he blames for the problems, “must be shot.” Kremlev saw a potential ally in President Trump. After Trump’s second inauguration, in January 2025, Kremlev sent an open letter to the president asking him to look into the Olympic committee’s actions in advance of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. “We look forward with great optimism to the possibility of working together to make the Olympic movement great again,” he wrote. In September 2025, the IBA brought in Trump Jr. for a panel discussion in Istanbul about boxing. With his then-girlfriend, Anderson, sitting offstage, he criticized transgender women competing in women’s sports and reminisced about watching Saturday night fights as a child. Trump Jr. shared the stage with Kremlev, the boxer Manny Pacquiao and Muhammad Ali’s daughter Rasheda. (Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said he was not paid for the appearance and was already in Turkey for an unrelated event.) Kremlev hosted Trump Jr. at an event in Istanbul in September 2025. International Boxing Association The president’s son had reason to be attuned to the sensitivity of cozying up with a Putin associate, especially while his father navigates the Russia-Ukraine war. Trump Jr.’s June 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney in Trump Tower became a major focus of the Robert Mueller investigation. The Trump Tower meeting was arranged after an email offering Trump Jr. damaging information about Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Trump Jr. famously responded, “If its what you say I love it especially later in the summer.” Trump Jr. later dismissed the matter as a “witch hunt,” and the Mueller report concluded that there was not enough evidence to convict him of a crime. Recently, Kremlev has been working to expand into the U.S. market. In July, his group hosted a bare-knuckle boxing event in Miami, a chance to showcase a particularly bloody form of the sport in which contenders fight without gloves. But the debut was overshadowed when manosphere influencer Andrew Tate, who the IBA had brought in to host, was arrested by U.S. Marshals outside the arena. (Tate is facing rape and sex trafficking charges in the United Kingdom, which he has denied.) Much about Kremlev’s relationship with Trump Jr., and where it is headed, remains unknown. In a press release after the Istanbul panel, the IBA hinted there was more to come.  “President Kremlev and Donald Trump Jr made it clear – this alliance will not remain symbolic,” the press release read. “More joint initiatives will follow.” The post Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas Wedding Was Secretly Bankrolled by Russian Oligarch Close to Putin appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Trump Administration]

— Vouchers Promise Students With Disabilities a Path to Private School. Parents Say That’s Not the Reality.

 

at 9/11/26 4:00am

Twelve-year-old Amelia Johnson was born with a rare genetic anomaly and is nonverbal. Amelia’s mother was able to get a private school voucher specifically for children with disabilities — but couldn’t find a private school that would accommodate Amelia. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica It’s after 6 p.m. by the time Angela Johnson hurries home from work. Her 12-year-old daughter, Amelia, is at their house outside of Pensacola, Florida, with a nurse trained to care for medically fragile children. Amelia, who was born with a rare genetic anomaly, has endured many surgeries and requires a brain shunt and a feeding tube. The nurse starts caring for Amelia as soon as a bus from the public school drops her off. Johnson loves much about the school. But as a physical therapist, she also recognizes its limitations. The district’s physical and occupational therapists have to travel from school to school. The classroom teacher can become overburdened. For all of Amelia’s life, Johnson has had to fight for the education and the school resources her daughter is entitled to receive under federal law. It has exhausted her. Two years ago, she thought she’d found a better option for Amelia when she learned Florida has a state-funded voucher program for children with disabilities. She jumped at the promise of “school choice.” The program, the largest of its kind in the country, channels taxpayer dollars into accounts that parents can use to pay for private school tuition and other education expenses. Johnson envisioned a private school with smaller classes and more one-on-one time with trained staff, a place where she didn’t have to battle for every minute of therapy her child required. She imagined Amelia learning to cut a straight line and to write her name. In her bedroom, Amelia looks for a book to read with her mom, Angela Johnson. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica In 2024, Amelia was awarded about $10,500 from the program. Thrilled, Johnson embarked on a weekslong hunt for a private school. She began scouring school websites, most of which said nothing about services for children with disabilities. She started calling schools, first an upscale Christian one nearby with a strong reputation. It had no nurse trained to care for medically fragile children, so she reached out to several other schools. At first, some said they could help — until Johnson explained that her daughter had a feeding tube, that she couldn’t yet hold a pencil correctly and needed assistance toileting. Then they all said no. Johnson couldn’t find a single one that provided nurses equipped to care for her daughter’s medical needs. Or teachers trained to educate nonverbal children. Or even a bus ride home. Therein lies the catch in “school choice” for children like Amelia. Unlike public schools, private ones generally aren’t required to educate students with disabilities. And they often don’t. The choice wasn’t hers, Johnson realized. It was the schools’. The vouchers “are basically designed to make you go to private school,” Johnson said, “but my kid can’t access private school.” Johnson returned the money to the state, along with a very stern email. Voucher programs and the private schools they increasingly fund have proliferated across the country. Yet those schools often reject children with disabilities — the very kids who were used to help sell early voucher programs to lawmakers and the public — for having needs that are too costly, complex or disruptive. That leaves those children with few options beyond the public schools. And as public schools lose enrollment as a result of more and more voucher use, they lose resources that would benefit children who remain, including those with disabilities. About 3 million school-age children with disabilities live in states with universal voucher eligibility. Florida, one of those states, illustrates how the promise of school choice can be empty for these children. After walking around the block, Amelia removes her leg braces, which can be uncomfortable. Her mother, Angela, encourages her to wear them and walk at least once a day. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica When children are approved for education savings accounts, a voucher-style program like the one Florida uses, states often put public money into accounts parents can use to pay expenses like tuition. If families can’t find a private school and don’t use the money, it may roll over to another year or, depending on the state, get returned. About 8% of the $1.7 billion Florida distributed last year through its voucher program for disabled children was returned because recipients — kids like Amelia — were enrolled in public school instead, according to data from the nonprofit that disburses most of the funds. By comparison, just 1% of money in the state’s program open to all students was returned for the same reason. Florida is one of three states where ProPublica obtained data allowing us to make such comparisons. Louisiana, which launched an education savings account program in the 2025-26 school year, delivered $43.1 million to parent-controlled accounts. Overall, 6% was returned because the families didn’t spend the money, state data shows. But among students with disabilities, that rate was far higher at 30%. In Texas, data is still coming in for the first year of its $1 billion voucher program. But so far, students with disabilities are opting out of using the money at slightly higher rates than all other students. Help ProPublica Report on Education Have you had trouble finding a school or using a voucher-style program? Do you have concerns about schools — public or private — in your area? Help us understand how families across the country are navigating their school options. Get in Touch Though families return the money for multiple reasons, many have indicated they did so because they couldnt find suitable private schools that would enroll their students. “Families are at the mercy of the schools — and schools choosing their kid — versus the other way around,” said Chris Roe, director of state policy at the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, a national association working on behalf of children with disabilities. Today, at least 18 states have voucher-style programs with universal eligibility or are phasing them in. Florida eclipses them all. More than a half-million Florida schoolchildren — roughly 1 in 6 — use a voucher today. When lawmakers opened the states voucher program to all children in 2023, two-thirds of the newly enrolled students were already attending private schools. Yet private schooling often remains out of reach for children like Amelia, the children lawmakers once used to gain a toehold for future voucher expansions. They shared disabled children’s compelling stories, named legislation in their honor and created some of the nation’s first statewide voucher programs specifically for these students. They started in Florida. After Angela gets home from work, she and Amelia head out to play in the front yard. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica Illusion of Choice In 1999, an unassuming man wearing glasses and a lavender tie stood before his colleagues in the Florida Senate to champion a bill that would change the trajectory of American education. John McKay, a Republican, wanted to give parents of children with disabilities a chunk of taxpayer money to pay for private school tuition. McKay pointed to his own family’s experience. Public schools had failed to meet the needs of his daughter, who had significant learning disabilities. He and his wife could afford to send their daughter to a private boarding school, but not all parents had that option. “We’re alienating parents,” McKay argued. “Ive been alienated by the public system when I was told I didn’t have any choices with regard to my children.” The McKay Scholarships began as a pilot program — the nations first voucher system specifically for students with disabilities. Lawmakers soon expanded it, creating the nation’s first statewide voucher program for this group of children. Ohio followed Florida’s lead, then Utah and Arizona and Georgia and, later, Louisiana and Oklahoma and others. Across the statehouses, politicians stressed one sentiment: choice. Parents would no longer be tethered to their local public schools and could choose where to send their children. Georgia’s sponsor said he sought “to give any disabled student whose parents are dissatisfied with their assigned public school the ability to attend the public or private school that best fits their needs.” “They can just take the scholarship and go to private school,” an Oklahoma lawmaker pledged. The programs have since helped thousands of children with disabilities move to private schools, including those designed to meet their unique needs. But for many children, especially those with more severe disabilities or who live in areas where few if any private schools operate, the promises of choice were never realistic. Some legislators backing those early programs said they recognized this problem but argued that any children helped by the new options made the effort worthwhile. And they hoped that competition fueled by money flowing into private schools would create a more robust school marketplace in the long run, one that would accommodate students with special needs. Amelia loves playing on her swing outside. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica In 2021, West Virginia lawmakers adopted their first and only foray into vouchers, an education savings program that they have since opened to all students. To get the bill passed, some legislators made familiar promises to disabled children — even though the state has only a handful of schools that specifically say they will serve even the least-intensive of children’s needs. “Our kids can’t go to a private school,” said Christy Black, an advocate for Disability Rights of West Virginia who has a daughter with Down syndrome. “I called every private school from Huntington to Charleston because that’s as far as we could drive her and work. But no one would accept her because she has a cognitive disability.” More than half of Utah’s counties have no private schools that take its vouchers for students with disabilities. In Georgia, 71% of counties have none. And in Louisiana last year, among about 350 private schools, only 14 reported enrolling a single child with a disability. Eight of those admitted five or fewer such students. Even in Florida, with its urban centers and roughly $5 billion voucher programs, ProPublica found that more than a dozen counties have no private schools that serve kids with disabilities or have only one school with limited offerings. Our analysis of state data also shows that more than half of Floridas private schools say they do not serve students with any type of disability. “It’s touted that this program is an equalizer, and then people have choice,” said Jinny Kim, managing attorney at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, a national civil rights and policy nonprofit that advocates for people with disabilities. “But then if you really look at the details, its not actually how it happens.” Anxious about her daughter’s upcoming transition to middle school, Atlanta-area mother Marguerite Lane decided to explore private schools that take the state’s voucher. Her daughter, who has autism, does well academically but can be very sensitive and struggle in bigger classrooms without enough behavioral support. Lane applied to and visited several private schools and found a small, arts-infused one that said it would accept some children with learning challenges. She thought it would serve her daughter well, but then she opened an email from the enrollment director. “We dont believe we can support her needs and help her thrive in this class,” it read, “and we also dont want to compromise the educational experience of the other students.” The last part hurt most. Lane thought, “God forbid the other children learn empathy.” Marguerite Lane and her daughter, Penelope, at home in Atlanta. Penelope likes to play piano and has a pet cat, Gatsby. Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica Toehold Strategy  As politicians debated those first voucher programs for children with disabilities, a common refrain echoed across statehouse chambers: The plans were just small programs for a specific group of students. “It’s a very limited scholarship,” a Utah representative assured colleagues in 2004. “This really is about special needs.” “It’s not, as I heard some of you say to me, the beginning of vouchers. No, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a program to help a group of students that need our help,” a Georgia House member told colleagues in 2007. Behind the political scenes, a different message spread. As Arizona adopted its first program for children with disabilities in 2006, Clint Bolick wrote an essay entitled “Toe-Hold Strategies.” Bolick, who was then president of the advocacy group Alliance for School Choice, is now a justice on the Arizona Supreme Court. Voucher advocates, he wrote, were “acting smarter.” Rather than take on powerful teachers unions directly, they were pushing smaller programs geared toward specific students whose needs were harder for politicians to oppose. “The strategy makes sense from a moral perspective, for it focuses assistance on the neediest schoolchildren,” he added. “It also works politically, because choice begets choice: Once the Rubicon is crossed and legislators vote to adopt a school choice program — no matter how small or targeted — it becomes easier to support a new one, or expand the old one, the next time around.” By 2011, a half dozen states had launched voucher programs specifically for students with disabilities. At a “school choice” conference that year, Howie Beigelman sat on a panel that discussed the strategy. At the time, he was deputy director of public policy for the advocacy arm of the Orthodox Union, a prominent Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization. He offered guidance to those who might want to get into vouchers. “Special needs is a very easy way to get into this business,” Beigelman said. “Anyone, no matter how partisan they are, its very hard to say special needs is not where people need ‘special’ education.” (He recently told ProPublica via email that this was his opinion and he had “never seen anything ‘intentional’ about using special needs scholarships for anything more than what they are plainly for: helping educate children with special needs.”) Angela reads a book to Amelia, emphasizing each word and encouraging Amelia to repeat the words aloud with her. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica Penelope used to bring stuffed toys to elementary school to help relieve stress, but as a middle schooler she has switched to a fidget spinner. Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica Shortly after vouchers for disabled children spread to Arkansas in 2016, the University of Arkansas posted on its website an essay by Sarah McKenzie, executive director of the college’s Office for Education Policy. “Special education private school choice programs are often seen as a ‘foot in the door’ for school choice laws,” she wrote. “Once some success has been shown to the public, more laws can be passed to expand these programs.” Indeed, following those wins, lawmakers across the country opened the floodgates, often to all or most comers, expanding voucher-style programs into a $10.6 billion tide of public money. Today, two-thirds of states have some kind of voucher-style program on the books. These programs mostly serve a very different population of students than the early ones did. Most current voucher recipients don’t have disabilities, nor do they need to hunt for a private school that will enroll them. They were already in private schools when they tapped this new windfall. North Carolina state Sen. Lisa Grafstein, a Democrat and a civil rights lawyer who advocates for people with disabilities, opposes her state’s voucher system, which is now open to all students. “The thing that genuinely infuriates me,” she said, “is when people with disabilities are used as pawns.” Failure to Address Access Two decades after states began adopting vouchers for children with disabilities, lawmakers have done little to improve access to private schools for them — even as they have created programs open to all comers. Most legislatures haven’t required private schools that take this public money to accept even a few kids with such needs. Nor have they created effective incentives to help operators open more specialized private schools, which can be costly to run. That’s largely because one of the driving forces behind vouchers is the goal of keeping rules to a minimum so private schools will take the public money. Amelia plays a card game with her parents, who encourage her to repeat the names of the animals pictured on the cards. Zaydee Sanchez/ProPublica “Getting the government involved in private schools isn’t the answer,” said former West Virginia Delegate Amy Summers, a Republican who played a central role in creating her state’s universal voucher-like program. She thinks competition for students will prompt private and public schools to better serve children with disabilities. Another key advocate in West Virginia was Republican state Sen. Patricia Puertas Rucker. She homeschooled her two children with disabilities, including a now-adult daughter who she said came home from public school with bite marks and bruises. Rucker hopes that the state’s voucher program will give more families a way to foot tuition bills or band together to create small schools called microschools. But she regrets that her colleagues approved the payments without additional money for students with disabilities, as some states offer. That extra money could help families afford the higher tuition often charged by specialized schools — and make it more viable for operators to open them. “It is very expensive to have all this special equipment and to even build the buildings for children that have very specialized special needs,” Rucker said. But beyond raising those payments, she doesn’t think the state should do anything to cajole or require private schools to enroll children with disabilities. “The minute you start doing that, you are basically disincentivizing private schools from participating, and then you’re denying parents. I do not want to do that.” It’s not that private schools haven’t opened to take advantage of the voucher windfall. They in fact have been proliferating in recent years. And some of these new schools specifically welcome children with disabilities. But most of them do not. The Pain of Rejection Diavonni Jordan and her son Jamir Souders at home in Dallas, Georgia. Private schools rejected Jamir, who has ADHD, explaining that they could not support his needs. Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica Parents described private school rejections as “insulting” and “heartbreaking,” especially when school personnel have met the children. But families don’t always need to apply or even call the schools to get a denial. Some websites or handbooks make it clear. One small Baptist academy in rural Georgia invites applicants to “join our family” but declares in its handbook that it isn’t equipped to educate children with learning disabilities or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. “If such students are accepted in our school, it is up to the parents to provide extra services other than what the classroom teachers would do in the confines of the classroom. In 2023, Taylor Cordes, a former special education teacher, embarked on what she calls her “personal passion project” to see how many private schools in her home state of North Carolina post such clear rejections. She dug into every handbook she could find for 660 schools and found that only about a third of them indicated they would accept students with even limited disabilities. More than 1 in 10 declared they would not serve such students, she said. Help ProPublica Report on Education Have you had trouble finding a school or using a voucher-style program? Do you have concerns about schools — public or private — in your area? Help us understand how families across the country are navigating their school options. Get in Touch Many families endure deeply hurtful personal rejections in the search for education. Private schools typically decide who to enroll after meeting parents and their children, as Diavonni Jordan, an Atlanta-area mother, learned. Her now-8-year-old son, Jamir Souders, has ADHD. When he was suspended multiple times from his public school and started to get into fights, she searched for an option with smaller class sizes where she thought he would focus and learn better. A single mother of two, Jordan applied to a local Christian school, then took time off work to visit it. She filled with hope as she toured the well-kept campus and spoke to its friendly staff. But within a week, she opened an email from the school. “The support that we could give in our 1st grade would not be enough for him this year,” it read. The school’s program was small, ill-equipped to provide for his needs, it added. Jordan expanded her search to other traditional private schools, even when they would mean longer drives for her. She applied to five and toured two. But the verdicts never changed. “Unfortunately — it doesn’t look like we would be a good fit for your family,” another Christian school wrote. Jordan wondered what child constituted a “good fit” for the school and felt the heartbreak of knowing it wasn’t her son. Perhaps, she thought, she will homeschool Jamir in the future. But for now, with a new school year upon them, he remains in public school. Jordan and Jamir read a book together in his bedroom. Alyssa Pointer for ProPublica The post Vouchers Promise Students With Disabilities a Path to Private School. Parents Say That’s Not the Reality. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— EPA to Loosen Methane Rules, Boosting Pollution From Oil and Gas Wells

 

at 9/11/26 3:00am

A Hilcorp well site in New Mexico in August 2025   Courtesy of Earthworks The Trump administration is poised to loosen environmental restrictions on oil and gas wells that produce very little energy but release vast amounts of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to drastically weaken requirements for leak inspections and equipment upgrades at more than 700,000 low-producing “stripper wells,” according to a draft rule being reviewed by the White House and seen by ProPublica. These wells — which tend to be old, poorly maintained and thus prone to leaking — produce just 6% of the country’s oil and natural gas but are responsible for roughly half the sector’s methane pollution, studies show. The EPA acknowledged similar figures in the draft. But it said that the cost of complying with existing regulations would force the lowest-producing wells to shut down and that this was “unreasonable” — even though it would eliminate just 0.4% of U.S. oil and gas production, according to an industry estimate cited in the proposed rule. The proposal, which would also weaken methane controls in the wider oil industry, is expected to save companies $42 billion through 2050. An attached memo says the rollback will help to “unleash” American energy, one of President Donald Trump’s favorite slogans. Environmental advocates said deregulating stripper wells will do little to boost energy output while significantly increasing climate pollution. “This is not about energy dominance,” said Darin Schroeder of the Clean Air Task Force, a climate advocacy group. “It’s about padding the pockets of oil and gas operators and saddling society with the costs.” A warning sign is posted at a Hilcorp installation in New Mexico. Courtesy of Charlie Barrett/Oilfield Witness The proposed changes are the culmination of a campaign by a previously low-profile faction of the oil industry that has gained unprecedented influence during the second Trump administration. In the draft, the EPA said it is deregulating stripper wells — defined as those that produce up to 15 barrels a day — in response to petitions from the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the National Stripper Well Association, among other groups. As ProPublica reported in June, the IPAA has long enjoyed the support of a little-known oil billionaire named Jeffery Hildebrand. He is the founder and owner of Hilcorp, a privately held company known for buying up old, poorly maintained stripper wells — a business that was threatened when the Biden administration imposed aggressive restrictions on methane pollution in 2024. In response, Hildebrand became one of the oil industry’s biggest Trump donors. Trump, back in office, promptly appointed a former Hilcorp lobbyist named Aaron Szabo to a top post at the EPA, putting him in charge of the effort to unravel the new methane rules. Szabo had previously helped to draft a letter on behalf of the American Exploration and Production Council — which has Hilcorp’s CEO on its board — opposing those rules. He also gave advice on climate regulations for Project 2025, the deregulatory roadmap for the current administration. Among Project 2025’s recommendations: eliminate an EPA program that would track “super-emitter” events — enormous methane releases that have long plagued the oil industry — and would oblige companies to respond to them. The AXPC and the IPAA have also called for an end to the program. And the current proposal from Trump’s EPA aims to do just that. An IPAA spokesperson declined to comment on the group’s influence in the Trump administration but said in an emailed statement that its lobbying “has focused on ensuring regulations are workable for low-production and marginal wells.” The NSWA and AXPC didn’t respond to emailed requests for comment. NSWA representatives previously told ProPublica that they had asked the EPA to soften restrictions on stripper wells because many of their members couldnt afford the compliance costs. AXPC CEO Anne Bradbury previously told ProPublica that the group’s members were “committed to building on a legacy of world-leading methane emission reductions.” Hilcorp spokesperson Nick Piatek didn’t provide a comment either but previously told ProPublica that the company was “proud” of recent efforts to reduce its emissions. While Szabo didn’t respond to emails from ProPublica, the EPA’s press office said in a statement that he “had not done any work for AXPC for well over a year before he started working for the federal government” and that he had reviewed federal ethics rules with the agency’s ethics staff upon joining. The agency declined to comment on the substance of the methane rule revisions except to confirm that they were being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget. The OMB’s press office didn’t respond to an emailed request for comment. The rules now being rolled back were a key component of former President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate agenda. They would have cut methane pollution from the oil industry by 80%, the EPA said at the time. Because methane breaks down relatively quickly — in about a dozen years — cutting these emissions is one of the few known ways to reduce global warming in our lifetimes. Methane accounts for one-third of the rise in temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. Since methane is the main component of natural gas, the rules would also have prevented useful energy from being lost to the atmosphere in the form of leaks and other releases. All told, Biden’s EPA had valued the rules’ climate, health and energy benefits at more than $7 billion a year, even after accounting for increased compliance costs. Breaking with precedent, Trump’s EPA didn’t include calculations of the environmental and health impacts of the new proposal. But if it goes into effect, much of the public benefit will evaporate while oil and gas producers see increased profits. Read More Trump Plans to Protect Methane-Leaking Stripper Wells. This Billionaire Donor Will Benefit. The post EPA to Loosen Methane Rules, Boosting Pollution From Oil and Gas Wells appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Climate and Environment, Pollution]

— Empty Seat: U.S. Absent as Western Powers Meet on Wartime Protections for Civilians

 

at 9/10/26 5:00am

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine testify during a Senate committee hearing. Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images Three years ago, the Defense Department led an ambitious international effort to better protect civilians during combat, a movement built on the bloody lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. The Pentagon created a network with European partners, driving the creation of shared standards. Civilian harm experts described the moment as a “unique opportunity” for American leadership by example. Today, those efforts continue — without the United States, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismantled the civilian protection mission. And Thursday, no U.S. delegation will be in the room when the international forum the U.S. cofounded meets at NATO headquarters in Belgium. The country’s absence from the International Contact Group on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response summit reinforces the abandonment of a mission the Pentagon had encouraged partners to embrace, said current and former officials. Most spoke to ProPublica on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation from President Donald Trump’s administration. They called the step back “humiliating” and “dangerous,” pointing to reports of rising civilian casualties in Iran following strikes on schools and homes. “There will be a day when people who care about mitigating civilian harm can come back and say, ‘OK, are we ready to solve this problem?’” said Jenny McAvoy, a former Defense Department official who helped shape the U.S. civilian protection program. “But there are already enormous consequences of abandoning this work.” The Pentagon declined to comment about the lack of U.S. participation in the Brussels talks. A spokesperson previously told ProPublica that the Defense Department factors civilian protections into all phases of operational planning and “remains committed to fulfilling its civilian harm mitigation and response responsibilities.” The Pentagon adopted the civilian harm mitigation and response mission in 2022 after years of bloodshed in the post-9/11 “forever wars.” Known as CHMR and pronounced “chimmer,” the framework called for a specialized center to collect strike data and for advisers embedded with regional commands to help mitigate the risk to noncombatants. Not long after, the U.S. teamed up with the Netherlands to coordinate efforts internationally. The two countries had been frequent partners in recent military campaigns, including the fight against the Islamic State group, and were both coming to terms with high-profile civilian casualty incidents. For the United States, years of harm in Iraq and Afghanistan had drawn international outrage and pledges from commanders to better collect data and learn from deadly mistakes. The Dutch were still addressing the fallout from a 2015 operation in Iraq in which air strikes targeting a car-bomb factory ignited a nearby munitions depot, setting off an enormous explosion that killed at least 70 civilians and wounded hundreds. Dutch responsibility wasn’t revealed until 2019, causing a national scandal and accusations of a cover-up. In 2023, the U.S. and the Netherlands formed the loose coalition on CHMR. Participants described a small, informal group that has met half a dozen times since 2023 to share best practices and hear briefings on civilian casualty trends. Advocacy groups said it had taken years to get the U.S. military to think of civilian casualties as more than “collateral damage,” showing commanders how the deaths of innocents were anathema to their morals and strategically harmful to their missions. The eventual adoption of CHMR guidelines by American defense officials helped their counterparts abroad make the case for programs in their own countries. “By the U.S. putting itself out there and saying, ‘We learned, we can do better,’ it gives permission and makes it OK for other governments to similarly acknowledge, ‘Yeah, we can do better too,’” said McAvoy. As participants gather this week in Brussels to discuss how to continue strengthening CHMR, however, the early momentum from the U.S. side has evaporated. Hegseth, who derides rules of engagement as “woke,” gutted the CHMR program over the objections of the nation’s top commanders, ProPublica reported last month. Staff plunged from nearly 200 to about two dozen. Days before the latest summit in Brussels, the United States wasn’t listed as a participant and there was no sign anyone from the Defense Department would attend. Current and former officials predicted either a no-show or, at most, a single delegate from one of the commands showing up. To experts, the message was clear: The era of U.S. leadership on civilian protection was over. Foreign ambassadors and heads of diplomatic missions visit Resalat Square in Tehran, Iran, on April 20, 2026, where photos of civilians killed in recent U.S.-Israeli strikes are displayed. Fatemeh Bahrami/Anadolu via Getty Images “The U.S. stopped participating in this group last year and people assumed that meant the group would die,” said McAvoy. “But the group continued to exist and to meet — without the U.S. — under the leadership of the U.K. and the Netherlands.” The two-day summit opens with a broad discussion of CHMR, such as how it applies in coalitions or in operations at sea, that includes advocacy groups and academics, a draft agenda reviewed by ProPublica shows. Day 2 is a closed-door session for more intimate talks among senior representatives of member states. The meeting wraps with a “looking ahead” panel. Past attendees included Austria, Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Norway. The nations represent a wide variation in approaches and needs when it comes to CHMR, participants said. Read More The U.S. Built a Blueprint to Avoid Civilian War Casualties. Trump Officials Scrapped It. Top Commanders Told Hegseth Not to Cut Civilian Protection Program, Poll Showed. He Did It Anyway. The U.K., for example, doesn’t have a formal framework for civilian harm mitigation and response, and advocates have spent years pushing the British Ministry of Defense to adopt policies similar to those of the United States. Though humanitarian groups generally regarded the American CHMR enterprise as nascent and imperfect, the overall framework provided a worthy standard, said Mae Thompson of the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights, a London-based advocacy group. Advocates have framed the Pentagon’s rollback as an opportunity for the U.K. to step into a leadership role, Thompson said, and they’ve been encouraged by a recent internal report by the defense ministry that calls for formalization of a program in Britain, including systems to track civilian harm, investigate, and make amends and offer post-harm response. NATO boasts a civilian protection policy that predates the American model, but the organization is now incorporating elements of the U.S. approach, said Andrew Hyde, who studies U.S.-European relations at the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan foreign policy think tank. Hyde said international talks are important for sorting out how CHMR applies in joint operations when the United States, NATO and European nations all have different interpretations of harm mitigation. The diminished U.S. role, he said, means NATO and other partners must step up on coordination. The shift in leadership could end up shielding civilian protection work from the whims of whichever U.S. administration is in power and leading to more enduring reforms, Hyde said. “NATO has continued to push forward without U.S. support or participation, keeping up the momentum and ready for U.S. re-engagement,” Hyde said. The post Empty Seat: U.S. Absent as Western Powers Meet on Wartime Protections for Civilians appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Military]

— 25 Years After 9/11, Questions About the FBI’s Pursuit of Saudi Suspects in the Case Have Only Grown

 

at 9/10/26 4:00am

A man stands in the rubble after the collapse of the first World Trade Center tower on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City. Doug Kanter/AFP via Getty Images Within a few days of the terror attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, FBI agents identified an important possible suspect: a middle-aged Saudi graduate student who provided crucial help to two of the al-Qaida hijackers as they settled in San Diego early the year before. The Saudi, Omar al-Bayoumi, had since moved to England, and he was arrested there at the FBI’s request. A police search of his home and office yielded a trove of evidence that quickly deepened investigators’ suspicions about Bayoumi and his dealings with the terrorists. But what happened to much of that evidence after it was delivered to the FBI remains a mystery. Bayoumi was questioned and released by British police and later returned to Saudi Arabia. For years thereafter, the FBI would insist he wasn’t really a suspect at all — that Bayoumi had met the hijackers by chance, had helped them unwittingly and seemed nothing like a militant Islamist. As the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is marked Friday, questions about how the FBI handled Bayoumi’s case have only grown, driven in part by evidence that was seized from him in 2001 but not made public for years or even shared with field agents who sought to investigate his role. That evidence and other FBI information, now filed in a federal lawsuit against the Saudi government by victims of the attacks, has undercut both Bayoumi’s claims of innocence and the FBI’s profile of him as a genial, pro-American civil servant. While he was living publicly as a student, it shows, Bayoumi worked closely with Saudi religious officials, operated as a Saudi intelligence asset and collaborated with several clerics who would later emerge as militant Islamists tied to al-Qaida. This week, representatives of the 9/11 families are again demanding an end to what they have called the Justice Department’s silence about what happened to the Bayoumi evidence and why he and other Saudis were not more aggressively pursued. The families have also questioned whether the Trump administration — which has strengthened U.S. diplomatic and business ties to the Saudi royal family — is committed to pursuing the truth about the possible role of Saudi officials. Brett Eagleson of the organization 9/11 Justice speaks at a news conference in front of the Saudi Consulate in Manhattan on Tuesday. The organization, made up of family members of 9/11 victims, called for further investigation into what it says was collusion in the attacks by Saudi officials. Natalie Keyssar for ProPublica “We still have not been given the full picture of what happened,” said Kathleen Zapata, whose father, Joseph Coppo, was killed in the World Trade Center. “Why are we having to fight against our own government simply to get answers about the most horrible attack ever on American soil?” A White House spokesperson said, “President Trump is leading the most transparent administration in history, and his team is working diligently on identifying records that are responsive to these families’ request.” A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment, noting that many of the officials involved in the early 9/11 investigation no longer work for the government. While former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden are expected to attend a ceremony at the 9/11 memorial in New York, President Donald Trump has said he will commemorate the anniversary separately at the Pentagon. The Saudi government has long denied any role in the attacks, often citing FBI and CIA statements that the royal family was an enemy of al-Qaida and its Saudi-born leader, Osama bin Laden. A spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return messages asking for comment, including a request to speak to Bayoumi. From San Diego to Dulles International Airport A ProPublica examination of how the FBI handled the Bayoumi evidence shows that questions surrounding the Saudi connections to the 9/11 plot date to Jan. 15, 2000, when the first two hijackers landed in Los Angeles on a flight from Bangkok. The CIA had followed the two men, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, as they met with other Qaida operatives in Malaysia days before. But the agency said it lost track of them when they flew to Thailand and then entered the United States using their real names and Saudi passports. (The CIA did not inform the FBI of their presence in the United States until Aug. 24, 2001, according to the report of the 9/11 Commission.) Unlike several Qaida operatives who led the hijacking teams, Mihdhar and Hazmi spoke no English and knew almost nothing of life in a Western society. The mastermind of the plot, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, told CIA interrogators he advised them to seek help from Muslim communities in California, according to the 9/11 Commission. But the commission and many U.S. terrorism experts expressed skepticism that he would deploy such ill-equipped operatives without providing them with any contacts in the United States. Bayoumi claimed his meeting with the hijackers was happenstance. After driving from San Diego on Feb. 1, 2000, he said, he had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles and then went to a nearby halal cafe. There, he later told the FBI, he overheard Hazmi and Mihdhar speaking Gulf-accented Arabic and introduced himself. Seeking to be hospitable, he said, he told them they might want to try San Diego. Shortly after the men stepped off a bus there three days later, Bayoumi said, he happened to run into them again at a local mosque. The next day, he arranged for them to rent an apartment in the building where he lived with his family, co-signed their lease and set up a bank account for them, briefly loaning them about $1,500 for the deposit. He went on to introduce them to more than two dozen local men who helped them in various ways. The FBI had already looked closely at Bayoumi, launching a preliminary investigation in 1998 after neighbors reported what they said were suspicious gatherings of young Arab men at his apartment. That inquiry determined that Bayoumi, who had worked for the Saudi civil aviation ministry, was still receiving a generous government stipend through an aviation company for which he did no work. The investigation found no criminal activity, however, and it was closed after six months, officials said. Barely a week after the 9/11 attacks, the FBI asked the British authorities to arrest Bayoumi in Birmingham, England, where he had begun graduate business studies at Aston University. David Campbell, then a young terrorism investigator, was dispatched from London by the Metropolitan Police Service, which is responsible for counterterrorism efforts across Britain. He recalled flying back down the highway in a special police vehicle with his handcuffed prisoner in the back seat, the sirens blaring. “They’d been told they had one of the 9/11 terrorists,” he said in an interview. The FBI sent three agents from the United States to assist with Bayoumi’s interrogation at the Paddington Green police station in Central London. They were joined by a senior FBI attache, Joseph Hummell, who worked closely with the police service’s  Anti-Terrorist Branch, known as SO13. But despite those close contacts and the FBI’s considerable information about Bayoumi, very little of it was shared with Campbell and the Birmingham detective who joined him in questioning the suspect. “We were really in the dark,” Campbell recalled. “They never even mentioned that he had been under investigation by the FBI in San Diego in 1998.” Nor, Campbell said, were the interrogators briefed about the materials that had just been taken from Bayoumi’s Birmingham home and office, which included boxes of papers, correspondence, photographs, computer disks, videotapes and an address book. Yet some of those items had been immediately flagged as important, records show. Among them was a diagram in Bayoumi’s handwriting that appeared to calculate the trajectory of an airplane to a point on the horizon. Another was a video of Bayoumi touring and describing the U.S. Capitol, a building that had been identified by U.S. investigators as a prospective al-Qaida target. Omar al-Bayoumi, right, shortly after being arrested in Birmingham, England, in 2001 BBC World Service via YouTube After questioning Bayoumi for almost a week, Campbell said, he and the Birmingham detective joined two senior SO13 officers on a conference call with Justice Department attorneys in the United States. The two interrogators were given a brief opportunity to express their view that Bayoumi’s account seemed deeply suspicious and full of falsehoods, Campbell said. It didn’t seem to matter. The U.S. officials, who included lawyers in Washington and federal prosecutors in New York, concluded quickly that they did not have sufficient evidence to seek Bayoumi’s extradition. “When the call ended, we just looked at each other in complete disbelief,” Campbell recalled. FBI documents declassified in response to a 2021 executive order by Biden give a partial answer to what happened to the Bayoumi evidence. One memorandum on Oct. 11, 2001, notes that New Scotland Yard, as the Metropolitan Police Service was often called, had provided the FBI attache’s office with “copies of all recovered exhibits, including mirror images of all computers.” A complete copy of the trove was also sent via Federal Express to the FBI’s New York Field Office, the memo noted. By then, however, the agency’s new director, Robert Mueller, had taken the unusual step of ordering that the 9/11 case be run out of its Washington headquarters. The Penttbomteam, as it became known in the FBI’s clunky acronym for Pentagon/Twin Towers Bombing, mobilized thousands of FBI agents and analysts around the world. One group focused on the hijackers of American Airlines Flight 77, the plane that crashed into the Pentagon, tracing the path of Hazmi and Mihdhar from Southern California to Dulles International Airport in Virginia, where they abandoned a used Toyota Corolla registered to one of their former addresses in San Diego. How the headquarters team translated and analyzed the materials obtained from Bayoumi in Britain is unclear. But the team did not appear to share the evidence widely. In another memo, dated May 15, 2002, the San Diego FBI office noted that it was asked to review only five of the more than 80 VHS tapes seized from Bayoumi in Birmingham. Two of those were duplicates and included footage of a paintball fight and a family trip to Sea World. “Nothing of significant investigative/evidential value has been discovered,” the memo stated. Although Bayoumi’s friends and associates helped the hijackers with everything from part-time jobs to flying lessons (they flunked out because their English was so poor), FBI leaders dismissed the idea that any of the people who helped them knew they were Qaida operatives sent on a still-evolving terrorist mission. “As far as we know, they contacted no known terrorist sympathizers in the United States,” Mueller told a joint panel of the Senate and House intelligence committees in September 2002. “To this day, we have found no one in the United States except the actual hijackers who knew of the plot.” The FBI’s more conclusive account of its Penttbom findings came before the bipartisan 9/11 Commission. The young agent leading the Flight 77 investigation team, Jacqueline Maguire, echoed Mueller’s earlier testimony, saying in 2004 that Bayoumi’s meeting with the California hijackers had been “a random encounter” and that he had helped them without knowing their true aim. Maguire also said the FBI had no indication the hijackers had initially sought out another figure who raised suspicions, Fahad al-Thumairy, the imam of the Saudi-built King Fahd Mosque in Culver City, California. Michael Jacobson, a former State Department counterterrorism official who was a key commission investigator, said he knew some FBI agents in California were convinced that Bayoumi and Thumairy had helped the hijackers deliberately. But Maguire and her boss, Mary Galligan, who oversaw the Penttbom team, “were both consistently pushing back hard on any narrative of a support network,” Jacobson said in an interview. Maguire and Galligan declined to comment. FBI Special Agent Jacqueline Maguire testifies during a hearing of the 9/11 Commission in June 2004 in Washington, D.C. Mark Wilson/Getty Images When investigators from the 9/11 Commission interviewed Bayoumi and Thumairy in Saudi Arabia in 2003, Maguire — who had already interviewed the two Saudis for the FBI months earlier — joined them as an official escort. The interviews, which were managed by Saudi intelligence officials, were notable for Bayoumi’s efforts to ingratiate himself and Thumairy’s seemingly brazen lies, former officials said. Thumairy said he had never met the hijackers and did not even know Bayoumi, despite telephone records showing numerous calls between them. The Saudi Embassy did not respond to a request to speak to Thumairy. In its final report, the commission said it could not confirm that Thumairy helped the two terrorists but found it was “fairly certain that Hazmi and Mihdhar spent time at the King Fahd mosque and made some acquaintances there.” Echoing the FBI’s assessment, the commission described Bayoumi as “a devout Muslim, obliging and gregarious,” and found no evidence he “believed in violent extremism or knowingly aided extremist groups.” It would take years before those conclusions were forcefully challenged. Daniel Gonzalez, a San Diego FBI agent who had been looking at Hazmi and Mihdhar’s circle since the day after the attacks, became the case agent for Operation Encore, a “subfile” or follow-on inquiry to the original 9/11 case. But while he and other agents made significant breakthroughs, former officials said, they faced constant skepticism from FBI headquarters and were sometimes blocked outright in their efforts to pursue the case. In 2007, in an interview with a key source in Jordan, Gonzalez learned of two other important witnesses in Los Angeles, young Muslim immigrants who had also helped the hijackers. The two later confirmed the hijackers had gone to the King Fahd Mosque after arriving in Los Angeles and met repeatedly with Thumairy. One of the men said Thumairy also arranged for the hijackers to be driven to their first meeting with Bayoumi at the halal cafe — undercutting Bayoumi’s claim that he met them by chance. For years, Encore agents said, they continued to press for more of the materials seized from Bayoumi in Britain. At one point, Gonzalez got a phone call from Washington asking if he wanted some old Penttbom evidence that was about to be destroyed. The materials — copies of some of Bayoumi’s long-sought papers, including the suspicious flight diagram — stunned the Encore team, Gonzalez said. Retired FBI Special Agent Daniel Gonzalez in San Diego, where two of the 9/11 hijackers spent time after arriving in the United States John Francis Peters, special to ProPublica In June 2012, a small group of Encore investigators and analysts flew to London to try to review the Bayoumi search evidence more thoroughly. According to three former officials familiar with the trip, they viewed dozens of hours of videotapes and took new copies of much of the Metropolitan Police material. For reasons that remain unclear, however, the team either did not see or did not focus on a few videotapes that would later become evidence in the 9/11 families’ lawsuit, including the tape of Bayoumi at the U.S. Capitol. While some terrorism experts have interpreted the recording as Bayoumi’s effort to “case” the site for a possible attack, lawyers for the Saudi government described it as a tourist video. The Bayoumi videos also included extensive footage of two Saudi religious officials who not long before had commanded attention from both the FBI and CIA. The two men, Adel al-Sadhan and Mutaeb al-Sudairy, were emissaries of the Saudi Ministry of Islamic Affairs who had traced what intelligence officials saw as a strikingly suspicious path around the United States. The Saudi Embassy did not respond to a request to speak to the men. In addition to traveling to Washington, D.C., with Bayoumi, the two clerics visited Los Angeles and San Diego a year before the hijackers and stayed at one of the homes where Hazmi and Mihdhar later lived. Sudairy also spent several months living in Columbia, Missouri, with an American al-Qaida member, Ziyad Khaleel, who provided Osama bin Laden with the satellite phone that FBI officials said he used to orchestrate the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Just before and after the hijackers arrived in San Diego, telephone records show, Bayoumi also made a series of calls to Sudairy in Washington, Thumairy in Los Angeles and Anwar al-Aulaqi, a Yemeni American cleric. Aulaqi, who ran a San Diego mosque that Bayoumi had funded through Saudi donations, was described by FBI witnesses as a spiritual adviser to Hazmi and Mihdhar. Aulaqi later emerged as an important al-Qaida leader before he was killed in a U.S. drone strike in 2011. Unanswered Questions In 2014 and 2015, a panel of security experts was assembled to review the FBI’s implementation of reforms called for by the 9/11 Commission. The 9/11 Review Commission, as the second panel was called, was also tasked with looking again at questions about the 9/11 plot that remained unanswered. Maguire, the FBI’s primary liaison to the review panel, again disputed suspicions about Bayoumi. “He came here for school and everything seems accidental with Bayoumi,” the commission was told in a 2014 briefing led by Maguire. The review panel concluded there was not enough new information to revise the 9/11 Commission’s finding that there was no “witting assistance” to the hijackers. But Tim Roemer — a Democratic former congressman from Indiana who served on the 2002 joint intelligence inquiry, the 9/11 Commission and the Review Commission — made a point of pressing for further investigation into the Saudi question. He was struck that Maguire and other FBI officials were still pushing back. “There was consistent feedback from some levels of the FBI that simply wanted to close the case and claim that what Bayoumi did was purely coincidence and somehow accidental,” Roemer said. Roemer insisted that the Review Commission formally recommend that the FBI continue to examine the Saudi issue. But shortly after it did so, officials at FBI headquarters renewed their pressure to shut down Operation Encore. In 2016, the head of the agency’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces finally relented, reassigning the case and disbanding the team that had been investigating it for years. The next year, a pair of memorandums sent by the FBI’s Washington field office confirmed something that the Encore agents had long suspected: Between the late 1990s and Sept. 11, 2001, Bayoumi was paid a monthly stipend as a co-optee, or part-time agent, of the Saudi intelligence services. By then, Gonzalez had retired. The Encore investigators who remained were working new jobs. Along with other documents from the FBI investigation, the memos were initially withheld from the 9/11 families by the Justice Department, which classified them as state secrets during Trump’s first term. The Encore agents saw the memos for the first time when they were finally made public in 2022 under Biden’s executive order. “Somebody needs to explain to the American people why we didn’t see this information before,” Gonzalez said in an interview. The post 25 Years After 9/11, Questions About the FBI’s Pursuit of Saudi Suspects in the Case Have Only Grown appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice]

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