ProPublica

ProPublica

Texas Lawmakers Largely Ignored Recommendations Aimed at Helping Rural Areas Like Kerr County Prepare for Flooding

by Lexi Churchill and Lomi Kriel, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues. Sixteen months had passed since Hurricane Harvey tore through the Texas coast in August 2017, killing more than 80 people and flattening entire neighborhoods. And when Texas lawmakers gathered in Austin for their biennial session, the scale of the storm’s destruction was hard to ignore. Legislators responded by greenlighting a yearslong statewide initiative to evaluate flood risks and improve preparedness for increasingly frequent and deadly storms. “If we get our planning right on the front end and prevent more damage on the front end, then we have less on the back end,” Charles Perry, a Republican senator from Lubbock who chairs a committee overseeing environmental issues, said at the time. In the years that followed, hundreds of local officials and volunteers canvassed communities across Texas, mapping out vulnerabilities. The result of their work came in 2024 with the release of Texas’ first-ever state flood plan. Their findings identified nearly $55 billion in proposed projects and outlined 15 key recommendations, including nine suggestions for legislation. Several were aimed at aiding rural communities like Kerr County, where flash flooding over the Fourth of July weekend killed more than 100 people. Three are still missing. But this year, lawmakers largely ignored those recommendations. Instead, the legislative session that ended June 2 was dominated by high-profile battles over school vouchers and lawmakers’ decision to spend $51 billion to maintain and provide new property tax cuts, an amount nearly equal to the funding identified by the Texas Water Development Board, a state agency that has historically overseen water supply and conservation efforts. Although it had been only seven years since Hurricane Harvey, legislators now prioritized the state’s water and drought crisis over flooding needs. Legislators allocated more than $1.6 billion in new revenue for water infrastructure projects, only some of which would go toward flood mitigation. They also passed a bill that will ask voters in November to decide whether to approve $1 billion annually over the next two decades that would prioritize water and wastewater over flood mitigation projects. At that pace, water experts said that it could take decades before existing mitigation needs are addressed — even without further floods. Even if they had been approved by lawmakers this year, many of the plan’s recommendations would not have been implemented before the July 4 disaster. But a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of legislative proposals, along with interviews with lawmakers and flood experts, found that the Legislature has repeatedly failed to enact key measures that would help communities prepare for frequent flooding. Such inaction often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities hardest because they lack the tax base to fund major flood prevention projects and often cannot afford to produce the data they need to qualify for state and federal grants, environmental experts and lawmakers said. Over the years, legislators have declined to pass at least three bills that would create siren or alert systems, tools experts say can be especially helpful in rural communities that lack reliable internet and cell service. A 2019 state-commissioned report estimated flood prevention needs at over $30 billion. Since then, lawmakers have allocated just $1.4 billion. And they ignored the key recommendations from the state’s 2024 flood plan that are meant to help rural areas like Kerr County, which is dubbed “Flash Flood Alley” due to its geography. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, left, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, right, look on as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signs an emergency proclamation during a press conference in Kerrville. (Ronaldo Bolaños/The Texas Tribune) Spokespeople for Gov. Greg Abbott and House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock, did not answer questions about why the plan’s recommendations were overlooked but defended the Legislature’s investment in flood mitigation as significant. They pointed to millions more spent on other prevention efforts, including flood control dam construction and maintenance, regional flood projects, and increased floodplain disclosures and drainage requirements for border counties. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick did not respond to questions. This week, the Legislature will convene for a special session that Abbott called to address a range of priorities, including flood warning systems, natural disaster preparation and relief funding. Patrick promised that the state would purchase warning sirens for counties in flash flood zones. Similar efforts, however, have previously been rejected by the Legislature. Alongside Burrows, Patrick also announced the formation of committees on disaster preparedness and flooding and called the move “just the beginning of the Legislature looking at every aspect of this tragic event.” Burrows said the House is “ready to better fortify our state against future disasters.” But Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez Ramos, a Democrat from Richardson, near Dallas, said state lawmakers have brushed off dire flood prevention needs for decades. “The manual was there, and we ignored it, and we’ve continued to ignore these recommendations,” said Rodríguez Ramos, who has served on the House Natural Resources Committee overseeing water issues for three sessions. “It’s performative to say we’re trying to do something knowing well we’re not doing enough.” One recommendation from the 2024 flood plan would have cost the state nothing to enact. It called for granting counties the authority to levy drainage fees, including in unincorporated areas, that could fund local flood projects. Only about 150 of 1,450 Texas cities and counties have dedicated drainage fees, according to a study cited in the state assessment. Kerr, a conservative county of 53,000 people, has struggled to gain support for projects that would raise taxes. About a week after the flooding, some residents protested when county commissioners discussed a property tax increase to help cover the costs of recovery efforts. The inability to raise such fees is one of the biggest impediments for local governments seeking to fund flood mitigation projects, said

ProPublica

Microsoft Says It Has Stopped Using China-Based Engineers to Support Defense Department Computer Systems

by Renee Dudley ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Microsoft says it has stopped using China-based engineers to support Defense Department cloud computing systems after ProPublica revealed the practice in an investigation this week. “In response to concerns raised earlier this week about US-supervised foreign engineers, Microsoft has made changes to our support for US Government customers to assure that no China-based engineering teams are providing technical assistance for DoD Government cloud and related services,” the company’s chief communications officer, Frank Shaw, announced on X Friday afternoon. Microsoft’s announcement came hours after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said his agency would look into Microsoft’s use of foreign-based engineers to help maintain the highly sensitive cloud systems. “Foreign engineers — from any country, including of course China — should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems,” Hegseth wrote in a post on X Friday. In its investigation, ProPublica detailed how Microsoft uses engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking or spying from its leading cyber adversary. The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage. But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police the work of foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Earlier Friday, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, cited ProPublica in a letter to Hegseth asking for details about which DOD contractors use Chinese personnel to maintain the department’s information and computing systems. China poses “one of the most aggressive and dangerous threats to the United States, as evidenced by its infiltrations of our critical infrastructure, telecommunications networks and supply chains,” Cotton wrote in the letter, which he posted on X. “DOD must guard against all potential threats within its supply chain, including those from subcontractors.” Since 2011, cloud computing companies like Microsoft that wanted to sell their services to the U.S. government had to establish how they would ensure that personnel working with federal data would have the requisite “access authorizations” and background screenings. Additionally, the Defense Department requires that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. This presented an issue for Microsoft, which relies on a vast global workforce with significant operations in India, China and the European Union. So the tech giant enlisted staffing companies to hire U.S.-based digital escorts, who had security clearances that authorized them to access sensitive information, to take direction from the overseas experts. An engineer might briefly describe the job to be completed — for instance, updating a firewall, installing an update to fix a bug or reviewing logs to troubleshoot a problem. Then, with little review, an escort would copy and paste the engineer’s commands into the federal cloud. “We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” one escort told ProPublica. In an earlier statement in response to ProPublica’s investigation, Microsoft said that its personnel and contractors operate in a manner “consistent with US Government requirements and processes.” The company’s global workers “have no direct access to customer data or customer systems,” the statement said. Escorts “with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment.” In addition, Microsoft said it has an internal review process known as “Lockbox” to “make sure the request is deemed safe or has any cause for concern.” Insight Global — a contractor that provides digital escorts to Microsoft — said it “evaluates the technical capabilities of each resource throughout the interview process to ensure they possess the technical skills required” for the job and provides training. Doris Burke contributed research.

ProPublica

He Came to the U.S. to Support His Sick Child. He Was Detained. Then He Disappeared.

by Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica; Perla Trevizo, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune; Mica Rosenberg and Jeff Ernsthausen, ProPublica; Ronna Rísquez, Alianza Rebelde Investiga; and Adrián González, Cazadores de Fake News Leer en español. 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. On Feb. 15, José Manuel Ramos Bastidas called his wife from inside a Texas immigration detention facility. He asked her to record a message so there would be some lasting evidence of his story. “They detained me simply because of my tattoos. I am not a criminal.” The Trump administration had sent dozens of Venezuelan immigrants to Guantanamo. He was afraid the same would happen to him. “Just in case something happens to me, so you can be aware.” Uncertain about his fate, Ramos wanted to make sure there was a record of what happened to him. A month later, he was gone. Ramos never set foot in the U.S. — at least not as a free man. He left Venezuela in January 2024, hoping to earn enough money to pay for his newborn son’s medical needs. Born with a respiratory condition, the family’s “milagrito,” or “little miracle,” had severe asthma and repeatedly needed to be hospitalized. The cost of treatment had become impossible to manage on the meager wages Ramos made washing cars in Venezuela’s collapsed economy, so he trekked thousands of miles through a half dozen countries to reach the U.S. border. When Ramos arrived, he didn’t sneak into the country. He followed the rules established by the Biden administration for immigrants seeking asylum. He signed up for an appointment through a government app and, when he was granted one, turned himself in to request protection. An immigration official and a judge determined he didn’t qualify, and Ramos didn’t fight the decision. The government kept him in detention until he could be deported back to Venezuela. In the months that followed, Donald Trump was elected president for a second term and began his mass deportation campaign. Among his first actions was to fly groups of Venezuelan immigrants whom he had labeled dangerous gang members to a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Ramos, 30, panicked and called his wife to say he was worried that the same was going to happen to him. On a video call his wife recorded, he held up a document he said was proof that immigration authorities had agreed to deport him to Venezuela. But he worried that they would not honor that promise. “I have a family,” he said, staring directly into the camera. “I am simply a hard-working Venezuelan. I haven’t committed any crimes. I don’t have a criminal record in my country nor anywhere else.” A month later, a more upbeat Ramos called again. He seemed confident that U.S. officials would send him home. Ramos’ family started preparing for his return. They planned to bake him a cake, cook his favorite chicken dish and go to church together to thank God for bringing him home safely. They never heard from him again. First image: Bastidas rests with Ramos’ son and her grandson, Jared, at their home in Venezuela. Second image: Rodríguez holds her phone, showing a photo of her husband. (Adriana Loureiro Fernández for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune) On March 15, a day after that call, Ramos and more than 230 other Venezuelan men were sent to the CECOT maximum-security prison in El Salvador, one of the most notorious in the Western Hemisphere. Without publicly providing evidence, the administration accused each of them of being members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang it designated a terrorist organization. In the months since the mass deportation — one of the most consequential in recent history — the Trump administration has released almost no details about the backgrounds of the people it deported, calling them “monsters,” “sick criminals” and the “worst of the worst.” Several news organizations have reported that most of the men did not have criminal records. ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and a team of Venezuelan journalists from Alianza Rebelde Investiga (Rebel Alliance Investigates) and Cazadores de Fake News (Fake News Hunters) went further, finding that the government’s own records showed that it knew the vast majority of the men had not been convicted of violent crimes in the U.S. We also searched records in South America and found that only a few had committed violent crimes abroad. Now, a case-by-case examination of each of the deportees, along with interviews with their lawyers and family members, reveals another jarring reality: Most of the men were not hiding from federal authorities but were instead moving through the nation’s immigration system. They were either in the middle of their cases, which normally should have protected them from deportation, or they had already been ordered deported and should have first been given the option to be sent back to a country they chose. Like Ramos, more than 50 of the men had used the government app called CBP One to make an appointment with border officials to try to enter the country. Others had crossed illegally and then surrendered to border agents, often the first step in seeking asylum in immigration court. According to our analysis, almost half of the men were deported even though their cases hadn’t been decided yet. More than 60 of them had pending asylum claims, including several who were only days away from a hearing where a judge could have ruled on whether they would be allowed to stay. Judges or federal officials had issued deportation orders for about 100 of the men, and a handful had even agreed to pay their own way home. Others, like Ramos, had spent their entire time in the U.S. in detention. They had no opportunity

ProPublica

Trump Administration Prepares to Drop Seven Major Housing Discrimination Cases

by Jesse Coburn ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is preparing to shut down seven major investigations and cases concerning alleged housing discrimination and segregation, including some where the agency already found civil rights violations, according to HUD records obtained by ProPublica. The high-profile cases involve allegations that state and local governments across the South and Midwest illegally discriminated against people of color by placing industrial plants or low-income housing in their neighborhoods, and by steering similar facilities away from white neighborhoods, among other allegations. HUD has been pursuing these cases — which range from instances where the agency has issued a formal charge of discrimination to newer investigations — for as many as seven years. In three of them, HUD officials had determined that the defendants had violated the Fair Housing Act or related civil rights laws. A HUD staffer familiar with the other four investigations believes civil rights violations occurred in each, the official told ProPublica. Under President Donald Trump, the agency now plans to abruptly end all of them, regardless of prior findings of wrongdoing. Four HUD officials said they could recall no precedent for the plan, which they said signals an acceleration of the administration’s retreat from fair housing enforcement. “No administration previously has so aggressively rolled back the basic protections that help people who are being harmed in their community,” one of the officials said. “The civil rights protections that HUD enforces are intended to protect the most vulnerable people in society.” In the short term, closing the cases would allow the local governments in question to continue allegedly mistreating minority communities, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. In the long term, they said, it could embolden local politicians and developers elsewhere to take actions that entrench segregation, without fear of punishment from the federal government. HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett declined to answer questions, saying “HUD does not comment on active Fair Housing matters or individual personnel.” Three of the cases involve accusations that local governments clustered polluting industrial facilities in minority neighborhoods. One concerned a protracted dispute over a scrap metal shredding plant in Chicago. The facility had operated for years in the largely white neighborhood of Lincoln Park. But residents complained ceaselessly of the fumes, debris, noise and, occasionally, smoke emanating from the plant. So the city allegedly pressured the recycling company to close the old facility and open a new one in a minority neighborhood in southeast Chicago. In 2022, HUD found that “relocating the Facility to the Southeast Site will bring environmental benefits to a neighborhood that is 80% White and environmental harms to a neighborhood that is 83% Black and Hispanic.” Chicago’s mayor called allegations of discrimination “preposterous,” then settled the case and agreed to reforms in 2023. (The new plant has not opened; its owner has sued the city.) In another case, a predominantly white Michigan township allowed an asphalt plant to open on its outskirts, away from its population centers but near subsidized housing complexes in the neighboring poor, mostly Black city of Flint. The township did not respond to a ProPublica inquiry about the case. Still another case involved a plan pushed by the city of Corpus Christi, Texas, to build a water desalination plant in a historically Black neighborhood already fringed by oil refineries and other industrial facilities. (Rates of cancer and birth defects in the area are disproportionately high, and average life expectancy is 15 years lower than elsewhere in the city, researchers found.) The city denied the allegations. Construction of the plant is expected to conclude in 2028. Three other cases involve allegations of discrimination in municipal land use decisions. In Memphis, Tennessee, the city and its utility allegedly coerced residents of a poor Black neighborhood to sell their homes so that it could build a new facility there. In Cincinnati, the city has allegedly concentrated low-income housing in poor Black neighborhoods and kept it out of white neighborhoods. And in Chicago, the city has given local politicians veto power over development proposals in their districts, resulting in little new affordable housing in white neighborhoods. (Memphis, its utility and Chicago have disputed the allegations; Cincinnati declined to comment on them.) The last case involved a Texas state agency allegedly diverting $1 billion in disaster mitigation money away from Houston and other communities of color hit hard by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and toward more rural, white communities less damaged by the storm. The agency has disputed the allegations. All of the investigations and cases are now slated to be closed. HUD is also planning to stop enforcing the settlement it reached in the Chicago recycling case, the records show. The move to drop the cases is being directed by Brian Hawkins, a recent Trump administration hire at HUD who serves as a senior adviser in the Fair Housing Office, two agency officials said. Hawkins has no law degree or prior experience in housing, according to his LinkedIn profile. But this month, he circulated a list within HUD of the seven cases that indicated the agency’s plans for them. In the cases that involve Cincinnati, Corpus Christi, Flint and Houston, the agency would “find no cause on [the] merits,” the list reads. In the two Chicago cases and the one involving Memphis, HUD would rescind letters documenting the agency’s prior findings. Hawkins did not respond to a request for comment. The list does not offer a legal justification for dropping the cases. But Hawkins also circulated a memo that indicates the reasoning behind dropping one — the Chicago recycling case. The memo cites an executive order issued by Trump in April eliminating federal enforcement of “disparate-impact liability,” the doctrine that seemingly neutral policies or practices could have a discriminatory effect. Hawkins’ memo stated that “the Department will not interpret environmental impacts

ProPublica

The Most Interesting Email I Ever Received: Remembering the Incredible Life of DIY Geneticist Jill Viles

by David Epstein 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 was adapted from David Epstein’s Substack newsletter, “Range Widely,” and references the story “The DIY Scientist, the Olympian, and the Mutated Gene” that he wrote for ProPublica in 2016. That story also became an episode of “This American Life.” Jill Dopf Viles — self-taught genetic detective, the central figure in the most interesting story I’ve ever reported and my friend — passed away last month in Gowrie, Iowa, at 50. I’m heartbroken that Jill did not live to see the publication of her book — “Manufacturing My Miracle: One Woman’s Quest to Create Her Personalized Gene Therapy — which came out last week. I know how much she treasured the fact that she would soon be able to call herself “author.” Here is a paragraph from her book: “Every gain I’d made in learning more about my genetic disease had involved some type of deception — to do my family’s underground blood draw in 1996 required that phlebotomy supplies be lifted from a hospital and a nurse secretly visit our home; gaining journalist David Epstein’s interest began with a wild exaggeration in my email subject line: ‘Woman with muscular dystrophy, Olympic Medalist—same mutation’; and I’d adopted the lexicon of a research scientist to gain a client rate for Priscilla’s genetic testing (the cost for clients was half what was charged to individual patients).” If I was deceived, I’m grateful for it. In that paragraph, Jill is describing just a bit of the effort that went into figuring out that she had a rare form of muscular dystrophy called Emery-Dreifuss, which causes muscle wasting, and also an even rarer form of partial lipodystrophy, which causes fat to vanish from certain parts of the body. Jill had been told for years that she didn’t have either of these, never mind both. After my first book, “The Sports Gene,” came out in 2013, I was on “Good Morning America” talking about genetics, and Jill happened to be within earshot of her TV. “I thought, oh, this is divine providence,” Jill later told me. So she sent me that email with the provocative subject line. She followed up by sending me a batch of family photos and a bound packet outlining her theory: that she and Canadian sprinter Priscilla Lopes-Schliep — bronze medalist in the 100-meter hurdles at the 2008 Olympics — shared a genetic mutation. On the face of it, this seemed ridiculous. One could hardly find a picture of two more different women. Take a look at this page from the packet Jill sent me: The packet outlined in granular detail why Jill thought, just from looking at pictures of Priscilla, that the two women shared a genetic mutation that caused the same fat wasting, but because Priscilla didn’t also have muscle wasting — quite the contrary — her body had found some way to “go around” muscular dystrophy. If Jill was right, she thought, perhaps scientists could study both of them and figure out how to help people with muscles like Jill’s develop muscles a little closer to Priscilla’s end of the human physique spectrum. Jill was sharing all this with me because she wasn’t sure how best to contact Priscilla and hoped I would facilitate an introduction. Jill’s hypothesis struck me as unlikely, to say the least. But her presentation in the packet was so interesting, and her knowledge of the underlying genetics and physiology so thorough, that I felt her idea deserved a hearing. I reached out to Priscilla; she agreed to meet Jill, and after comparing body parts in a hotel lobby, Jill convinced her to get a genetic test. Long story short, Jill turned out to be right. She and Priscilla had a mutation in the same gene, albeit at neighboring locations. The discovery led Priscilla to get urgent care for a serious health condition that had previously been overlooked because of her obvious fitness. Jill and I shared this story in an episode of “This American Life” in 2016 — which was rerun last week in her honor. After that story ran, Jill’s genome became the subject of research, exactly as she’d hoped. Today, in a lab in Iowa, there are fruit flies known as “Jill” flies, because they have been engineered to carry her same mutation. As expected, Jill flies have severely limited mobility. But just recently, a scientist conducted a genetic experiment in which she increased the production of a particular protein in the Jill flies. Suddenly, they began to move like normal fruit flies. The breadth of life contained in Jill’s new book is incredible. She was a child the first time she heard a doctor discussing her own death with her mother. The indignities of adolescence and young adulthood that she endured were legion, starting with spontaneous falls in school, followed by kids looping their fingers around her arms and legs and asking if her mother fed her. Jill’s condition accelerated with puberty, so the bodily changes that are confusing for any teenager were absolutely harrowing for her. Almost overnight she lost the ability to do things she loved, like skate or ride a bike. At one point in her early teen years, a doctor ordered pictures of Jill’s posture, which forced her into a strange and humiliating photo session that hadn’t been properly explained beforehand: “I had seen these photos before — a stark, frozen moment of a patient’s greatest vulnerability, the body positioned in a way nature and the photographer dictate, all except for the eyes. The eyes cannot be manipulated or coaxed. It is often said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Maybe that is why black bars are printed over the eyes of the patient. Perhaps this is done to protect the patient’s anonymity, but I wonder if it isn’t really done to shield the peering eyes

ProPublica

The USDA Wouldn’t Let Her Give Up Her House When She Couldn’t Pay Her Mortgage. Instead, It Crushed Her With Debt.

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. Off a two-lane stretch of U.S. Route 1 in rural Caribou, Maine, sits a white ranch-style house that’s been consumed by weeds and vines. The house was once the fulfillment of a dream. The owner had purchased it in 2006 through a federal mortgage program designed specifically for people like her: impoverished, first-time homeowners who live in the most rural parts of the United States. The loan, which came directly from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, required no down payment. But things started going wrong from the day she moved in. First, the basement flooded. Then the furnace stopped working. As major repair costs accumulated over the next six years, the woman’s health deteriorated until she was forced to leave her job as a manager at Kmart. Her disability check was not enough to cover medical expenses and the upkeep required for the house — let alone the $855 monthly mortgage. So in 2012 she drove to a USDA office 20 miles away and tried to give the house back. She said staff there would not accept her keys, telling her instead to call a toll-free number for help, as agency protocol requires. She left a message and did not hear back. She stopped paying her mortgage and moved out. Her dream home sat abandoned for more than a decade. USDA guidance says the agency should act quickly when borrowers fall behind on payments “to minimize any potential loss to the Government and to the borrower.” A prompt sale keeps the government from having to pay the legal and administrative costs associated with foreclosure down the road and may protect the borrower from incurring a major blemish on their credit history. But that did not happen. Rather, 13 years passed before a sheriff’s deputy knocked on the door of the woman’s public housing apartment in May and served her with foreclosure papers on the now dilapidated ranch home that’s been overtaken by squatters. The government’s delay hurt the value of its investment and left the woman with a bill far greater than the cost of the loan she initially took out — with additional interest and other fees that had accumulated over those years. The woman, now 68, declined to be interviewed, but her attorney, Tom Cox, said she allowed him to share her experience on the condition that she not be named to protect her privacy. Since March, the USDA has filed 56 foreclosures in the federal court system against properties purchased with a rural development mortgage, also known as a Section 502 direct loan. All but one were in Maine. The borrowers have been in default for an average of nearly nine years. As in the case of the Caribou homeowner, the USDA’s delays in those cases have resulted in borrowers racking up more debt because of the interest and fees that piled up in the intervening years, according to a Bangor Daily News and ProPublica examination of the foreclosure cases and interviews with former USDA officials and legal experts. On average, borrowers in the 55 Maine cases owe $110,000 more than they would have had the agency moved to take possession of the properties when they first defaulted, the Bangor Daily News and ProPublica found. This includes what the USDA calls “preservation and inspection” fees, a broad category on the foreclosure filings that can include home repairs and yard maintenance, among other things. Borrowers who can’t pay risk having the government garnish their wages or federal benefits such as Social Security. The Caribou woman had her disability checks garnished six times since 2015 to offset her debt before the USDA even foreclosed on her property, according to her lawyer. The best way to keep the government from garnishing federal benefits is to file for bankruptcy, attorneys said. “It really undermines the concept of giving access to homeownership to a population who might not otherwise have been able to afford it,” said Rhiannon Hampson, former USDA rural development director for Maine who stepped down in January before President Donald Trump was inaugurated. “The irony, with all of these fees piled on, is that they can’t afford to get out of it.” The recent wave of foreclosure filings in Maine underscores the government’s failure to monitor a mortgage program that since its founding in 1949 has poured tens of billions of tax dollars into giving the poorest Americans a shot at homeownership. The USDA does not publicly report how often it files foreclosures. U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat and member of a House appropriations subcommittee overseeing the USDA’s direct loan program, has proposed language in the House agriculture appropriations report for the 2026 fiscal year calling on the agency to regularly report the number of foreclosures and abandoned properties related to the direct loan program. The bill awaits a vote before the full House of Representatives. The USDA regularly filed foreclosures in Maine prior to the coronavirus pandemic but has rarely done so in recent years, according to Richard H. Broderick Jr., a Maine attorney with whom the agency had contracted to file foreclosures until 2022. Kevin Crosman, the Maine attorney now filing foreclosures on behalf of the USDA, would not comment on why the agency started doing so again. Reporters visited 12 of the 55 homes in the Bangor Daily News’ core coverage area in May. At least five appeared to be abandoned and in disrepair — with windows boarded up or a sign affixed to the door saying it was being cared for by a New York company — raising doubts that the government will recoup its investments. The USDA is supposed to take custody of properties purchased with a Section 502 direct loan and begin the foreclosure process when the homeowner becomes incapacitated, dies or

ProPublica

Former NYPD Commissioner Accuses Mayor Adams of Running “Criminal Enterprise” and Cites ProPublica Investigation

by Eric Umansky ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. What Happened: Former New York Police Department Commissioner Thomas Donlon sued Mayor Eric Adams and other top police officials on Wednesday, accusing Adams of running the force as a “criminal enterprise” that the mayor used to “consolidate power, obstruct justice and punish dissent.” In the 251-page complaint, Donlon said the mayor used the department’s Community Response Team for political gain. “CRT became the enforcement arm of Defendant Adams’ political strategy,” the complaint says, “a tool for projecting ‘tough on crime’ optics at the expense of civil rights and constitutional law.” It also calls the CRT a “rogue” unit that answered “only to City Hall.” The suit drew extensively from a recent ProPublica investigation, which detailed how the mayor championed the CRT despite concerns within the Police Department about the unit. Adams, former officials said, was so close to the unit he had access to a little-known livestream of the CRT’s body-worn camera footage, a detail that Donlon cited in his legal complaint. What They Said: “The Community Response Team speaks to the culture under Adams of willfully violating the constitutional rights of civilians and officers,” John Scola, Donlon’s lawyer, told ProPublica. That culture is: “We’ll do whatever we want.” Background: In 2023, a senior NYPD official wrote a scathing internal audit after finding that CRT officers were wrongfully stopping New Yorkers and failing to document the incidents. Weeks later, Adams took to Instagram to boost the unit. “Turning out with the team,” he wrote, showing a photo of him wearing a wide smile and khaki pants, CRT’s official uniform. The official who wrote that audit was pushed out months later. He and other top former commanders recently sued Adams alleging favoritism and misconduct, charges the mayor denies. Why It Matters: Donlon, a former FBI agent who held the job of police commissioner for only two months, from September to November 2024, lobbed his accusations against Adams as the mayor has been waging an uphill battle to keep his job. Adams was indicted last fall on federal charges of bribery, fraud and illegally taking campaign contributions from foreigners. He pleaded not guilty. He avoided trial by making a deal with President Donald Trump, who dropped the prosecution in exchange for Adams working with the administration on immigration enforcement. Still, he remains unpopular in the city and is running for reelection as an independent against a popular Democrat, Zohran Mamdani. Response: In a statement, the mayor’s office dismissed Donlon’s claims. “These are baseless accusations from a disgruntled former employee who — when given the opportunity to lead the greatest police department in the world — proved himself to be ineffective,” the statement said. “This suit is nothing more than an attempt to seek compensation at the taxpayer’s expense after Mr. Donlon was rightfully removed from the role of interim police commissioner.” Previously, Adam has defended the CRT. Asked about the unit at a press conference this spring, the mayor said, “CRT is here.” He continued, “I support all my units.” The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment about the suit.

ProPublica

RFK Jr. Wants to Revolutionize a Program That Supports Childhood Immunizations. The Results Could Be Catastrophic.

by Patricia Callahan ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Five months after taking over the federal agency responsible for the health of all Americans, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to overhaul an obscure but vital program that underpins the nation’s childhood immunization system. Depending on what he does, the results could be catastrophic. In his crosshairs is the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system designed to provide fair and quick payouts for people who suffer rare but serious side effects from shots — without having to prove that drugmakers were negligent. Congress created the program in the 1980s when lawsuits drove vaccine makers from the market. A special tax on immunizations funds the awards, and manufacturers benefit from legal protections that make it harder to win big-money verdicts against them in civil courts. Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccination group and previously accused the pharmaceutical industry of inflicting “unnecessary and risky vaccines” on children for profits, has long argued that the program removes any incentive for the industry to make safe products. In a recent interview with Tucker Carlson, Kennedy condemned what he called corruption in the program and said he had assigned a team to overhaul it and expand who could seek compensation. He didn’t detail his plans but did repeat the long-debunked claim that vaccines cause autism and suggested, without citing any evidence, that shots could also be responsible for a litany of chronic ailments, from diabetes to narcolepsy. There are a number of ways he could blow up the program and prompt vaccine makers to stop selling shots in the U.S., like they did in the 1980s. The trust fund that pays awards, for instance, could run out of money if the government made it easy for Kennedy’s laundry list of common health problems to qualify for payments from the fund. Or he could pick away at the program one shot at a time. Right now, immunizations routinely recommended for children or pregnant women are covered by the program. Kennedy has the power to drop vaccines from the list, a move that would open up their manufacturers to the kinds of lawsuits that made them flee years ago. Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, who served as New Jersey’s state epidemiologist and then spent a dozen years as a vaccine executive at Merck, is among those worried. “If his unstated goal is to basically destroy the vaccine industry, that could do it,” said Bresnitz, who retired from Merck and has consulted for vaccine manufacturers. “I still believe, having worked in the industry, that they care about protecting American health, but they are also for-profit companies with shareholders, and anything that detracts from the bottom line that can be avoided, they will avoid.” A spokesperson for PhRMA, a U.S. trade group for pharmaceutical companies, told ProPublica in a written statement that upending the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program “would threaten continued patient access to FDA approved vaccines.” The spokesperson, Andrew Powaleny, said the program “has compensated thousands of claims while helping ensure the continued availability of a safe and effective vaccine supply. It remains a vital safeguard for public health and importantly doesn’t shield manufacturers from liability.” Since its inception, the compensation fund has paid about $4.8 billion in awards for harm from serious side effects, such as life-threatening allergic reactions and Guillain-Barré syndrome, an autoimmune condition that can cause paralysis. The federal agency that oversees the program found that for every 1 million doses of vaccine distributed between 2006 and 2023, about one person was compensated for an injury. Since becoming Health and Human Services secretary, Kennedy has turned the staid world of immunizations on its ear. He reneged on the U.S. government’s pledge to fund vaccinations for the world’s poorest kids. He fired every member of the federal advisory group that recommends which shots Americans get, and his new slate vowed to scrutinize the U.S. childhood immunization schedule. Measles, a vaccine-preventable disease eliminated here in 2000, roared back and hit a grim record — more cases than the U.S. has seen in 33 years, including three deaths. When a U.S. senator asked Kennedy if he recommended measles shots, Kennedy answered, “Senator, if I advised you to swim in a lake that I knew there to be alligators in, wouldn’t you want me to tell you there were alligators in it?” Fed up, the American Academy of Pediatrics and other medical societies sued Kennedy last week, accusing him of dismantling “the longstanding, Congressionally-authorized, science- and evidence-based vaccine infrastructure that has prevented the deaths of untold millions of Americans.” (The federal government has yet to respond to the suit.) Just about all drugs have side effects. What’s unusual about vaccines is that they’re given to healthy people — even newborns on their first day of life. And many shots protect not just the individuals receiving them but also the broader community by making it harder for deadly scourges to spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that routine childhood immunizations have prevented more than 1.1 million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations among the generation of Americans born between 1994 and 2023. To most people, the nation’s vaccine system feels like a solid, reliable fact of life, doling out shots to children like clockwork. But in reality it is surprisingly fragile. There are only a handful of companies that make nearly all of the shots children receive. Only one manufacturer makes chickenpox vaccines. And just two or three make the shots that protect against more than a dozen diseases, including polio and measles. If any were to drop out, the country could find itself in the same crisis that led President Ronald Reagan to sign the law creating the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program in 1986. Back then, pharmaceutical companies faced hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the vaccine protecting kids from whooping cough, diphtheria and tetanus caused unrelenting seizures that led to severe disabilities. (Today’s version

ProPublica

FDA Inspectors Again Find Dangerous Breakdowns at an Indian Factory Supplying Medications to U.S. Consumers

by Megan Rose and Debbie Cenziper ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. U.S. inspectors have uncovered new and dangerous breakdowns in drugmaking at an Indian factory owned by Sun Pharma that produces generic medications for American consumers. The latest problems come 2 1/2 years after the Food and Drug Administration gave the facility a special pass to continue sending certain drugs made there to the United States, even after the factory was officially banned from the U.S. market. The factory failed to investigate the source of bacteria found in test vials or deal with damaged equipment that had caused drugs to be contaminated with metal particles, according to the June inspection report, which ProPublica obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Workers improperly handled vials and stoppers meant for sterile medications and, in some cases, failed to disinfect manufacturing areas and equipment, according to the report. One FDA inspector saw a worker put on a sterile gown and then brush up against a waste bin and use their hands to push down the overflowing trash. Investigators also saw liquid dripping through ceiling cracks and the growth of what appeared to be fungus and mold in a storage area for samples used for testing. The FDA in late 2022 had banned the factory in the city of Halol from shipping drugs to the United States because of similar manufacturing failures. ProPublica reported last month that a low-profile group inside the agency at the same time exempted some medications from that ban, ostensibly to prevent drug shortages. The FDA has granted similar exemptions for drugs made at more than 20 other foreign factories that violated critical standards in drugmaking and were barred from the U.S. market. The FDA kept the practice largely hidden from the public. The agency did not regularly test drugs coming from the banned factories or proactively monitor reports about potential harm among consumers, ProPublica found. In Sun’s case, more than a dozen drugs were initially excluded from the Halol import ban. The company is still allowed to send five to the United States, government records show, including vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxer used during surgery, and the cancer drug doxorubicin. Also excluded are divalproex delayed release tablets, which treat seizures and other conditions; leuprolide injection, used by people with prostate cancer, endometriosis and other conditions; and temozolomide capsules, for brain cancer. The inspection last month marked the first time the FDA had been back to the factory in the 2.5 years since it imposed the import ban and Sun started sending exempted drugs to the United States. Inspectors found that procedures designed to prevent microbiological contamination of sterile drugs were not established or followed and that equipment wasn’t maintained to prevent malfunctions that would “alter the safety, identity, strength, quality or purity of the drug product,” according to the report. Some of the concerns focused on the exempted drugs still being sent to the United States, according to a person familiar with the situation who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The FDA blacked out the names of the drugs that were potentially compromised on its publicly released inspection report, including a medication made on a manufacturing line in which several batches had to be rejected because they were filled with black particles. A portion of the FDA’s June inspection report redacted the names of potentially compromised drugs manufactured by Sun that continue to be released to the U.S. market. (Obtained by ProPublica) “It’s disappointing to see issues continue to come up at this site given the site’s role in potentially manufacturing critical drugs for U.S. consumers,” said the person familiar with the inspection findings. Sun did not respond to questions about the latest inspection or its regulatory history with the FDA. In an email, the company said that adherence to quality standards “is a top priority for Sun, and we maintain a relentless focus on quality and compliance to ensure the uninterrupted supply of medicines to our customers and patients worldwide. We continue to work proactively with the US FDA and remain committed to achieve full resolution of any FDA regulatory issues at our facilities.” The FDA said factories that receive exemptions from import bans are required to conduct extra testing on drugs with third-party oversight before they are sent to the United States, helping to ensure patient safety. Sun’s Halol plant, however, was cited in 2022 and again last month for failing to thoroughly investigate unexplained quality problems, including impurities, found during drug testing. The FDA did not respond to a request for comment about the latest Sun inspection. U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Michigan, who recently co-sponsored a bill to lower prescription drug costs, said in a statement to ProPublica that the FDA has a responsibility to ensure that drugs coming into the country are safe. “We need full transparency about the extent to which exemptions enabled sub-par, unsafe, or ineffective drugs to be distributed to American patients,” she said. Medill Investigative Lab student Katherine Dailey contributed reporting.

ProPublica

Texas Officials Say They Didn’t See the Flood Coming. Oral Histories Show Residents Have Long Warned of Risks.

by Logan Jaffe In late September 2000, longtime Kerr County, Texas, resident W. Thornton Secor Jr. sat down with an oral historian to tell his story. Like many of the residents recorded as part of a decadeslong effort by the Kerr County Historical Commission to document the community’s history, Secor had a lot to say about the area’s floods. “It always seems to happen at night too,” Secor said of local floods he and his family had experienced. “Can’t see most of it.” Secor, who died in 2022, was a third-generation manager of a lodge that still operates along the Guadalupe River. His oral history shares family memories of floods going back to 1932 — like the time a flood that year washed away most of the cabins his grandfather built. Now, Secor’s daughter, Mandi Secor Lipscomb, is left considering the future of the lodge in the aftermath of another devastating flood, on July 4. Secor Lipscomb is the fourth-generation owner and operator of the same lodge, Waltonia on the River. Often when I try to understand a place or process a big news event, I look for records kept by local historical societies and libraries. In archived documents, preserved photographs and oral history collections, one can start to see how a community understands itself. So, as news reports about the floods in the Central Texas Hill Country poured in throughout the week, I went looking for historical context. What local knowledge is held by people who live, or have lived, in what’s repeatedly described as “Flash Flood Alley”? How have people in Kerr County’s past contended with floods of their own time? A trove of more than 70 oral histories recorded by the Kerr County Historical Commission begins to answer those questions. The recordings document memories of floods going back to 1900, but oral histories alone rarely tell a full or accurate story. Still, there’s at least one conclusion to draw: Everything has a history. The flood that killed more than 130 people in the Kerr County area this month is not the first time a flash flood on the Guadalupe River took lives of people, including children. The front page of a local newspaper, the Kerrville Daily Times, on July 20, 1987. A flash flood killed 10 campers as they tried to evacuate. (Kerrville Daily Times via Newspapers.com) I keep this history in mind when I hear local and state officials say no one could have seen this coming. Take this exchange between a reporter and Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly: Reporter: Why weren’t these camps evacuated? Kelly: I can’t answer that. I don’t know. Reporter: Well you’re the judge. I mean you’re the top official here in this county. Why can’t you answer that? There are kids missing. These camps were in harm’s way. We knew this flood was coming. Kelly: We didn’t know this flood was coming. Rest assured, no one knew this kind of flood was coming. We have floods all the time. This is the most dangerous river valley in the United States. And we deal with floods on a regular basis. When it rains, we get water. We had no reason to believe that this was gonna be anything like what’s happened here. None whatsoever. My colleague Jennifer Berry Hawes wrote last week about the uncanny similarities between the Texas floods and Hurricane Helene, which struck North Carolina last year. In both disasters, weather forecasts predicted the potential devastation, yet people were left in harm’s way. And as another colleague, ProPublica editor Abrahm Lustgarten, pointed out in a piece about how climate change is making disasters like the flood in Texas more common, “there will be tireless — and warranted — analysis of who is to blame for this heart-wrenching loss” in the weeks to come. “Should Kerr County, where most of the deaths occurred, have installed warning sirens along that stretch of the waterway, and why were children allowed to sleep in an area prone to high-velocity flash flooding?” Lustgarten wrote. “Why were urgent updates apparently only conveyed by cellphone and online in a rural area with limited connectivity?” As we wait for answers — or as journalists dig for them — the oral histories show Kerr County residents have warned one another, as well as newcomers and out-of-towners, about flooding for a long time. In his 2000 oral history, Secor said he remembered a time in the spring of 1959 when his father tried to warn one new-to-town woman about building a house so close to the river. “He took her out and showed her the watermarks on the trees in front of our house and all,” Secor said, likely referring to the watermarks from the flood of 1932, which a local newspaper described at the time as “the most disastrous flood that ever swept the upper Guadalupe Valley.” The flood killed at least seven people. “‘Oh,’ she says, ‘that will never happen again,’” Secor recalled. He said her body was found in a tree a few months later after a flood swept her and the roof she stood on away. “It’s going to surprise newcomers when we get another flood like the ’32 flood,” Secor said in 2000. “It’ll get us again someday.” As the Guadalupe River rose over the July 4 weekend, the 16-cabin lodge his daughter owns was sold out and full of guests. All of them escaped the floods, said Secor Lipscomb. They ran, some barefoot in the mud, up a steep hill beyond the property’s retaining wall. They took shelter in a barn. Later, Secor Lipscomb assessed the damage to her family property. What she saw left her in tears: Four cabins had water up to the ceiling. Another two had flooded about 5 feet. But among the wreckage was a crew of nearly 40 volunteers, ready to help with the cleanup. By the time I reached out to her to ask her about her father’s oral history, six cabins and the main camp office

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