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by Duaa Eldeib ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. When a health insurance company refuses to pay for treatment, most people begrudgingly accept the decision. Few patients appeal; some don’t trust the insurer to reverse its own decision. But a little-known process that requires insurers and plans to seek an independent opinion outside their walls can force insurers to pay for what can be lifesaving treatment. External reviews are one of the industry’s best-kept secrets, and only a tiny fraction of those eligible actually use them. ProPublica recently reported the story of a North Carolina couple, Teressa Sutton-Schulman and her husband, who we identified in the story by his middle initial, L, to protect his privacy. Last year, L suffered escalating mental health issues and needed intensive psychiatric care. Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield issued the couple multiple denials in their case, even after Sutton-Schulman’s husband attempted suicide twice in the span of 11 days. The instructions for an external review were buried on page seven of one of the denial letters. “You can now request that your case be reviewed by a health care provider who is totally independent of your health plan or insurance carrier,” read the letter from the state insurance department in Texas, where the treatment occurred. Skeptical but hopeful, Sutton-Schulman submitted the request for the external review. Their case was assigned to Dr. Neal Goldenberg, an Ohio doctor who works for a third-party review company as a side job. After reading the extensive appeal, Goldenberg overturned Highmark’s denial to cover treatment that had cost Sutton-Schulman and L more than $70,000. Highmark previously said in a statement that the company was “passionate about providing appropriate and timely care” to its members. It acknowledged that “small errors made by physicians and/or members can lead to delays and initial denials” but said that those are corrected on appeals. The lesson is simple, explained Kaye Pestaina, a vice president at the nonprofit health policy think tank KFF, who has studied external appeals. “Appeal, appeal, appeal, appeal,” she said. “That’s all you have.” External appeals have been around for decades at the state level, but in 2010, the Affordable Care Act expanded access to the reviews for the majority of people who get their health insurance through work. The details around the external review process vary depending on whether an insurance plan is regulated by state or federal laws. Karen Pollitz helped draft the federal regulations around external reviews during the Obama administration, but she said an extensive lobbying effort on behalf of insurance companies and employers weakened the initial protections. Now, only a fraction of denials are eligible for an external review, and the health insurance plan gets to hire the reviewers. Transparency requirements that called for insurers to report data around denials and other metrics, she said, also were largely not implemented. “There are all kinds of ways they could strengthen the laws and the regulations to hold health plans more accountable,” said Pollitz, who left the administration after the rollbacks and worked at KFF before retiring. But for now, Pollitz said, filing external appeals is sometimes the only recourse patients have. An advantage of the Affordable Care Act, she added, was that it established state consumer assistance programs to help people get the coverage they were promised. Federal funding for those programs dried up a couple of years later, but about 30 states decided to find other ways to pay for the programs. (Want to find out if your state has one? Here’s a list from federal officials.) If the remaining 20 or so states — including Wisconsin and Ohio — established programs, families would reap the benefits, according to Cheryl Fish-Parcham, director of private coverage at the consumer health care advocacy organization Families USA. “Every state needs one of these programs,” she said. “Health care is so complicated, and people really need experts to turn to.” Fish-Parcham meets with representatives from consumer assistance programs across the country every month. The models differ from state to state. Programs are housed in state attorney general offices, in nonprofits and even as independent agencies. Helping patients or their providers with external appeals is a key part of the programs’ role. The first step often is simply letting them know that appeals — both internal and external — are options. “The numbers are low because some people just give up. They’re frustrated. They’re tired. They’re battling cancer,” said Kimberly Cammarata, director of Maryland’s Health Education and Advocacy Unit, the state’s consumer assistance program. “And sometimes the information about why the claim was denied or about how to appeal is terribly unclear. A lot of these outcome letters will say you have a right to an external appeal, but they don’t exactly tell you where to go.” Some states have enacted legislation to combat that confusion. For example, insurers in Maryland are no longer able to bury information on appeals deep in their denial letters. Beginning this month, a new state law requires insurers to include information at the top of all denial letters in “prominent bold print” that states the member has the right to appeal or file a complaint to the insurance commissioner. That declaration advises consumers that the letter contains information on how to file an appeal and reach the Health Education and Advocacy Unit. The unit’s address, phone number, fax and email must also be included in the body of the notice. Connecticut added similar information at the top of denial letters in a box on the front page in 2023. The office saw an almost immediate effect. In the two years that followed, more than 40% of referrals to the state’s Office of the Healthcare Advocate came from people who received denial letters with the new language. The office isn’t funded through taxpayer money. It’s paid for entirely by state assessments on insurance companies. “We want to help people,”

by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door. She calls it “the final mission.” But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling. Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students. McMahon has described her agency moving “at lightning rocket speed,” and the department’s actions in just one week in September reflect that urgency. The agency publicly blasted four school districts it views as insubordinate for refusing to adopt anti-trans policies and for not eliminating special programs for Black students. It created a pot of funding dedicated to what it calls “patriotic education,” which has been criticized for downplaying some of the country’s most troubling episodes, including slavery. And it formed a coalition with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, PragerU and dozens of other conservative groups to disseminate patriotic programming. Officials at the Education Department declined to comment or answer questions from ProPublica for this story. At times, McMahon has voiced support for public schools. But more often and more emphatically she has portrayed public schools as unsuccessful and unsafe — and has said she is determined to give parents other options. To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years. Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration. In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons. More than 8 in 10 elementary and secondary students in the U.S. go to a traditional public school. But Burke expects that public schools will see dramatic enrollment declines fueled by both demographic and policy changes. Addressing an interviewer in an April podcast, she noted: “We’re going to have a lot of empty school buildings.” In a 2024 podcast, Noah Pollak, now a senior adviser in the Education Department, bemoaned what he sees as progressive control of schools, which he said has led to lessons he finds unacceptable, such as teaching fourth graders about systemic racism. “And so the work that I do is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions,” said Pollak, who has been an adviser to conservative groups. As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation.” President Donald Trump himself said in July that the federal government needs only to provide “a little tiny bit of supervision but very little, almost nothing,” over the nation’s education system except to make sure students speak English. Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution. Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students. Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.” Allison Rose Socol, a policy expert at EdTrust, an organization focusing on civil rights in schools, decried what she called the “demo crew” in McMahon’s office. Socol described McMahon’s push to help grow private school enrollment through taxpayer-funded vouchers and other means as a “great American heist” that will funnel money away from the public system. “It’s a strategic theft of the future of our country, our kids and our democracy,” she said. “Lead as Christians” Attention on McMahon often focuses on her former role as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. It was no different on the day of her Senate confirmation hearing,

by Monica Samayoa, Oregon Public Broadcasting This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has ordered state agencies to take “any and all steps necessary” to fast-track solar and wind permits that must break ground by next year or likely miss out on a federal tax credit Congress is ending. The move follows reporting by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica about the role that the state’s lengthy permitting process plays, according to renewables advocates, in Oregon having one of the slowest growth rates in the country for green energy. At the time, Kotek’s office said that she was “carefully considering opportunities to streamline Oregon’s energy siting processes.” The Democratic governor’s order does not change existing state law, and at least one leading green energy advocate voiced skepticism about its impact because it fails to address another obstacle to construction: the federal government’s sluggish pace of adding transmission capacity to handle new wind and solar. Kotek’s office, when announcing the order on Monday, couched it as the state’s attempt to reduce the risk “shovel-ready” projects lose out on federal tax benefits that make them more affordable. “With the elimination of promised incentives by the Trump Administration, states must step up as the last line of defense against climate catastrophe. We have to get renewable energy infrastructure built, and quickly,” Kotek said in a statement. “We cannot afford to lose this critical window.” Oregon needs to build more renewable energy projects like wind and solar to meet its renewable energy goals. In addition, the state has experienced rising electricity costs amid soaring demand. Yet as OPB and ProPublica have reported, Oregon lawmakers have paid little heed to the region’s inadequate transmission system. In addition, they have rejected or watered down legislation designed to make it easier for developers to get their wind, solar and transmission projects through the state’s approval process. Then, this year, President Donald Trump signed legislation dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It set a schedule for ending the federal investment tax credit and the production tax credit, which can fund 30% to 50% of most solar and wind projects. The credits were modified and extended during the administration of President Joe Biden as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The legislation signed by Trump says projects can still qualify for the credits if they meet a July 4, 2026, deadline for breaking ground and are completed by 2030. But projects that don’t start construction by July 4 must be up and running by Dec. 31, 2027, to qualify. That’s considered a tough time frame to meet. One analysis estimated the loss of credits could cost Oregon about 4 gigawatts of planned wind and solar energy, which is roughly enough electricity to power 1 million homes. According to Atlas Public Policy, a data and policy firm based in Washington, D.C., Oregon has 11 wind and solar projects now at risk of not qualifying for the tax credit. Nicole Hughes, executive director of the advocacy group Renewable Northwest, said Oregon may not get all of those projects or even a handful of them done in time to get the tax credits, in spite of Kotek’s order. Hughes said that’s because “even projects that already have made it through the permitting process are being held back by massive transmission queue backlogs and some of the transmission upgrades that these projects were waiting for.” Separate from state permitting, energy developers have to wait for the federal Bonneville Power Administration to allow projects to connect to its transmission lines. Bonneville owns about 75% of the Northwest’s transmission lines, and its lines are largely full with no capacity for new sources of electricity. It can take years before Bonneville determines whether a proposed project can plug into its grid. “I don’t think it’s right to be just looking at this July 2026 deadline,” Hughes said. “Our energy issues are going to extend far beyond that date, and we need to be thinking more long-term about how we move projects quicker through both the permitting and transmission process.” She nonetheless described Kotek’s order as a good first step, saying it put state agencies on notice that moving renewable projects forward is a priority. Kotek’s office declined to comment on concerns raised about the executive order’s limitations. A spokesperson for Bonneville stated that it has modified the interconnection process to move on a “first-ready, first-served” process that the agency says will improve current backlogs. The spokesperson said the federal agency expects to add about 2 gigawatts of new energy projects by the end of 2028 and complete the first phase of an interconnection study in January that could add more. The executive order directs the Oregon Department of Energy and the state Energy Facility Siting Council to identify and prioritize siting approval for projects that must begin construction by July 4. The highest priority would be given to projects with secured contracts between a developer and a utility and that can demonstrate anticipated benefits to Oregon ratepayers. The governor’s order also says the Oregon Public Utility Commission should consider using an outside contractor to study how solar and wind power projects connect to the electrical grid in the future. “Congress and the Trump administration have launched an all-out assault on affordable clean energy and our safe climate future,” Climate Solutions Oregon Director Nora Apter said in the statement issued by the governor’s office. “By moving swiftly to get as many wind and solar projects across the finish line as possible before the loss of federal tax credits, Governor Kotek is defending Oregon families, family-wage jobs, and energy resilience.” Oregon joins a handful of states that have already moved to more rapidly approve qualifying projects, like Colorado, Maine and California, due to the expiring federal tax credits.

by Ashley Hiruko, KUOW This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with KUOW public radio. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. When Brenna Poppe moved into the Civic Hotel off the damp streets of Seattle in late 2022, she cried with joy. During her next year at the city-sponsored homeless shelter, she’d meet other guests who felt the same way — overwhelmed by the sudden realization that tonight, they would not sleep outside. The Civic got quieter last year, however. Rooms around her, their doors still painted bright yellow from when the hotel was a boutique property, started to empty out. A “deafening silence” crept in, she recalled. The 53-room hotel was converted to a shelter in the early days of the pandemic, and the city of Seattle kept it going. After Poppe’s first year there, the city in February 2024 signed a $2.7 million lease extension to continue using rooms at the Civic and other buildings as shelter space through the end of the year. And yet, despite committing to pay the rent, the city stopped sending people there. Existing residents moved on to permanent housing or elsewhere and no one took their place. Dozens of rooms went unfilled. By December, Seattle taxpayers were paying a hefty $4,200 a month per empty room — at a time when thousands of Seattleites were without a roof over their heads. City officials described their decision to leave the rooms vacant as simply a “pause” while they evaluated what to do about an anticipated budget deficit. One-time federal funding was going away and, if the city eventually succeeded in securing long-term funding, officials wanted to find a cheaper location than the Civic. They said the uncertainty forced them to both hold onto the Civic and stop placing people there, to avoid later sending clients back to the street. But internal records reveal more complicated motives. At the same time as the city was halting placements, it rejected a move to a cheaper shelter location, which the main advocate of the plan said would keep the program running without interruption. A top official in the office of Mayor Bruce Harrell, explaining the decision in private, voiced animosity toward the nonprofit leader who pitched the new location and signaled an end to city support for the leader’s program. Regardless of the rationale, the outcome of the city’s decision was that for nearly a year, Seattle paid for just as many rooms as before yet helped fewer and fewer people off the street with them. Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell, whose plan to address homelessness promised to “better track shelter capacity and ensure beds do not go unfilled.” (Megan Farmer/KUOW) Placements resumed this year, in a new location, after a 16-month gap. Many West Coast cities are struggling, as Seattle has, with a rise in homelessness in recent years. Before referrals were halted, the effort that placed people at the Civic had already moved hard-to-reach homeless people from the street to a shelter space and, in many cases, then on to long-term housing and stability. Seattle’s decision to keep dollars flowing to an effort it had suspended comes as cities such as Los Angeles are facing criticism for failing to accurately track outcomes of their massive outlays on homelessness. Allowing vacancies to grow at city-leased shelter space also seems to be at odds with a commitment by Harrell, whose 2022 plan to address homelessness promised efforts to “better track shelter capacity and ensure beds do not go unfilled.” (A spokesperson for Harrell responded that it’s important to note city-funded shelters had 2,850 units in all last year, 87% of which were full on any given night. The city declined a request to interview Harrell.) Poppe, who lived at the Civic through 2024, viewed its empty rooms as a squandered opportunity, and she told the shelter staff as much. “Multiple times,” Poppe said, “I spoke to staff about this egregious amount of open rooms.” After Initial Ramp-Up, Occupancy in City-Funded Rooms Plummets Notes: Data unavailable for June 2024. “City-funded rooms” are defined as rooms reserved for the city of Seattle. Each bar represents a count taken on one day of the month. (Source: CoLEAD, a nonprofit-led program that partnered with Seattle to fill city-funded rooms as shelter space) The Blade On any given day in a section of Third Avenue between Pike and Pine streets known as The Blade, disorder is commonplace. Some people are screaming at the air, their pants falling off their frail frames. Others are sleeping, huddled in doorways to keep warm and safe. This human suffering stands in contrast with neighboring symbols of Seattle’s affluence: Pike Place Market, Benaroya Hall and the downtown shopping district are within a five-minute stroll. A walk-up-only McDonald’s on the corner has been dubbed “McStabby’s,” referencing violent crimes that have taken place nearby over the years. In 2022, nonprofits and downtown businesses came up with a plan that would ultimately involve the Civic Hotel. The Third Avenue Project was designed to reduce the violence and open drug use through extensive outreach and the deescalation of conflicts between people on the street. But housing was also on the minds of the organizers. Many believed in a modified version of the “housing-first” approach, which is predicated on the idea that any issues people struggle with on the streets are best addressed if they first find shelter, with no requirements for sobriety. Despite Seattle’s shortage of shelter beds and affordable permanent housing, the nonprofit leaders involved with Third Avenue hoped to help at least some clients move indoors. The concept seemed to line up with the priorities of Harrell, who on his campaign website the year before had promised “an accountable, ambitious plan with transparency and benchmarks to expand and provide housing and services on demand to every unsheltered neighbor.” Third Avenue Project organizers got to work after Harrell took office, with significant funding from the city. “Safety ambassadors”

by Amy Yurkanin ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. When 19-year-old Jorge Ruiz walked into the Autauga County Jail in handcuffs on Oct. 28, 2018, he wasn’t a typical suspect. He was out of place and in big trouble in a deeply conservative part of Alabama. That morning, he’d been driving about 70 miles per hour in a 55 zone when he crossed the center line of a two-lane rural highway. His Ford pickup collided head-on with a Honda Civic, killing the woman behind the wheel. Paramedics took Ruiz to the hospital, where a blood test found a trace amount of alcohol. At just 0.016, it was below the legal threshold for intoxication. But rather than charging him with manslaughter, which typically would be the most extreme charge brought under the circumstances, police went further. They arrested him for murder. To support such a murder charge, prosecutors are supposed to show that a defendant’s conduct displays “extreme indifference” — behavior so reckless that someone is likely to die, as when a person fires a gun into a crowd or steers a boat into a group of swimmers. Suspects charged with murder after car crashes often are documented to have blood alcohol levels more than twice the legal limit and 10 times the level found in Ruiz’s blood, according to a review of Alabama cases from the last 20 years by ProPublica. Many others had prior DUIs or were driving 100 miles per hour or more. In this case, the suspect had a clean criminal history and wasn’t even going fast enough to be ticketed for aggravated speeding. Ruiz’s trial attorney said that as soon as he started talking to the district attorney’s office, the case felt different. Across the three counties in Alabama’s 19th Circuit Court, only a handful of people have been charged with murder for a car accident in the span of a decade — and most wound up taking a plea deal for a lesser charge. But this time around, the prosecutor’s offer could hardly be considered a deal at all: The teenager would have to plead guilty to murder, and it would be blind plea, meaning he would have to hope for mercy from the court in his sentencing. “In my 30 years of practicing law, I have never been offered a deal like that,” Ruiz’s court-appointed lawyer, Richard Lively, said. The lead prosecutor eventually budged, but only a little. He wouldn’t reduce the charge, but he would recommend that the teenager spend 30 years in prison. That’s longer than any other sentence handed down since at least 2004 for a car crash fatality in Alabama’s 19th Circuit Court, which includes Autauga, Chilton and Elmore counties. A man who fled the scene of a fatal crash — and had a 0.09 blood alcohol level nine hours later — received a 15-year sentence in 2017. A woman who had three times the legal limit of alcohol in her system received 23 years in 2007 after she killed a University of Alabama student. For defendants who were teenagers when they caused fatal car accidents, the courts can be even more lenient. In 2012, a Madison County judge granted youthful offender status to a man who was 19 when he was charged with murder for a drunk driving crash that killed a high school sophomore in Huntsville. The driver, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.15, was sentenced to a year in jail and two on probation. Lively had a hard time squaring his client’s charges with the results of his blood test and recorded speed. Alabama’s murder statute does not require a driver to be legally intoxicated, and people have faced murder charges for killing someone by racing or fleeing police. But neither applied here. Lively reasoned that for murder to fit, the teenager would have had to be intentionally driving into oncoming traffic. He thought his client could beat the charge and told him not to plead guilty. Years later, attorneys involved in the case would attempt to shed light on what was so different about it — and on one fact in particular that they believed eclipsed all the others. He was a Mexican immigrant. The case against Ruiz was, as one legal expert put it, “a perfect storm of horrible facts.” The night before the accident, he stayed up late after drinking at a music festival in Birmingham. At the scene of the crash, police found beer cans in his truck. He was in the country on a temporary work visa and did not have a driver’s license. He spoke little English, relying on his 17-year-old cousin to translate his Miranda rights and the string of questions from police. The only reason Ruiz was in Autauga County was to visit his extended family after finishing a monthslong job in Georgia and South Carolina clearing brush from power lines. He was days away from returning to Mexico. The woman he killed was named Marlena Hayes. She was a 29-year-old nurse who’d just finished the night shift at Prattville Baptist Hospital. She wasn’t even supposed to be working at that time. She’d planned to see her brother perform that weekend with the marching band at the University of West Alabama. In the end, though, she took the shift as a favor to a colleague. Marlena Hayes was killed in a car crash in 2018. (Obtained by ProPublica) Newspapers and TV stations in central Alabama quickly picked up the story. Some referred to Ruiz as an illegal immigrant even though he’d been in the U.S. on a six-month H-2B visa, which are approved when employers can’t find enough American workers. One of those articles appeared in the Montgomery Advertiser, the largest newspaper in the area. When Lively was assigned to the case, he felt compelled to show that his client had

by Sharon Lerner ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This spring, scientists at the Environmental Protection Agency completed a report on the toxicity of a “forever chemical” called PFNA, which is in the drinking water systems serving some 26 million people. The assessment found that PFNA interferes with human development by causing lower birth weights and, based on animal evidence, likely causes damage to the liver and to male reproductive systems, including reductions in testosterone levels, sperm production and the size of reproductive organs. The report also calculated the amount of PFNA that people could be exposed to without being harmed — a critical measurement that can be used to set limits for cleaning up PFNA contamination in Superfund sites and for removing the chemical from drinking water. For months, however, the report has sat in limbo, raising concerns among some scientists and environmentalists that the Trump administration might change it or not release it at all. The EPA told ProPublica the report would be published when it was finalized, though the press office did not answer questions about what still needed to be done or when that would likely happen. But the report’s final version was “completed and ready to post” in mid-April, according to an internal document reviewed by ProPublica. And two scientists familiar with the assessment confirmed the report has been finalized and ready for publication since April. “Scientifically, it was done,” said one of the two scientists, who both worked in the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the unreleased report. “All that was left to do was to brief higher-ups about the report and post it,” the scientist said, adding that such a delay was unusual. “In recent years, the assessments tended to be finalized within a few weeks.” A draft version of the assessment was made public last year and drew objections from an industry trade group. The final version, which retained the calculations published in the draft report, was completed shortly before the EPA announced its intention in May to rescind and reconsider limits on the amount of PFNA and several other forever chemicals allowed in drinking water. The limits had been set last year by President Joe Biden’s administration. Darya Minovi, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed to that pending change as a possible motivation for not publishing the PFNA assessment. “If you’re trying to roll back drinking water standards, you probably don’t want to release information that makes the case for why those standards are necessary,” said Minovi. The nonprofit science advocacy group called attention to the unpublished report in a social media post last month that said, “Without this assessment, federal and state agencies are denied the best available science that they rely on to protect public health.” PFNA is so hazardous that the EPA struck an agreement with eight companies to phase it out nearly two decades ago. The chemical was a component of firefighting foam and a processing aid to make a kind of plastic used in circuit boards, valves and pipes. PFNA has been found in water near sites where the foam was used and in the drinking water in 28 states, according to an analysis of EPA and state data by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. Local governments around the country have been trying to get companies that used and made forever chemicals such as PFNA to foot the bill for the expensive job of cleaning up contamination. In 2019, the state of New Jersey ordered the owner of an industrial plant in West Deptford to address chemical contamination at the site, where high levels of PFNA had been found in the nearby soil and water. The state took the company, Solvay Specialty Polymers, to court, accusing it of failing to fully comply. As part of a legal settlement, Solvay agreed to pay more than $393 million and to clean up contamination. The company, which has since become Syensqo Specialty Polymers, pointed out to ProPublica other sources of PFNA contamination in the area of the plant and noted that it settled the suit without admission of liability. Solvay tried to influence the EPA over the drinking water limit the agency set for PFNA and other chemicals in the class, according to lobbying records. The company also lobbied Congress over legislation that would prevent chemical assessments conducted by the agency’s Integrated Risk Information System program from being used in regulation. IRIS, as the program is known, analyzes the harm chemicals can cause and put together the PFNA report. Syensqo and Solvay did not respond to questions about lobbying and whether they asked the EPA either to change or not release the IRIS report on PFNA. Scientists in the EPA’s IRIS program began work on the assessment because PFNA, short for perfluorononanoic acid, appeared particularly dangerous. Like other compounds in its class, PFNA doesn’t break down in nature. Scientists had already found it in soil and water around the country. It was also measured in food, air, indoor dust and fish — as well as in breastmilk, fetal tissues and human blood. Perhaps most worrisome, studies had already suggested that the chemical caused serious harm to people and lab animals. A draft of the report, which reflected five years of collecting and reviewing studies, found that, in addition to developmental, liver and reproductive harms, PFNA “may cause” immune problems, thyroid effects, harm to the developing brain and a cluster of other disorders, including Type 2 diabetes. The American Chemistry Council took issue with the report’s findings on low birth weight and liver issues, arguing that the evidence wasn’t as robust as the report claimed. The industry trade group did not address the reproductive threats posed by PFNA, which have been documented by other regulatory agencies and are part of a larger