ProPublica Investigations

In mid-December 2020, federal officials responsible for protecting American elections from fraud converged in a windowless, dim, fortified room at the Justice Department’s downtown Washington, D.C., headquarters. They had been summoned by Attorney General William Barr. Over the preceding weeks, Donald Trump’s claims that the presidential election had been stolen from him had reached a crescendo. He’d become obsessed with a conspiracy theory that voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan,

The call came from a number I didn’t recognize, with a Canadian area code. A steely voice on the other end of the line greeted me, identifying himself as an official with the Canadian military. He had a question: Had I been reaching out to him on WhatsApp, trying to work him for information? I paused. As an investigative reporter at ProPublica, I’m reaching out to a lot of people all the time. But as I racked my brain, I couldn’t think of any Canadians I had recently tried to develop as

The Justice Department said Friday that it would move forward on a proposed $68 million settlement with a Texas land developer it had accused of preying on Hispanic residents, despite a judge’s concerns that the agreement did not do enough to help victims. During a hearing, U.S. District Judge Alfred H. Bennett questioned why the settlement had no compensation for those who were harmed and grilled a federal prosecutor over $20 million devoted to police and immigration enforcement. He said he

Tennessee lawmakers passed legislation this week to fix the state’s controversial threats of mass violence law, which had resulted in children being charged with felonies over jokes and misunderstandings. Gov. Bill Lee is expected to sign the bill, which will require that school officials only report student threats to police if a threat is “credible,” meaning reasonably expected to be carried out. Previously, a school administrator who failed to report any threat of mass violence could be ch

In December 2023, the U.S. Justice Department sued a Texas land developer it accused of duping tens of thousands of Hispanic residents into predatory mortgages, a landmark case for the Biden administration. Colony Ridge, which sold plots in massive subdivisions north of Houston, had become a “one-stop shop for discriminatory lending,” Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights, said at a news conference announcing the lawsuit. The developer targeted Hispanic applicants throug

Renault Shirley remembers the first time he was asked to falsify billing reports for Kentucky’s largest drug rehab center. He had just returned from a church service in 2023 where the company’s founder and owner, a charismatic Christian from Eastern Kentucky, preached about the value of getting sober to hundreds of clients and staff at Addiction Recovery Care. Shirley, 58, who led recovery group discussions at ARC, said one of his supervisors told him to submit an invoice for the day’s can

The collapse of Prospect Medical, a for-profit hospital chain plundered by private equity and the company’s management, has generated a painful litany of woes. Amid a debt-fueled acquisition spree that saw the small California company grow to 17 hospitals in six states, Prospect was repeatedly cited for dangerous medical care, poor infection control and unsanitary facilities. The company stiffed state and local governments on more than $135 million in taxes and didn’t pay vendors for equipmen

More than 400,000 Arizonans have lost their SNAP benefits since July — the largest decline in the nation by a wide margin — as an underfunded state agency administered changes called for in President Donald Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The drop represents nearly 47% of the state’s participants in the program better known as food stamps and includes about 180,000 children, according to the Arizona Department of Economic Security, which administers the program. On Wednesday,

Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable. A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a

As a cybersecurity reporter at ProPublica, much of my work over the past two years has focused on how the federal government and its IT contractors, like Microsoft, have navigated major technological transitions. The one now in the news every day is artificial intelligence.  This emerging technology has its grip on everyone: Home users, corporations and the federal government are all rushing to use it. President Donald Trump and his Cabinet say AI will transform the nation, making us mor

Just under three years ago, the Food and Drug Administration deemed 19 peptide drugs too unsafe to be dispensed by compounding pharmacies, which mix components of approved drugs to create bespoke medication for people who have trouble taking commonly available products. Now, under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency is poised to reverse itself. That’s despite few clinical studies supporting the effectiveness or safety of these peptides, which are amino acid c

Our reporting started, like much of our work, in a spreadsheet. As I parsed through federal court data, I noticed something odd: Within months of President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, prosecutors began filing obscure charges related to trespassing on military property — so many, in fact, that more cases were filed in 2025 than in the prior decade. Nearly all of these charges originated from cases along the U.S. southern border, where last spring, the White House designated la

In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investo

Doris Coulson remained spirited even as her illness progressed — watching cooking shows on TV, working crossword puzzles and wheeling herself down the hallways of her nursing home to show off her granddaughter when she came to visit. Coulson had been admitted to Hillview Post Acute and Rehabilitation Center in Little Rock, Arkansas, in January 2016, after Parkinson’s disease left her at risk of choking when she swallowed. That April, the facility’s operations were taken over by Skyline Health

For years, Utah allowed government officials to do something other states banned: ask a person who reports a sexual assault to take a polygraph test. That will change soon. Earlier this month, state lawmakers passed a bill that prohibits police and other government officials from requesting polygraph tests for alleged sex assault victims. Gov. Spencer Cox signed it into law on Thursday, and it goes into effect in May.  Experts say these tests are known to be especially unreliable with

This story works best on ProPublica’s website. Before vaccines, death and disability stalked children. Then shots turned once-common infections into something doctors only read about in textbooks. When immunization rates drop, however, plagues from the past can come roaring back, as measles has in American communities where parents decided not to vaccinate their children. Imagine what would happen if even the people who wanted shots couldn’t get them. Health Secretary Robert F.

The woman, 52, lay on the exam table at a clinic in Richland, Washington. Her legs were parted and propped up. The OB-GYN, Dr. Mark Mulholland, stood between her legs, inquiring about the woman’s sex life as he had in prior visits, she wrote in a complaint filed with Washington state health care regulators. She said Mulholland had previously asked about her enjoyment of sex and if she had a boyfriend, a strange way to learn about a patient’s sexual activity, she thought. But this was her l

On the day that federal immigration agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, I ran out of my house with my camera in hand to document the aftermath. As a visuals editor at ProPublica, I spend most of my time at my desk. But I couldn’t ignore this massive story rapidly unfolding in Minneapolis, the city I’ve called home for the past few years. The first thing I photographed that day was a woman trying to calm a man with a hug. “There was a young man right at the police tape, honestly inches away fr

In one talk radio appearance after another, Sheriff Jerry Sheridan has declared that his department had eliminated the racial bias that plagued it under his former boss Joe Arpaio. As a result, he’s quick to add, a landmark racial profiling court case dictating much of what the Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff’s department does should be dismissed. “I believe we are in compliance with the court order. We’re not a racist organization, and we don’t racial profile,” he said on Phoen