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

by Rob Davis 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. This is how misinformation gets accepted as fact. A year after Oregon endures its most destructive fire season on record in 2020, state lawmakers order a map estimating the wildfire risk for every property in the state. It’s the kind of rating now available on real estate sites like Zillow. The state wants to use the results to decide where it will apply forthcoming codes for fire-resistant construction and protections around homes. Around the same time, insurance companies start dropping Oregon homeowners’ policies and raising premiums to limit future losses, much as they have done in other disaster-prone states. Insurers have their own sophisticated risk maps to guide them, but some brokers instead tell homeowners the blame lies with the map the state produced. The belief gets treated as fact both on social media and in mainstream news — even though insurers and regulators say it’s not true. The anger quickly spreads. Not only is Oregon’s map seen as at fault for higher insurance premiums, one conservative talk radio host calls it an attempt to “depopulate rural areas.” People in an anti-map Facebook group start musing about “Agenda 21,” a conspiracy theory implicating the United Nations in an effort to force people into cities so they can be more easily controlled. By the time the state pulls back the map and starts over, the myths about it have gained so much momentum there’s no stopping them. Oregon’s hotter, drier climate isn’t the problem; the map is. Christine Drazan, the Oregon House Republican leader, joins more than a dozen other Republicans in February 2025 behind a sign that says “REPEAL THE WILDFIRE HAZARD MAP.” She calls the state’s map “faulty, defective, harmful” and says it, along with related fire-safe building and landscaping rules that are in the works, is “a heavy-handed bureaucratic takeover” that’s kept rural residents from insuring or selling homes. “This map is destroying their property values,” she says. In the end, what’s most remarkable about the campaign against Oregon’s wildfire map isn’t that misinformation found an audience. It’s that it worked. A melted sign hangs from a fence in Lyons, Oregon, in 2020. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images) Chris Dunn, a wildfire risk scientist at Oregon State University and a former wildland firefighter, thought Oregon had a chance to be a national model for adapting to wildfire risks when he was asked to make the statewide map in 2021. Oregon adopted a unique set of land use laws in the late 1960s and 1970s that helped curb urban sprawl. A coalition of farmers and conservationists formulated the legislation to preserve farmland and keep cities compact. To Dunn, protecting homes seemed within reach because the state had maintained agricultural buffers around cities, helping to serve as firebreaks. At the time, Zillow hadn’t yet come out with risk ratings. By building its own map, Oregon could use local input and make adjustments as it went along. The map results would help Oregon decide where to require a tool proven to save homes from wind-driven wildfires: “defensible space.” Owners would have to prune trees up and away from their houses; they would need to keep their roofs clear of leaves, needles and other dead vegetation. The idea was to deny wind-borne embers fuel that can burn down dwellings — a problem fresh on lawmakers’ minds after Oregon’s devastating 2020 fire season destroyed more than 2,000 homes. Dunn knew public communication would be important. Before the map was released, a private property rights group had warned its members in a letter that the map and its rules were worrisome. Gov. Kate Brown’s wildfire council, advising state leaders about the map’s rollout, knew about the letter and the potential for pushback, according to emails Dunn provided to ProPublica. Dunn said he was clear with Brown’s wildfire director, Doug Grafe, and others on the council that the map needed a significant, coordinated and effective communications campaign starting months before its release. Dunn said all the state developed was a one-page document on the roles of each government agency. (Brown and Grafe did not respond to ProPublica’s questions. Grafe told Oregon Public Broadcasting in 2022 that “we are committed to ensuring people understand what they can do to increase the likelihood their homes and properties will survive wildfires.”) Without state outreach, many homeowners learned their homes were in “extreme risk” zones from a July 2022 letter in the mail. It gave them 60 days to appeal the designation or face complying with new building and defensible-space codes the state was developing. The wildfire hazard map and online user interface, created by Chris Dunn, a wildfire scientist at Oregon State University, shows high hazard areas in orange and those with moderate hazards in purple. (Screenshot by ProPublica of the Oregon Statewide Wildfire Hazard Map) Dunn could see that an uproar was building around his work. One community meeting where he was scheduled to present was canceled after state officials received threats of violence. On Facebook, more than 6,000 people joined a private group, ODF Wildfire Risk Map Support, a base of opposition. ODF stands for the Oregon Department of Forestry, the state agency overseeing the map’s creation. One member warned that state officials would snoop around their rural properties to tell owners what to do. “Guys this is a agenda 21,” said the member, referencing the conspiracy theory promoted in part by former Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck. Along with 31 thumbs-ups, eight angry faces and several other emojis, the post got 24 comments. This insane bill out of Salem is crazy! Every designation was decided by an algorithm by politicians in Salem who don’t a clue about our property, our house, our lifestyles! If you think it’s not their agenda to destroy rural property owners, think again. (10 likes) The

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

by Joel Jacobs ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. A New York business frozen out of its checking account. A Georgia chemotherapy patient denied a credit card refund after a product dispute. A New Jersey service member defrauded out of their savings. These consumers — along with hundreds of others — reached out to their congressional representatives for help in the past 12 months. “I have been unable to pay my rent, utilities, personal bills, student loans, or my credit card. I have been unable to buy groceries or put gas in my car,” wrote the New Yorker, who contacted Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ office. Records show their representatives — all Republicans — referred them to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency formed in the wake of the Great Recession to shield Americans from unfair or abusive business practices. All three consumers got relief, according to agency data. Then the lawmakers — along with nearly every other Republican in Congress — voted to slash the agency’s funding by nearly half as part of President Donald Trump’s signature legislative package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a step toward the administration’s goal of gutting the agency. Republicans have long been critical of the CFPB, accusing it of imposing unreasonable burdens on businesses. Already, the CFPB under Trump has dropped a number of cases and frozen investigations into dozens of companies. Yet the agency has historically benefited consumers across the political spectrum, securing around $20 billion in relief through its enforcement actions. Data obtained by ProPublica through a public records request shows that many of the same Republican members of Congress who have targeted the CFPB for cuts have collectively routed thousands of constituent complaints to the agency. Rep. Darrell Issa of California and Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia, for example, voted to reduce the CFPB’s budget. Yet each of their offices has referred more than 100 constituents to the CFPB for help, among the most of any House members. The office of Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who also voted for the CFPB cuts, has routed more than 800 constituent complaints to the agency, the most of any current lawmaker from either party, ProPublica found. A spokesperson for Issa said in an email that most of his office’s referrals to the agency “occurred several years ago” and reflected “a conventional way” to handle constituents’ consumer issues. Wittman and Cornyn didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about the disconnect between their offices’ use of the CFPB’s services and their votes to cut it. Neither did New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, whose office fielded the defrauded service member’s complaint, or Malliotakis, who was approached by the New York business owner, or Rep. Rick Allen, whose office directed the Georgia chemotherapy patient to the agency. Overall, members of Congress have steered nearly 24,000 complaints to the CFPB since it opened its doors in 2011. Roughly 10,000 of those were referred by the offices of current and former Republican lawmakers, ProPublica found. “This is how members of Congress from both parties get help for the people who live in their districts,” said Erie Meyer, the CFPB’s former chief technologist, who left the agency in February. The agency has a particular mandate to help service members and seniors, she noted. “This is how, if a service member is getting screwed on an auto loan, this is the only place they can go.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., has referred more than 200 constituents to CFPB since its creation. In a statement to ProPublica, he accused Republicans in Congress of “pursuing senseless cuts that will undermine their own ability to protect their constituents, who will be left in the lurch when they fall victim to scams or deceptive and unfair business practices.” “Republicans have made clear that they stand on the side of big businesses — not consumers,” he added. “Their irresponsible pursuit of dismantling the CFPB will have far-reaching and long-lasting consequences.” An Irreplaceable System In recent years, the CFPB’s public database shows the number of complaints has exploded, from around 280,000 in 2019 to more than 2.7 million last year. Complaints have grown across many categories, including credit cards and debt collection. Last year, most of the complaints filed, over 2.3 million, were about mistakes or other problems involving credit reporting agencies, and more than half of them resulted in relief, CFPB data shows. “These credit score formulas govern so many factors of your life. It’s not just your ability to get a loan, it’s your ability to secure housing or qualify for a job,” said Adam Rust, director of financial services at the Consumer Federation of America. “It’s important that you can resolve something, but it’s difficult to do it on your own.” Once a complaint is submitted, it is routed to the company, which has 15 days to respond. Companies can request an additional 45 days to reach a final resolution. Many consumers end up getting nonmonetary relief, such as fixes to erroneous credit reports or an end to harassment by debt collectors, but some get financial help as well. More than $300 million has been returned to Americans through the complaint system, including $90 million just last year. Normally, staff at the CFPB monitor the complaints to identify systemic issues and escalate complaints involving consumers who are at immediate risk of foreclosure, although that didn’t happen for a few weeks this year when the agency’s acting director halted its work. The CFPB also shares complaint information with other federal agencies, states and localities to help them protect consumers. No other government or private entity has the capacity to effectively handle the volume of complaints that the CFPB does, experts and current and former employees say. States often have limited resources for consumer protection efforts. Many states — including some conservative ones that supported a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the CFPB’s structure — steer consumers

by Molly Redden ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Fearing mass firings, or worse, retaliation by the people they helped prosecute, a group of agents scrambled to enlist a legal team who could stop the administration in court. Norm Eisen, a prominent ethics lawyer now leading dozens of lawsuits against the Trump administration, agreed within hours to represent the agents pro bono, along with Mark Zaid, a veteran whistleblower attorney. For more firepower, the two approached the giant Chicago-based law firm Winston & Strawn, which has a history of providing free representation to people and organizations that squared off against Trump’s first administration. But Winston declined to represent the FBI agents, three people with knowledge of the matter said. It was one of several cases Winston turned down in quick succession, they added, that would have pitted the firm against an openly retributive president. Some of the country’s largest law firms have declined to represent clients challenging the Trump administration, more than a dozen attorneys and nonprofit leaders told ProPublica, while others have sought to avoid any clients that Trump might perceive as his enemies. That includes both clients willing to pay the firms’ steep rates, and those who receive free representation. Big Law firms are also refusing to take on legal work involving environmental protections, LGBTQ+ rights and police accountability or to represent elected Democrats and federal workers purged in Trump’s war on the “deep state.” Advocacy groups say this is beginning to hamper their efforts to challenge the Trump administration. Their fears intensified after Trump signed a battery of executive orders aimed at punishing top firms over old associations with his adversaries. But as the Winston episode shows, Big Law began to back away from some clients almost the minute he returned to power. The country’s top firms remain deeply wary, even though the president has lost all four initial court challenges to those executive orders. “The President’s Policy is working as designed,” said a lawsuit the American Bar Association filed against the administration in June. “Even as federal judges have ruled over and over that the Law Firm Orders are plainly unconstitutional, law firms that once proudly contributed thousands of hours of pro bono work to a host of causes — including causes championed by the ABA — have withdrawn from such work because it is disfavored by the Administration.” The bar association itself has struggled to find representation, the lawsuit said. One unnamed firm, which has represented the association since the 1980s in lawsuits related to ABA’s accreditation of law schools, “is no longer willing to represent the ABA in any litigation against or potentially adverse to the Administration and its policies.” Sidley Austin, the sixth-ranked corporate firm by revenue in the world, has represented the ABA in at least five lawsuits over its accreditation practices since 1989. The ABA and Susman Godfrey, which is representing the association in its lawsuit against the administration, declined to comment. Winston, Sidley and the White House did not respond to questions sent in writing. Trump’s grievances with Big Law stem partly from its role in blocking his first-term agenda. In his executive order targeting Jenner & Block, a firm with close ties to the Democratic Party that fought Trump on transgender rights and immigration, he assailed the firm for allegedly “abus[ing] its pro bono practice to engage in activities that undermine justice.” Another firm, WilmerHale, was where former Special Counsel Robert Mueller worked before and after leading the Russian interference investigation. The executive orders barred attorneys working for the firms from entering federal buildings where they represent clients, terminated the firms’ government contracts, revoked partners’ security clearances and required government contractors to disclose if they work with the targeted firms. Perkins Coie, one of Trump’s first targets, began to lose business “within hours,” its suit said. The judge who halted the executive order against WilmerHale wrote that the firm “faces crippling losses and its very survival is at stake.” “I just think that the law firms have to behave themselves,” Trump said at a press conference in late March. Nine corporate law firms behaved themselves in the form of reaching public settlements with Trump. The deals require them to provide $940 million in total of pro bono support for Trump-approved causes. There has been no public indication of the White House calling on them to perform specific work, and Trump has not released any new executive orders against firms since April. Yet organizations that challenge the government are still feeling the chill. “There’s been a real, noticeable shift,” said Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project, a national nonprofit that brings lawsuits over alleged police abuse and was a frequent pro bono client of Big Law. In November, as soon as Trump won reelection, a top firm that was helping NPAP develop a lawsuit against a city’s police force abruptly stopped attending all planning calls, Bonds said. Later, the firm became one of the nine that struck a deal with Trump, after which the firm half-heartedly told Bonds, she said, that it would reconsider the case in the future. Bonds declined to identify the firm. Activist nonprofits have long relied on free representation because they typically lack the resources to mount major lawsuits on their own. Civil rights cases in particular are complex undertakings usually lasting years. Many call for hundreds of hours spent deposing witnesses and performing research, as well as upfront costs of tens of thousands of dollars. Big Law, with its deep ranks of attorneys and paying

by Sawyer Loftus, Bangor Daily News This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Bangor Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. People living in public housing across the nation have special protections meant to prevent low-income tenants from being evicted when they fall behind on rent. The consequence of an eviction from public housing for people in Maine is especially challenging because there are not enough affordable housing options in the rural state, and those evicted are more likely to face homelessness. Maine public housing authorities file a disproportionately high share of eviction cases compared with all landlords in the state, according to an analysis of court data obtained by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica. If you’re one of 1.6 million tenants living in public housing nationally, including 6,000 in Maine, here are some available safeguards. The following is not legal advice. Rent Relief Options If you start having trouble paying your rent, there are options available to you before you face eviction. You can ask for help in the following ways: Lowering your rent. In public housing, your rent is typically based on your income. So if your paycheck decreases, you can write to the housing authority to request what’s known as an interim recertification to lower your rent. Pausing rental payments. If you currently pay the minimum rent allowed at your housing authority and fall behind, you can request what’s called a hardship exemption to pause your rental payments. You may qualify if: You lost government assistance such as food stamps or Medicaid, or are waiting to see if you can get it. You lost your job. A family member died and it affects your household income. You can also ask if your housing authority sets other qualifications for a hardship exemption. 30-Day Notice The eviction process starts as soon as you get a 30-day notice letter from your housing authority. It might be called a “termination” or “eviction” notice. The letter should tell you what you owe. If you fail to begin payments within 30 days, the housing authority can bring an eviction case against you in court. The notice does not mean you have to move out immediately. Public housing authorities have to give you a 30-day notice, which is a new federal requirement as of January 2025. The notice must include instructions on how you can update your income with the housing authority and/or ask for a hardship exemption. It must provide an itemized list of how much back rent you owe, broken down by month. The list may also include any penalties for lease violations or other fees you owe for maintenance, utilities or other services. It also has to say how you can switch from flat rent to income-based rent. (Flat rent is based on what the federal government considers a fair rent for your area, and income-based rent is based on how much you earn.) The notice must share information about the housing authority’s grievance process, which allows you to formally dispute the eviction before it reaches court. The Grievance Procedure (Cat Willett for ProPublica) After receiving the 30-day notice, you can try to avoid eviction by requesting an informal meeting with your public housing authority, which is the first step in the grievance process. It’s wise to make this request in writing by the deadline in your eviction notice. In this meeting, you will have the chance to talk over your case and see what options might be available to avoid eviction, such as agreeing to a repayment plan (more on those below). If that doesn’t work, you can request a formal grievance hearing to try to prevent your eviction from going to court. It’s better to do this in writing, too. Ahead of the hearing, you can request: Documents in your tenant file. The housing authority’s Admissions and Continued Occupancy Policy, which explains in detail the housing authority’s rules, including how the grievance hearing should unfold. At the hearing you have the right to: Have a lawyer present. Present your own evidence and question evidence offered by the housing authority. Call witnesses to support your case and question any witnesses called by the housing authority. The hearing is decided by an arbiter or panel. If you win the grievance, the housing authority cannot file the eviction case against you in court. If you lose, the case heads to eviction court. Repayment Agreement The federal government encourages housing authorities to enter into repayment agreements with tenants who are behind on rent in order to prevent evictions from public housing. Such an agreement, which housing authorities are not required to offer, is a legally binding contract that outlines how long you have to repay your debt. You can ask your housing authority if this is an option. Despite federal guidance to offer repayment agreements outside of court, public housing authorities sometimes will take you to court before offering one. If you decline the agreement, you could be evicted following the court hearing. What to know about in-court agreements: Signing a repayment agreement in court can put an eviction on your permanent record, even if you meet all the agreement’s requirements. This important fact might not even be mentioned in the agreement, so it’s worth asking. Housing authorities can ask you to agree to be evicted immediately if you fail to abide by the terms of the agreement, such as making payments on time. A repayment agreement reached in court can require you to follow all housing authority rules — such as those prohibiting smoking, requiring you to take down holiday decorations or shovel your driveway — or face an immediate eviction. Pay cap. The federal government encourages — but does not require — housing authorities to create repayment plans that do not make you pay more than 40% of your monthly income (taking into account your regular monthly rent and additional payment to

by Sawyer Loftus, Bangor Daily News This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Bangor Daily News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. When Jasmin Belanger agreed to a plan to pay $750 in back rent, she had no idea how the decision would haunt her. It wasn’t until 10 months later, while apartment hunting to distance herself from an ex-boyfriend she said had abused her, that she discovered an eviction on her record. She hadn’t ever been ordered to move out, having paid her back rent on schedule. But it turned out that the 2023 deal she made in court with her landlord to help her avoid eviction created a paper record that made it look like she had been evicted. That black mark kept her from finding a new place to live. Belanger’s landlord was the Bangor public housing authority, which operates apartments for low-income residents. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development strongly encourages public housing authorities to offer so-called repayment agreements to tenants who have fallen behind on rent in order to help them stay in their homes. It recommends that authorities reach these deals before cases reach eviction court. But housing authorities have flexibility as to how to design and enforce such agreements. And the way these second-chance opportunities are executed in some parts of Maine — verbally in eviction courts with little judicial oversight — has come back to harm even tenants who meet every term of their deals. That’s because judges here don’t pause eviction cases even when tenants and housing authorities reach agreements. In fact, those judges often grant landlords possession of properties at the time that repayment deals are made — expediting the process of kicking out tenants who violate the agreements. Some states have taken steps to prevent this, requiring landlords to return to court to evict tenants who don’t fulfill the terms of their repayment plans. Housing authorities also could choose to pause or close eviction cases if repayment agreements are made in court, but they rarely do so in Maine, said Erica Veazey, an attorney with Pine Tree Legal Assistance, a legal aid group based in Portland that represents low-income tenants throughout the state. Most housing authorities in Maine, including Bangor’s, told the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica that they follow HUD’s guidance and try to reach agreements with tenants outside of courts. But court records show that’s not always true in Bangor, the state’s second-largest housing authority. There, 54 tenants had repayment agreements made in court, according to the newsrooms’ examination of eviction filings between 2019 and 2024. All 54 tenants ended up with eviction judgments in court records, including those who may have repaid their debts. (If a repayment agreement was made outside of court, it would not appear in any official record.) Maine’s court system is one of the last in the country to rely on paper records, making a holistic accounting of such ghost evictions difficult. But the Bangor cases show for the first time how these repayment agreements can backfire for tenants against the intent of the HUD guidance. Presented with these findings, Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor’s housing authority, said he did not know public housing residents would automatically end up with evictions on their records if they entered into repayment agreements in court. “I don’t quite understand or know how those processes may be changed,” Myatt said, “but we would certainly lead an effort or be part of an effort that would change those rules.” Mike Myatt, executive director of Bangor’s housing authority. He said he did not know that public housing residents would automatically end up with evictions on their records if they entered into repayment agreements in court. (Linda Coan O’Kresik/BDN) HUD, during President Donald Trump’s first term, began urging housing authorities to reach repayment agreements before taking tenants to eviction court in July 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. In January, just before President Joe Biden left office, the agency reemphasized that guidance as part of new safeguards for public housing tenants; that doesn’t include a recommendation about whether evictions should be included on tenants’ records as part of such deals. “HUD’s intent seems pretty clear: Eviction filing should be a last resort for housing authorities and not essentially a way to strong-arm tenants into agreeing to whatever terms you want to put them under,” said Hannah Adams, a senior attorney at the National Housing Law Project, a nonprofit legal advocacy center for low-income tenants and homeowners. She practices in Louisiana, where judges regularly sign off on repayment agreements without entering an eviction judgment. Of the more than three dozen tenants contacted by the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica, only Belanger agreed to publicly share her experience about the consequences of having an eviction on her record. An eviction, even one that never actually happened, can haunt a person’s financial record for years, visible to lenders and prospective landlords and hurting opportunities to obtain credit or rent a home, Adams said. Asked to comment on a range of questions, including the effect of housing authorities deviating from federal guidance, HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett issued a statement saying the Trump administration is reviewing all rules finalized during the last administration. “Many artificially raised the cost of housing and administration of HUD programs,” Lovett said. “HUD is looking into this specific rule and considering necessary options to revise or remove this burden.” The agency did not respond to follow-up questions about whether or how it would revise the guidance about repayment agreements. Perils of Court-Based Deals Belanger said she fell behind on her rent in 2023 because she was paying to stay at a hotel to live away from her ex. She had also lost income because she was no longer showing up regularly to her cosmetology job due to the stress. An eviction notice delivered to her door in May 2023 prompted

by Lisa Song ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. It was meant to be a routine discussion on pollution. One by one, delegates at the United Nations expressed support for a new panel of scientists who would advise countries on how to address chemicals and toxic waste. But the U.S. delegate took the meeting in a new direction. She spent her allotted three minutes reminding the world that the United States now had a “national position” on a single word in the documents establishing the panel: gender. “Use of the term ‘gender’ replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity and is demeaning and unfair, especially to women and girls,” the delegate told the U.N. in June. The Trump administration is pushing its anti-trans agenda on a global stage, repeatedly objecting to the word “gender” in international resolutions and documents. During at least six speeches before the U.N., U.S. delegates have denounced so-called “gender ideology” or reinforced the administration’s support for language that “recognizes women are biologically female and men are biologically male.” The delegates included federal civil service employees and the associate director of Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for Trump’s policies, who now works for the State Department. They delivered these statements during U.N. forums on topics as varied as women’s rights, science and technology, global health, toxic pollution and chemical waste. Even a resolution meant to reaffirm cooperation between the U.N. and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations became an opportunity to bring up the issue. Insisting that everyone’s gender is determined biologically at birth leaves no room for the existence of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, who face discrimination and violence around the world. Intersex people have variations in chromosomes, hormone levels or anatomy that differ from what’s considered typical for male and female bodies. A federal report published in January just before President Donald Trump took office, estimated there are more than 5 million intersex Americans. On at least two occasions, U.S. delegates urged the U.N. to adopt its language on men and women, though it’s unclear if the U.S.’ position has led to any policy changes at the U.N. But the effects of the country’s objections are more than symbolic, said Kristopher Velasco, a sociology professor at Princeton University who studies how international institutions and nongovernmental organizations have worked to expand or curtail LGBTQ+ rights. U.N. documents can influence countries’ policies over time and set an international standard for human rights, which advocates can cite as they campaign for less discriminatory policies, Velasco said. The phrase “gender ideology” has emerged as a “catchall term” for far-right anxieties about declining fertility rates and a decrease in “traditional” heterosexual families, he said. At the U.N., the administration has promoted other aspects of its domestic agenda. For example, U.S. delegates have demanded the removal of references to tackling climate change and voted against an International Day of Hope because the text contained references to diversity, equity and inclusion. (The two-page document encouraged a “more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth” and welcomed “respect for diversity.”) But the reflexive resistance to the word “gender” is particularly noteworthy. Advocates for LGBTQ+ rights said the U.S.’ repeated condemnation of “gender ideology” signals support for more repressive regimes. The U.S. is sending the world “a clear message: that the identities and rights of trans, nonbinary, and intersex people are negotiable,” Ash Lazarus Orr, press relations manager at the nonprofit Advocates for Trans Equality, said in a statement. Laurel Sprague, research director at the Williams Institute, a policy center focused on sexual orientations and gender identities at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she’s concerned that other countries will take similar positions on transgender rights to gain favor with the U.S. Last month Mike Waltz, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the U.N., told a Senate committee that he wants to use a country’s record of voting with or against the U.S. at the U.N. as a metric for deciding foreign aid. In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement: “President Trump was overwhelmingly elected to restore common sense to government, which means focusing foreign policy on securing peace deals and putting America First — not enforcing woke gender ideology.” A clash between Trump’s administration and certain U.N. institutions over transgender rights was almost inevitable. Trump’s hostility to transgender rights was a key part of his election campaign. On his first day in office, he issued an executive order called “Defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government.” The order claimed there were only two “immutable” sexes. Eight days later, Trump signed an executive order restricting gender-affirming surgery for anyone under 19. Federal agencies have since forced trans service members out of the military and sued California for its refusal to ban trans athletes from girls’ sports teams. In June, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized American government officials for their statements “vilifying transgender and non-binary people.” The human rights office urges U.N. member states to provide gender-affirming care and says the organization has “affirmed the right of trans persons to legal recognition of their gender identity and a change of gender in official documents, including birth certificates.” The office also supports the rights of intersex people. “Intersex people in the U.S. are extremely worried” that they will become bigger targets, said Sylvan Fraser Anthony, legal and policy director at the intersex advocacy group InterACT. “In all regions of the world, we are witnessing a pushback against women’s human rights and gender equality,” Laura Gelbert Godinho Delgado, a spokesperson for the U.N.’s human rights office, said in an email. “This has fueled misogyny, anti-LGBTI rhetoric, and hate speech.” The Trump administration’s insistence on litigating “gender” complicates the already ponderous procedures of the U.N. Many decisions are made by consensus,

by Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor, photography by Sarahbeth Maney, ProPublica This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. For more than half a century, Diana Skarphol’s family received a check every month from the company that drilled the first successful oil well in North Dakota on their land in 1951. The checks, from the company that became Hess Corp., were straightforward. Her family, which owns the oil and gas underground, received a percentage of the revenue generated from the company’s sale of the minerals, called a royalty. But in April 2015, when she opened that month’s check and looked at the accompanying statement detailing her share, she noticed for the first time that a significant portion of the payment had been deducted. About 35% of what she thought she was owed was gone, and she didn’t know why. She was so taken aback that she called her husband, Bob Skarphol, a state lawmaker on the verge of retirement, as he drove from the capitol in Bismarck to their home in Tioga, a small community in the oil-rich Bakken in the western part of the state. “Why are there minuses?” Diana Skarphol recalls asking. “Rather than being added in, things were being subtracted. I was puzzled and confused.” The couple remembers that call because it was the start of a frustrating, decade-long search for answers from the company and of a string of unanswered pleas for help from the state, which has not taken action to help royalty recipients even as other states have. Over the past decade, Hess has withheld about 31%, or $137,635, of the Skarphols’ royalty income to cover the company’s costs to move oil and gas from the well site to market, records show. Oil and gas companies owed the state’s private mineral owners, like the Skarphols, an estimated $4.6 billion in 2023 before deductions, according to North Dakota State University research. But those deductions — which can vary greatly — are deeply contentious in the state: The companies claim certain costs should be shared with royalty owners, while owners say that in most circumstances, the deductions shouldn’t be permitted at all. The state itself doesn’t regulate what can be deducted and there is no official accounting of how much of that money is withheld. The North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica spoke with 18 mineral owners, interviewed experts and lawmakers, and reviewed court records and royalty statements to understand the extent of deductions. A dozen owners provided records of companies withholding 20% or more of their oil and gas royalties. Some monthly statements showed deductions as high as 50%. Similarly, at least one energy company and one independent researcher have found the deductions to be around 20% in recent years. The industry’s chief lobbyist said percentages that high are atypical. Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said it would be “impossible” to calculate an average deduction but suggested it couldn’t be more than 7% to 10% based on the cost of transporting oil out of state. If deductions were in that range, North Dakota royalty owners collectively would have lost between $322 million and $460 million in 2023. The Skarphols’ leases with Hess were signed during a time when oil and gas was often sold at or near well sites. The leases didn’t say anything about deductions. “It’s a matter of fairness,” Diana Skarphol said. “We didn’t get any say in it. They just up and changed it. You feel like you’re being cheated. It’s not right.” Bob and Diana Skarphol have kept records of payments for their mineral rights going back decades. While the language in the leases has not changed, the industry has. Most companies now choose to move the commodities away from the well site before selling them, incurring additional transportation and processing costs. They pass on a share of those costs to the royalty owners, which the North Dakota Supreme Court has ruled is legal. By contrast, North Dakota officials have taken steps to safeguard state-owned royalties. Since 1979, all state leases with oil and gas companies prohibit deductions. When state trustees noticed deductions were being taken anyway, they fought back and have spent years negotiating settlements to recoup those missing royalties. But the majority of the oil and gas in North Dakota is privately owned by about 300,000 individuals, according to the industry. And North Dakota policymakers have not taken action that would protect private minerals, an investigation by the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica has found. “There’s a double standard,” said Rep. Keith Kempenich, a Republican from Bowman, a community in the oil field. He has co-sponsored several pieces of unsuccessful legislation aimed at helping private owners. Lawmakers have rejected efforts to rein in deductions and to make it easier for royalty owners to understand what costs are being deducted and why. And oil and gas regulators have claimed they have no jurisdiction to help. “It’s ridiculous,” said Bob Skarphol, who has led the advocacy efforts by private mineral owners. “The industry has an incredible amount of influence in North Dakota.” The state, which owns about 6% of the minerals in North Dakota, has advantages that private mineral owners don’t have. It has the resources to audit companies that pay royalties and to litigate disputes. State law also requires that companies provide electronic copies of royalty and production data to regulators, but private royalty owners are guaranteed access only if they travel to the company’s office, which could be out of state. And unlike the state, private mineral owners rarely have the leverage to negotiate a lease that prohibits deductions, and leases don’t expire unless oil production lapses. In responses to questions from the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica, officials from three companies that operate in North Dakota — Hess Corp., Slawson Exploration Co. and Zavanna Energy — said they follow the language in the

by Marissa Greene, Fort Worth Report and Report for America ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This article is co-published with Fort Worth Report and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas. Texas Rep. Nate Schatzline recently stood before a gathering of conservative activists just outside Fort Worth, recapping legislative wins and previewing what’s next at the Capitol. On this day, however, he was speaking not only as a lawmaker but also as a pastor. A week earlier, the Internal Revenue Service decided to allow religious leaders to endorse political candidates from the pulpit, effectively upending a provision in decades-old tax law barring such activity. Schatzline, a longtime pastor at Mercy Culture Church in Fort Worth, was excited. The IRS affirmed “what we already knew,” he said at the July 14 meeting: The government can’t stop the church from getting civically engaged. “There is absolutely no reason that a politician should be more vocal about social issues than your pastor, and so I need pastors to stand up,” Schatzline told the crowd made up of members of True Texas Project, a Tarrant County-based organization that is a key part of a powerful political network pushing lawmakers to adopt its hard-line opposition to immigration and LGBTQ+ rights and to advance conservative education policies. “We need pastors to be bold.” For decades, pastors like him have fought for the right to speak on political issues and actively endorse candidates in their capacity as religious leaders. Now, before a judge has weighed in on whether to allow the IRS policy change, some religious leaders are already calling on congregations to demand greater political involvement from their churches. While the tax agency’s stance applies to churches nationwide, Texas is expected to be where it will matter most, said Ryan Burge, a political and religious expert at Washington University in St. Louis. More than 200 megachurches call Texas home. In the Lone Star State, pastors seem to have a larger profile in social, political and religious discussions. “Texas will be the epicenter for testing all these ideas out,” he said. Schatzline said as much in a follow-up interview with Fort Worth Report. A nonprofit that Mercy Culture Church previously created to help elect candidates to political office is working with President Donald Trump’s National Faith Advisory Board to expand that work and to mobilize churches and pastors to get them more civically engaged, the state representative said. Officials from the White House and the advisory board did not respond to a request for comment. While Schatzline said pastors can choose not to be vocal about candidates, congregations like his may feel differently. “Especially our conservatives across America, they have an expectation that their pastor is going to speak to the issues of truth,” he said. For more than 70 years, churches and other religious institutions in the United States were told to steer clear of “any political activity” or risk losing their tax-exempt status. That federal measure, the Johnson Amendment, was added into IRS tax law in 1954 and named after its author, Lyndon B. Johnson, then a Texas congressman. In August 2024, during the last months of the Biden administration, an association of religious broadcasters and two East Texas churches sued the IRS, arguing that the Johnson Amendment infringed upon their freedom of speech and religion. Nearly a year later, the IRS, now under Trump, and the plaintiffs filed a proposed joint settlement outlining in the agreement that when a house of worship speaks to its congregation about “electoral politics viewed through the lens of religious faith,” it neither participates nor intervenes in a political campaign and so doesn’t violate the amendment. The court must now consider their proposal. IRS officials did not respond to a request for comment on what prompted its decision. The biggest implication of the proposed legal agreement is a push on pastors to be “more political than they want to be,” said Burge, a former Baptist pastor who is now a professor of practice at Washington University’s John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics. “It all comes down to the 5% of people on each side of the political spectrum who are the loudest and are trying to drag you into their fervor,” said Burge, adding that congregants could threaten to leave a church if their pastor doesn’t talk about their political stances. A previous investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune highlighted 20 examples of churches that were seemingly violating the Johnson Amendment. That was more than what the IRS itself had investigated in the previous decade. Thirteen of those congregations were in the North Texas area, including Mercy Culture, where Schatzline was ordained a pastor in 2024. The tax agency largely abdicated enforcing the amendment, the newsrooms previously reported. For example, in the mid-2000s, the IRS investigated a little more than 100 churches, including 80 for endorsing candidates from the pulpit, after citing an increase in allegations of church political activity leading up to the 2004 presidential election. Agency officials didn’t revoke the tax-exempt status of any churches, instead sending warning letters. Following the filing of the proposed settlement in July, the Fort Worth Report identified at least three churches in Texas whose leaders openly praised the IRS decision, including Mercy Culture and Sand Springs Church, one of those involved in the lawsuit that sparked the IRS change. The day after the court filing, Mercy Culture Church posted a screenshot on Instagram and Facebook of The New York Times article detailing the news and noting it was “time for the church to get loud!” “We will not be silent on issues of righteousness, life, liberty, or leadership. We don’t endorse parties — we stand for the Kingdom!” the post read. In Athens, less than 100 miles south of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Sand Springs Church senior pastor Erick Graham