Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Founder of Kentucky Drug Rehab Center Indicted on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges

 

at 6/5/26 1:00pm

Logos of organizations under the Addiction Recovery Care umbrella are on display at ARC’s career services office in Louisa, Kentucky. Ryan C. Hermens/Lexington Herald-Leader Timmy G. Robinson Jr., founder and owner of what was once Kentucky’s largest drug addiction treatment company, was criminally indicted Thursday by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. The indictment, filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky, charges Robinson with fraudulently selling millions of dollars of the same IRS tax credit to two companies. Robinson “devised a scheme” to “unlawfully enrich himself” by selling those tax credits to two parties, the indictment says. Robinson is also charged with two counts of money laundering  for spending the proceeds of the fraudulent sale.  Robinson has resigned as CEO of ARC, company spokesperson Vanessa Keeton said Thursday. Robinson, 50, founded the company in 2012 after becoming sober and telling people he felt called by God to help people in the state with addiction.  ARC, which at one point operated more than 40 drug treatment centers around the state, has been under FBI investigation for Medicaid fraud since July 2024. That investigation is ongoing, the FBI confirmed on Friday. The Lexington Herald-Leader, in partnership with ProPublica, reported in April firsthand accounts from former ARC employees and clients who said they were told by ARC to falsely bill Medicaid, or witnessed others billing for services that were not actually provided. The company said at the time that it “has never knowingly or fraudulently billed Medicaid for services, and there is no evidence that the organization encouraged employees to falsify group notes for billing purposes.” Robinson’s attorney, Kent Wicker, said he and his client were surprised to learn an indictment had been placed over a “dispute with some investors that is now pending in a civil courtroom.” That dispute escalated earlier this year, when ARC was sued by two companies to which Robinson had sold IRS credits, including the Bahamas-based Angelica Capital Trust. But both companies allege that when ARC received the IRS credits, it illegally kept more than $8 million the companies were owed. They allege ARC was refusing to repay the money in part so it could pay a preliminary $28 million settlement with the Department of Justice over alleged Medicaid fraud. Robinson has said he would make payments to creditors upon the sale of the company, which he described in January as imminent.  “To be clear, Mr. Robinson did not defraud anyone, did not gain anything from the transaction at issue, and he has done nothing but deliver high quality care for over a decade to thousands of Kentuckians,” Wicker said in an emailed statement to the Herald-Leader and ProPublica. “We look forward to defending this case in court.” Starting in 2023, ARC applied for two COVID-19-related tax credits, totalling nearly $7 million. In July 2025, Robinson sold the rights to the first tax credit to a loan company, the indictment says. Under the agreement, the purchaser would pay ARC $2.7 million in exchange for a future repayment of the tax credit once the IRS funds arrived. Robinson signed that agreement, and later that month the buyer wired ARC the agreed amount.  Read More They Needed Treatment for Drug Addiction. The Company They Turned to May Have Used Them to Commit Fraud. Soon after, the indictment says, Robinson “devised a scheme” to sell that same credit amount to a second company and in doing so “falsely represented” that the $2.7 million in initial tax credit was available to purchase. “Robinson concealed the prior transactions” to the new buyer, according to the indictment. In November, Robinson signed an agreement with the second buyer, who sent a wire transfer that included $2.7 million for the twice-sold tax credit.  In December, when the IRS paid ARC the COVID-19 tax refunds, “at Robinson’s direction, ARC spent the ERC [Employee Retention Credit] funds on other operational costs and debt obligations,” the indictment reads. Keeton declined to comment further on the case, citing pending litigation. However, she said ARC continues to operate normally. “All facilities, programs, and services remain open and fully operational,” Keeton said in an emailed statement. “Our leadership team, employees, and clinical staff remain committed to delivering high-quality care and support to the individuals and families we serve.” Robinson faces 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, or twice the gain or loss, for the wire fraud count. Each money laundering count carries up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Tell Us About Your Experience With Kentucky’s Addiction Recovery Care We’re taking a closer look at how ARC treated the people who came to the organization seeking help with their sobriety. If you’re a current or former client or employee, we want to hear from you. Share Your Experience The post Founder of Kentucky Drug Rehab Center Indicted on Fraud and Money Laundering Charges appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Health Care, Mental Health]

— North Carolina Democrats Propose Changes to Block GOP Power Transfers and Secrecy

 

at 6/5/26 11:00am

The North Carolina legislature, where Democrats recently introduced three bills to reform the state’s courts and protect the separation of powers between its branches of government Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images Democratic lawmakers in North Carolina introduced a trio of constitutional amendments this week aimed at protecting traditional powers of the state’s governor and reforming oversight of its court system. The effort was prompted in part by ProPublica’s reporting, including an investigation that found that over nearly a decade, Republican lawmakers had pushed through law after law shrinking the powers of North Carolina’s governor, always a Democrat during that time. At a press conference on Wednesday, the bills’ sponsors readily acknowledged that the initiatives are unlikely to pass, at least in the current legislative session: Republicans hold majorities in North Carolina’s House and Senate. But in proposing the measures as changes to the state constitution, the group of eight Democrats said their goal was to make them less vulnerable to the persistent partisan warfare that has engulfed the narrowly divided swing state. Republicans “won’t always be in the majority,” said Rep. Phil Rubin, the primary sponsor of one bill. “And when they’re not, they’re going to suddenly think these are great rules. So let’s do them now.” Republican leaders in the House, Senate and court system did not respond to requests for comment on the bills. Experts have long maintained that Republican power grabs have thwarted the will of North Carolina voters, removing the Democratic governor’s control or partial control over numerous boards, entities and executive prerogatives and leaving him the nation’s weakest. (Republican officials have defended the shifts, pointing out that voters also elected a GOP legislative majority.) Rubin’s measure would bar the legislature from stripping away additional gubernatorial powers, as well as block majority leaders from what he called “government by ambush” — springing major legislation on the minority and public without notice. “ProPublica’s reporting shows the perils of not having this law,” Rubin said. Voters should have “the opportunity to secure their constitution, demand absolute transparency in lawmaking and ensure that people, not backroom deals, have the final say.” The two other constitutional amendments unveiled this week target aspects of the judicial system. The first, authored by House Rep. Marcia Morey, would make disciplinary hearings and sanctions by the courts’ internal watchdog, the Judicial Standards Commission, public. GOP rules currently cloak the commission’s work in secrecy. Behind closed doors, ProPublica revealed, the majority-Republican state Supreme Court quashed the commission’s recommendations that two Republican judges who’d admitted to committing egregious conduct violations be publicly reprimanded. (Spokespeople for the North Carolina Supreme Court and the Judicial Standards Commission declined to comment or respond to a detailed list of questions about the matter.) Morey’s bill would also change who appoints the commission’s members, a step she called critical to preventing the “weaponization” of its work. Currently, Republican legislative leaders and Paul Newby, the state’s conservative chief justice, appoint a majority of the commission’s members. As ProPublica has reported, in 2023 Newby encouraged the commission to investigate a Black Democratic justice who’d criticized his decision to effectively shut down a racial equity commission. (Newby, as well as spokespeople for the court and the Judicial Standards Commission, declined to comment for the story.) Morey’s measure would divide commission appointments equally among the chief justice, the governor and the North Carolina State Bar. “Who makes decisions about discipline and who appoints the decision-makers,” she said, are critical to making the system “fair and effective.” The second bill, sponsored by Rep. Deb Butler, would disqualify state Supreme Court justices from hearing cases in which family members are parties. Justice Phil Berger Jr. has caused controversy by ruling in multiple cases in which his father, the leader of the state Senate, is a defendant in his legislative capacity. (Berger referred recusal requests on these cases to the Republican majority on the Supreme Court, which ruled he could participate.) Butler’s measure would also compel justices to disclose more information about large stock transactions, outside sources of income and sponsored travel. A ProPublica investigation found Newby didn’t disclose a trip to a luxurious Hawaiian resort, paid for by a conservative judicial education program. Newby and court spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment about his decision not to disclose the trip. Butler described her bill as an effort to restore public trust. “People deserve complete confidence in the integrity of their court,” she said. In the unlikely event that the bills pass, the public would then have the chance to vote on them in November. If not, the sponsors said, they’d revive them in the next session, by which time even some Republican strategists think that a blue wave may have flipped the North Carolina House. “We’re committed to following through on these bills to ensure fairness and impartiality in our courts and legislature,” Morey said. “This should be the norm, not the partisan bias we have now.” The post North Carolina Democrats Propose Changes to Block GOP Power Transfers and Secrecy appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Politics]

— These Republican Lawmakers Challenged Abortion Bans. Then They Faced Backlash.

 

at 6/5/26 4:00am

North Dakota state Rep. Eric Murphy at home planning a day of canvassing in his Grand Forks district. Murphy, an incumbent Republican, faces a contested primary election from conservative challengers after he introduced a bill to expand abortion access last year. Dan Koeck for ProPublica If Eric Murphy loses his primary election on June 9, he believes he already knows one reason why. Last year, the North Dakota state representative, a Republican, tried to expand the window of pregnancy in which women could access abortion. The state legislature had banned it for almost everyone from the moment of conception. Tied up in court, the ban hadn’t yet gone into effect. But Murphy wanted to lock in a less restrictive law, making abortion accessible up to 15 weeks and even later for women whose doctors deemed it a medical necessity. To convince his fellow legislators, he read out loud from two ProPublica stories about women in Texas who died without lifesaving care. “Physicians felt compelled to follow the law,” he said in a hearing, “and both women died so that an inane law could be followed.” A conservative colleague had warned him not to file the bill, Murphy told ProPublica, recalling the man’s words: “I can no longer protect you from who’s going to come after you.” There was some truth to that sentiment. At least four Republican state lawmakers who challenged severe abortion restrictions lost support from anti-abortion groups and key party allies and went on to lose primary elections, ProPublica found. The blueprint in those races was remarkably similar. Opponents either embraced stricter abortion policies or avoided the issue altogether. Anti-abortion organizations campaigned against the incumbents, party endorsements shifted to their opponents and activists worked to turn out voters in low-participation primary elections. In some of the races ProPublica examined, lawmakers who replaced abortion-ban reformers went on to support even stricter abortion legislation. In South Carolina, for instance, two new senators supported a bill to eliminate almost all exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. One provision of the bill would send women convicted of illegally terminating their pregnancies to jail. Murphy is one of at least two Republican state lawmakers now facing a contested primary after trying to modify their states’ abortion restrictions. Richard Briggs, a state senator from Tennessee, is also fighting to keep his seat. In 2019, Briggs voted for the state’s so-called trigger law — a ban that would snap into place if the federal right to abortion was ever overturned. But he had second thoughts after that actually happened. A cardiothoracic surgeon, Briggs realized the newly activated law didn’t provide adequate protections for patients having medical complications. “As a medical doctor, I drew the line,” he said in an interview. He introduced bills for a clearer medical exception and protection for doctors who intervened in cases where a fatal fetal anomaly risked the mother’s health. The latter bill failed and now serves as ammunition for the challenger vying for his seat in the state’s Aug. 6 primary. “My opponent consistently works to weaken Tennessee’s pro life laws,” Kent Morrell says on his campaign website, noting that Tennessee Right to Life had revoked its endorsement of Briggs. Murphy, who teaches biomedical sciences at the University of North Dakota’s medical school, ultimately did not succeed at reforming the state’s ban. His bill failed 87-6, and the state Supreme Court later reinstated the original ban, which forbids abortion from conception, with exceptions for rape and incest up to six weeks and to save the life of the mother. Murphy discusses campaign issues with retired teacher Deb Stahlberg at her home in Grand Forks. Dan Koeck for ProPublica The first time Murphy ran for election, his county’s Republican Party had endorsed him. Not this time. Instead, the party endorsed his two challengers, including Jill Chandler, the executive director of a “crisis pregnancy center” who believes abortion should be banned from conception. She told ProPublica she happened to be present in the committee room when Murphy made the case for his bill. “To know that he was an endorsed Republican candidate from my district and one that I had voted for because of that endorsement was eye-opening,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘This can never happen again.’” It was not the first time either Briggs or Murphy had taken positions that aggravated members of their parties in legislatures that have taken sharp turns to the right. Murphy voted against book bans and private school vouchers. Briggs had urged the public to get COVID-19 shots and has said that medical expertise should trump politics in decisions that involve public health. Briggs expressed confidence in his election chances; he feels that voters agree with the decisions he’s made and noted that his Republican colleague, Sen. Becky Duncan Massey, survived a primary challenge over her support for abortion-ban exceptions. Murphy believes the “silent majority” supports the intent of his abortion bill, but primary races historically have low turnout. It could come down to a handful of votes, he said. “I might lose an election over this,” Murphy said, “but would I rather win an election by not doing the right thing?” The Fallen Reformers As a Republican state representative in Louisiana, Mary DuBuisson sought legislation that would make sure victims of rape and incest could terminate their pregnancies, and she also sponsored a bill that would have allowed women whose pregnancies were not viable to end them. She ended up losing a primary runoff. Melinda Deslatte/AP Photo Mary DuBuisson, a former state Republican representative in a suburb outside of New Orleans, considers herself passionately “pro-life.” Like Briggs, she voted for her state’s near-total abortion ban in 2019. Three years later, just before Louisiana’s trigger law was implemented, it came before the legislature again. Recognizing that women would now have to live under the restriction, DuBuisson wanted to make sure victims of rape and incest could terminate their pregnancies. When her colleagues refused to include those exceptions, she became the only Republican to vote against the ban. A year later, she caused a stir when she sponsored a bill that would have allowed women whose pregnancies were not viable to end them. “To force a woman to carry to term with zero chance of survival is heartless and cruel,” she said at the time. She didn’t feel it would be controversial. Other Republican women in the House told her she was doing the right thing. But when it was time to vote, another female Republican state lawmaker made a motion that ultimately succeeded at killing the bill in committee. “I mean, I just couldn’t understand,” she said of all her colleagues. “What if this was you, your daughter or granddaughter?” When she came up for reelection, her primary opponent latched onto her record. Brian Glorioso was an attorney she had handily defeated in 2018. He called her proposed legislation a leftist attempt to circumvent the state’s abortion ban and said any “pro-abortion” doctor would falsely deem a pregnancy nonviable in records just to perform the procedure. She beat him in the Oct. 14, 2023, primary by 384 votes — not enough to avoid a runoff. Then, he got some extra support. On Oct. 16, Louisiana Right to Life told its followers this runoff was key. Glorioso was expected to have a 100% “pro-life” voting record, while DuBuisson’s was 77%. On Oct. 27, the state’s new governor-elect, Republican Jeff Landry, endorsed him, citing issues other than abortion; he wouldn’t tell ProPublica whether DuBuisson’s record on it played a role. But Landry, who had defended the state’s ban as attorney general, made clear during his campaign that he was “an unwavering defender of life, especially in the face of adversity,” citing his 100% rating from a national anti-abortion group. “I think it partially cost me my election,” DuBuisson said of her attempts to reform the ban. History repeated itself the following year, this time in South Carolina. Three state senators — all Republicans who consider themselves “pro-life” — worked across party lines to defeat an abortion bill that essentially banned the procedure from conception and eliminated rape and incest exceptions. At the time, the state allowed abortion up to 20 weeks. Sens. Sandy Senn and Penry Gustafson spoke out against limitations on abortion access for victims of rape and incest. Sen. Katrina Shealy, who had the longest tenure for a woman in the state legislature, pushed for making abortion accessible up to 12 weeks and later for exceptions in cases involving rape, incest and fatal fetal anomalies. Ultimately, a six-week window with rape, incest and fatal fetal exceptions became law. South Carolina state Sens. Sandy Senn, left, Katrina Shealy, center, and Penry Gustafson, right, show off model spines they received from Students for Life Action with a message to “get a backbone” and vote to ban abortion at six weeks. The three, nicknamed the “Sister Senators,” ended up losing their reelection bids. Jeffrey Collins/AP Photo Amid the Statehouse showdown, they were nicknamed the “Sister Senators.” All lost their county GOP’s endorsement to their male opponents. But the bigger repercussions came from anti-abortion groups that mobilized a multifront grassroots campaign against them. Students for Life Action announced that it generated “37,000 pieces of mail, almost 130,000 personal text messages, more than 51,000 phone calls and thousands of doors knocked” to unseat the trio. “All three of them got voted out — every single one of them lost because of that decision,” said Dr. Matthew Clark, the executive director of Personhood South Carolina, which believes abortion shouldn’t exist at all and that women who have them should be prosecuted for murder. Clark, an allergist and Presbyterian pastor, said his group’s desired legislation has a better chance to advance now that the Sister Senators have been replaced. Matt Leber, who beat Senn, previously co-sponsored a bill as a member of the state House that would make abortion a crime equivalent to homicide. It failed to advance, and Leber withdrew his name as a co-sponsor amid a controversy surrounding it in 2023. This legislative session, Leber and Carlisle Kennedy, who beat Shealy, supported a bill that carries misdemeanor criminal penalties for women seeking abortions, with jail time up to two years. Senate Bill 1095 passed with supermajority support out of a committee Leber sits on. The bill died before the session, but watchers of abortion restrictions noticed it got further than any other similarly repressive legislation ever has. A Fateful Disconnect Murphy speaks to a voter in Grand Forks. Dan Koeck for ProPublica The outcomes do not neatly match public polling. Surveys in states such as South Carolina and Louisiana have found that many Republican voters support at least some exceptions to abortion bans, including in cases of rape or threats to a woman’s health. But primary elections often draw only a small share of eligible voters, giving outsized influence to highly engaged activists and organized interest groups. DuBuisson’s runoff drew about one-third of registered voters. Participation in the South Carolina primaries was lower still. Some races were decided on tiny margins; Senn lost hers by 33 votes. The North Dakota GOP has moved further to the right on abortion in recent years, even as polling suggested the state’s restrictions were losing support from Republican voters. At its 2026 convention, the party passed a resolution rejecting any policies that “normalize” abortion. North Dakota is one of the few states with a multimember system, where two representatives and one senator govern together in the same district. District 43, which Murphy currently represents, is one of the only purple districts in an otherwise deeply red state. It includes part of Grand Forks, a growing college town home to the University of North Dakota. Murphy’s fellow representative, Democrat Zac Ista, told ProPublica he hadn’t been able to make a dent in this legislature. He announced he wouldn’t be seeking reelection, opening up an opportunity for a Republican takeover of the district. Ista said the lack of support rallying around Murphy is due to his position on abortion, as well as culture-war legislation he refused to support. “I think it’s illustrative of that schism, where at this district level, Republicans are really trying to sort of press the most extreme conservative opinions,” Ista said. Richard Glynn, the GOP county chair in Murphy’s district, had previously supported Murphy’s abortion bill. In written testimony, Glynn shared his experience hearing about young women performing illegal abortions when he was a freshman at the University of South Dakota in 1966. Four young women who were in sororities died from using metal hangers to terminate their pregnancies, he wrote. “These deaths were viewed as preventable if these girls could have received competent care. Unfortunately, North Dakota is going down the same path with limited access to obstetric care that negatively impacts the health of the woman,” his letter said. When reached by phone, Glynn said delegates in the county voted and Murphy had the least amount of votes, which is why he did not receive the county’s endorsement. Glynn declined to answer more questions before hanging up on a reporter. One of Murphy’s opponents, Mike Holmes, has drawn a lot of excitement — and an endorsement from Gov. Kelly Armstrong — for his expertise in energy technology and industrial development. The governor said Holmes understands “what it takes to keep North Dakota’s economy strong.” Holmes has been silent on abortion and didn’t respond to ProPublica’s requests for an interview. Chandler, who touted her “respect for life” in a campaign mailer, is favored among anti-abortion groups. “It’s a pretty stark contrast,” said Bridget Turbide, executive director of North Dakota Right to Life, who called Murphy’s proposal “the most extreme pro-choice bill we’ve ever seen.” A flyer promoting Jill Chandler, one of Murphy’s opponents, was paid for by Citizens Alliance of North Dakota, a conservative group that opposes abortion among other causes. Photo courtesy Eric Murphy Citizens Alliance of North Dakota, a conservative group that opposes abortion among other causes, paid for a mailer calling Chandler a “champion of family values.” The same group marked Murphy in “bad standing” in an online roster of legislators, questioning his alignment with North Dakota values. Murphy’s third colleague who also represents District 43, Republican State Sen. Jeff Barta, campaigned alongside him in 2022 as part of a unified Republican ticket when the primary election was uncontested. Asked about the upcoming race and the candidates, Barta pointed to Murphy’s proposal that would have expanded abortion access in North Dakota. “Last session, he introduced House Bill 1488, which created a little divide there,” Barta said. Barta said Murphy has also broken with the party on other issues. “That probably opened the door for the third candidate to run,” Barta added. Had that not happened, Murphy would have made it to the general election without having to defend his spot on the ballot. Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, lawmakers taking such nuanced stands on abortion bans may not have risked a career death sentence, said abortion historian and law professor Mary Ziegler. “The kind of incrementalism that Eric Murphy seems to be doing is something from a bygone era, where people were more pragmatic in the movement and not punished for it,” she said. The post These Republican Lawmakers Challenged Abortion Bans. Then They Faced Backlash. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Abortion, Health Care, Politics]

— In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations

 

at 6/4/26 4:00am

A rural area off Highway 14 just north of the small town of Moorcroft, in eastern Wyoming They were pillars of their church, congregants in a little-known denomination that sets itself apart from the world and teaches that even the most unconscionable acts can be wiped away — not just forgiven, but forgotten and never spoken of again. So it went in a rural Wyoming church, where a man was accused of sexually abusing young girls hundreds of times in the pews during Sunday services. Though the preacher knew of the abuse, he never reported it to police, local prosecutors said. Instead, he told the man to seek therapy. In Minnesota, a man from the same faith admitted that he began entering the bedrooms of his daughter and son at night around the time each of them turned 12. He and his siblings grew up in the church and were sexually abused themselves, and then he repeated the abuse with his own children. And in Washington state, preachers knew a member of their congregation had sexually abused several young boys. Instead of reporting him to police, they allowed him to ask for forgiveness, according to a family member, and he continued to sexually abuse children. He was later found guilty of raping the 9-year-old son of a church member and sentenced to life in prison. The abusers and victims all belonged to the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church, or the OALC, a Scandinavian-rooted revivalist church that teaches its followers that heaven is reserved just for them. To get there, according to current and former members, they must follow a strict doctrine, which emphasizes asking for forgiveness for their sins and says that being forgiven by a fellow church member washes away those sins.  What’s more, the church teaches that once a perpetrator is forgiven, anyone who speaks about the wrongdoing — including the victim — can be accused of harboring an unforgiving heart. Those who have left the church, as well as some who are still with it, say this means the burden of sin shifts from the person who committed the act to the person who refuses to let the matter rest.  Sexual abuse survivors say these rituals have created a culture where allegations of abuse are resolved outside of the criminal justice system and the victims must bear their pain alone or risk going to hell. In some families, sexual abuse stretches across generations, ensnaring a parent, child and grandchild.  “This is what I would call institutionalism of abuse of young women and children,” said DaNece Day, the prosecuting attorney for Crook County in Wyoming, whose office has charged two OALC members in the past two years. In Wyoming, Crook County Attorney DaNece Day’s office has brought charges against members of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. Day and other prosecutors said one of the biggest obstacles to breaking the cycle is the way church members move among congregations spread across the U.S. and Canada, often hundreds of miles apart but tightly bound by large, multigenerational family networks.  Last fall, ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune reported that preachers in Minnesota had known for years about allegations that one of its members, a man named Clint Massie, had sexually abused young girls in the congregation. But instead of reporting it to police, church leaders urged some of the victims to take part in sessions where they were brought face-to-face with Massie and encouraged to forgive the abuse.  Now, new reporting by the two news organizations shows how the sexual abuse of children in the OALC, as well as the failure by church leaders to report it to authorities, is a persistent and national problem. Some current and former OALC members are calling on elders from what the church regards as its mother congregation in Sweden — where the church originated — to intervene. In fact, those elders, who don’t have authority over the American church but wield considerable influence, are coming to the U.S. and Canada this summer to meet with congregations. What they’ll find are a growing number of criminal cases against church members and increasing legal scrutiny of leaders for failing to report allegations of sexual abuse to police.  In a statement, representatives from the Swedish church said the cases are isolated incidents and they didn’t “observe any pattern” among the tens of thousands of members in 34 OALC congregations in the U.S. and Canada. They said sexual abuse should be reported to authorities and that it was possible “some matters have been handled improperly or without sufficient knowledge.” And they acknowledged that church guidelines “are being reviewed with the American missionary pastors in order to ensure compliance.” Representatives of the OALC in the U.S. and Canada said in an email that they also “do not perceive there to be a general pattern of behavior,” describing sexual abuse as a serious and persistent problem across society. They acknowledged that bringing a victim to face their abuser, as a pastor for the OALC church did with Massie, can be traumatic. But they defended the church’s doctrine of forgiveness, saying it was not a means to conceal wrongdoing or to shield offenders from legal consequences, and no one is coerced to forgive or to ask for forgiveness. If those teachings had been misapplied or misunderstood in some cases, they said, it “does not reflect an error in our doctrine.” ProPublica and the Star Tribune interviewed 20 people who said they were sexually abused, almost all as children, in OALC communities, along with parents of victims as young as 3. Reporters also traveled to OALC churches around the country and reviewed court and police documents from at least eight cases, along with victims’ statements to local authorities.  Their abusers were family members, other children or men who were trusted to be alone with children because they are part of the same insular faith community. Some victims spoke anonymously for fear of retribution from the church or their own families. Others identified themselves as well as their abusers publicly, unafraid of the repercussions.  Many of those victims said church leaders pressured them to keep quiet. In Minnesota, police records describe a woman telling a young girl that her abuse, which began when she was around 5 or 6 years old, was not a big deal and she “needed to get over it.” In Washington state, a police report notes a woman told law enforcement that her preacher had, for “spiritual reasons,” discouraged her from contacting authorities after her daughter told her she’d been raped by three men from church. “We’re always told that what the preachers tell us, that’s coming from God,” explained one woman, who said she, too, was told not to speak of her abuse. “Who’s going to argue with that?” The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Moorcroft Sexual abuse in the OALC has sometimes been a legacy passed from one generation to the next — hidden, quietly endured, repeated. Lorie Peldo was sexually abused for eight years by her older brother, starting when she was only 2, she said in an interview. A quarter century later, after the memories began to resurface during therapy, Peldo’s mother told her that she’d known about the abuse. But on the advice of her preacher in Battle Ground, Washington, her parents didn’t report the crimes to the police. Instead, they took her brother to a doctor, she said. Peldo said she eventually confronted her brother, who said that it had haunted him his entire life. She tried to forgive him, she said, but the weight of what he’d done did not lift. She fell into such deep despair that she tried to commit suicide. She said she ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Her brother later died; her parents are also deceased. It didn’t stop there. On a church road trip, Clint Massie — who was sentenced for child abuse in Duluth, Minnesota, last year — sexually abused Peldo’s daughter, Tonya, when she was 11 and he was a teenager, according to Tonya Peldo’s statements to law enforcement. Peldos case was included in the police file involving Massie, but it wasnt charged criminally, according to a prosecutor, because the statute of limitations had run out. Massie has not responded to repeated requests for comment. Tonya Peldo told investigators from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office in Duluth that she didn’t see Massie again until some two decades later, after she moved to the city and recognized him passing out candy to kids at the church. She said she told the pastors about what he’d done to her, yet one of the preachers told her to ask Massie for forgiveness, as if she had wronged him. “I was like, ‘No. No!’” she said in an interview. It would be more than a decade before Massie was charged with sexual abuse crimes. In 2019, Tonya’s daughter was also sexually abused, making her the third generation of Peldo girls to be victims. The daughter was 14 when a 25-year-old relative, Blake Nelson, bought her a pack of cigarettes and then invited her into his trailer in Clark County, Washington, so that he could teach her how to give a massage, according to court records. Tonya Peldo, her mother and her daughter all say they were abused by members of the OALC. Nelson pleaded guilty to charges of communication with a minor for immoral purposes and fourth-degree assault in the case involving Tonya Peldo’s daughter. At his sentencing, Tonya told the judge how church leaders had tried to keep her daughter from reporting the abuse to police. Nelson’s own lawyer, Michele Michalek, said the pastors repeatedly called her law office to insist the case should be handled internally.  “They think that law enforcement shouldnt be involved,” Michalek said. A judge in Minnesota commented on the cyclical nature of abuse in 2023, when a man from an OALC family turned himself in to police after repeatedly abusing his son and daughter. At his sentencing, the judge took into account that the man and his siblings, who grew up in the church, had also been victims of child sexual abuse. She said she found it “almost incomprehensible” that the adults in his life didn’t know about the abuse he and his siblings had suffered as children. “All I can see are the ripples of consequences for you and all of your siblings, who were abused or abusers, and then for your children,” the judge said. A clipping from a 1951 newspaper showing Eija Marttinen, seen second from right and then called Tanninen, and her family after arriving in Nova Scotia from Finland, shortly before her father started the first OALC church in Canada. Courtesy of the Marttinen/Tanninen family The OALC church is a branch of a broader faith called Laestadianism, a conservative Christian revival movement that began in the mid-1800s in northern Scandinavia. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, as millions of Scandinavians migrated to the U.S., some followers of the Laestadian movement brought with them more than language, traditions and religious devotion. Alongside the faith came a deeply insular church culture shaped by strict obedience and a doctrine of forgiveness that critics and former members say enabled the concealment of wrongdoing. One of them was Eija Marttinen. A photo in a newspaper in 1951 shows Marttinen as a little girl wearing a Finnish sailor suit and braids, standing alongside 14 family members and several large suitcases. Her family had just arrived in Nova Scotia from Finland, and they would soon launch Canada’s first Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. In the photo, Marttinen is smiling brightly toward the horizon, as if spellbound by the endless possibilities of a new world. But even then, at age 9, Marttinen harbored a secret that would be the source of a lifetime of emotional pain. Now 84 and living in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, she said in an interview that her older brother sexually assaulted her starting when she was 5. Another brother soon started abusing her, too, she said. Both brothers are now dead. Years later, Marttinen said she came to learn that there were other predators in the church. She kept silent about her abuse for most of her life, fearing she would be forced to forgive and still live with the stigma if she came forward. She only told her own daughter about the extent of the abuse in recent months, after reading the ProPublica and Star Tribune stories. “They can do whatever they want and you have to forgive them. That’s not right. But you go along because you were brought up in it.  “I wish I wasn’t,” she added.  The Laestadian churches in Scandinavia have faced their own reckonings. From 2009 to 2011, a Finnish child welfare scholar, Johanna Hurtig, documented widespread sexual abuse cases among Finnish church members and found that the concept of forgiveness of sins had been warped into a tool to silence victims.  At first, church leaders were defensive, according to news reports. But they later acknowledged “serious mistakes” in how the church handled sexual abuse, including pressuring victims to forgive offenders instead of reporting them. They urged members to report abuse to police and child welfare authorities. Several men were convicted in Finnish courts and sentenced to long prison terms.  In 2017, Norwegian police documented 151 cases of rape and abuse, many with child victims, in a remote northern village of some 2,000 people. Following a newspaper investigation, the police said they tied many of the cases to members of Laestadianism, with some incidents dating to 1953. The police found the practice of forgiving and forgetting often led to abuse being considered settled internally, effectively silencing victims and protecting perpetrators. Moorcroft is small but home to a thriving OALC congregation. The church’s emphasis on large families has created booms in places like Minnesota, Wyoming and southern Washington. Families rely heavily on one another socially, financially and spiritually while keeping their distance from what members often call “the world” — outsiders and secular influences viewed as dangerous or corrupting. Even ordinary activities like watching TV and dancing are treated as transgressions that must be confessed. One abuse victim said she felt anxious every time she turned on her car radio, fearing that if she listened to a pop song and died in a crash before asking forgiveness, she could go to hell.  Some church members hope the Swedish elders address sexual abuse during their visit, including the mother of a 15-year-old girl who revealed in May 2025 that her father had been abusing her for years. It happened both in Minnesota and after they moved to Washington, according to court records. The mother, according to child protection services reports, said she told her preacher about the abuse.  Authorities did not learn of the allegations until August, when her daughter saw a therapist after weeks of her mother trying to get help through church channels, according to the reports. That visit triggered an investigation by child protection authorities in Washington, who substantiated the complaint. Prosecutors in Minnesota charged the father with criminal sexual conduct, but he hasn’t been charged in Washington. The father has asked the court for a public defender and has not yet entered a plea. He did not respond to voice and text messages seeking comment.  Asked why church officials did not immediately contact law enforcement, a spokesperson for the church declined to answer, saying the case was “complex” and in authorities’ hands. However, he said that, in general, spiritual advisers need to use counselors and other professionals “to determine if there is a reasonable cause to report as dictated by law.” But the mother said it was she — not the church — who set up the therapy session.  “Their job is to pick up the phone and say, ‘Hi, I’ve got some confusing, conflicting information but I’m concerned for the safety of this person,’” she said. “They don’t have to be investigators, all they need to do is tell somebody.” The mother said she plans to raise the church’s failure to notify police with elders when they visit this summer. Nonetheless, she plans to remain in the church. Asked why, she said, “Because I want to go to heaven.” An Old Apostolic Lutheran Church in Brush Prairie, Washington Last summer, in the rural expanse of eastern Wyoming, Moorcroft police drove up the long dirt road leading to the OALC church, a large brick building on the edge of town with a white cross emblazoned under the eaves.  The investigators were looking for records that could verify the membership of a man who several children said had abused them during services. His name was Charles Massie — the brother of Clint Massie, who had pleaded guilty to similar crimes in Minnesota months earlier. Over 10 years, authorities alleged, Charles Massie had sexually abused at least seven girls. Some of the abuse occurred at his house and some at his businesses, where young girls worked part time. But the vast majority of the abuse occurred at church, according to court documents. Investigators tallied 832 incidents where Massie sat near the girls’ parents, allegedly fondling the girls’ genitals and breasts. One victim, who told the police she was 5 or 6 years old when she was abused by Massie, said that he “raped me with his fingers.”  Wyoming has charged Charles Massie with nine counts of sexual abuse and sexual battery. He is being held in jail in Nebraska, where prosecutors also have charged him in connection with sexual assaults. He has pleaded not guilty in both states. He could not be reached for comment. When investigators in Moorcroft contacted families of the victims, they learned that the families already knew about the abuse. One had learned of it three years earlier, according to charges. But according to court records, none of them had told the police. Instead, the charges say, the father of some of the victims had told their preacher, David Lindberg, about the abuse in 2024. Charles Massie would later turn himself in, but not for another year. Day, the top prosecutor in Crook County, Wyoming, said there was “no support” for victims and the church did nothing to punish Charles Massie. “There are no consequences for him,” she said. “Hes allowed to sit in church with them every Sunday, even after theyve come forward and said, ‘This man has been hurting us.’” She said Charles Massie turned himself in to the Moorcroft police after he admitted to a mental health provider that he had abused children; the provider told him that they would report Massie if he didn’t go to police. Lindberg disputed the characterization that he did not act when Charles Massie confessed to him. “All I can say is, when I first heard about it, he came to me and he had a problem, so I told him he needs to go get therapy and turn himself in to the police,” Lindberg said. “And he did.”  He referred additional questions to a church spokesperson, Troy Massie, who is a relative of Charles and Clint Massie. In written responses, Troy Massie said the church told Charles to stop attending services after he confessed to Lindberg, though he could listen to services on the phone.  “We continue to improve our efforts as needed to protect all children,” he wrote. OALC Member Speaks During His Sentencing for Rape During his sentencing hearing in 2017, Carsie Tikka, who had been convicted of raping a child, lashed out at his lawyer, the judge and his accusers. Obtained by ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune The Wyoming church isn’t the only one to face accusations that it failed to report abusers. In southwestern Washington in 2017, a jury convicted church member Carsie Tikka of raping a 9-year-old boy. But one woman, who was a member of the church at the time, said that years before he was charged, Tikka had assaulted her stepchildren and the leaders had done nothing to stop him. Instead, Tikka asked her family for forgiveness. After Tikka was convicted at trial, a court-ordered psychiatrist wrote in a report that Tikka had “a history of offending 29 males,” an allegation that Tikka denied in court. At his sentencing, Tikka said his conscience was clean. He said he had already “received the testimony of sins forgiven” by one of God’s disciples. “You clearly by your statement here are not remorseful,” the judge remarked before sentencing him to life in prison without parole. “You put the blame on everyone else.” Then Tikka illustrated the central problem facing prosecutors and victims alike — a powerful religious culture that prioritizes spiritual absolution over secular justice — with his final, defiant words: “My sins have been forgiven,” Tikka told the judge. “Have yours?” The post In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice]

— I Got Access to Hundreds of Teacher Misconduct Complaints in California — and You Can Too

 

at 6/4/26 3:00am

Anna Vignet/KQED I was a new reporter at KQED in 2021 when former elementary teacher Joseph Brian Houg was sentenced to more than three decades in prison for sexually abusing 10 students. He’d taught at the same San Francisco Bay Area school for more than two decades. Were there warning signs?   I soon discovered parents on social media saying they had complained to school administrators for years about Houg. I also knew that schools could release such complaints if they were substantiated or if teachers were disciplined. So I filed public records requests with Houg’s school — something anyone can do.  I received 43 pages of records within a few months showing that parents had reported Houg to the principal at least four times since 2009. They complained about him for asking students to strip down to their underwear in his classroom in order to try on costumes for a play he was directing, and for coming into their changing room. They also complained about his touching boys’ chests or stomachs and tapping one boy on the butt. I learned that the principal had twice warned Houg to stop touching students. But he was allowed to keep teaching. (The principal said in a deposition that while Houg’s actions crossed professional boundaries, they were not reported to her as sexual.) Over the next two years, I reported on similar cases of teachers remaining in the classroom after complaints of unwanted touching. Another Bay Area elementary school, in Benicia, reported a teacher to the state’s licensing body after he resigned due to accusations of misconduct. He was hired by another school, and his educator license remained in good standing until he was criminally charged. (He is currently fighting those charges.) This raised a whole different set of questions for me: Should these teachers have been allowed to keep teaching in new schools? How much about a teacher’s disciplinary history did potential employers know? And what was the state’s responsibility for acting on, and sharing, the information it had about these teachers? After I entered journalism school at the University of California, Berkeley in 2023, I wanted to investigate how common it was for teachers to continue working with kids after schools found that they had committed misconduct. California law bars the teacher licensing agency from releasing disciplinary records to the public, so my classmate and I requested records from the 300 largest school districts in California. We asked for complaints of teacher sexual misconduct made to schools in the five previous years. We also asked for any reports sent by schools to the state’s teacher licensing agency, which are required to be filed when public school educators are fired or resign due to alleged misconduct. Read More He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway. Dozens of districts responded within two months. We began building a spreadsheet of teachers against whom complaints were raised. Getting the records was slow: California requires public agencies to determine whether they have records to disclose within 10 days, and to release them promptly, but most dragged their feet. Whenever schools stopped responding, I copied school board members and attorneys on my emails, citing the law. By the time I graduated more than a year after filing the records requests, I had received more than 350 complaints, which I used in my recent investigation with KQED and ProPublica. To this day, Los Angeles Unified, the largest school district in California, still has not released any records pertaining to teacher misconduct cases that it reported to the state. Instead, the district said it would charge me $8,000 ($100 an hour for 80 hours of work) for it to “investigate approximately 2,500 potentially responsive personnel files.” The First Amendment Coalition, a California nonprofit that advocates for free speech and government transparency, is representing me in a lawsuit filed in May. We argue that the Los Angeles school district is violating public records laws with its failure to release documents pertaining to alleged educator misconduct. A Los Angeles Unified spokesperson told me in a written statement this week that its policies balance the publics right to access records with “responsible stewardship of public resources” and the law.  Districts slow-walking their responses isn’t the only obstacle to getting records from schools. Districts typically notify teachers before releasing complaints to give them the opportunity to block the documents’ release. The former Benicia teacher who was criminally charged with sexually abusing students in 2024 sued to block the release of complaints made against him at two school districts. The First Amendment Coalition represented me in that case, too, and we won. It took nine months to get the records. In another case in which I had requested records, the court granted an injunction preventing release of the teachers records, but the legal filings contained the details of the allegations against him, so the nature of the complaint became public anyway. At least four teachers have called or emailed me directly to ask why I’m requesting their disciplinary records. They wanted to share their side of the story, which I was more than happy to hear, and some argued that their cases were not worth my time. One asked me to retract my request. (I did not.) Another sent a 1,700-word email saying that the allegations were only partially true and lamented that he did not have the money to defend himself.  While I appreciated the complexity of individual cases, I believed that those misconduct complaints might contain important truths. Undeterred by school districts’ recalcitrance, I followed the public record-seekers’ mantra: If you can’t get records from one agency, the answers you’re looking for may exist somewhere else.  Records of state disciplinary hearings are presumed public when teachers object to their dismissals by school districts or appeal the suspension or revocation of their licenses. And those records reside in the Department of General Services, a state agency that houses another agency responsible for convening administrative hearings of public employees.  This agency proved helpful with the case of Jason Agan, a San Francisco Bay Area math teacher who KQED and ProPublica reported on last month. Agan had been fired for sexually harassing high school students but went on to teach at two more schools, even after an independent panel convened by the Office of Administrative Hearings deemed him unfit to teach. Because he had asked for an outside hearing after the district moved to fire him, I requested those records.  I got them the next day. The documents contained summaries of testimony from students, administrators and Agan himself at his dismissal hearing. Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, admitted to touching students’ shoulders but denied any sexual motivation, stating during his dismissal hearing that he did so to offer them support and encouragement. He maintained his teaching license.  Getting a response from the Department of General Services was like discovering a secret portal to obtaining records quickly and easily.  So I requested five years’ worth of decisions about other teachers by independent panels from this agency, in search of further insights into how the state’s teacher disciplinary system works and where it falls short. I obtained a gold mine of documents in less than a week. I had learned some important lessons: What seems to be secret isnt always so. Sometimes you just need to know who to ask, and for what. Help Us Report on Teacher Misconduct in California If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and ProPublica want to hear from you. Share Your Experience The post I Got Access to Hundreds of Teacher Misconduct Complaints in California — and You Can Too appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— Texas State Takeover of Local School Districts Expands, Raising Concerns

 

at 6/3/26 4:00am

Newly appointed Beaumont ISD Superintendent Sandi Massey speaks during a school board meeting in Beaumont, Texas. Danielle Villasana for ProPublica No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the Texas Education Agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of those came this spring. At least another 10 are at risk of takeover, including, as of last week, the Austin Independent School District.  And to lead some of these districts, Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the man the education agency chose in 2023 to oversee the Houston school district, the state’s largest. Miles is also a close ally of Mike Morath, Texas’ powerful education commissioner. Already, at least two of these new district leaders have started to adopt policies similar to the contentious reforms Miles has pursued in Houston. He has touted improved test scores under his charge. Houston ISD had no F-rated campuses and fewer D-rated campuses in the state’s latest ratings compared with previous years. But Miles has also sparked widespread protests in response to the district’s rigid adherence to scripted lessons and repetitive testing, the firing of principals and teachers, mass school closures, and the conversion of schools into charters.   Miles did not respond to requests for comment from the Texas Observer. Houston ISD officials, in a statement to the Observer, said the district did not achieve better ratings by maintaining the status quo but “made difficult decisions” to improve academic performance, noting the majority of its campuses are now rated A or B.  These school districts whose new leaders have connections to Miles should prepare for “upheaval and chaos,” warned an elected Houston school board member.  “If anything doesn’t align with improving test scores, it will be taken away,” said Maria Benzon, who was elected in November to the Houston ISD board but is not permitted to serve under the ongoing state takeover. Under Miles, for example, Houston ISD eliminated librarian positions and turned some libraries into what Benzon called “detention centers,” because they are being used, in part, for students with behavioral issues. Morath, the TEA commissioner, has said the centers are used for more than just punishment.  Texas law allows the TEA to take control of districts with multiple failing school ratings or governance issues and to replace their superintendent and elected boards.  The recent takeovers include Beaumont, Lake Worth and Connally independent school districts, whose new superintendents worked under Miles when he was superintendent in Dallas ISD; two of them also worked for him in Houston. In Fort Worth ISD, one of the state’s largest districts, the new state-appointed superintendent chose Daniel Soliz as his second-in-command, another person who worked under Miles in Houston ISD. Soliz did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath attends a meeting at Harmony Hills Elementary School in San Antonio in 2025.The pace of state school district takeovers has increased during Morath’s time as commissioner. Scott Stephen Ball for The Texas Tribune At least two of the state’s new superintendent appointees — Sandi Massey, who now helms Beaumont ISD in southeast Texas, and Ena Meyers, TEA’s appointee for Lake Worth ISD, a small district near Fort Worth — also worked for the controversial Colorado-based charter network Third Future Schools, which Miles led prior to becoming superintendent in Houston. In April, the Observer revealed that Miles had an ongoing $120,000 annual consulting contract with the charter network, an arrangement that likely violated a new statewide ban on public school administrators’ moonlighting. After questions from the news organization, Miles canceled the contract. The district said Miles “remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.” Third Future’s charter network is expanding around the state as districts turn campuses over to the nonprofit’s Texas subsidiary, often as a means to delay possible state takeover. The nonprofit did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.  School district takeovers often involve layoffs, school closures and an increase in charter schools, as has happened in Houston, said Domingo Morel, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University, who found Texas has had more district takeovers than any other state since 1989.  What’s unique to Texas, Morel said, is that the low bar required to take control has led to more takeovers. Since 2015, five consecutive failing state ratings at just one school can trigger a takeover, as occurred in Houston, which has 273 campuses.  Texas has also made it harder for districts to appeal these seizures. The Legislature passed a law in 2021 that barred districts from using public funds to challenge the education commissioner’s “final and unappealable” decision to take them over. The threshold that defines a failing school was also lowered. Then, in 2025, the state passed another law restricting districts from using public funds to sue the state when challenging its accountability ratings.  The state “is the player, the referee, the coach, the scorekeeper,” when it comes to rating schools and deciding when to seize control, said Steven Nelson, an associate professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada who’s been studying school takeovers for more than a decade. He said he suspects the TEA-appointed leaders connected to Miles will also focus on standardized testing, which will result in “a narrow curriculum when all is said and done.”  The acceleration of takeovers, and the state’s increasingly stringent rating system, comes just as Texas rolls out a school voucher program that will, in most cases, award parents $10,000 in state funds to send their children to private schools. State accountability standards do not apply to private schools, where students don’t have to take the standardized tests required in Texas public schools.  TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky said the agency does not expect the four school districts that have recently been taken over to adopt the same reforms that Miles implemented in Houston. “During an intervention, state law requires the agency to appoint a new superintendent and a board of managers. All other staffing and operational decisions are made locally by the district,” Kobersky said.  But last August, Morath told lawmakers other districts “should be copying the changes that we see in Houston.” Massey, the new superintendent in Beaumont, has also cited the changes in Houston ISD as a blueprint. “The model that we are implementing here is a very similar model to Houston. And why? Because of the success that Houston has had,” Massey said at a May 21 board meeting, referring to her time working with Miles at Houston ISD, where he selected her to be chief of schools. A speaker addresses the school board in Beaumont. Danielle Villasana for ProPublica People clap as Massey speaks during a school board meeting. Danielle Villasana for ProPublica Under Massey, the newly appointed board of managers voted at their first meeting to temporarily suspend a number of policies related to governance and hiring practices, including employees’ rights to present grievances to the board and principals’ ability to approve new hires without district permission. Board of managers member Jeff Wheeler said at the meeting, “We are requesting that they be suspended until the board can move, can more fully evaluate our local policies.” The board has taken other steps that mirror what happened in Houston after the takeover there: On May 14, the district announced it was cutting 34 positions that support student mental health, and on May 21, it announced a high school would close.  Massey did not respond to the Observer’s requests for comment about whether she’s following the Houston playbook. Jackie Simien, a spokesperson for Beaumont ISD said, “Massey has worked alongside successful educational leaders with demonstrated results in improving systems, instruction, and student performance.” Students protest against the state’s takeover of Houston ISD in 2023. Douglas Sweet Jr. for The Texas Tribune The late Sylvester Turner, then mayor of Houston, speaks about the takeover of Houston ISD during a press conference in 2023. Joseph Bui for The Texas Tribune Benzon, the elected Houston ISD board member, said Miles is sidelining parent and teacher voices in her district, and they are leaving in droves as a result. “They are trying to escape the New Education System and Miles’ bad policies,” Benzon added, referring to a program Miles transplanted from his former charter school network that is characterized by scripted lessons and repetitive testing. The Houston Chronicle reported the district “is losing students at an accelerated pace” under the takeover, spurring the district to shutter 12 schools ahead of the next school year.  In its statement to the Observer, Houston ISD cited a survey of families reporting a “favorable perception” of the district and said it retained many exemplary teachers. Nelson and Morel said they believe the ultimate objective of any takeover is to disenfranchise local communities. Black and Hispanic students make up the majority of the population at all four of the districts now headed by Miles’ associates. “It all begins at the school board level to then completely disempower the community,” Morel said. On April 23, Houston ISD moved to fire a veteran teacher and president of the Houston Education Association teachers union after she protested requirements to comply with Miles’ New Education System.  Meyers, the new Lake Worth superintendent who at the time was Houston ISD’s deputy chief of strategic initiatives, testified in favor of the teacher’s termination.  “We do not allow our staff to make decisions about curriculum in a New Education System school or in Houston ISD,” Meyers said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “If they are not following expectations, we would not allow them to stay in HISD as an employee.”  Since taking over in Lake Worth, Meyers and the board of managers have temporarily suspended board policies related to governance procedures, hiring and employee assignments and schedules, similar to what Massey and her board did in Beaumont.  In response to the Observer’s inquiries about replicating Houston ISD’s reforms in her new role, Meyers wrote in an email that “Lake Worth ISD is very different from Houston ISD. We are a district of five schools serving a much smaller community, so our approach must reflect the unique needs of our students, staff, and families.”  Her email continued, “I believe educators should learn from successful practices wherever they exist.” As in Beaumont and Lake Worth, the takeover in Fort Worth ISD has been characterized by swift changes. After less than a month under the new leadership, the 68,000-student district has suspended local board governance and hiring policies and has cut dozens of staff positions, including those supporting English-language learners.  Parent organizer Zach Leonard said a new instructional model Fort Worth ISD is rolling out in 19 schools, called “Elevate,” is essentially the same as what Miles has done in Houston, an assertion district spokesperson Tierney Tinnin refuted.  Leonard, along with other parents with his organization, notes the similarities between the programs: “scripted slide-by-slide lessons, rigid timed instruction, and ‘demonstrations of learning’ reduced to data points.” “This isn’t education reform,” Leonard said, referring to Miles’ model of learning being transported to Fort Worth. “It’s a franchise being handed to our children without a vote.” The post Texas State Takeover of Local School Districts Expands, Raising Concerns appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— Lawmakers Demand Answers After the White House Initiated a $620M Loan to a Firm Tied to Donald Trump Jr.

 

at 6/3/26 3:30am

Donald Trump Jr. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images A group of lawmakers demanded answers from the White House this week following a ProPublica investigation revealing that a top aide to the president intervened to secure a $620 million Pentagon loan to a startup linked to the president’s eldest son. ProPublica’s reporting “reveals a staggering level of corruption and influence peddling that superseded this process, enriching the President’s son at the expense of U.S. national security and taxpayer dollars,” wrote the group of Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii as well as Reps. Jason Crow of Colorado and Mike Levin of California. Read More The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr. Last year, the Pentagon announced the loan to Vulcan Elements, a small North Carolina startup, about three months after Donald Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm took a stake of undisclosed size in the rare-earth magnet company. Interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to lend to the firm was made by Peter Navarro, who serves as the president’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing and is a friend of Trump Jr.’s. Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly told ProPublica. After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said. In their letter, addressed to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the lawmakers asked a series of questions about Navarro’s involvement in the deal, including whether he intervened at someone else’s direction, if the president was aware or involved, and who Navarro communicated with at the Pentagon. They also asked more broadly about whether White House officials have communicated with federal agency officials about other companies linked to the Trump family. “The American public — and service members that are in harm’s way — expect that the DoD contracting process is fair, unbiased, and competitive to ensure that only the best companies, providing only the best products, receive taxpayer dollars,” the lawmakers wrote. Navarro, who served as trade adviser in the president’s first term, and Trump Jr. have formed a close bond in recent years. The president’s son visited Navarro in prison while he served time for defying a subpoena from lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump Jr. was one of the small group of people Navarro dedicated his latest book to for having “my back when it was against the wall.” And a week before the Vulcan deal was announced, Trump Jr. hosted Navarro on his streaming show, encouraging his nearly 2 million subscribers to buy Navarro’s book. That interview was not long after word came down from Navarro to Pentagon staff to make the massive loan to Vulcan, one of the defense officials involved in the deal said. Asked to respond to the lawmakers’ allegations and ProPublica’s reporting, Navarro in a text message wrote “Staggering level of hyperbole. More fake news” but did not elaborate. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Navarro did not respond to questions from ProPublica sent to him directly before the initial article was published. But in a post on X afterward, he called the story “fake news on steroids.” Vulcan has not commented. A White House spokesperson had said in a statement that the administration is working “in the best interest of the American people,” adding, “The President’s entire team, including Senior Counselor Navarro and officials at the Department of War, is working together and with private industry to secure America’s critical mineral supply chain at Trump Speed.” Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said last week that the president’s son does not discuss companies he has invested in with federal government officials and did not speak to Navarro about Vulcan. He “has no knowledge about how this deal came together,” the spokesperson said. A spokesperson for 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, said it also played no role in Vulcan getting the loan and did not learn about the deal before it was public. “No company receives preferential treatment,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. “Outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the Department’s funding decisions.” The loan was part of the Pentagon’s effort to fund companies that could help the U.S. reduce dependence on China’s critical mineral supply chains. It represented a big win for Vulcan and its investors. Estimates of the company’s valuation grew tenfold after the deal was announced. The deal is one of many actions by the administration of President Donald Trump that have helped companies in which his family holds stakes. Government contracts and other benefits have gone to various Trump-linked companies. But ProPublica’s reporting on the Vulcan loan represented the first time the awarding of a contract from a federal agency was directly linked to White House intervention. A number of other lawmakers also criticized the Vulcan deal following ProPublica’s investigation. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, called it “corruption to the highest degree,” alleging on X: “They are looting this country. Dismantling it, selling it for parts, and lining their own pockets.” Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat, called for a congressional investigation. “It’s just nonstop corruption from this White House, and Republicans in Congress are content to twiddle their thumbs and look right in the other direction,” she posted on X. “Congress should be investigating and putting a stop to this kind of crooked self-dealing—not enabling it.” The post Lawmakers Demand Answers After the White House Initiated a $620M Loan to a Firm Tied to Donald Trump Jr. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Trump Administration]

— A Low-Income Housing Program Is Pouring Billions Into Housing Many People Can’t Afford

 

at 6/3/26 3:00am

Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source images via IRS and Flickr. On any given night, thousands of people sleep on the streets in Portland, Oregon. They seek shelter in tents, bushes and overpasses in a city that has struggled with one of the worst housing crises in the country. Portland, like many cities, has raced to increase its supply of affordable housing by turning to a federal program that’s existed since the 1980s: the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. It provides up to $15 billion worth of tax credits a year nationally to help developers build apartments. Portland supplemented the federal construction money with local dollars, creating incentives that were hard to turn down. But to meet the affordability requirements, all the developers needed to do in most cases was put rents within reach of someone earning 60% of median income, an earnings threshold that equates to about $75,000 annually for a family of four. It turns out that this amount of rent is now close to what the typical Portland landlord charges without any subsidy. The result of the federal tax credit has been a glut of apartments costing renters on the order of about $1,400 a month for a one-bedroom. That’s a manageable outlay for a family making $75,000 but nearly half the monthly income of someone who earns $35,000 at the local minimum wage. Nearly 2,000 of Portland’s subsidized units sat vacant and unused at last count, as The Oregonian and Willamette Week have reported. The same situation has repeated from Seattle to the San Francisco Bay Area to Denver. Economists and other academic researchers have been warning for decades that this was precisely the sort of problem that the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit was likely to create. Studies have concluded that the program, which currently supports nine out of every 10 subsidized units built in America, is an expensive and ineffective way to house people who can’t afford it. Researchers have said it doesn’t subsidize housing deeply enough to reach truly low-income renters, so it produces housing in markets and at income levels that already have a surplus instead of filling a shortage. Independent researchers have found little evidence it’s expanded the overall housing supply beyond what the market would have produced without it. Its complexity has birthed an industry of affordable-housing-focused developers, investors, lawyers and accounting specialists who profit off the tax credit. Between 1991 and 2024, a dozen studies concluded that many more people could benefit if the money were spent on rental vouchers, which let consumers, rather than the government, decide which landlords get tax subsidies. Estimates went as high as twice the impact for the dollar. “The evidence is telling us this program is lacking its reason to exist,” said Kirk McClure, an emeritus professor of urban planning at the University of Kansas and a leading critic of the tax credit. “We should reform the program to make it work better.” McClure and others have brought their concerns to Congress. He recommended diverting the money into rental vouchers for tenants, or else changing the tax credit’s rules to reward only developers who build units in genuinely short supply: those affordable to people at the very bottom of the income ladder. The ideas never went anywhere. Instead, money for the tax credit has grown at a much faster rate than rental assistance vouchers since 2000, data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Treasury shows. Rock-solid support from industries that benefit from the tax credit and both parties in Congress has made it the linchpin of U.S. housing policy. “The program leverages housing market forces, entrepreneurial innovation and private accountability to increase housing supply,” former HUD Secretary Ben Carson told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in 2025. Among the tax credit’s other prominent backers are two Northwest Democrats on the Senate Committee on Finance, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Maria Cantwell of Washington. Cantwell has introduced bills to increase funding for the existing tax credit, and Wyden has proposed expanding the target of the credits to benefit not just low-income families, but also middle-income households — the opposite of what McClure says needs to happen. Both Wyden and Cantwell say Congress should hold more hearings to ensure the program is run efficiently, but they also defended it in written statements to Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica. “There isn’t any silver bullet to the housing crisis in Oregon and around the country,” Wyden’s statement said, “but the low-income housing tax credit has been the most successful federal housing construction program on the books for decades and is the only housing program Republicans haven’t tried to gut.” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden has proposed expanding the target of the credits to benefit not just low-income families, but also middle-income households — the opposite of experts’ advice. Francis Chung/Politico via AP Images Indeed, President Donald Trump has sought to cut housing programs such as rent assistance. But as part of his spending package last year, Congress approved the biggest expansion of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit in decades. “That’s a mistake,” McClure said. It won’t alleviate homelessness or the housing shortage for people at the lowest incomes, he said. It will just create more buildings that compete with the market and with one another for the same pool of renters. McClure recounted seeing a brand-new affordable housing complex near his home in Kansas not long ago with a sign enticing tenants of another government-backed complex down the street, promoting newer units at the same price. “So the taxpayers of the United States subsidized the creation of this new property to help bankrupt another federally subsidized property,” he said. “That is stupidity 101. We have got to be better stewards of the American taxpayer’s dollar.” Subsidized Vacancies Oregon’s affordable housing production has skyrocketed in recent years. So have rents and homelessness. Over the past decade, Oregon lawmakers doubled funding for the state’s affordable housing tax credit and started offering low-interest and deferred loans for construction. Voters in the Portland area, meanwhile, passed housing bonds totaling more than $900 million. Developers can use that money to secure federal housing tax credits. The state went from building about 1,800 affordable units a year pre-pandemic to nearly 5,000 last year. Industries that benefit from the tax credit say it’s the engine that makes that kind of building boom possible. The Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition, representing lenders, developers and others in the industry, has called the program “the most effective tool we have to meet the affordable housing needs in rural, suburban, and urban areas.” Jennifer Schwartz, director of tax and housing advocacy for the National Council of State Housing Agencies, which advocates for the tax credit and other housing programs administered by states, said the housing market by itself won’t produce a big enough supply of housing within reach for low-income renters. That goes for even those who receive federal rent vouchers, she said. “It costs too much to build housing to turn around and rent it to households who are low-income households,” Schwartz said, “unless you have some sort of incentive like the housing credit.” But in Portland, all that new construction hasn’t made a dent in the city’s affordability crisis. A report from the Portland Housing Bureau in 2025 found that rent and home sale prices were growing faster than incomes, even as the city’s vacancy rate was also rising. The vacancy rate was roughly 7.6% as of May, according to Aaron Kirk Douglas, director of market intelligence at the Portland-based brokerage HFO Investment Real Estate. Vacancies are even higher for ostensibly affordable units: 11%, leaving nearly 2,000 units unused. Housing industry experts consider 5% vacancy to be a baseline for ordinary turnover. The time it takes to verify that a tenant’s income meets the tax credit’s requirements and prep units for move-in played a role in the struggle to fill vacant units built with the federal subsidy. But housing advocates say the biggest barrier is price. The gap between market-rate rents and affordable housing rents has shrunk, and not just in Portland. By one industry estimate, in more than a dozen U.S. cities at least 40% of affordable housing was competing with market-rate buildings rates in 2025. In the Portland suburb of Gresham, federal rules cap a two-bedroom apartment built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit at $1,675 a month. Zillow puts the equivalent market-rate apartment at $1,525. Operators of a new $53.8 million development in northeast Portland, built with the tax credit and the local housing bond, had trouble filling studio and one-bedroom apartments whose affordable rents were near market rate. They began offering a month of free rent for new tenants, according to a March report from the committee that oversees the region’s housing bond. Affordable housing providers, which in Portland are predominantly nonprofit organizations, are also increasing their marketing budgets to attract renters away from market-rate buildings. “The idea that we’re competing with the market would have been unfathomable a few years ago,” said Margaret Salazar, CEO of Reach Community Development Corporation, one of Portland’s largest affordable housing providers. Salazar, who led Oregon’s state housing agency during the COVID-19 pandemic and later worked as a regional director for HUD, is a longtime proponent of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. But she said the people who can afford to rent apartments the tax credit has produced would rather move into a market-rate apartment for similar money and with fewer rules and restrictions. “It’s becoming a slimmer and slimmer slice of residents” that Reach can serve, she said. “Suddenly we’re competing for this little slice of people.” Meanwhile, a substantial group of Portland-area residents remain priced out. HUD data shows more than 90,000 households in Multnomah County earn less than the 60% of median income that a family would typically need to afford a federally subsidized unit. (The precise number of families who can’t afford “affordable” units is unclear because it depends on variations in household size, actual rent levels and other subsidies that might reduce rents further.) Salazar said that right now Reach can rent to people at lower income levels only if it can find additional subsidies such as housing vouchers — and funding for vouchers is so limited that only 1 in 4 people who qualify are able to get them. Despite the convergence of rent levels in market-rate and subsidized housing, supporters of the tax credit say it remains valuable because the units it subsidizes are constrained from raising rents faster than incomes — and there’s no guarantee market-rate rents will remain at this level in the future. But Steve Rudman, who ran the local housing authority in the Portland area for more than a decade, said the fact that the tax credit is now delivering market-rate housing rather than housing for the poorest households raises an existential question for the federal program. “What is this thing really doing?” Rudman said. “What is the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit?” A Stopgap Takes Off Criticism of the federal construction credit has been a near constant since it began. In the Reagan era, housing experts began to worry rents would become unaffordable amid deep cuts to housing programs and the drafting of the Tax Reform Act, which eliminated several tax shelters for real estate. McClure, an economist for the city of Boston at the time, worked with others to design a tax credit that would reward affordable housing production. “It was meant to be a three-year stopgap until we came up with something better,” he said. The idea was to incorporate low-income housing into market-rate housing construction that was already taking place. Developers could receive a tax credit if they capped rents for a certain portion of the apartments in their building, and they could continue to rent the rest at any amount they chose. McClure crafted letters for Boston’s mayor to send Congress in support of the idea. His analysis helped decide the subsidy amount. Developers could offset 70% of the cost of new builds or 30% of the cost of a rehab. Congress signed off in 1986. Almost immediately, the program diverged from the outcomes McClure had envisioned. Kirk McClure, one of the drafters of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. For decades, he’s been calling for reforms to the policy. Arin Yoon for ProPublica He and other drafters of the tax credit had thought developers would use it to offer deep discounts on a small number of units, allowing them to charge market rate on the rest. But developers found it more profitable to subsidize 100% of their units at the smallest allowable discount, a rent affordable to households at 60% of median income. In 1992, as lawmakers considered making the 6-year-old Low-Income Housing Tax Credit permanent, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office declared the program “unlikely to substantially increase the supply of affordable housing” and “more suited to the needs of investors than poor renters.” For one, the tax credits cost a lot to administer, congressional economists said. They also pointed to evidence that subsidized housing production dampened market-rate construction. Congress was preparing to give developers $3 billion through the tax credit as of 1992. Putting that money into housing vouchers instead, the CBO concluded, would help 550,000 households, more than twice as many as would benefit from the construction tax credit. The numbers echoed findings from an earlier HUD evaluation of tax credits vs. vouchers. Congress made the tax credit permanent a year later. As time wore on, McClure’s emerging doubts about a program he originally expected to be temporary only deepened. When the Fannie Mae Foundation hired him in 1997 to analyze how the tax credit was doing, he concluded it was a “very inefficient subsidy delivery mechanism” that didn’t produce as much housing as it should have. Other studies came to similar conclusions as McClure, HUD and the Congressional Budget Office. At least five found the tax credit does little to increase the overall housing supply. The Government Accountability Office noted problems with the program in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018, finding it lacked basic oversight to show the federal funds worked as intended. A 2017 investigation by NPR and Frontline documented numerous examples of waste and fraud, including one developer pocketing tax credits without building the required housing. “Given the available evidence on program performance, we should certainly not expand the tax credit program,” Edgar Olsen, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Virginia, wrote in a 2017 article for the American Enterprise Institute. “The existing evidence argues for terminating it.” There are some critics within Congress. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Wisconsin, introduced a bill to kill the program last year, calling it a “cash grab for developers and banks.” But the bill went nowhere. Olsen, like McClure, remains adamant today about what he considers the tax program’s uselessness. In a recent interview, he told OPB and ProPublica that he’s urged policymakers, in academic articles and in testimony, to re-examine whether the program has any value at all. “How often do they talk to people like me or like Kirk McClure? The answer is almost never,” Olsen said. “What they hear from are people who represent the financial interest of the industry, and so they want more money to be spent on this.” The post A Low-Income Housing Program Is Pouring Billions Into Housing Many People Can’t Afford appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Regulation, Taxes]

— Toxic Ground: How Oil Field Pollution Is Threatening Oklahoma

 

at 6/2/26 4:00am

Collage by Mauricio Rodriguez Pons/ProPublica. Source images: Katie Campbell/ProPublica. Kara Meredith can tell you the exact day her life turned upside down: Aug. 23, 2025. She was at her home in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma, caring for her 5-week-old son, when one of her daughters ran to tell her there was water all over the bathroom floor. Her husband, Mitch Meredith, wasn’t worried — until he saw the dark liquid bubbling up around the base of the bathtub. Mitch and his relatives worked all night trying to contain it. It was near dawn when his uncle said, “This is oil.” Read more Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help. The United States is the largest oil and gas producer in the world. All of that drilling produces hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic wastewater each year. For decades, energy companies have disposed of that briny fluid by shooting it back underground using high-pressure injection wells. But across Oklahoma, the fluid is spreading uncontrollably belowground, blasting out of old, unplugged wells, polluting land and contaminating drinking water. In a new documentary from The Frontier and ProPublica, reporter Nick Bowlin investigates a scourge of oil field wastewater seeping into the lives of Oklahomans, about half of whom live within a mile of an oil and gas operation. His reporting takes him to the headquarters of the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, the state agency tasked with regulating oil and gas. The agency told Bowlin that it is committed to “doing the right thing, holding operators accountable, protecting Oklahoma and its resources, and providing fair and balanced regulation.” But as Bowlin continues to dig, he discovers he is far from the first one to raise the alarm about what’s happening in Oklahoma.Watch the documentary here. Show Us What It’s Like to Live with Oil Pollution in Oklahoma We’ve reported on oil and gas pollution contaminating drinking water, killing cattle and damaging property. We need your help to show how this affects people across the state. Share Your Experience The post Toxic Ground: How Oil Field Pollution Is Threatening Oklahoma appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Environment, Pollution]

— After the Trump DOJ Halted Police Reform, This City Stepped In. Then Officers Shot and Killed Katelyn Hall.

 

at 6/2/26 3:00am

Community leaders and civil rights advocates say that one year into Louisville, Kentucky's attempts at police reform, the efforts have yielded mixed results. Jon Cherry for ProPublica Last May, as President Donald Trump settled into his second term, the Justice Department walked away from federal efforts to reform troubled police departments across the country. Officials announced their decision to not only drop lawsuits against two cities for unconstitutional policing but also retract findings of abuse in a half dozen other places. Some of those jurisdictions celebrated the news. But not Louisville, Kentucky, a blue city in a red state whose elected leaders used the occasion to make their own announcement. After the federal withdrawal, Mayor Craig Greenberg said Louisville would be “moving ahead rapidly” with reforms to its police department, which had been found to have a pattern of unconstitutional policing. In fact, the city would be adopting a version of the reform agreement Louisville had previously negotiated with the Biden administration and hiring an outside monitor to oversee its progress. “I made a promise to our community,” the mayor said, “and we are keeping that promise.” There was much to do. In 2023, federal investigators had found that the city’s police routinely discriminated against Black residents, inappropriately used police dogs against people, and failed to properly respond to people facing mental health challenges. The mayor said the local reform plan would allow city leaders to correct these problems and accomplish key goals, perhaps even faster than he outlined. But police records obtained by ProPublica show just how entrenched the issues were. Two years after the DOJ revealed its initial findings, while the Greenberg administration was charting its path to reform in early 2025, officers were still engaging in the problematic policing practices called out by federal investigators, according to the records. Most notably, police officials were failing to thoroughly review officers’ use of force. Today, one year into the citys reform effort, community leaders and civil rights advocates say the results have been mixed. For example, the city has expanded a pilot program to direct some mental health calls away from police and send them instead to mental health specialists. Yet a panel created to review the department’s mental health practices overall only met for the first time in March, almost a year after it was announced, and it isn’t scheduled to issue recommendations for another year. “What we do as a city, we make things look good on paper, but then in the application of it, it plays out so differently,” said Shameka Parrish-Wright, a Louisville city council member and a candidate for mayor looking to unseat Greenberg later this year. “And what plays out on the ground in day-to-day interactions is different.” Underscoring the stakes for Louisville residents is the March fatal shooting of a 28-year-old woman named Katelyn Hall, who was experiencing a mental health crisis when police gunned her down in her own apartment. Experts in mental health told ProPublica that the incident is emblematic of practices flagged by the Justice Department more than three years ago. Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Paul Humphrey, however, said the department should not be judged by one shooting given that it responded to 3,200 mental health calls last year and “only about eight resulted in any injury to anyone.” The incident is still under investigation. Louisville police killed 28-year-old Katelyn Hall after responding to a call at her apartment, where she was experiencing a mental health crisis. Louisville Metro Police Department In the aftermath of the killing, Greenberg’s office is exploring ways to pair mental health professionals with police in such situations — an idea that, critics note, was explicitly recommended in 2023 by the Justice Department. Today, the city sends either mental health professionals or police to calls, but does not have them respond together on critical incidents, including when a weapon is present. Greenberg declined multiple requests for interviews, but his press secretary, Matt Mudd, defended the reform work, which he said was now being overseen by an independent monitor. The Louisville Metro Police Department is in a much better place than it was three years ago,” he told ProPublica in an email. “That work is ongoing, and we are partnering closely with the community to ensure progress continues. Humphrey, the police chief, noted that police reform can often take years to achieve under federal oversight. By comparison, Humphrey told ProPublica, “I think were going at a really good clip.” Today, the city stands as a test case for how effectively a community can implement police reform without a court order and the accountability that comes with federal intervention. “Theres no enforceability by law,” said Ed Harness, Louisville’s first-ever inspector general. He is charged with investigating misconduct in the police department. “Now whether reform can happen voluntarily, with compliance and supervision by elected leaders, kind of is the question that will be answered in Louisville.” Louisville’s inspector general, Ed Harness, is charged with investigating misconduct in the police department. Jon Cherry for ProPublica The Path to Reform Policing in Louisville has been under a national microscope since March 2020, when plainclothes officers broke down the door of Breonna Taylor’s apartment serving a no-knock search warrant. Her boyfriend thought they were robbers and fired a single shot at them. Taylor, a 26-year-old Black medical worker, was killed as police returned fire. Her case, along with that of George Floyd in Minneapolis, helped spark a national reckoning over race and policing, and attracted the scrutiny of the Justice Department. In 2023, just months after Greenberg took office, the DOJ published a scathing report on the police department’s pattern of misconduct and constitutional violations. By December 2024, the city and the DOJ announced the details of a court agreement, known as a consent decree, that would set requirements for improvements and be overseen by an outside monitor and a judge. Greenberg touted the city’s commitment to “aggressively implement police reform.” In the following months, however, the questionable police behavior continued. Police records first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and later by ProPublica through a public records request detail nearly 50 use-of-force incidents from December 2024 through April 2025. In more than half of them, officers engaged in actions that the Justice Department had noted in 2023 were either violations of peoples rights, like using choke holds and allowing police dogs to continue biting people who no longer posed a threat, or otherwise needed improvement, like how supervisors reviewed such incidents. In one case, a suspect spit on an officer, who then performed a “takedown” of the man while he was already in handcuffs. In another, multiple witnesses said an officer put his knee on a man’s back while he lay on the ground, a tactic that has been widely condemned since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck in 2020. In both those instances, as well as others, the department’s internal review unit found the uses of force to be appropriate. According to the records, the review unit failed to discuss alternative approaches or completely review all uses of force by the officers involved.  Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, the deputy project director for the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project, said her team requested the records in Louisville and six other jurisdictions to assess whether they corrected the problems flagged by the DOJ in its investigations. In Louisville, she said her organization expected oversight to be extra diligent given the DOJ’s criticism of what it called “biased” internal investigations. “We were troubled by a review process that seemed more concerned with protecting the agency from liability than with protecting the public from further abuse,” she said. The Louisville police department did not respond to ProPublica’s inquiry about the records and the use-of-force review process. Last May, just five months after the consent decree was signed, Harmeet Dhillon, head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, announced the department was dropping the case against Louisville, ending what she called the “failed experiment of handcuffing local leaders and police departments with factually unjustified consent decrees.” The Hall of Justice in Louisville Jon Cherry for ProPublica Questions Over City’s Commitment The same day, Greenberg unveiled his administration’s reform plan, dubbed the Community Commitment, and pledged to hire an independent monitor to oversee the police department’s progress. The document carried over much of the federal reform plan, but civil rights advocates and community leaders noticed it differed in key ways. Most notably, it had no mechanism for enforcement in the event of a disagreement between the monitor and the police department. Under a federal consent decree, a federal judge makes the final decisions on such disputes and can force departments to implement corrective actions. Louisvilles plan simply calls for the parties to have continued talks. That makes the policy initiative vulnerable to the vagaries of politics or local budgeting, critics say. “Thats the biggest risk here, that it will just prove to be too difficult, too expensive, not politically advantageous for this or subsequent administrations to continue this effort,” said Christy Lopez, a professor at Georgetown Law who spent years investigating police misconduct for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “That is one advantage that consent decrees offer, that they have the oversight and threat of a federal judge, who can make contempt findings if people are not doing what they said they would do. You dont have that here.” Because of that, several community leaders want to enshrine key parts of the agreement in local law. “We need an ordinance that makes sure the reforms from the consent decree are done regardless of administration,” said Kungu Njuguna, a lifelong resident of Louisville and a policy strategist for the Kentucky ACLU. Louisville resident and Kentucky ACLU policy strategist Kungu Njuguna believes the city needs an ordinance to enshrine police reforms. Jon Cherry for ProPublica Ericka Seward, a community activist who has been campaigning for police accountability since Taylor’s killing in 2020, said the current reform plan requires residents to trust the police to make change — a difficult task, she said, given the department’s history of discriminatory policing. Seward, who is Black, said she watched officers manhandle her 21-year-old son in the parking lot of his apartment complex in 2022. He had called her during a traffic stop for what police said was erratic driving, and she drove to the location. After patting him down, officers were about to let him go with a warning when he argued that the stop was dubious and told the officers he would be complaining to members of the department’s leadership who his mother knew through her work as an activist, Seward said. The officers then physically pulled him back to their car and told him they were now going to issue him tickets, she said. Her son was cited for careless driving and failure to signal. “It was scary to me, it was scary to him,” Seward said. “Because we know what theyre capable of.” Seward filed a complaint with the city inspector general’s office. According to its report, the lead officer defended his actions, telling investigators that, because Sewards son was accusing him of not having a valid reason for the stop, he became concerned and wanted to document the stop to show that he did have probable cause.” While Harness’ office found no wrongdoing on that count, it did note that the officer couldn’t say how fast Seward’s son was driving. It also found that the department did not have a policy prohibiting retaliation and recommended that one be adopted, according to records. The department has since done so, though that too has drawn criticism from Harness’ office, which said its recommendation was “largely ignored.” The revised policy only applies to retaliation after a complaint has been filed, the inspector general’s report said, meaning it does not cover retaliatory policing in response to “citizens’ words, actions or demeanor.” In its 2023 investigation, the Justice Department found that Louisville police officers had “threatened and retaliated against civilian complainants.” It also found that Black drivers were nearly twice as likely as white drivers to be cited by police for minor violations — part of a pattern of discriminatory policing that investigators said often led to unnecessary and tense interactions between police and the public, sometimes resulting in arrest. The DOJ noted racial disparities in enforcement for loitering, littering and having dark window tinting. The federal consent decree dictated that those kinds of offenses receive warnings unless an officer could articulate why that approach was “insufficient” to deal with the issue. That change, however, is not in the city’s reform plan. Humphrey said that leaders determined the measure wasn’t in the best interest of the city or its officers. He also said police are trained on how to best determine the right course of action on those low-level infractions. Rebecca Hall, mother of Katelyn Hall, who was killed by police, with Dash, Katelyn’s emotional support dog Jon Cherry for ProPublica A Mental Health Crisis, a Deadly Encounter The city did incorporate into its plan many of the DOJ’s recommendations for handling people with mental health issues. Such incidents made up nearly a quarter of the use-of-force cases investigators reviewed, according to the federal report, “and a large share of those incidents involved at least one unreasonable use of force.” The city’s plan included a number of measures, starting with the formation of a behavioral health council to review incidents and recommend changes to policies and practices with the goal of “reducing the number of police encounters with people with behavioral health disabilities involving unnecessary use of force and reducing the severity of the force when force is required.” The council, however, didn’t have its first meeting until March — about 10 months after the mayor’s announcement. Police officials told ProPublica that city leaders decided to first hire the independent monitor and develop an implementation plan before putting the behavioral council to work. Four days after the group had its first meeting, Louisville police responded to a 911 call about Katelyn Hall, the 28-year-old woman in mental health crisis. She had locked herself in the bathroom and, according to her roommate, had cut her wrists and ingested cleaning fluids, and was behaving erratically. She had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had previously attempted suicide. Within 13 minutes of their arrival, police shot and killed her. Rebecca Hall shows the last text messages she received from her daughter before Katelyn was killed by Louisville police. Jon Cherry for ProPublica “No one wants to see an outcome like this,” Humphrey said in early April during a press conference. “We have already begun to use this incident to work on improving how we handle these situations. We owe that to everyone involved and to the city.” But mental health and law enforcement experts who reviewed police body camera footage of the incident told ProPublica that officers demonstrated some of the same problematic behaviors first identified by the Justice Department more than three years ago. The federal investigators found Louisville officers “frequently fail to give people experiencing crisis time or space” and “do not engage in verbal de-escalation for enough time to be successful.” In fact, officers often made the situation more tense and confrontational, which would lead to “increased safety risks to themselves and the person in crisis and increased the likelihood of the use of force.” In Hall’s case, the officers started out asking questions like, “What’s going on?” and, “Can you talk to me?” while Hall screamed at them to let her die. Police spent about six minutes talking with her before a member of the Emergency Medical Services unit, worried that Hall had cut her wrists, suggested forcing the door open. The team spent the next three minutes breaking the doors lock and popping one of its hinges, during which time the officers pushed themselves against the door attempting to get into the bathroom. Sharon Gandarilla-Javier, an assistant professor of police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, called it a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation, but stressed that the six minutes of discussion wasn’t enough time and the police should have considered alternatives to forcing the door open. For example, Hall’s mother, Rebecca, was on scene and identified herself to first responders, assuming they would ask her to help talk with her daughter. They never did. Mariela Ruiz-Angel, the director of alternative response initiatives for Georgetown Law’s Center for Innovations in Community Safety, said Hall’s mother could have been a “game changer.” “We’ve used that tactic multiple times to try to find the loved one that makes the most sense, to be like, ‘Hey, Im here, Mamas here,’” she said. At one point, an officer tells Hall, “I want you to live,” and that her friends and family are worried about her.  The responders designated which officers would use their hands, a Taser and a firearm in preparation for Hall’s exit from the locked room. But Gandarilla-Javier, who spent more than 10 years as a New York Police Department officer and teaches classes on trauma-informed policing and crisis intervention, told ProPublica that the plan overheard on the video needed to be more detailed, with an explicit discussion about how to safely subdue Hall if she were to advance on them. When Hall ultimately opened the door and walked toward the officers, she was holding a broken piece of toilet. Within five seconds, she was shot by two officers, including the one who minutes before had told her he wanted her to live. Had the officers planned better, the outcome may have been different, Gandarilla-Javier said. Louisville Metro Police Deputy Chief Emily McKinley told reporters in April that “each encounter poses a unique and often chaotic challenge,” and that in the Hall case, “If you look at the porcelain, I think it could be an extremely lethal situation” for the officers. Asked whether officers could have instead tackled Hall, she declined to answer, saying such questions would be part of the investigation into the shooting. Hall’s mother said police could have done more. “My daughter deserved more than eight minutes of their time,” Rebecca Hall said through tears in an interview. “She needed kindness and she needed somebody back there” to let her know that they cared. Hall continued: “She didn’t get that in that moment. I know she definitely didn’t need bullets. … She just needed help.” Mental health advocates like Khalilah Collins have been pushing for years for the department to allow mental health professionals to lead the response to such calls. In fact, she was part of a group of professionals who, at the city’s request, researched alternative responses in 2021. The study was part of the reforms that the city pledged to undertake in a lawsuit settlement after Taylor’s killing, but a nonpolice response failed to win the support of city leaders and wasn’t adopted. “We refuse to build what we need for people,” Collins said. “We dont want the police there. The police dont want to be there. Theyre not trained to be there, but we refuse to do anything else.” To be sure, the department did create a program to divert some calls to mental health professionals, but that did not happen in this case because police determined Hall was “armed with glass.” Louisville police policy dictates that if a weapon is present, mental health professionals cannot respond to the calls. In the wake of Hall’s death, though, Greenberg and Humphrey say they are now exploring whether police and mental health professionals should be allowed to respond together. According to Mudd, the mayor’s spokesperson, one option being discussed involves using “new technology, like cameras, to add behavioral health providers to situations that require their expertise without potentially sacrificing their safety.” When ProPublica asked Mudd if there was a timeline for making a decision, he said only that the city and the police department were “moving with urgency.” The post After the Trump DOJ Halted Police Reform, This City Stepped In. Then Officers Shot and Killed Katelyn Hall. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice, Police]

— “No One Is Watching”: How Trump Reversed Biden’s Crackdown on Gun Trafficking

 

at 6/1/26 3:00am

Collage by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: Bloomberg/Getty Images, Firearm Transaction Record Form via U.S. Department of Justice and Alec MacGillis/ProPublica. Marianna Mitchem grew up in the Denver suburbs, where she played high school soccer. One day in April 1999, her team faced off against a nearby rival, Columbine High. The next day, two teenagers went on a shooting rampage at Columbine, killing more than a dozen people. The massacre left an imprint on Mitchem. After graduating from Providence College, she joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Fearing for my friends and watching what was happening — you don’t forget things like that,” she told me. “I wanted to make a difference.” She started in the ATF’s Denver office as an industry operations investigator, the bureau’s term for inspectors who ensure that firearms dealers are conducting the required background checks on buyers and maintaining sales records. When the bureau found discrepancies, it tended to settle for reprimands and improvement plans, rarely going so far as to revoke a dealer’s license. In 2021, things started to change. The country was experiencing a surge of deadly violence, with homicides up more than a third since 2019, and the administration of President Joe Biden was desperate to reverse the trend. For years, data had shown that a large share of guns used in shootings came from a small fraction of dealers, and that guns that were trafficked — sold by stores to straw purchasers (people other than the intended users) or resold on the street — were far more likely to be used in shootings. Acting on this data, the administration in June 2021 announced what became known as “zero tolerance”: Dealers found to be willfully violating the law would lose their licenses, period. Revocations spiked, from fewer than 50 in 2019, 2020 and 2021 to a record 181 in 2023. Also in 2021, Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, started urging federal prosecutors to prioritize gun violence. A year later, Congress passed a law that added a firearms trafficking conspiracy charge to the federal criminal code, a crucial new tool for prosecutors. After 2021, the homicide rate started falling, which criminologists attributed to several factors, including repair of the social fabric since the coronavirus pandemic and a closing of the breach in police-community relations that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd. One other factor got less attention: the clampdown on the illegal flow of firearms. The Biden administration struggled to broadcast its gains on public safety, and Donald Trump won the election in 2024 partly by vowing to restore order. By the time Trump reentered the White House, Mitchem had risen to associate assistant director for industry operations, overseeing inspectors across the country. “We were making incredible progress on trafficking, on violent crime,” she said late last year. But the Trump administration, driven both by gun-lobby advocacy and its own political priorities, quickly set about undoing much of its predecessor’s moves to combat gun violence. It repealed the zero-tolerance policy, going so far as to invite revoked dealers to reapply for new licenses. It shifted hundreds of ATF agents to immigration work. And it scaled back on prosecutions for gun trafficking. The White House declined to comment, referring questions to the ATF and the Department of Justice. The homicide rate fell further last year, but criminologists warn against complacency, because the illicit gun trade is a classic pipeline problem: The harm can take a while to make itself felt. Research has found that the typical “time to crime” for trafficked firearms ranges up to about three years, which means that any positive lag of the anti-trafficking efforts of the Biden years would still be in effect now, with any negative effects of the Trump pullback lying in the years to come. Among those now sounding the alarm is Mitchem. Dismayed at the policy reversal, she left the ATF last spring, after 21 years, and joined Everytown, the gun-safety group founded by Michael Bloomberg. “Just because no one is watching the trafficking pipelines right now doesn’t mean guns aren’t flowing through it. It just means they’re not being intercepted,” she told me. “And as you walk away from that, and you don’t have your focus on that anymore,” she added, “that pipeline is going to be flowing, and we are going to start to see the violent crime impact from that over time.” Estimates put the number of guns in the United States at close to 400 million, but the odds that any of them will be put to ill use rise exponentially if they are obtained illegally. Of the 2.3 million firearms traced from crime scenes between 2017 and 2023, half were bought less than three years earlier and 87% were recovered in possession of someone other than the original, legally authorized buyer. Over that period, stores sold almost 1.3 million guns to traffickers that were subsequently recovered in a crime, according to an Everytown analysis of ATF statistics. This is why the laws governing gun sales carry such high stakes for public safety. But enforcement of these laws has long occupied an unusual no-man’s-land in this country, scrambling the standard political lines around criminal justice. Conservatives favoring tough-on-crime rhetoric are frequently torn when it comes to firearms trafficking: On the one hand, traffickers are helping fuel the violent crime that conservatives decry; on the other, prosecution of gun laws brushes against tenets that conservatives hold sacrosanct. It is liberals who are more likely to push for tougher enforcement, though they can be conflicted, too, as their belief in stricter gun laws runs up against a general preference for a less punitive approach to lawbreaking. Marooned in this no-man’s-land for decades now has been the agency assigned the task of enforcing federal gun laws, the ATF. Going back to an episode at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in 1992, where an ATF investigation of illegal gun dealing led to federal agents killing the wife and son of a white separatist, the ATF has been viewed with scorn by people who otherwise might side with armed government authorities. “ATF IS GAY” read the T-shirt worn by one attendee of a big gun show I attended earlier this year in Manassas, Virginia. The agency’s radioactivity with the gun-rights lobby has left it on shaky political ground. It went seven years without a Senate-confirmed director. Its budget has not enjoyed the same expansion as that of other federal law enforcement agencies. And stringent laws constrain any ATF capabilities viewed as potentially threatening the rights of gun owners. To comply with a 1986 law preventing the creation of a federal gun registry, for example, the ATF uses software with some features disabled. Steve Dettelbach, who served as director under Biden, joked in a 2024 congressional hearing that the ATF might be “the only customer of Adobe Acrobat that pays money to remove search function.” Despite these constraints, the ATF has developed its investigative capability. In the 1990s, the agency started sharing with local law enforcement agencies its National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, which collects the unique marks on bullet casings found at shooting scenes. The system has become much more potent as it became easier to share large numbers of images from crime scenes rapidly and compare them against the NIBIN database. The work was boosted further by the creation, starting in 2016, of 25 crime gun intelligence centers to process the data. Given that a tiny share of the nation’s guns are used in shootings, with many of those used multiple times, the leads produced by the technology can have an outsized impact, said Daryl McCormick, who retired last year as special agent in charge of Ohio and southern Indiana. “It’s crazy how it might spiderweb out,” he told me, “because you have a gun that’s used in three shootings, but in one of those three shootings, there’s a guy that’s linked to three more shootings.” Starting in the spring of 2020, that technology was put to the test. As homicides rose sharply, so did sales at dealerships. By one estimate, there were 3 million more guns sold between that March and July than would have been expected. Many soon turned up in shootings; the number of guns recovered at crime scenes that had been bought from a dealership less than a year earlier, an especially strong indicator of firearms trafficking, jumped by nearly a third from 2019 to 2021. Meanwhile, many shootings involved ghost guns assembled from kits, which had begun proliferating a few years prior. Amid other factors driving the killing, the sheer plenitude of weaponry on the streets was pivotal, said Daniel Webster, a gun-violence researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “We know,” he told me, “that a small number of dealers can create a substantial amount of harm, and traffickers as well.” In the spring of 2021, a 25-year-old man was summoned to help a friend in a confrontation at a low-income housing development in Middletown, Connecticut. It was a petty beef arising from disrespectful comments made to someone’s girlfriend, but Tylon Hardy responded anyway. “He was one of the guys who wanted to protect his community,” his sister, Tianna Hardy, told me later. “He showed up to protect his friend.” After he arrived, Tylon was fatally shot in the back. A photo of Tylon Hardy in his sister’s house. He was fatally shot in Middletown, Connecticut. Jarod Lew for ProPublica Guns are tightly regulated in Connecticut, where buyers must first obtain a permit. But this gun had not been sold by a Connecticut store. It had been purchased six days earlier at Smokin’ Barrel Guns and Ammo in Raleigh, North Carolina, more than 600 miles away. It was a particularly rapid movement up the Iron Pipeline, the name for the trafficking channel from southern states with lax gun laws to northern states with stricter ones. And it turned into a clear example of why trafficking enforcement matters. Investigators obtained camera footage from the shop showing a young man emerging after buying the gun, a Taurus 9 mm pistol, to make a call on his cellphone. The following spring, the Biden-nominated U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Michael Easley Jr., produced indictments in the case that started with the camera: Four people were charged with having engaged in a conspiracy to traffic dozens of guns from shops in eastern and central North Carolina. All told, the ringleader had bought more than 100 guns from straw purchasers in North Carolina; 10 of the guns surfaced at crime scenes in Connecticut and New Jersey. The ringleader ended up pleading guilty and being sentenced to more than 10 years in prison; the other three received sentences ranging from 18 months to five years. Tianna Hardy’s brother, Tylon, was shot with a trafficked gun from North Carolina. Jarod Lew for ProPublica Easley kept pursuing trafficking cases, poring over spreadsheets full of NIBIN data showing information for every gun traced from shootings in his district. His office would zero in on guns with a short “time to crime” from the initial sale and see if investigators could build leads from purchase records. His team made its interest in trafficking plain to the local ATF division, motivating agents to build cases. “Prosecutors have the ability to send a demand signal to the marketplace of agents, that we have an interest in these and if you bring us the cases, we will push them over the end zone and get convictions,” he told me. Prosecutors kept getting more encouragement from Washington. In April 2022, the ATF issued a rule decreeing that ghost guns had to conform to the same regulations as regular firearms, including carrying serial numbers and requiring background checks. Two months later, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which got crucial Republican backing from North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis. In addition to the new trafficking conspiracy charge, the law included a new straw-purchasing charge, expanded background checks for buyers under 21 and funding for states with red-flag laws permitting gun confiscations from those judged dangerous. And a month after that, the Senate confirmed Dettelbach, giving the ATF its first confirmed director since 2015, one who had prosecuted gun crimes as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio. Across the country, federal prosecutors took on trafficking cases with gusto. Over the remainder of Biden’s term, they charged more than 500 defendants using the new trafficking statutes; others brought cases using laws already on the books. In Ohio, McCormick and his ATF colleagues took on a sprawling case that started with a shooting with a machine gun in Avondale, outside Cincinnati, and led to a six-year prison sentence for a 24-year-old man who had made and sold over 80 machine-gun conversion devices; two other men who trafficked the devices to Cincinnati gangs were sentenced to nine and 11 years. As in North Carolina, the Ohio agents were getting encouragement from prosecutors, including Kenneth Parker, the then-U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Ohio. “I made it clear, through my edicts, my announcements to them that we wanted those cases involving violence, that they know how seriously we were taking them,” he told me. In February, I drove to Raleigh to meet with Easley and visit Smokin’ Barrel — or what used to be Smokin’ Barrel. The shop closed after the ATF revoked its license in early 2023, not for having sold the gun in the Connecticut case, but for an earlier incident, in which the owner sold a gun to an 18-year-old woman, in violation of North Carolina’s 21-year age minimum for buying a handgun. The shop, a small outbuilding adjacent to a used car lot, now sat empty; its fading sign still stood roadside. Not far away, I found the former owner, Richard Humphries, at his home. He told me how upset he still was over the revocation, especially since, he said, he had self-reported the improper sale. When I asked him about the Taurus that ended up being used six days later in the Connecticut killing, he initially had trouble recalling it, confusing it with another case in which a man had used a gun bought at the store to kill his wife. What was it like to learn about shootings with the guns he sold? “I hate it,” he said. “I hate that I sold it and he might have used it, but there’s nothing I can, you know …” He trailed off. I pointed out that in the Connecticut case, investigators had been able to uncover the trafficking ring after tracing the gun to his shop. Was that a good use of resources? “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, they need to be able to do that. But they just, you know, they need to pay more attention to the crooks than people trying to make an honest living.” I heard similar complaints from other dealers who had their licenses revoked during Biden’s term for transgressions they insisted were mere clerical mistakes. One in Indiana told me that his violations included a mix-up involving an Amish customer’s name; one in South Carolina told me his violations included filling out forms on behalf of elderly customers with shaky handwriting. “If it had been six months earlier, they would have given us a slap on the hand,” he said. Even some within the ATF had misgivings, worrying that the policy would strain the agency’s relations with law-abiding dealers and make them less likely to offer alerts on suspicious behavior by buyers. “The industry is probably one of the best ways we get information about trafficking,” McCormick, the retired Ohio agent, told me. “But if there’s friction between us and the industry, they’re less likely to report it.” Gun-safety advocates discounted that risk, saying the policy had both shut down many lawless stores and encouraged countless other sellers to make sure they were complying with the law. “It’s not only targeting bad dealers but sending a message to the entire industry: button up,” Josh Scharff, general counsel of Brady United, told me. In 2024, revocations rose yet further, to 183. This represented a mere sliver of dealers — only 2% of those inspected that year — but it provoked new ire, not only from traditional lobby groups such as the National Shooting Sports Foundation and National Rifle Association but from ascendant groups of gun owners with even more aggressively anti-regulation stances. Some dealers challenged their revocations in federal court. In 2023, the ATF revoked the license of a shop in the Phoenix suburbs, Chambered Group, after four inspections in five years turned up a host of violations. The business sought unsuccessfully to block the revocation in court, with a federal judge, Steven Logan, finding that the business had “purposefully disregarded [federal] regulations by repeatedly violating the same regulations despite being given multiple opportunities to cure its mistakes.” In 2024, one of the shop’s co-owners tried to get a new license under a slightly different name, Chambered Custom Firearms, and the ATF blocked him, noting his past role with the revoked store. (A lawyer for the shop declined to comment.) But after Trump returned to the White House, his administration announced an end to the zero-tolerance policy, urged revoked dealers to reapply and started settling the court cases, one after another. In April 2025, the DOJ informed the court that it had started settlement talks in the Arizona case and a month later alerted it that Chambered Custom had submitted a new application “which ATF will expeditiously process.” It issued the license in July. In Oregon, a dealer had gone to federal court to challenge the ATF’s 2024 denial of his license renewal for South Valley Firearms in the town of Monroe due to his past conviction for domestic violence. Trump’s DOJ initially contested the dealer’s bid, but early this year, the department notified his attorney out of the blue that his client would be getting his license, after all. “They didn’t give any explanation as to why,” said the lawyer, Leonard Williamson. “They just said, ‘Have him resubmit his application and we’ll give it to him.’” The end of zero-tolerance was, on its own, hardly a surprise for an administration elected with the strong support of gun-rights and gun-industry groups. What has differed from the first Trump term has been the wholesale shift of resources away from the enforcement of gun trafficking laws and toward the immigration crackdown, both at the ATF and DOJ. Last spring, the administration began shifting large numbers of ATF agents to a new assignment: assisting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions against undocumented immigrants. ICE records obtained by the libertarian Cato Institute in September showed that nearly 1,800 of ATF’s roughly 2,500 agents had taken part in enforcement and removal operations. While ATF agents were shifted to immigration operations, criminal referrals fell. ATF referrals for common trafficking-related charges, including the two added in the 2022 law, decreased 15% in 2025 from 2024, according to a ProPublica analysis. Asked about the drop, ATF spokesperson Tanya Roman pointed at DOJ prosecutors. “Not every ATF referral is accepted by the [United States Attorney’s Office] for prosecution,” she said in a written response to questions. Eventually, the shift toward immigration enforcement reached even beyond ATF’s agents to the industry operations investigators who inspect dealers. Terrence Robinson had served in that role for six years, based in Baltimore. He took pride in the work, but soon after Trump’s second term began, Robinson realized it would be a turbulent year for his agency. As part of the push by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the government, the ATF offered early retirement to many of its 800-odd inspectors. In the end, some 125 took the offer, threatening to overburden a corps already struggling to inspect even a sliver of the nation’s 130,000 licensed firearms dealers. “ATF does not comment on personnel matters,” Roman said. Around the same time, Robinson went to inspect the location of an applicant for a dealership license in Baltimore. The city, long wracked by gun violence, has come to have virtually no licensed dealers within its boundaries; those that remain are mostly in the suburbs. Robinson was startled to discover that this applicant intended to sell guns from his apartment in a building downtown, a few blocks from Camden Yards. Robinson voiced his concerns to his supervisor, who told him that he had to approve it. “According to our rules and regulations now, he passed a criminal background check, and he’s a citizen, so …,” Robinson said. “It’s mind-boggling.” Most upsetting, though, was the directive that he and other industry operations investigators received in late summer to start spending at least six hours per week on immigration-related work. It was hard to understand what this even meant — their job was to inspect firearms dealers. To comply, he began scouring dealers’ sales records looking for buyers with foreign-sounding names, which were then relayed to the Department of Homeland Security. This struck him as a monumental misuse of resources. This was what pushed him over the edge and made him decide to take early retirement, too, in September. “I didn’t sign up to be an immigration person,” he said. “I’m just not that.” Asked about such orders, the ATF’s Roman said: “In support of President Trump’s whole of government approach to combat illegal immigration, ATF is assisting the Department of Homeland Security and other federal law enforcement partners with their immigration enforcement efforts. To ensure operational security and the safety of our agents and partners, ATF does not disclose details or specific numbers of personnel deployments or enforcement activities.” Now that Robinson was gone, his former team was down from 10 to six, with a temporary supervisor. He worried what the changes at ATF meant for public safety. “I’m not saying I can see the future, but I don’t see things getting better,” he said. “I see things getting worse.” Terrence Robinson served as an inspector at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for six years in Baltimore. The directive that he and other industry operations investigators received in late summer was to start spending at least six hours per week on immigration-related work. This was what pushed him over the edge and made him decide to take early retirement. “I didn’t sign up to be an immigration person,” he said. “I’m just not that.” KT Kanazawich for ProPublica “Everyone’s been in a little bit of shock about what’s going on,” Marianna Mitchem said last December, speaking from the stage of a conference on gun violence at the Center for American Progress, the center-left think tank in Washington. She described what the ATF had accomplished in recent years, then she laid bare the extent of the pullback now underway. Mitchem told the advocates that they would have to look to officials in their home states and cities to try to fill the void left by the Trump administration. “It’s up to the states to start tackling this trafficking problem, because unfortunately, you’re not going to have the support of the ATF,” she said. This has already started happening in a few places. In the suburbs of Philadelphia, a city that suffered one of the worst pandemic-era homicide spikes but has since experienced dramatic improvement, county sheriffs have started doing more inspections of dealers to make up for the decline in ATF enforcement. A member of the conference audience asked Mitchem what else states could be doing to respond. Her answer suggested she wasn’t sure. “ATF wasn’t always the most widely known agency. I think we sort of liked it that way. We did really, really good work and kept our head down,” she said. “And so now, you’re trying to let everybody know, unfortunately, there are still good people there, but they’ve been redirected.” In February, Trump’s nominee to lead the agency, Robert Cekada, downplayed that redirection at his confirmation hearing. Cekada is a 20-year ATF veteran, a fact in which gun-safety advocates have tried to take some reassurance. Cekada testified that the agency was continuing to “do dealer inspections uninhibited.” But ATF has made it much harder for researchers and the public to track that work. It took the administration more than 15 months to release a tally of how many dealer licenses it had revoked: 56 in 2025, down 69% from the year before. Cekada also challenged a report last fall that 80% of the ATF’s agents had been reassigned to immigration enforcement. The reassignment had never amounted to more than 100 agents at a given time, Cekada said. “ATF in those operations has been focused on offenders that were illegally armed with firearms,” he told senators. But as the former federal prosecutors and ATF agents I spoke with noted, the key question when it comes to the fight against trafficking is whether prosecutors are seeking out cases. After all, the ATF investigates cases, but U.S. attorneys prosecute them. And here the evidence suggests a pullback. A ProPublica analysis shows that in the first year of the Trump administration, the DOJ declined 30% more referrals from the ATF for the main trafficking-related charges than it had the year prior.  Despite the high rate of declinations for ATF referrals, the DOJ last year ended up prosecuting nearly as many gun-trafficking cases from all sources as it had in 2024. But a growing share of the cases, roughly 30%, were under the new trafficking conspiracy charges included in the 2022 law, which since its inception has proven especially useful in cases involving gun trafficking across the Mexican border: About a fifth of all people charged under that law over the course of 2024 and 2025 are in a single district, western Texas. Asked about the rise in declinations of ATF referrals and the shift toward border-related cases, DOJ spokesperson Katie Kenlein said, “The department declines to comment on prosecutorial strategy.” Webster, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said numbers leave little doubt as to the shift away from general anti-trafficking enforcement. “Everything is diverted,” he said. “It’s all about immigrants.” On April 29, right after being confirmed as ATF director, Cekada announced 34 proposed rule changes, including requiring dealers to hold records for only 20 or 30 years, not indefinitely, and limiting ATF scrutiny of the state-issued permits that can replace background checks for buyers. “We are proposing to remove unnecessary hurdles that were standing in the way of law-abiding citizens and businesses,” he said, flanked by leaders of the NRA and National Shooting Sports Foundation. One crucial Biden-era reform has persisted: the clampdown on ghost guns. The 2022 ATF regulation survived a Supreme Court challenge last year, and lawsuits by several cities helped drive the leading producer of ghost guns out of business. Webster and other criminologists note that the reduced flow of ghost guns correlates with a sharply lower rate of shootings by teenagers, who had been heavy users of the guns during the 2020-21 homicide surge. Even that progress seemed as if it might be at risk. In early April, a joint status report issued to the federal court in Texas where the case originated stated that “ATF has advised that it plans to take agency action to amend the challenged rule” (even though the rule has been upheld by the Supreme Court). A day later, the White House’s 2027 budget called for reversing “the imposition of excessive restrictions on homemade firearms.” But five days after that, the DOJ notified the court in the Texas case that “the government has decided to maintain the definition” that underlies the ghost gun rule. Asked for clarification, the ATF’s Roman said last week: “ATF is still conducting legal reviews for other, more technically challenging rules. If changes are needed following the review, a proposal will be published.” For now, one key valve in the pipeline remains closed. The post “No One Is Watching”: How Trump Reversed Biden’s Crackdown on Gun Trafficking appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Regulation, Trump Administration]

— More Than $100 Million Was Billed for Medically Questionable Vascular Procedures, Government Watchdog Finds

 

at 5/29/26 4:00am

Nash Weerasekera, special to ProPublica Dozens of doctors are routinely performing risky vascular procedures in medical offices, generating tens of millions of dollars in Medicare payments for potentially unnecessary procedures, according to a federal report released earlier this month. The review, completed by the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services, flagged nearly 140 doctors across the country as having concerning billing patterns.  The analysis parallels a 2023 ProPublica investigation that revealed how high Medicare reimbursements for office-based vascular treatments had fueled a surge of unnecessary procedures, putting patients at risk of amputation or even death. The inspector generals study, which began in April 2024, cited ProPublica’s reporting and broadly confirmed its findings. Millions of Americans have peripheral artery disease, a vascular disorder in which the buildup of plaque narrows arteries and blocks blood flow in the legs. While most treatments are safe, ProPublicas investigation found that there has been widespread concern among medical experts that some doctors are overusing procedures on patients who may not need them.  The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services laid the foundation for the problem nearly 20 years ago, when it tried to rein in growing hospital costs by diverting certain common, minimally invasive procedures to outpatient facilities. These treatments may include the placement of stents in blood vessels or the removal of plaque with a bladed catheter, also known as an atherectomy.  But instead of saving taxpayers money, it created a boom. For years, even as researchers challenged the long-term safety and efficacy of these expensive procedures, the federal government did little to stop potential abuse.  ProPublicas reporting chronicled the rise of the procedures after the introduction of the governments financial incentive, along with horror stories of patients who lost their legs or died from complications. Our investigation examined years of federal Medicare claims data to identify and name the doctors who were making the most money off of these controversial procedures, and found that several of them had also racked up allegations of patient harm and even fraud. Doctors identified in our reporting objected to being portrayed as part of the problem, with some defending their use of the procedures, saying they could save the government money by preventing more serious complications down the road. ProPublicas analysis also found that many procedures were being performed on patients with only mild disease, against best practices. Working with data journalists from the health analytics group CareSet, and in consultation with experts, we found that nearly 1 in 4 patients underwent the invasive procedure in the early stages of vascular disease, amounting to nearly 30,000 patients who may have endured procedures too soon or even unnecessarily. The inspector general’s analysis, which focused on data from 2019 through 2023, found that while overall payments for vascular procedures have decreased in recent years, the procedures have shifted from hospitals to physicians’ offices.  The report flagged $105 million, about a fifth of all office-based vascular payments in 2023, as suspicious for medically unnecessary procedures. About 140 doctors accounted for these concerning payments, with 26 physicians responsible for the majority of them. This small group of specialists each received about $3 million in medical payments on average, and treated more than four times the average number of Medicare patients compared with similar physicians, conducting double the average number of procedures per patient. Read More Steak Dinners, Sales Reps and Risky Procedures: Inside the Big Business of Clogged Arteries In the “Wild West” of Outpatient Vascular Care, Doctors Can Reap Huge Payments as Patients Risk Life and Limb Thousands of Patients May Be Undergoing Vascular Procedures Too Soon or Unnecessarily About half of these flagged doctors, which include interventional radiologists, vascular surgeons and cardiologists, practiced in California and Texas. Since 2019, CMS has investigated and identified 15 providers who received overpayments for vascular procedures, according to the report. The agency has also initiated a claims analysis project to detect physicians who are excessively billing for certain procedures, including atherectomies.  The inspector general recommended that CMS monitor billing records to identify medically unnecessary procedures that pose a risk to Medicare enrollees and take appropriate actions. The inspector general also provided information on the outlier physicians to CMS and encouraged the agency to work with its program integrity team to review their billing patterns. Although determining whether these physicians engaged in abusive or fraudulent practices was not within the scope of this study, their billing patterns warrant further scrutiny, stated the report.  CMS agreed with the inspector generals recommendations and said it would consider the report’s findings to determine next steps.  The post More Than $100 Million Was Billed for Medically Questionable Vascular Procedures, Government Watchdog Finds appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Health Care]

— Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need.

 

at 5/29/26 3:00am

Brian Smith teaches students at the school in Sleetmute, Alaska, in 2024, which has suffered from a leaky roof and structural problems as a result. One lawmaker has labeled the school “the poster child” for what’s wrong with the state’s public school infrastructure. Emily Schwing/KYUK Alaska would more than triple the funding it devotes to school construction and maintenance projects next year under a budget approved this month by the state Legislature. The funding, which awaits Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, follows reporting by KYUK, ProPublica and NPR last year that documented a severe health and safety crisis inside the buildings used daily for public education. The bill would allocate more than $148 million toward construction and maintenance in the 2027 fiscal year, up from $40 million in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30. The new budget line is an effort to help with millions in backlogged major maintenance needs for schools around the state. Years of lacking investment in Alaska’s public schools have resulted in leaking roofs, broken water pipes and failing foundations. If the governor signs off, it would be the largest allocation in more than a decade. The money could pay for more than 30 projects but would still cover only a fraction of the requested repairs.  Some of the worst conditions exist inside rural public schools that serve predominantly Indigenous student populations and are often used as emergency shelters. In December, former students and concerned parents told the State Board of Education about squalid conditions inside Alaska’s only state-owned boarding school. Their testimony further fueled efforts by lawmakers to help unburden cash-strapped rural school districts in communities where residents don’t pay taxes to help fund education. As Alaska legislators wrestled with statewide budget shortfalls, money for education, including for school construction and maintenance, “bubbled to the top,” according to state Sen. Lyman Hoffman, an Alaska Native Democrat who represents the largest rural school district in the state. “Even though the whole state is having a problem balancing its checkbook, at the top of the list is education,” he said during an Alaska Senate Finance Committee meeting in March, at which legislators questioned state education department leadership.  Every year, districts follow an application process to submit their construction and maintenance  funding requests to Alaska’s education department. Since 1998, the Legislature has funded only a fraction of those proposed projects. Last year, lawmakers were able to secure about 5% of the nearly $800 million that both rural and urban school districts said they needed to keep their buildings safe and operating. This year, school districts requested more than $1.12 billion for infrastructure — the second-highest total requested statewide since 1998. Despite the legislative infusion of cash, the 2027 budget for school infrastructure will cover only about 13% of what school districts asked for.  “I do appreciate it,” said Kuspuk School District Superintendent Madeline Aguillard, “but the hole that the state is in is so deep and so big. It’s going to take a long time to hit that word ‘enough.’”  Aguillard’s district includes schools in nine roadless communities along the middle stretch of the Kuskokwim River in the heart of Alaska’s interior. The district first requested funds from the state to repair a leaking roof at its school in Sleetmute in 2007. For nearly two decades, the leak persisted, resulting in other problems for the building. In 2021, an architect inspected the building and uncovered severe structural damage. Further reporting by ProPublica, KYUK and NPR revealed a bat infestation and other serious health and safety issues in Sleetmute’s school. At least one lawmaker has publicly labeled that school “the poster child” for what’s wrong with Alaska’s public school infrastructure. Aguillard said news reporting in 2024 on serious structural deficiencies inside Sleetmute’s K-12 Jack Egnaty Sr. School “really lit a fire” in the state Legislature. Damage inside the woodshop of Sleetmute’s school in 2024. The school district first requested funds from the state to repair a leaking roof in 2007. Emily Schwing/KYUK For years, lawmakers and state education department staff have blamed each other for the annual school infrastructure shortfall. Last year, education Commissioner Deena Bishop told Propublica, KYUK and NPR that she can do little more than advocate on behalf of districts. “The power of the purse is with the Legislature,” said Bishop, who has served as the state’s education commissioner for three years.  But this March, at the Senate Finance Committee meeting with education department leaders, co-chair Bert Stedman, a Republican, suggested the committee had not received sufficient information from school districts and Bishop. “She’s responsible. The buck stops with her,” Stedman, from the coastal hub community of Sitka in Southeast Alaska, told his colleagues. (In response, education department staff said they rely on information school districts provide about conditions inside buildings; those districts have an annual opportunity to make requests for money for maintenance and construction.) Stedman, Hoffman and one other ranking co-chair have been on the Finance Committee for more than 15 years. None of the co-chairs agreed to comment for this story.  Previous reporting by the news organizations has also brought to light several problems with the system school districts must use to request funds and the process the state education department relies on to rank those projects. “There is, I would personally say, a flaw in the system, in the ranking that we are trying to fix,” Bishop said during that March hearing. Read More Alaska Ignored Warning Signs of a Budget Crisis. Now It Doesn’t Have Funding to Fix Crumbling Schools. Bishop described how wealthier urban school districts with more staff fare better than more remote districts. Those urban districts have more resources to hire professional grant writers and pay for building inspections, which can help elevate applications. More than half of the projects approved for funding this year are in urban school districts that also have access to local tax revenue to pay for education. Alaska’s rural school districts are almost entirely reliant on state funding because they serve communities where residents do not pay taxes to help fund education.  “Some are winners and some are losers,” Bishop said.   In the absence of a permanent solution to pay for decades of backlogged major maintenance projects, the Legislature has relied on a few stopgap measures. For instance, the incorporated Galena City School District proposed a $36.5 million major renovation project that includes the removal of hazardous materials and major upgrades to outdated critical systems like heating and ventilation, plumbing and electricity. In its first year on the state’s list, it was ranked second for funding priority, above several other projects in rural school districts that have waited several years, and in some cases decades, for approval. So lawmakers reduced the amount of money that will go to Galena in order to deliver money to a larger overall number of projects. In recent months, Lawmakers have also taken steps to help schools deal with the rising price of heating fuel, which is delivered by barge or air in ice and snow-free months to districts that are not accessible by road. Approached by Aguillard about the issue, state Sen. Löki Tobin, a Democrat from Anchorage who chairs the Senate Education Committee, led an effort to create a one-time grant program to help defray those rising energy costs. “It’s hard to argue against keeping the facilities warm and the lights on,” said Tobin, who acknowledges that the money only scratches the surface.  “There’s so many competing priorities in our state,” she said. “I think we’re all kind of competing for scraps of a pie.” Three days before the session was set to end, Alaska’s Senate voted to make Tobin’s program permanent beginning in 2028. Dunleavy has until early June to sign the budget lawmakers sent to his desk. According to Tobin, there’s no indication this year that he won’t sign off. In his eight years as governor, Dunleavy has acknowledged the budget shortfall but used his veto power to cut state investment in public school infrastructure.   We’re Investigating Alaska Internet Companies. We Need Your Help. Alaskans pay the most for phone and internet but get the slowest service. Please fill out our quick survey to share how much it costs you to get online and what you think of the service. Share Your Experience The post Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.

 

at 5/28/26 3:00am

President Donald Trump, with son Donald Trump Jr., returns to the White House from Florida in May. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.  The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism. But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s. Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a top aide to the president, said an official at the Pentagon who was not authorized to speak publicly. After defense officials got the White House request, they asked Pentagon staff to move at an unusually rapid pace, said another person who was involved in the deal at the Pentagon but not authorized to speak about it. The staff worked late nights and with little sleep to get the loan through in a matter of weeks, the source said. “The call came from the White House: We have to get this done,” the person said.  The deal is one of many actions by the Trump administration that have helped companies in which the Trump family holds stakes. Government contracts and other benefits have gone to various Trump-linked companies, prompting allegations of self-dealing by Democratic lawmakers and good government experts. But ProPublica’s reporting on the Vulcan loan represents the first time the awarding of a contract from a federal agency has been directly linked to White House intervention. The loan was a massive financial commitment from the Pentagon in its effort to fund companies that could help the U.S. reduce dependence on China’s critical mineral supply chains. The deal was a dramatic win for Vulcan, a North Carolina rare-earth magnet company launched just two years earlier. Estimates of its valuation grew tenfold after the deal was announced. It was also a win for Trump Jr.’s venture capital firm, which took a stake of undisclosed size in Vulcan about three months before the Pentagon announced the deal.  Do You Know More About This Topic? We’re still reporting on Trump family finances. If you know more about this topic, please contact our reporting team. Robert Faturechi Contact me, by email or securely on Signal, with tips about the federal government and Trump’s businesses. Contact Me And there may be more good news on the way for the president’s eldest son. Among other companies under review for a Pentagon loan was a drone parts manufacturer that Trump Jr. advises and owns a stake in, according to one of the defense officials who spoke to ProPublica.  Navarro, who served as trade adviser in Trump’s first term, and Trump Jr. have formed a close bond in recent years. The president’s son visited Navarro in prison while he served time for defying a subpoena from lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Trump Jr. was one of the small group of people Navarro dedicated his latest book to for having “my back when it was against the wall.” And a week before the Vulcan deal was announced, Trump Jr. hosted Navarro — now the president’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing — on his streaming show, encouraging his nearly 2 million subscribers to buy Navarro’s book. That interview was not long after word came down from Navarro to Pentagon staff to make the massive loan to Vulcan, one of the defense officials involved in the deal said. Navarro did not respond to questions from ProPublica sent to him directly. Neither did Vulcan. A White House spokesperson said in a statement that the administration is working “in the best interest of the American people,” adding, “The President’s entire team, including Senior Counselor Navarro and officials at the Department of War, is working together and with private industry to secure America’s critical mineral supply chain at Trump Speed.” Trump Jr.’s spokesperson said the president’s son does not discuss companies he has invested in with federal government officials and did not speak to Navarro about Vulcan. He “has no knowledge about how this deal came together,” the spokesperson said. A spokesperson for 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, said it also played no role in Vulcan getting the loan and did not learn about the deal before it was public.  “No company receives preferential treatment,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. “Outside affiliations, investors, or political connections play absolutely no role in the Departments funding decisions.”  Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer during the George W. Bush administration, said aides to the president should not be intervening in contracting and lending decisions by agencies, particularly in matters that financially benefit the president’s family.  “This is our money they’re spending, Painter said. “This is corruption we pay for.” The Office of Strategic Capital, the Pentagon division that made the deal with Vulcan, aims to address a bipartisan concern: that China’s grip on rare-earth elements and other critical minerals threatens national security. It is hard to overstate the country’s dominance in this arena. As of last year, for example, China produced the world’s entire supply of samarium, an obscure rare-earth metal that is an essential component of magnets that help guide Tomahawk missiles and start the engines in F-35 fighter jets. Other rare earths are central to the manufacturing of a vast array of commercial and military products, from car parts and semiconductors to drones. Finding the raw materials is generally not hard, but separating them from other materials they’re bonded to is, and it’s that process that China largely dominates. Virtually every advanced military in the world depends directly or indirectly on the country’s supply chain of rare earths. The danger of relying so heavily on a single supplier for these essential materials was underscored last year when China announced it was restricting exports of some rare-earth metals. The Office of Strategic Capital, started under the Biden administration, funds private companies that are working in this space or developing certain military technologies so that the U.S. can stop relying on its top rival to equip its own military. The Trump administration supersized the effort, expanding its lending authority from about $1 billion to $200 billion. It also radically changed how the office operated, according to interviews with more than a dozen people who worked there or interacted with it from the private sector or other parts of the government. The Biden administration had set up an open application process for interested companies, with each firm to be vetted methodically, a process meant to ensure good bets — but one that people involved acknowledged was set up to be slow and bureaucratic.  “The Trump administration is more interested in going out into the market and finding what it wants. We’re not going to wait for people to apply to us,” said one former Office of Strategic Capital official.  The Trump Pentagon handed the reins to hard-charging former Wall Street executives, who have been recruiting others to make the leap from finance to government. A leaked presentation from a headhunter seemed to suggest they could parlay their tour in government into future riches: “If you ever want to raise your own fund, you will gain access to fundraising channels that include royal families and foreign sovereign contacts.” (It’s unclear whether the Pentagon approved the presentation.) The office’s new leaders aim to make as many deals as possible, including loans and investments in exchange for ownership stakes, people who have worked with the office say. They said the new officials are relying more on their own personal networks, not applications, to choose companies to fund. So far, outside of Vulcan, a small number of other companies have been selected, including Korea Zinc, a metal refiner; MP Materials, a Nevada rare-earth mining company; and ReElement Technologies, an Indiana producer of rare-earth elements and battery metals that partners with Vulcan. The Pentagon’s announcement said the loans to Vulcan and ReElement were conditional on the firms fulfilling certain legal and financial requirements but did not detail them. Last week, Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon may ultimately not lend to ReElement because of concerns over the company’s revenue projections and ability to scale up its technology that were discovered after the conditional loan was announced.  Because of its size and connection to Trump Jr., the Vulcan deal has drawn the most scrutiny. A group of Democratic senators demanded that the Pentagon provide an accounting of how the company was awarded the loan, writing that the Trump family’s conflicts of interest could be “resulting in a waste of taxpayer dollars and a threat to national security.” (The Pentagon’s response did not address how Vulcan was selected, explaining only how the department addresses conflicts that arise from its employees’ financial holdings, not those of the president’s family.) Democrats in the House tried to subpoena Trump Jr. to testify on the Vulcan deal but were blocked by Republicans. “Donald Trump Jr. must be made to answer whether the presidents son illegally profited from his fathers presidency,” Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter said earlier this year.  Vulcan was launched in 2023 by a student at Harvard Business School. The private company quickly began securing a series of relatively small defense contracts, beginning during the Biden administration. Its first manufacturing facility opened in March 2025; according to an interview with its founder published that month, the firm’s funding around that time was less than $10 million. The kind of rare-earth magnets the company focuses on are needed for critical military technologies, including drones and satellites. In August 2025, Vulcan announced $65 million in investments, including from 1789 Capital, the venture firm that Trump Jr. joined as a partner after his father was elected to a second term. Neither 1789 nor Vulcan has publicly disclosed how much of a stake the venture firm has taken.   Staff in the Office of Strategic Capital learned of the White House request to give a loan to Vulcan around September or October, an official involved said. It’s unclear how the White House request was delivered or if it was presented as an order or a recommendation. Companies considered for funding are generally vetted for many months, the person said, but this deal was completed in a matter of weeks because they were told it was a White House priority. Asked about the Vulcan deal being expedited, the Pentagon spokesperson said defense officials balance “lightning speed with rigorous diligence to close high-impact deals that directly strengthen America’s defense and empower our warfighters.” In November, the Pentagon announced its plans to lend $620 million to the company and another $80 million to its partner, ReElement. The company would also get $50 million in incentives from the Commerce Department. In exchange, the government would take a $50 million stake in Vulcan with the right to buy more later.  Vulcan, which at the time had fewer than 50 employees, said it would use the windfall to build a large new facility that would churn out thousands of tons of magnets a year. It said it planned to ramp up in the coming years, adding hundreds of new jobs. The deal was good news for Vulcan’s investors, including Trump Jr.’s firm. Estimates of Vulcan’s valuation went from around $200 million near the time 1789 Capital first invested, according to Bloomberg, to around $2 billion.   Navarro’s role in initiating the deal was not publicly disclosed. Even if he didn’t discuss it with Trump Jr., the loan represented a win for someone Navarro considered a dear friend. In an October episode of Trump Jr.’s streaming show, “Triggered,” the two showed a close bond. The president’s son called Navarro “my boy” and complimented him on the “jacked” physique he developed while in prison. Navarro called Trump Jr. “brother” and thanked him for his support “in my hardest of times.” (Navarro had argued he was wrongly imprisoned for not complying with a congressional subpoena because he was protected by executive privilege.) Although Vulcan was not mentioned, the two spoke about rare earths, a topic Navarro has frequently discussed publicly. “China has revealed itself with this rare-earth issue as a country which is using the weaponization of their manufacturing floor, their supply chains, to exert pressure, not just on the United States, but to every other country that might do something that gets in the way of the Chinese dream of world domination,” Navarro said. “That’s what we’re fighting now.” From left: White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, senior counselor Peter Navarro and staff secretary Will Scharf in the Oval Office in 2025 Andrew Harnik/Getty Images The Office of Strategic Capital is expected to deploy billions more in loans in the coming months to critical mineral and military technology companies. Among the companies under review was Unusual Machines, a Florida drone parts maker, a Defense official said. Trump Jr. sits on the company’s advisory board and holds millions of dollars worth of shares. The Pentagon was accused of cronyism last year when it awarded the company a contract to make drone engines for the Army.  Executives at other companies hoping for Pentagon loans or other types of investments are scrambling to figure out how to get in front of the right people.       Brodie Sutherland, CEO of Nevada-based tungsten mining company Patriot Critical Minerals, said his firm hired a lobbyist. That person knew someone who was previously connected to the Office of Strategic Capital and was able to introduce the company to a current staffer.  “It’s like any industry: A lot of what it is,” Sutherland said, “is who you know.” Speaking to ProPublica last month, he said his company had had conversations with Pentagon staff and he was optimistic the firm could get funding.  “Whether you need someone on the inside track to get it across the line I don’t know,” he said. “We’re hopeful you don’t need to be chums with Trump Jr. to get a project across.” Defense Department records reviewed recently by ProPublica show Sutherland’s company had already been considered for a loan but was rejected. The records did not say why. Sutherland said he still hoped his company could secure some kind of Pentagon funding in the future. The post The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Trump Administration]

— U.S. Lawmakers Demand Reforms to Immigration Officers’ Use of Tear Gas and Pepper Spray

 

at 5/27/26 3:00am

Federal agents fire tear gas and pepper spray into a crowd of protesters, including children, in Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 31. Courtesy of Kylie Cleveland Three U.S. senators have called for an overhaul of federal agents’ use of tear gas and pepper spray, citing a ProPublica investigation that found at least 79 children were left screaming, coughing or hurt by these chemicals during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Lawmakers said the findings showed more restrictions are needed to avoid injuring bystanders — including children — with chemical munitions. Such weapons were designed to combat rioters and soldiers, and their compounds are toxic, especially to children, who breathe more rapidly than adults relative to their body weight.  “This reporting makes clear that we need federal legislation to rein in the over-use and misuse of tear gas and chemical agents,” Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a statement. “We cannot allow another child to be tear-gassed by federal law enforcement officers.”  ProPublica found that the Department of Homeland Security’s policies on the use of these weapons are less restrictive than those of some local police departments, many of which have been forced to adopt stronger ones following lawsuits or local legislation. There is no uniform standard governing how and when law enforcement departments can use these weapons.  DHS should update its policies based on the best practices of local police departments, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, told ProPublica. In Minneapolis, for instance, police officers can deploy chemical munitions only if the police chief has authorized it. “This kind of use of force should require approval from someone in a position of authority” and an assessment of the potential “collateral damage to children,” Blumenthal said.  Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, echoed this sentiment. “We need a complete overhaul of ICE and Border Patrol to ensure they follow the same rules and safeguards that apply to police departments across the country,” she said in a written statement. Many of the hurt kids were at home when tear gas drifted in from streets where federal agents had deployed the chemical agent against crowds of protesters. Other children were sitting in their parents’ cars when officers fired pepper spray through the driver’s side windows.  Virtually no research exists on the potential long-term effects on children, but the chemicals are undeniably dangerous. One mother near Chicago told ProPublica she’s repeatedly taken her 7-year-old daughter to urgent care due to her coughing and wheezing since tear gas seeped into their house last fall. Referencing our reporting, three Democrats in the House Committee on Homeland Security also sent a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin asking for the department’s training and policies for using chemical munitions when children are in the vicinity. The letter accused the department of “needlessly and callously” inflicting harm on children, and it requested details on whether DHS has studied the weapons’ “toxic effects on children.” The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., signed the letter, along with the ranking members of two subcommittees, Rep. J. Luis Correa from California and Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan.  Blumenthal sent a separate letter to Mullin requesting the disciplinary records of agents who used chemical munitions in the presence of children. One video disclosed in a lawsuit shows federal officers near Chicago hurling tear gas canisters at protesters without apparent provocation before an officer says, “Fuck yeah,” and shouts, “Woo!” This took place just a few blocks from where the 7-year-old lives. (It’s unclear if the officers were disciplined.) “Video evidence demonstrates that chemical agents have been employed indiscriminately, even when children are present,” wrote Blumenthal, who sits on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and is the ranking member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.  The scope of the agents’ actions led some historians to compare current events with Southern law enforcement’s use of tear gas during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. ProPublica interviewed one Civil Rights activist, Charles Mauldin, who was 17 years old when police tear gassed him and hundreds of others marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama.  “Having people like ICE treat people the way we were treated 61 years ago, it’s horrible,” Mauldin told ProPublica.  A DHS spokesperson called Mauldin’s comparison “disgusting,” adding in a statement that “this type of garbage has led to our law enforcement officers experiencing coordinated campaigns of violence against them.”  The spokesperson didn’t address ProPublica requests for interviews with Mullin; Todd Lyons, the outgoing director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement; or David Venturella, the acting director of ICE.  “DHS does NOT target children,” the spokesperson wrote, before blaming parents for placing their children in risky situations. “It is reckless, unlawful, and extremely irresponsible for parents to interfere with law enforcement activities but especially when they are accompanied by children.” ProPublica’s investigation found that some of the children most affected were innocent bystanders. In Portland, Oregon, federal agents routinely tear-gassed protesters who gathered outside an ICE processing center. For months starting last summer, the chemicals seeped into an apartment complex across the street, past closed windows and the towels that tenants shoved under their doors in a vain attempt to protect themselves. One 12-year-old developed hives and “chronic respiratory issues,” according to his mother’s court declaration. Two girls, ages 7 and 9, hid in a fort they built in their father’s closet. Another parent said she taught her 13-year-old son to wear a gas mask indoors. Their situation was so extreme that the most approximate research ProPublica found was a 2018 survey of Palestinian families in the West Bank, where children complained of rashes and chronic tonsillitis after repeated exposure to tear gas deployed by Israeli security forces. ProPublica contacted more than two dozen federal lawmakers seeking a response to our findings. None of the Republicans, including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson; Sen. Rand Paul, chair of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Rep. Andrew Garbarino, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, responded to requests for comment. Many of the Democrats who responded condemned DHS for its officers’ behavior and pointed to past unsuccessful efforts, such as holding hearings and sending dozens of oversight letters, to hold the department accountable for its actions. ProPublica previously reported on a Democrat-led forum in March spotlighting children who have been harmed during immigration enforcement operations, including citizens who appear to have been wrongfully detained. In mid-May, Rep. Delia Ramirez of Illinois held a shadow hearing in which she cited ProPublica’s findings on children harmed by tear gas and pepper spray. Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Maryland Democrat who attended the hearing, said in an interview that he has been pushing for fellow lawmakers to take up the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would address many of the issues our investigation raised. Various experts told ProPublica that federal legislation could help ensure law enforcement agencies across the country adopt additional restrictions on these weapons, particularly when children are at risk. Last month, for instance, Sen. Tina Smith, a Democrat from Minnesota, introduced a bill that prohibits excessive use of force, including chemical munitions, in the presence of children. It has 17 co-sponsors, none Republican, and hasn’t been brought to a vote. Read More Kids Are Being Harmed by Tear Gas, Pepper Spray Under Trump. There Could Be Long-Term Consequences. At 17, He Was Tear-Gassed at Selma. At 78, He’s Watching Kids Tear-Gassed During Trump’s Deportation Campaign. Blumenthal also called for fellow lawmakers to support a bill that would explicitly provide the public with the right to sue federal law enforcement officers for violating civil and constitutional rights. The Trump administration previously said that any new restrictions would hamper immigration officers’ ability to carry out their work. On Monday afternoon, federal agents fired pepper spray outside an immigration detention center in Newark, hitting Sen. Andy Kim, a Democrat from New Jersey, according to the USA Today Network. Kim had visited the facility to support detainees who’d started a hunger strike to protest conditions inside. He told reporters that he was pepper-sprayed after trying to de-escalate tensions between immigration agents and protesters, and his throat still burned later that evening. It’s unclear if any children were affected by chemical munitions.  DHS said officers had responded to protesters obstructing law enforcement from leaving the ICE facility. “No individuals were directly struck by pepper ball projectiles,” DHS wrote in a post on X. “Our law enforcement followed their training and used the minimum amount of force necessary to protect themselves, the public, and federal property.” In response to ProPublica’s questions about the lawmakers’ calls for reform, a spokesperson for DHS said in a written statement that officers are trained to use “the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve dangerous situations.” “DHS is authorized to do what is appropriate and necessary in each situation to diffuse violence against our officers in the most appropriate manner possible,” the statement said. In his letter sent last week, Blumenthal gave the agency a deadline of June 1 to respond to his questions and requests for records. The post U.S. Lawmakers Demand Reforms to Immigration Officers’ Use of Tear Gas and Pepper Spray appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Immigration, Trump Administration]

— She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.

 

at 5/26/26 5:00am

Emily Waldorf Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica On the morning of Sept. 16, 2024, Emily Waldorf’s preschooler found her curled on the bathroom floor. Waldorf had felt a strange pressure during a shower, like a balloon bulging into her vagina, and was now bleeding. “I can be your pillow, mommy,” her daughter said, nuzzling into her neck.  Waldorf was 17 weeks pregnant. She and her husband, Justin, dropped their daughter off at her grandparents’ and rushed to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Waldorf worked as an acute care physical therapist.  In a dark room, a doctor pointed to an hourglass shape glowing on the ultrasound screen: There was her amniotic sac, funneling into her dilated cervix, and there was their tiny daughter’s foot, dipping out.  “Your body is about to miscarry,” the doctor said.  Three doctors gathered and told the couple that the longer Waldorf’s cervix remained open and her uterus exposed to bacteria, the higher her risk of developing a life-threatening infection. The standard of care, they explained, would be to quickly empty her womb.  But they couldn’t do that, one doctor said apologetically, sighing deeply. The baby still had a detectable heartbeat, and stopping it would run afoul of a state abortion ban that snapped into place after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022; violations carried penalties of up to $100,000 in fines and 10 years in prison. They needed to wait until Waldorf went into labor on her own or showed signs of a dangerous infection, or until the fetal heartbeat ended. “Our hands are tied behind our backs,” Dr. Erin Large later told her, according to a journal Waldorf began keeping on her phone and shared with ProPublica. “Tell your friends to vote differently.” Raised Baptist in a Republican family, Waldorf struggled to understand what the doctors were saying as waves of grief hit her. How could an abortion ban aimed at women who wanted to end their pregnancies keep doctors from helping a woman who didnt?  Waldorf didn’t oppose abortion, but she had never considered that the law could apply to her. Her father was a doctor. This was the hospital where she had worked for the past six years. The OB-GYN team treating her had delivered her daughter, and some of them lived blocks from her parents. She was a highly educated 38-year-old woman with connections to the governor. As she lay in a hospital bed, worried that infection could enter her uterus at any moment, she finally understood the ban now applied to anyone losing a baby. Trapped in a medical limbo, she took a nurse friend’s advice and began writing everything down. That journal, along with her medical records and interviews, offer a rare, harrowing account of how Arkansas abortion ban, not best practices or medical training, guided her doctors choices. She was miscarrying as hospitals, physicians, lawmakers and medical boards around the country were being confronted with the reality that the bans, designed to be as strict and punitive as possible, were causing preventable harm and even deaths. Yet even as more of these cases stacked up, there was no coordination between states to protect women. Each state, each woman seemed to operate in a vacuum. And Waldorf would find she was in it alone. One of the doctors advised Waldorf to go home and told her what to expect: At any moment, she could start bleeding heavily and go into labor. It might happen while she was going to the bathroom or playing on the floor with her daughter. When the baby started to emerge, the doctor said, Waldorf shouldn’t pull too hard or she could rip the baby’s head off. She would need to cut the umbilical cord herself and return to the hospital for care in a diaper, her fetus wrapped in towels and the cord hanging between her legs.  Waldorf didn’t want her daughter, or herself, to have those memories inside their home. So she begged to stay, and the doctors agreed. No one could predict when the ordeal would be over.  Waldorf settled into a small hospital room, her husband glued to the vinyl couch beside her, both reeling from the impending loss of what would have been their second daughter. The pregnancy had been far enough along to start getting their 4-year-old daughter excited about decorating a nursery, family-of-four camping trips and what it would mean to become a big sister.  Now they had to engage in the morbid ritual of waiting for that dream to die. Doctors and nurses with Doppler machines and ultrasounds kept showing up, forcing them to hear the heartbeat and see the movement of a tiny body. “Oh look,” Large said during one of the ultrasounds, “she’s opening and closing her mouth.” “My body failed a baby,” Waldorf wrote in her journal.  Waldorf’s job, treating critical patients in the intensive care unit, had taught her to compartmentalize, to stay cool under pressure. But as the days bled together, her resolve turned to panic when she discovered one outcome she had not considered.  Scrolling through social media on her third night, a headline caught her eye: “Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mothers Death Was Preventable.” On the day Waldorf was admitted to the hospital, ProPublica had published an investigation on the death of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old medical assistant who died of infection after doctors delayed emptying her uterus. Thurman left behind a 6-year-old son.  “Oh my god, it isn’t just me,” Waldorf thought. “But she died.” Waldorf hopes speaking out about her ordeal during a dangerous miscarriage under Arkansas’s abortion ban will help other women. Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica Almost exactly three years before Waldorf showed up at Washington Regional in urgent need of care, a 28-year-old woman named Josseli Barnica arrived at a Houston emergency room with the same condition. She, too, was 17 weeks pregnant. The fetus’ head was pressed up against her dilated cervix, and a miscarriage was, according to her medical record, “inevitable.”  When her husband rushed from work to her side, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: Inducing delivery or emptying her uterus would be “a crime,” he later told ProPublica. “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat.” Texas, like Arkansas, has a criminal abortion ban. Had Barnica landed in one of the hospitals across the world, from Nigeria to Mexico, that follow standards from the World Health Organization and countless medical associations, her treatment would have been much different. In those hospitals, when a patient’s cervix opens too soon, signaling an “inevitable miscarriage,” or when their water breaks before the fetus can survive, known as previable preterm premature rupture of membranes (shorthanded as “PPROM”), it’s standard for doctors to offer to empty the uterus. That’s true even if there is still a heartbeat, given the high risk of infection.  “This is basic obstetrics,” said Dr. Alison Goulding, a maternal-fetal-medicine specialist in Texas. “Everyone should know that you have to provide an abortion in these settings or women can die.”  For 40 hours, Barnica waited in the hospital for the heartbeat to stop, with her cervix exposed to bacteria. She died three days after she delivered, ProPublica reported in October 2024; the cause was a deadly infection. The hospital declined to comment on Barnica’s case but said “our responsibility is to be in compliance with applicable state and federal laws and regulations” and physicians exercise their independent judgment. The doctors involved did not respond to requests for comment.  Her death and those of six other women in three states over the next three years brought into sharp focus the consequences of the bans. Because the laws’ exceptions for medical emergencies are vague and have rarely been tested in courts, liability-conscious hospital administrators, lawyers and doctors have sometimes put legal concerns above their patients’ well-being, ProPublica’s reporting has found.  Texas lawmakers responded to ProPublica’s investigations by amending the exceptions in their state laws to make clear that a life-threatening emergency did not need to be “imminent” for physicians to act. The state’s medical board specified that doctors can empty the uterus of any patient with PPROM, and it requires doctors to undergo training to ensure they know that. But Texas’ reforms stopped at its borders. Without a single federal law governing abortion, each of the 19 other states with similar bans were not required or advised to follow suit. That includes Arkansas, which touts its designation as the “most pro-life state in America.”  Since its ban took effect, not one person there has been granted a medically necessary abortion, according to the state’s public data. The state’s Republican lawmakers and officials have repeatedly shot down attempts to broaden the law’s exceptions. And when advocates tried to launch a ballot initiative to let voters weigh in, Republicans blocked it over a paperwork error and created restrictions to make those initiatives harder to file.  The doctors and Democrats fighting for reform have been doing so without essential knowledge that could help make their case. Though the two states share a border, news of Texas’ changes to its abortion ban — and why they were made — had failed to have an impact across the state line. Three Democratic state representatives said they hadn’t heard of the new Texas guidance until ProPublica asked about it. “If there are things that are working in other states, we should be looking at that,” said one, Ashley Hudson, who has tried twice to pass broader exceptions.  On her fourth morning in the hospital, Waldorf was sitting on the toilet when she felt something heavy fall. There was so much blood, she couldn’t see what it was. She thought it was the baby, but a nurse confirmed it was a blood clot, 3 inches across. Waldorf’s water had broken. All morning, she watched the amniotic fluid drain out of her. Now there was virtually no chance the fetuss lungs would develop to reach the edge of viability in seven weeks. There was only the risk of infection, growing every passing hour.  She was convinced that this meant the doctors would finally have to induce her to avoid infection. But after confirming that her fetus still had heart tones, the OB-GYN on duty, Dr. Britte Smith, said she couldnt induce yet. First shed need to consult the hospitals risk-management team. “Oh,” Waldorf thought. “I’m a liability.” Smith returned about two hours later, Waldorf recalled, and told her she had two options: She could remain under observation at the hospital, or she could get into her car and drive nearly four hours to Kansas, a state with no abortion ban, where doctors could induce her. The hospital would not authorize a transfer or arrange to send her in an ambulance, and it offered no explanation for why.  Medical records note that the risk-management team was consulted twice over the next 31 hours, and Smith wrote: “Since there is still a heartbeat and no signs of maternal infection, we can not proceed” with induction of labor. Smith did not respond to requests for comment.  Waldorf called the maternal-fetal-medicine team at the University of Arkansas for Medical Science in Little Rock, the state’s only academic health center. The team told her standard treatment guidelines recommended that she be induced if she didn’t deliver within 12 to 24 hours because the risk for infection rises every hour. But they also said: “It can’t be done in Arkansas.” The hospital told ProPublica it could not comment on Waldorf’s experience.  Waldorf’s sister, Elizabeth Rowe, had almost died of hemorrhaging during childbirth, so the family felt an hourslong drive to Kansas through rural roads without medical support was not an option.  Waldorf’s family and friends were shocked she was running into so many obstacles. Her father, a gastroenterologist named Kenneth Rodgers, was baffled. “You dont sit around and wait for somebody to become septic. You do whatever it takes to prevent them from becoming septic,” he said. “If I dont do whats medically indicated in a potentially life-threatening situation, then I am liable for neglect. Why isn’t this the same thing?”  Her mother and stepfather were also outraged.  “It’s inhumane,” her mother, Linda Quattlebaum, said. “I’m pro-life, but for the mother.” Her husband, Paul Quattlebaum, fumed, “If I took my dog to a vet and it had this problem, that dog would get better treatment.” The next morning, day five, 24 hours had gone by since Waldorf’s water broke. She texted a friend from college that her temperature had risen to 99.3 degrees.  “What is next?” her friend, Lindsey Haire, wrote back. “Can they help you now?”  “I think it has to be like 100.4,” Waldorf wrote. “They will continue to monitor my temp or my symptoms.” “Dear lord,” Haire responded. Waldorf had spelled out the catch-22 in her journal that morning: “If I need a blood transfusion and it stabilizes my condition, they cannot induce. If my temp continues to spike then they can induce.” When her sister, Rowe, walked in that morning, she found Waldorf with her eyes wide and glazed over, her jaw tensed. Justin slumped on the couch looking defeated. “Are they going to let me die?” Waldorf asked. Rowe had never seen her sister this way; Waldorf was always the calm and practical one when challenges arose.  “That’s crazy,” Rowe said. “We’re in a hospital. People come to the hospital for them to save your life, not to let you die.”  Elizabeth Rowe, left, and her sister, Emily Waldorf, at Waldorf’s office in Fayetteville, Arkansas Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica Some hospitals in states with abortion bans have taken steps to protect their patients.  When Ohio was under a six-week ban in 2022 and 2023, a group of hospitals in one region gathered to hash out collective policies, including for miscarriages, said Dr. Justin Lappen, the chair of the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine’s committee on reproductive health. “Everyone at the same time thought the worst thing to do would be to have different practices,” he said.  So they resolved to interpret the vague law the same way: PPROM qualified as a medical emergency. “There’s power in numbers,” he said. “If we are going to do something, we should do it together and be similar, because that also hopefully gives you legal protection.” But that’s far from the norm. A 2024 Senate Finance Committee report, commissioned in the wake of ProPublica’s reporting on Thurman’s death, found that many hospital leaders and lawyers have left doctors to fend for themselves and have at times remained “conspicuously and deliberately silent” on how to provide care for miscarriages under the bans.  Physicians described hospital lawyers who “refused to meet” with them for months, were “pretty much impossible” to reach during “life or death” scenarios, and offered little help beyond “regurgitating” the law, according to the report. Information on how to handle the legal conflicts between the bans and federal law is usually not written down and, in some cases, is provided only on a “need-to-know” basis.  ProPublica has also reported that hospitals in different regions of Texas took vastly different approaches to treating miscarriage — and that miscarrying patients were far more likely to get gravely ill where hospitals werent offering abortions without signs of infection.  Many hospitals in abortion ban states will not even disclose their policy on PPROM to the public, ProPublica surveys have found. Of 10 hospitals with significant labor and delivery wards in Arkansas, only one responded to ProPublica’s questions.  The University of Arkansas Medical Sciences shared its frequently asked questions on abortion policy that stated, in part, “Under Arkansas law, may an abortion be performed if the mother’s life is at risk? It depends.” Only abortions “necessary” to preserve a patient’s life are allowed, not ones that could prevent “possible” emergencies, according to the hospital’s general counsel.  “Hospital leaders and institutional lawyers are basically interpreting these laws so conservatively, and so worried about a criminal charge, that they have forgotten about basic professionalism values of healthcare,” said Dr. Jody Steinauer, a professor of OB-GYN at the University of California, San Francisco who studies the impacts of abortion bans.  In interviews with seven doctors who worked in Arkansas, all said that no hospitals allow doctors to provide abortions for patients with “inevitable miscarriage” or PPROM without signs of infection.  Dr. Dina Epstein, an OB-GYN in Little Rock, said she and her colleagues see cases like Waldorf’s often. They are always excruciating. Her patients often panic and beg for help, but none have had the resources to travel to another state for care. Doctors at her hospital are left to negotiate among themselves over what counts as sick enough for them to act, Epstein said. “What organ needs to fail? What thing needs to happen that pushes us over the edge?” Many hospitals and doctors remain paralyzed, experts say, even though none have been prosecuted for treating a miscarriage with a procedure that would be considered an abortion. “Its been five years, and people are still like: ‘I dont know what we can do,’” said Ghazaleh Moayedi, a doctor in Texas who never stopped providing abortions for women facing miscarriages. “That’s willful ignorance at this point.” A case study included in the Texas Medical Boards new mandatory training for OB-GYNs explains that an abortion can be performed when a patient has PPROM, a condition that leads to miscarriage, even if there is no sign of infection yet. Texas Medical Board Rowe wracked her brain for something, or someone, who might be able to help her sister.  She began calling up private ambulance companies, but they would not agree to drive Waldorf because they considered her condition unstable. The cost of a medevac helicopter was in the tens of thousands of dollars. Rowe considered putting it on a credit card.  Then it struck her. “Let’s call up Sarah,” Rowe said. The family didn’t personally know Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but in their small-town Baptist circles, she felt only a degree away. Waldorf had gone to the same college, four years behind, and joined the same sorority, known as a social club, at Ouachita Baptist University. They had friends whose cousins had been in the governor’s wedding or had gone on vacation with her. One of those friends had even invited Waldorf to stay at a historic eight-room bed and breakfast with the governor during Ouachita’s annual alumni event in two weeks time.  On Waldorf’s fifth day in the hospital, Rowe reached an aide in the governor’s office at 9:27 a.m., according to Waldorf’s journal. She tried to lay it on thick, telling the aide about the connections Waldorf and Sanders shared.  “We recommend you seek legal advice,” the aide responded. “This is an emergency,” Rowe countered. “We need some help now!” The aide’s reply, according to Rowe: “What is it you expect the governor’s office to do?”  The sisters had the law’s exception language pulled up on a phone. It defined a medical emergency as “a condition in which an abortion is necessary to preserve the life of a pregnant woman whose life is endangered by … a physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.” Waldorf’s case certainly counted, they argued, and they begged for someone to call the hospital and the attorney general’s office.  The aide offered to learn more and call back, but the family says it never received another call. A friend also called the governor’s office twice and reached two different aides and got a similar response. ProPublica asked the governor’s office if Sanders was aware of the calls at the time, and if not, what her message would be to women facing this kind of situation. The spokesperson did not respond to the questions, but said: “Governor Sanders has prioritized not just the wellbeing of Arkansas’ unborn children but also at-risk kids and mothers.”  A friend reached out to Molly Duane, at the time a senior attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who was representing dozens of women denied medical care under abortion bans. Among them was Amanda Zurawski, a Texas woman who contracted sepsis and lost a fallopian tube in 2021 after doctors refused to induce her at 18 weeks pregnant in circumstances much like Waldorf’s. In response to that case, the Texas Supreme Court said PPROM should count as a medical emergency.  When Duane received the call, she was confident she had the expertise and the data to fix any fear or misunderstanding the hospital might have. “This is not a hospital in the middle of nowhere,” Duane said, “This is the hospital where she works. Surely I can convince them that providing the standard of care is legal.”  Her arguments made little headway. In a conversation with Andrew Cozart, the hospital’s director of risk management, and Thomas Olmstead, its general counsel, Olmstead told her, “We cannot rule out the possibility of an overzealous prosecutor,” she recalled.  Duane sent Cozart evidence it would be a violation of medical standards and common understandings of the law’s exception if the hospital didn’t provide Waldorf an induction. ProPublica reviewed the letter Duane sent and reached out to Cozart and Olmstead, who did not respond to requests for comment. At 5 p.m., about an hour after the email was sent, Waldorf was getting out of the shower when the CEO of the hospital, Larry Shackelford, knocked on her door. “Let me put on some clothes first,” she told the nurse, flustered.  Waldorf was used to seeing Shackelford addressing staff at the front of a conference room, polished in a suit and tie. But when he opened the door, he looked disheveled, like he had stood up from his desk and run down the hall. Waldorf and her husband recall him standing awkwardly at the foot of the bed as she looked at him with her arms crossed. “I feel like a ticking time bomb right now,” Waldorf told him. “I’ve been here for five days, and you guys have not done anything for me.” “I’m so sorry you’re in this situation,” the Waldorfs recalled Shackelford saying. “We’re going to take the very best care of you.” He didn’t say much else, except to repeat that she would get the best care, as if that was all he had been authorized to say. When he left, the couple was confused. Was Shackelford saying the hospital was finally going to allow an induction? Or was this a political visit meant to mollify them? Shackelford did not respond to a request for comment.  But Large returned and told them the hospital’s decision hadn’t changed. “With positive fetal heart rate and no evidence of maternal distress/severe illness at this time unable to augment/induce labor to expedite delivery,” the doctor wrote in the medical records; she advised they should consider going home. Soon after, Washington Regional officials told Duane they would agree to transfer Waldorf to a hospital in Kansas, where abortion at her gestational stage was legal. Duane found a team at The University of Kansas Health System about four hours away.  Before authorizing the transfer, though, Large told Waldorf she had to say specific words. “Repeat after me,” Large said, the Waldorfs and Rowe recall. “I no longer want to receive care here. I would like to transfer to another hospital with a higher level of care.” Waldorf repeated the words, and they were noted in her medical record.  At 10:20 p.m., Waldorf was strapped into a five-point harness in the back of an ambulance and began the bumpy ride along rural roads. Her husband and sister followed behind, watching her anxiously through the window.  Her arrival at the Kansas hospital felt nothing like what she had experienced in Arkansas, Waldorf wrote. Women in green scrubs and hairnets were lined up to greet her as her stretcher rolled out of the elevator. Their leader, Dr. Megan Thomas, spoke first. “We are so glad you made it,” she said. Waldorf took a picture inside the ambulance during her ride from Arkansas to Kansas to receive lifesaving medical care. Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica The University of Kansas hospital system was not always this helpful. Two years earlier, its legal team at a separate facility had blocked care to a woman named Mylissa Farmer for PPROM at 17 weeks, even though the state did not have a sweeping abortion ban. The Biden administration investigated the case as a violation of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, which it interpreted as dictating that hospitals must offer patients abortions in emergency situations, even if they are in states with bans.  Federal investigators learned that The University of Kansas Health System officials had deemed the political climate “too hot and heated” to help Farmer, according to their report. The government cited the hospital for violating the law and threatened fines if the system didn’t correct issues that led to the denial of care. The hospital said Farmer’s care was in line with hospital policy, medical standards and the law based on the facts known at the time. The University of Kansas Health System has since become something of a beacon for women in Waldorfs situation. It’s hard to see where that kind of accountability push would come from today.  The Trump administration rescinded the Biden-era guidance pressing hospitals to offer emergency abortions and dropped the governments related lawsuit. Republican lawmakers in states with bans haven’t introduced legislation to punish hospitals and physicians who fail to provide care, even though they often blame deaths and injuries under bans on malpractice and confusion. And state medical boards, which oversee the licensure of doctors, have not disciplined physicians reported to have refused to perform a medically necessary abortion during a miscarriage, including the doctors involved in Barnica’s, Zurawski’s and Farmer’s care.  If the medical board in Arkansas could issue guidance about PPROM like the one put out in Texas, that would help enormously, doctors there told ProPublica. “It addresses the vagueness and all the specific questions we have as providers,” Epstein, the Little Rock doctor, said.  Even the prominent anti-abortion advocacy group Americans United for Life told ProPublica it agreed with the Texas stance on treating previable PPROM.  ProPublica asked the Arkansas State Medical Board, the governor’s office and Republican lawmakers who sponsored the abortion ban if they planned to issue similar guidance.  The Arkansas board told ProPublica the law is already clear enough. Medical boards in 18 other states that banned abortion either said they did not have plans to issue new guidance or did not respond to ProPublica’s questions. The governor’s office did not answer questions from ProPublica. In response to ProPublica’s questions, Mary Bentley, a Republican state representative and lead sponsor of the original ban, said she believes that the law does allow doctors to offer abortions to women with PPROM and that they do not need to wait for signs of infection. She said she is reaching out to the medical board to see if they can issue guidance similar to Texas’ and she would work toward more legislation if needed. “Medical decisions should not be made by lawyers,” she said. “We need to just clarify it for them better. The women of our state definitely deserve it.”  One of the last levers of accountability is the courts. Abortion-rights groups, including Amplify Legal, where Molly Duane is now the litigation director, have sued at least 13 states over their laws, sometimes forcing clarifying statements from judges — though they’ve had limited impact so far.  One lawyer in Texas has started filing malpractice lawsuits. Michelle Maloney represents 10 women or their families who allege doctors did not provide medical care that should have been considered legal under the abortion law’s medical emergency exception.  “I think it is the most effective way to potentially make hospital systems do what they need to do to support doctors,” Maloney said. “If we can create some risk on the other side, hopefully we can motivate people to do the right thing.” Soon after Waldorf arrived at the Kansas hospital, she received misoprostol to induce labor and delivered around 1 p.m.  She and Justin held their daughter for a few precious moments as her heartbeat stilled, marveling at her perfect tiny fingers and toes and whispering private words of love.  They named her Bee, in honor of the interconnectedness of the natural world, and so they could see reminders of her each spring.  Then the tenor in the room turned. Waldorf’s placenta was having trouble detaching. Blood kept gushing out, soaking the pads under her dark red. The nurse kept weighing them. “Is that a lot of blood?” Waldorf asked, her eyes locked with those of the nurse. “It’s a lot of blood,” the nurse replied. The monitor began beeping. Waldorf’s blood pressure was dangerously low. Justin saw his wife’s face turn white. Working in the intensive care unit, Waldorf had seen patients die with this exact combination of symptoms. “This is it,” she thought.  A doctor reached elbow-deep into her uterus, trying to loosen the placenta. The team was about to take her to the operating room when he was finally able to detach it.  Doctors said she lost a liter of blood and her complications were likely worse for having been forced to wait so long to deliver.  Waldorf realized that if she had gone into labor at home or on the road, there was no way she would have made it to the hospital in time. In Waldorf’s medical record, the Kansas doctors stated the induction was performed “with the intent to preserve the life and health of the mother.” It included four dense paragraphs citing evidence of the high risks of sepsis and hemorrhage if the medical team waited to empty her uterus.  Some hospitals in states with bans have provided similar prewritten language their physicians can use to remove ambiguity about why an abortion falls under an emergency exception. Washington Regional, which has not provided such guidance to its doctors, declined to comment on its policies. None of the doctors involved in Waldorfs care at Washington Regional agreed to discuss the case. Back at home, Waldorf’s mother came to stay. Waldorf continued to bleed so much that she didn’t want to go out in public and suffered headaches for a week. In her journal, she unpacked her grief and rage. It all feels quite like the Handmaids tale, she wrote on Sept. 24. I had to seek refuge, travel by ambulance across borders. She and Justin had a hard time explaining to their daughter what had happened when she would ask when her little sister would arrive. They told her she wasnt coming anymore, until the girl eventually stopped asking.  Alumni weekend came around. Waldorf had canceled the stay at the bed-and-breakfast with the governor, but she decided seeing her community might be healing. At the opening event, the emcee announced that Sanders was in attendance and the audience rose to applaud. Waldorf stayed seated. So did her mother and stepfather, who had supported the governor for years. Her stepfather tore the Sanders bumper sticker off his car and made it known to local politicians what had happened.  On Dec. 8, the night before she was scheduled to return to work, Waldorf found herself frantically cleaning her house and snapping at her daughter. The next morning, she could barely push herself out of the car. Walking into Washington Regional, she was flooded with memories of the days she had spent there as a patient, and of how her colleagues and the CEO had not been able to help her. A month later, she submitted her resignation letter. The decision made her feel lighter, she wrote. Exhausted. Free.” She started her own physical therapy practice that spring, naming it Hive Therapy in honor of Bee.  She estimates the lost income, startup debt and out-of-pocket medical costs from her ordeal at more than $147,000. Included in the tally was more than $5,000 for the ambulance ride to Kansas, which Washington Regional was unwilling to pay for.  In a letter to Duane, the hospital’s general counsel, Thomas Olmstead, used Waldorf’s words against her — the words Large had asked her to repeat.  The ambulance transfer happened because of Waldorf’s “specific request,” he wrote, and not because the attending physician believed that Waldorf needed a “higher level of care.”  “It is simply not reasonable for you to make demand that WRMC assume responsibility for the cost of a patient-directed transfer,” he wrote. Olmstead has since been promoted to executive leadership. He did not respond to a request for comment.  When reached for comment, Large would not speak about Waldorf’s case even though Waldorf had given her permission to. But, she said, “I am glad that the topic at hand is being discussed, because thats incredibly important. Im glad her voice is being heard.”  The Arkansas Medical Board said it is not currently investigating any complaints against the doctors. Local lawyers have been unwilling to take on a malpractice case because Waldorf didn’t die or end up with permanent injuries.  A year after leaving her job, in February 2026, Waldorf joined a lawsuit led by Duane, alongside an OB-GYN and five other women denied care under the Arkansas abortion law. It seeks to block the state’s ban on the grounds that it violates the state constitution; named as defendants are Sanders, the Arkansas attorney general, state prosecutors and members of the state medical board. The state is currently trying to get the case thrown out on jurisdictional grounds, and the governor’s office told ProPublica, “Governor Sanders looks forward to defending Arkansas’ pro-life laws in court.” Waldorf’s personal story and deep Arkansas roots seem to have grabbed the attention of people who don’t usually follow abortion policy. Boys she knew in college who she hasn’t talked to in 20 years reached out to say how upset they were to hear about her experience. A pastor she’d known since childhood defended her on Facebook against anti-abortion attacks. Friends who described themselves as “pro-life” have written long messages about how her story has sickened them and how they want the law changed.  Waldorf said she hopes that sharing the details of her trauma may finally make a difference. But it hasn’t stopped her from reliving it all. Fayetteville is small. Barely a day goes by where she doesn’t bump into former co-workers from the hospital — at the grocery store or the coffee shop or school pick-up. Recently, she saw Large a few booths over at a local restaurant.  Each run-in brings it all pouring back. The ultrasounds. The “risk management.” The blood, so much blood. But also, the state line. The relief she felt crossing it. A girl walks past the cross atop Mount Sequoyah, a hilltop landmark and overlook above Fayetteville, Arkansas. Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica The post She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help. appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Abortion, Health Care]

— Albuquerque Officials Take Steps to Curb Surge in Citations, Jail Stays Related to Homelessness

 

at 5/26/26 4:00am

The Metropolitan Detention Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where ProPublica found that the jail population of people marked “transient” or homeless surged to 12,000 in 2025 from 3,670 in 2022 Ramsay de Give for ProPublica Judges, state public defenders and city officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico, are taking steps to curb a cycle of missed court dates and arrest warrants for crimes related to living outside that has led to a county jail population that’s about half homeless. Eighteen months ago, judges in Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, noticed an increase in charges related to homelessness — including for obstructing a sidewalk, unlawful camping and unlawful storage of personal property. They said they also saw that some people who received the citations didn’t have an address and were missing court dates. People living on the street often lack cellphones and permanent addresses, making it difficult for them to know when to appear in court. Missed court appearances can lead to warrants that — if the person encounters officers again — can land them in jail. Starting July 1, when Albuquerque police issue citations for nine offenses associated with homelessness, they will schedule related court appearances for Fridays, according to a memo issued by Presiding Criminal Division Judge Michelle Castillo Dowler. The judges anticipate that having a specific day each week for the city ordinance cases will lead to fewer people missing court dates and fewer warrants for failing to appear. Officials will also use the set hearings to attempt to address the problem in other ways. A caseworker and an attorney from the New Mexico Law Offices of the Public Defender will attend the Friday hearings. The public defender’s office is also working to have local treatment and service providers available outside the courtroom, said Dennica Torres, the district defender for the public defender’s office. “It’s like a one-stop shop on Fridays,” she said. Her office, the district attorney’s office and the courts have been working since last year to address the homelessness-related caseload. The city of Albuquerque has also set aside $200,000 for a city attorney or paralegal to assist with the Friday effort, Torres said.  “We can’t simply just cycle vulnerable individuals through jail and back out on the street,” Mayor Tim Keller said at a recent news conference. “Both of those are not the right answer.” The changes come after ProPublica reported in March that under Keller’s tenure, charges have skyrocketed for ordinances related to living on the street. In 2025, people were charged 1,256 times for obstructing sidewalks, nearly six times the number of cases in the previous eight years combined; more than 3,000 trespassing charges were handed out, the highest for any year since 2017; and cases of unlawful camping increased to 704 from 113 the year before, according to previously unreported county data. Read More Albuquerque’s Mayor Said Arrests Were “Not the Solution” to Homelessness. Yet Jail Bookings Have Skyrocketed. Court data shows that charges for the nine offenses that will be part of the court’s Friday hearings continue to rise — from 579 between January and April of 2025 to 2,072 during the same period this year. (Judges did not include trespassing in the charges scheduled for Fridays.) ProPublica found the number of people at Bernalillo County’s Metropolitan Detention Center who are designated as “transient” or homeless has soared in recent years, to nearly 12,000 in 2025, from 3,670 in 2022. Last week, nearly 53% of people booked at the jail were recorded as homeless. Keller did not respond to ProPublica’s questions or requests for comment. But he previously told the news organization that arrests and citations are not a solution to homelessness, which is a contentious issue in Albuquerque. While the city’s homeless population more than doubled from 2022 to 2025, the increase in homeless people jailed by the county more than tripled.  Keller, who has been mayor since 2017, has responded by increasingly deploying city crews to clear encampments and also by ramping up enforcement of crimes related to being homeless. Keller previously defended the Albuquerque Police Department’s actions.  “What we’re doing is following the letter of the law,” he said. “There are much more punitive things that I’m sure a lot of people would want, that we don’t do because they’re inappropriate.” The post Albuquerque Officials Take Steps to Curb Surge in Citations, Jail Stays Related to Homelessness appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice, Prison]

— Lawmakers Ask DOJ Watchdog to Investigate Alleged Drugs-for-Votes Scheme After ProPublica Report

 

at 5/26/26 3:00am

Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera, a Democrat Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images Puerto Rico’s representative in Congress and four other members of the House of Representatives have asked the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General to investigate why a federal probe into a prison drugs-for-votes scheme was abandoned after the 2024 elections.  “Credible allegations of election fraud uncovered through federal investigative work warrant serious scrutiny and transparent explanation,” the members of Congress wrote in the May 20 letter, adding that it was essential for “public confidence in democratic institutions” that such claims are handled consistently, “regardless of the political actors involved.”  The letter was signed by Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández Rivera, a Democrat and member of Puerto Rico’s Popular Democratic Party, as well as Reps. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Oversight Committee; Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y.; Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus; and Jesús “Chuy” García, D-Ill., a member of the House Judiciary Committee. Their request follows a ProPublica investigation that published earlier this month detailing how prosecutors had uncovered a drugs-for-votes scheme being run by a violent gang in Puerto Rican prisons and were deep into looking at whether now-Gov. Jenniffer González-Colón or her campaign were involved. In the days following President Donald Trump’s election in 2024, as prosecutors prepared the indictment, they were told by supervisors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Puerto Rico to exclude the voting-related charges against inmates and prison staff, four sources with knowledge of the investigation told ProPublica. Then, once Trump took office, they were told to abandon the probe into potential political ties entirely, the sources said. In their letter, the members of Congress urged the inspector general to examine the Justice Department’s decision to not pursue charges related to election fraud “despite reported findings and evidence.” They added that the failure to further investigate contradicts the Trump administration’s “repeated emphasis on prioritizing election integrity and election security as federal enforcement priorities,” in addition to deeming drug traffickers threats to public safety and democratic institutions.  Initially, Hernández Rivera sought a House Judiciary Committee investigation into the issue but then decided the inspector general’s office would be a better avenue.  “This has always been about following the facts and ensuring there is accountability,” he said in an email to ProPublica. “Given the concerns raised about the DOJ’s handling of the investigation and prosecutorial decisions, we believe an Inspector General review is the appropriate mechanism to independently examine what occurred and whether standards were applied consistently.” The letter was addressed to Don Berthiaume, who had been serving as acting inspector general and has been nominated for the position. While his confirmation is pending, William Blier, the deputy inspector general, is leading the office.  The inspector general’s office has jurisdiction over misconduct by Justice Department employees, including the Bureau of Prisons, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. However, it does not oversee allegations of attorney misconduct, which are handled by the Office of Professional Responsibility, unless the allegations include criminal behavior. The inspector general’s office declined to comment on the letter.   González-Colón, a longtime Republican and member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, has declined repeated requests for interviews by ProPublica. In a previous statement, she denied any wrongdoing and said she “has stood firmly against corruption” throughout her career and political campaigns. “I categorically reject any attempt to link me to unlawful conduct,” she said. She also told local news outlets she didn’t think any investigation into the matter is warranted. González-Colón has not been charged with any crime.  Read More Prosecutors Had a Drugs-for-Votes Scheme “Locked Up.” Under Trump, They Were Told Not to Pursue Charges. An indictment filed in December 2024, while Joe Biden was still president, charged 34 members of a gang, known as Group 31 or Los Tiburones, and associates with crimes including drug distribution resulting in at least four overdose deaths. The indictment also alleged that the gang connected with government officials “for the purpose of reducing prison sentences” and told inmates “who to vote for in primary and general elections.” But the indictment included no charges related to the drugs-for-votes scheme. Sources familiar with the investigation said gang leaders forced inmates to vote for González-Colón or face brutal beatings, or be cut off from the drugs they were addicted to. Prosecutors said they had evidence that González-Colón had spoken with one of the prison gang leaders on WhatsApp during the primary campaign and were pursuing other potential ties when they were instructed not to look any further, people with knowledge of the investigation told ProPublica.  W. Stephen Muldrow, U.S. attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, said his office does not comment on open cases. While a couple of defendants have made plea agreements, most of the cases are still pending.  A spokesperson for his office, Lymarie Llovet-Ayala, told ProPublica in a previous email that charging corrupt public officials “has always been and remains a top priority” of the office.  The post Lawmakers Ask DOJ Watchdog to Investigate Alleged Drugs-for-Votes Scheme After ProPublica Report appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice, Politics, Prison]

— California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints

 

at 5/22/26 4:00am

A photo of teacher Jason Agan in the 2017-18 Angelo Rodriguez High School yearbook Beth LaBerge/KQED A San Francisco Bay Area school district has replaced a middle school math teacher for the remainder of the academic year following an investigation by KQED and ProPublica that showed he had been accused of inappropriately touching students at two previous jobs. The Redwood City School District has received at least two new complaints against Jason Agan, according to the parents who filed the complaints as well as emails from the district to the parents saying it is investigating both. Read More He Was Fired for Sexually Harassing Students. California Allowed Him to Keep Teaching Anyway. The news outlets found that the state teacher licensing agency allowed Agan to keep his credentials following his 2019 firing from a high school in the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District for what district officials characterized as sexual harassment of female students. At least 11 students and one parent at Angelo Rodriguez High School submitted written complaints about Agan’s behavior to school administrators, drawing at least two warnings to stop, KQED and ProPublica’s investigation found. Students in that district testified during Agan’s dismissal hearing that he made them uncomfortable by massaging their neck or shoulders as well as commenting on female students’ clothing, prompting an independent panel to deem him “unfit to teach,” according to records obtained by the news outlets. The Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the agency responsible for educators’ licenses, suspended Agan’s teaching license for seven days in 2021, after he had already gotten another job teaching math at Ephraim Williams College Prep Middle School in the Fortune network of charter schools in Sacramento, an hour away from his first school. The discipline — along with a red flag icon — is noted in the state’s public database of credentialed educators, but no specific reason is given for the sanction. Anyone searching his name in the database would see he still held credentials indicating he was legally fit to teach. At Ephraim Williams, Agan’s second school, he drew another complaint of unwanted touching, prompting a written warning from Fortune’s human resources consultant. He left the school in June 2022 and started teaching math at Clifford School, a prekindergarten through eighth grade school in Redwood City, that August. That is where he was teaching when the investigation was published. David Weekly, president of the school board in Redwood City, told KQED and ProPublica on Saturday that the board plans to review the district’s hiring process after Clifford parents, in a public letter, called for such a review and for a third-party investigation into whether district officials were aware of prior complaints against Agan. “Parents deserve to know their kids are safe and to know that the district is doing a good job carefully vetting those who will be working closely with their children,” Weekly said in a written statement to the news outlets. Redwood City School District Superintendent John Baker told the Clifford School community on Thursday that the district has enlisted a third-party investigator to review its hiring practices and procedures, according to a letter that the district spokesperson shared with the news outlets. Deputy superintendent Wendy Kelly previously told KQED and ProPublica that the district, when hiring, typically calls candidates’ immediate supervisors and checks the database of licensed educators. She declined to answer questions about Agan’s hiring or say whether the school district was aware he had been accused of misconduct at two previous schools. Clifford principal Kristy Jackson emailed parents in the hours after the story was published to outline the district’s hiring policies and said that while she could not discuss confidential personnel matters, “To date, I have not had any concerns about this employee related to student safety.” Agan, who has not been accused of a crime, did not respond to requests for comment about the new complaints after he was removed from the school. Nor did he previously respond to questions sent via email and certified mail to his home about students’ accusations and his job history. He has denied any sexual motivation in touching students, stating during his dismissal hearing from the Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District that he touched students’ shoulders to offer them support and encouragement but that he did not massage them. More than a dozen parents showed up at Clifford the morning after the story published last week to express concern about Agan’s employment to the principal, according to two parents who were there. Just before noon that same day, Jackson and Baker emailed the Clifford School community saying that the district would “soon be welcoming a substitute teacher to support students in Mr. Agan’s classroom.” A Redwood City school district spokesperson said a substitute was brought in to teach Agan’s classes starting May 13 but declined to comment on his employment status. The spokesperson did not answer a question about the new complaints. Parents expressed “profound alarm and outrage” and also demanded Agan’s immediate resignation or removal from any position involving contact with students, according to their letter to the Clifford principal, school board, state lawmakers, California State Superintendent Tony Thurmond and the teacher licensing agency. More than 170 people signed the letter, according to a parent involved in organizing the petition. Agan started teaching at Clifford School in 2022. Beth LaBerge/KQED “We recognize the seriousness of these matters and believe that transparency, accountability, and student safety must take precedence over institutional reputation or liability concerns,” the parents wrote. “Children deserve learning environments where they are safe, respected, and protected. Parents and guardians deserve honesty and accountability from the institutions entrusted with their children’s care.” Brie Hanni, a parent who signed the letter, said she broke down after learning about Agan’s disciplinary history and pulled her seventh grade daughter, who was in Agan’s class, out of school the day KQED and ProPublica published the story. Hanni says Agan’s case illustrates a systemic gap in transparency, and the state should specify the reasons educators are disciplined. The licensing bodies governing dozens of other professions in California, including doctors, nurses, police officers and lawyers, make the reasons that disciplinary actions were imposed easily accessible on their websites. And at least 12 states, including Oregon, Washington and Florida, do the same for teachers. “I think a statewide, if not nationwide, question is: What do you do with these teachers who are ‘unfit to teach’?” Hanni said. Thurmond, who is running for governor, told KQED and ProPublica that any teacher who “abuses or harasses students should never teach again.” Thurmond said that as governor, he would propose legislation to automatically revoke licenses for educators found by schools or independent panels to have committed sexual harassment. A spokesperson for his campaign said the legislation would be retroactive. Xavier Becerra, the former U.S. health and human services secretary, former state attorney general and a leading candidate for California governor, “believes California should have a system that acts swiftly, prioritizes the protection of students, and gives parents and schools confidence that serious misconduct is being handled appropriately and transparently,” said Jonathan Underland, Becerra’s campaign spokesperson, in a statement. “Student safety has to come first,” Underland said. “The allegations described in this reporting are deeply disturbing, and no student or family should ever feel unsafe at school.” Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment on Agan’s case and the state’s disciplinary process for educators. Neither did six other gubernatorial candidates seeking to replace him. State Sen. Josh Becker, who represents Redwood City, shared ProPublica and KQED’s investigation on social media and wrote: “Completely unacceptable. What is going on here? The legislature needs to dig into this which includes me.” A spokesperson for Becker said he was not available for comment this week. During a Redwood City school board meeting last week, Clifford parent Josh Levinson said he had submitted a Title IX complaint against Agan to the district after reading the article and speaking with his seventh grade son. Title IX is the federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination and harassment in schools. “What I’ve heard from my son is that this pattern hasn’t changed,” Levinson said at the board meeting, referencing Agan’s history of misconduct claims. “When someone’s deemed unfit to teach, that should be a massive red flag, not something brushed aside because the database says they’re technically employable.” Levinson declined to speak about the specifics of his complaint. Another Clifford parent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his child’s identity, told the news outlets that he also filed a complaint against Agan after reading the article and speaking with his child. The parent said his child reported seeing Agan touch students’ shoulders and yell during class. In his job application to Redwood City that the district shared with KQED and ProPublica, Agan did not disclose that he had been fired from Rodriguez High; instead, he wrote that he left because he “wanted to explore new challenges and opportunities.” He also checked a “Please don’t contact” box under Rodriguez High. Kelly, the Redwood City deputy superintendent, said in a previous interview that the district contacts prior employers even when candidates instruct them not to. She also said that school districts trust the Commission on Teacher Credentialing to vet teachers, and those whose credentials are valid are considered employable. In his earlier application to teach at Ephraim Williams, Agan did acknowledge that he had been fired from Rodriguez High after being “accused of inappropriately touching students on the shoulders during class.” He wrote that he disagreed with the dismissal and explained that he would often place his hands on students’ shoulders while helping them. A spokesperson for the state’s teacher licensing agency, Anita Fitzhugh, has emphasized that state law limits what information the agency can share. Only after the agency recommends educators be disciplined can it release its findings, which include a summary of the case, to prospective employers. But that information is released only if a school requests it within five years of when the discipline was recommended. In Agan’s case, that window passed earlier this year. Redwood City did not ask for such findings before hiring Agan in 2022, according to logs of requests made during that time that the teacher licensing agency provided to KQED and ProPublica. Kelly previously confirmed that the school had not requested the findings, saying that she discovered only last year that it could do so. Agan is one of at least 67 educators for whom the state has not revoked professional licenses after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of misconduct of a sexual nature, according to a review of available records from 2019 through 2025 obtained by the news outlets. Help Us Report on Teacher Misconduct in California If you have experience with the state’s opaque teacher disciplinary process, KQED and ProPublica want to hear from you. Share Your Experience The post California Teacher Previously Fired for Sexual Harassment Is No Longer in the Classroom After New Complaints appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Education]

— Louisiana’s Tough-on-Crime Policies Stand to Cost Taxpayers Millions More for Years to Come

 

at 5/22/26 3:00am

Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica. Source image via Wikimedia Commons. The day after a shooting last month killed a teenager and injured five people at the Mall of Louisiana, Gov. Jeff Landry blasted what he referred to as “hug-a-thug” policies — reforms put in place prior to his tenure when the state was trying to shed its reputation as the nations incarceration capital. He also demanded harsher penalties for violent minors. “I’m done with them. It doesn’t matter how old they are,” Landry, a Republican, said during a news conference in Baton Rouge. “We’ve got 18,000 acres at Angola — if it was up to me, I would send them all there for the rest of their lives.”’ Landry’s push for harsher punishments that would keep people in prison longer came as little surprise. Soon after his 2024 inauguration, he won a package of tough-on-crime bills that drastically changed the state’s sentencing laws. A Landry spokesperson at the time brushed off concerns from civil rights groups and incarceration experts that it would swell the prison population and plunge the state into financial disaster, insisting that “less crime means greater economic opportunity for everyone.” Two years later, the governor wants to add hundreds more beds in Louisianas largest prison and spend more on medical costs as prisoners stay longer behind bars. His proposed $798 million corrections budget, which the Republican-controlled legislature is expected to pass by June 1, represents a 9% increase from the inflation-adjusted total spent in fiscal year 2024, the last budget passed before his tenure. The increased budget is the first indication that the rising inmate population resulting from Landry’s policies is costing Louisiana taxpayers. ProPublica and Verite News have spent more than two years investigating how Landry’s policies have impacted Louisiana’s criminal justice system. The number of prisoners paroled under Landry has plummeted to its lowest point in 20 years, due in part to a law he signed that cedes much of the power of the parole board to a computerized algorithm. And the prison population as a whole is expected to become older and sicker since Landry and the legislature eliminated medical parole. Landry also ushered in a law that lowered the age at which the justice system must treat defendants as adults from 18 to 17 years old to combat what he characterized as an epidemic of violent crime committed by minors. But an investigation by ProPublica and Verite News found that 69% of 17-year olds in three of the state’s largest parishes were arrested for offenses that Louisiana law does not consider violent crimes. Many experts say the full impact of these changes won’t be felt for at least another decade. The Crime and Justice Institute, a Boston-based nonpartisan public-safety research organization, predicts that by 2034, Landry’s rollback of inmates’ ability to shave time off their sentences through good behavior will double the size of the state’s prison population, double the number of nonviolent offenders being held and cost an estimated $2 billion for new prisons to accommodate the population. Here is how Landry’s policies have already begun to impact Louisiana’s prisons and budget. Prison Population Change In the two years after Landry took office, the number of state prisoners has increased by about 8%, and Landry’s budget indicates that number will continue to rise. The governor is asking for an additional 688 beds at the state’s largest prison, the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, which will require the hiring of 150 correctional officers. A corrections department spokesperson said the increased capacity is necessary because under the previous administration, “beds were significantly decreased, correctional officer positions were cut, facilities closed, and funding [was] eliminated.” In 2017, a bipartisan coalition of Louisiana legislators had passed an ambitious package of bills designed to reduce the number of nonviolent offenders behind bars — and with it the state’s nation-leading prison population. By 2021, the number of nonviolent offenders in state prisons and jails dropped by 55% and the overall prison population by 26%, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Louisiana’s Prison Population Has Continued to Go Up Under Gov. Jeff Landry After years of steady decline due to a bipartisan prison-reform package, the state’s incarcerated population started climbing again in 2022, after the height of the coronavirus pandemic, as courts reopened and crime rates rose. The increase has continued as a result of Landry’s criminal justice rollbacks. Note: Prison population totals as of Dec. 31 of each year. Source: Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Chris Alcantara/ProPublica But in early 2024, Landry signed a series of bills that repealed most of those reforms. The governor and his allies in the legislature eliminated parole for anyone convicted of a crime committed after Aug. 1, 2024, and required prisoners to serve at least 85% of their sentences before they can reduce their time through good behavior. The elimination of parole also got rid of medical parole and put additional restrictions on medical furlough — both of which had been offered to severely ill or injured inmates. The rising number of prisoners has applied additional pressure on overcrowded local jails, where more than half of Louisiana’s inmates are held instead of state-run prisons. Landry is asking the legislature for an additional $17 million to increase the rate paid to local sheriffs to house state inmates by $3 per day, from $26 to $29. Louisiana Has More State Prisoners in Local Jails Than Any Other State in the Nation More than half of Louisiana inmates are held in local jails instead of state-run prisons. Note: Data as of 2023. Source: Department of Justice report on prison population released in September. Chris Alcantara/ProPublica Some lawmakers and prison reform advocates say there are indications that the Department of Corrections is seeing the need for a shift in strategy. State Rep. Mandie Landry (no relation), a Democrat from New Orleans, said corrections department officials asked her to sponsor a bill that allows prisoners who earn an associate’s degree to shave 90 days off their sentences. And while that might not seem like much, she said, it’s a move in the right direction. “I think they’re realizing that what the legislature did a few years ago is going to explode into a nightmare in prison,” she said. The legislature passed the bipartisan bill in April. A corrections department spokesperson declined to respond to questions concerning the impact of Landry’s policies on the prison population and corrections budget, how those policies are impacting inmate medical care and if the department is seeking to gradually reverse any of Landry’s policies. Landry’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Rising Corrections Budget Landry is asking for an additional $82 million for next year’s corrections budget — 11% more than currently allotted. Over the past decade, the amount of state tax dollars spent on correctional services has fluctuated, especially during the coronavirus pandemic, when federal aid temporarily supplemented the corrections budget. But Landry’s policies will ensure the need for additional funds, said James Austin, a national corrections policy expert. Landry’s Proposed Budget Could Push Statewide Prison Spending to Its Highest Level in a Decade The actual spending in 2027 by the Department of Corrections could be even higher, based on past trends. Note: Louisiana’s fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30. Fiscal years 2016 to 2025 represent actual taxpayer spending on corrections after adjusting for inflation, using the most recent rate as of April. The amount of state funding dropped in fiscal years 2020 and 2021 because the state used federal pandemic aid to supplement its corrections budget. A key reason for the state funding increase in fiscal year 2025 was the cost of major repairs at two prisons. The figures for fiscal year 2026 represent the department’s budget as of December 2025 plus an additional amount the Landry administration has requested through June. Source: Louisiana Division of Administration. Chris Alcantara/ProPublica While overall state spending during Landry’s tenure is projected to drop by 2% when adjusted for inflation, corrections spending will increase by 9% if the governor’s proposed budget passes. “There’s no indication that the need for more beds and more staff is going to flatten out. And I don’t think this governor will talk about increasing taxes,” Austin said. “All that’s left is to cut programs in other areas.” A new report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in Washington, D.C., determined that the proposed increase in corrections spending would come at the expense of education. Landry has proposed cutting $165 million in education funding, including $40 million for state colleges and universities and $125 million for K-12 education, including teacher pay. (Landry backed a measure that would have paid for teacher raises by liquidating three education trust funds, but voters rejected the proposal in the May 16 election.) “They have made the decision to boost the funding for prisons while deprioritizing the investments in teachers,” said Michael Mitchell, author of the report. The state is forced to make cuts because Landry and the Republican-controlled legislature pushed through their 2024 criminal justice bills in less than two weeks without the typical debate over costs, said Sarah Omojola, director of the Louisiana office of the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform. “These rollbacks were very partisan and not supported by research, data or even fiscally sound policy,” Omojola said. “They just approved the bills before the legislative staff even computed what the full expenses were.” A Landry spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. Rep. Debbie Villio, a Republican from Kenner who sponsored the 2024 bills that eliminated parole and significantly reduced the ability of prisoners to reduce their sentences through good behavior, did not respond to a request for comment. “It is my position that this legislation will not ramp up prison population and costs,” Villio texted the Times-Picayune at the time the bills were passed. An Older, Sicker Prison Population The need for additional healthcare funds is yet another indicator of the costs associated with Landry’s changes to the state’s sentencing laws, said Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voice of the Experienced, a New Orleans nonprofit that advocates for the rights of incarcerated people. Without the benefit of parole or the ability to reduce their sentences through good behavior, inmates will spend more time behind bars. That extra time will create an older and sicker population, Reilly said. The number of older prisoners was already on the rise prior to Landry due, in part, to lengthy sentences secured in the 1980s to 2000s by previous New Orleans district attorneys. Landry has asked for an increase of $14.3 million to pay for medical care in prisons for the next fiscal year, which begins in July. The administration is also asking for an additional $33 million for the current fiscal year to pay for medical care, overtime and supplies. Louisiana Prisoners Over the Age of 70 Experienced the Highest Change in Population Since 2019 Since Landry took office in 2024, the population of prisoners over 70 has gone up 28%, while the overall prison population rose by 8%. Prisoners over 70 typically represent a small portion of the overall prison population. Note: Prison totals used to calculate the rate for each age group are from Dec. 31 of each year. Source: Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. Chris Alcantara/ProPublica A 2024 investigation by Verite News and ProPublica detailed allegations of unconstitutional medical care provided to inmates being held in Angola’s medical ward. Austin, the corrections expert, said that a medical system that for decades has struggled to care for its most vulnerable will “only worsen” under the strain of a rapidly expanding and aging population. In March, a federal appeals court threw out a lower-court order to have a court-appointed team oversee medical care at Angola, calling the proposed remedy “micromanagement” that violated the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act. The case has been sent back to the lower court. For years, as both attorney general and governor, Landry has defended Angola’s healthcare system, claiming that inmates are entitled to only “adequate” medical care — not specialized care or the best care possible. The legislature proposed two healthcare bills this year that would reduce medical costs. One that would restore medical parole and medical furlough as exceptions to the elimination of parole recently passed. Another, which would expand the time an inmate can be released into hospice, is still being considered. Current law allows prison officials to release terminally ill prisoners two months prior to their expected death, which is the shortest hospice-release window in the country, according to Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a nonprofit focused on criminal justice reform. The proposed bill would double that time to four months, which would still be the shortest. Florida has the next shortest window, at six months, followed by Alabama, South Carolina and Tennessee, which have a life expectancy requirement of one year. “These people are on their death bed. Some of these people dont even realize they’re in prison,” said corrections secretary Gary Westcott at a March hearing on the proposed bill. And the costs associated with caring for these inmates can be extraordinarily high, Westcott said. “We’re talking about changing diapers, feeding them. Most of them cannot do anything on their own,” he said, noting that once they are transferred to a hospital, those costs are picked up by Medicaid. The post Louisiana’s Tough-on-Crime Policies Stand to Cost Taxpayers Millions More for Years to Come appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Criminal Justice, Prison]

— The Trump Administration Is Facing Scrutiny for How It’s Handing Out Billion-Dollar Border Wall Contracts

 

at 5/21/26 1:00pm

The Department of Homeland Security has released little information to the public on its plans to build new border infrastructure through the Big Bend region. Hannah Gentiles When Tommy Fisher set out to build a section of border wall in South Texas during the first Trump administration, the project quickly became ensnared in controversy. Experts raised concerns about shoddy construction and signs of erosion. Beyond that, Fisher’s company had received funding from a group called We Build the Wall, an influential conservative nonprofit that included President Donald Trump’s then-political strategist Steve Bannon as a board member. Some of its leaders eventually went to prison for their involvement in the venture. Even the president denounced the project. “I disagreed with doing this very small (tiny) section of wall, in a tricky area, by a private group which raised money by ads,” Trump wrote on X in response to reporting by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune in 2020 detailing problems with the wall project. “It was only done to make me look bad,” the post continued. But none of this stopped Fisher’s company from getting subsequent border wall contracts, including from the state of Texas. And now the federal government has awarded his company over $9 billion to build even more border wall — including a $1.2 billion contract in the Big Bend region of Texas, where residents have continued to press for answers about the government’s plans in and around one of the country’s largest national parks. And, as during Trump’s first term, Fisher’s work is stirring up controversy again. A New York-based construction company has sued the Trump administration after it awarded the bulk of new Texas border wall contracts to North Dakota-headquartered Fisher Sand & Gravel and another company. Posillico Civil Inc.’s lawsuit, filed in the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C., on May 13, offers one of the first public glimpses into the procurement process along the border in Texas. The suit claims that out of the 11 prequalified vendors for the wall projects, U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded nearly $14 billion — about 73% of the value of the contracts — to just two: Fisher’s firm and Barnard Construction, based in Montana. The work also includes wall projects around El Paso, Laredo, Del Rio and the Rio Grande Valley. The Trump administration has come under scrutiny for awarding no-bid contracts and for the lack of transparency around its accelerated border wall construction plans, moves designed to help the president achieve his key campaign promise of securing the border. During his first term, Trump’s moves also faced criticism. A 2020 investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that the government was awarding contracts before acquiring titles to the land, leading to millions of dollars in costs related to delays. A review of federal spending data by the news organizations also revealed how the first Trump administration had made hundreds of contract modifications, increasing the cost of the border wall project by billions. The administration has shown no signs of slowing down: The U.S. Department of Homeland Security secured $46.5 billion to build the border wall in 2025, thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Having prequalified contractors is not uncommon, as the system is structured to help the government move through projects quicker, but it is not meant to remove competition, said Charles Tiefer, a leading authority on federal contract law and former member of the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan. DHS “is picking contractors for loyalty and from confidence that they will do its bidding, rather than, as every other administration has done, picking contractors for best value,” Tiefer said, referring to reports that then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem awarded a $220 million ad campaign contract to a firm she had connections to. In response to ProPublica’s reporting, DHS said the department “has no involvement with the selection of subcontractors” and that it doesn’t control or weigh in on who contractors hire. “They got huge blank checks, and they want to write them as fast as possible,” Tiefer said. The White House declined to comment for this story. A CBP spokesperson said in a written statement that the bidding process has been fair. “Contracts awarded are based on the contractor’s qualifications to perform the work in a timely manner and at prices deemed fair and reasonable,” the spokesperson wrote, saying neither CBP nor DHS have an affiliation with We Build the Wall. An attorney for Posillico declined to comment. The company has previously built 43 miles of federal wall in South Texas and also won a contract to construct sections of Gov. Greg Abbott’s state border project. The state project experienced many of the same construction delays and cost overruns as Trump’s border wall. Posillico alleges in the lawsuit that it incurred “substantial bid preparation and proposal costs” drawing up plans for federal solicitations that were “not genuine competitive opportunities.” While these are just allegations, Scott Amey, a contracting expert and general counsel at the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said border wall contracts have long been controversial and raised questions on what the government is getting for the cost, as well as the political connections of some of the contractors. Amey closely followed border wall procurement during the first Trump administration. “There’s a cost, and ethics and contracting questions that all come up whenever you mention anything with the border wall,” Amey said. Representatives for Fisher Sand & Gravel and Barnard did not respond to requests for comment. Barnard has filed as an intervenor in the case, meaning it isn’t a party in the suit but wants to participate. Although the vast majority of the new funding is going to Fisher and Barnard, several other companies got smaller percentages of the contracts: Spencer Construction LLC; Granite Construction Co.; and Southwest Valley Constructors, which recently won another $1.7 billion contract for barrier construction in and around Big Bend National Park. Representatives for the other companies did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Posillico’s lawsuit claims that the contracts issued to the other companies went beyond the original scope of wall construction work the federal government told bidders it was seeking. In CPB’s Big Bend Sector project, for example, contractors were ultimately required to install cattle fencing and cattle guards — something Posillico’s lawsuit contends was not what the government originally asked of potential contractors. Had the government been clearer on the scope, the lawsuit argues, the company may have had a better chance of winning a contract. As part of the new scope of work, winning contractors, including Fisher Sand & Gravel, will also have to work with the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that administers treaties around the Rio Grande and the physical border with Mexico. Fisher has previously clashed with the commission. In 2019, the commission filed a lawsuit claiming Fisher had violated a binational water treaty between the U.S. and Mexico after the company constructed fencing in South Texas. The investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune found that a 3-mile stretch of border wall Fisher built on the banks of the Rio Grande was at risk of collapsing if not fixed. The company also built a segment of border wall in Sunland Park, New Mexico, without following proper procedures. Both projects involved We Build the Wall, the nonprofit. In the end, four of the nonprofit’s top leaders, including Bannon, were arrested on fraud and other charges connected to the fundraising scheme. Three men, including an Air Force veteran, were convicted and sentenced to prison. Trump pardoned Bannon, who was awaiting trial. Fisher and the government reached a settlement in 2022 in which Fisher Sand & Gravel agreed to conduct quarterly inspections, maintain an existing gate and keep a $3 million bond for 15 years or until the property was transferred to the government to cover expenses in case the structure failed. Local residents protest new wall infrastructure in Presidio, Texas, in March. Hannah Gentiles “The Rules Don’t Really Apply” The Posillico lawsuit offers a rare peek behind the veil at the high-dollar world of border wall construction, an industry that has sprung up over the past 10 years in response to Trump’s recurring campaign promise to build a wall. The procurement process has been especially obscure around border wall contracting, thanks to Noem waiving dozens of laws regulating financial transparency and competitiveness in government contracting for the entire southern border. That act marked the first time in American history these waivers were applied to all 1,954 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. In its lawsuit, Posillico made explicit that it did not contest the use of waivers to expedite construction of the wall. For residents of border communities, the waivers have meant that DHS has released very little information detailing the massive infrastructure projects coming to their communities. This spring, the Center for Biological Diversity filed two lawsuits in federal court related to border wall construction in the Big Bend area, specifically over DHS’ failure to respond to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for documents related to the project and challenging the agency’s authority to waive laws without Congress’ approval. The government has not filed answers to the complaints yet, with a deadline of June 1 for the FOIA complaint and early June in the congressional authority lawsuit. In the Posillico lawsuit, DHS moved to seal documents in the case, including any depositions or affidavits; Judge David A. Tapp signed off on the motion. In the absence of publicly posted requests for proposals and direct communication from Washington, residents in the Big Bend region have been relying on an online map posted by CBP that says it tracks contracts as they’re awarded. Lines on the map have shifted dramatically over the past few months, raising questions about what the government actually plans to build. The agency briefly took the map down altogether, around the same time that protests about the possibility of a physical wall in Big Bend National Park reached a fever pitch. When the map was restored to the website, it appeared to show a mix of “vehicle barriers” and “patrol roads” planned instead of steel walls within park boundaries. Fisher Sand & Gravel is currently slated to build a wall-related project in Big Bend Ranch State Park, bordering the national park to the west, though it hasn’t publicly released any plans for what alternate border barriers might look like. Landowners in communities adjacent to the park are still gearing up to face eminent domain challenges from the federal government. Barnard is working on a project outside the parks. Documents in Posillico’s lawsuit revealed that CBP has flagged sections of wall in Hudspeth, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties for “fast-track” construction by the company. To support that work, a pecan farm near the small ranching community of Lobo has started clearing a swath of land for a 500-person camp and petitioning the local water conservation district for approval to use agricultural well water for the project. Amey, the contracting expert, said the Trump administration seems to want to make the exception the rule, considering controversial practices like Noem’s decision to award the huge border ad contract and the fact the government has waived so many contracting rules to accelerate the wall’s construction. “It seems as if this administration, especially this time around, has decided that the rules don’t really apply,” he said. The post The Trump Administration Is Facing Scrutiny for How It’s Handing Out Billion-Dollar Border Wall Contracts appeared first on ProPublica.

[Category: Immigration]

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