ProPublica

by J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system. Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings. “He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.” One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?” And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?” During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities. Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. “It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It worked there, so now let me send them there,’” Amezcua said. Santa Ana residents chant about ICE raids during a City Council meeting in June. (Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register/Getty Images) Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups and state governments that stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or out of the country. And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat. One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.” Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.” The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in history right now and it’s frightening.” Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department. The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public. The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended. The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement. Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen 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. A former Chicago police officer facing trial for perjury and forgery has admitted he lied under oath dozens of times when he used an audacious alibi to get out of numerous speeding tickets and other traffic violations. Over more than a decade, he repeatedly blamed an ex-girlfriend for stealing his car and racking up the tickets — and each time, the story was bogus. Jeffrey Kriv, one of Chicago’s most prolific drunk-driving enforcers during his more than 25 years as a cop, was sentenced to 18 months’ probation and ordered to pay $4,515 in restitution after pleading guilty last week to a lesser charge of felony theft. A plea agreement with prosecutors in Cook County, where Chicago is located, allowed Kriv to avoid jail time and ended the criminal case against him, but the implications of his actions go far beyond his own case. A ProPublica analysis of court and police records has found that prosecutors have dropped at least 92 traffic and criminal cases that were based on arrests Kriv made and tickets he wrote. Most of the cases that were dismissed involved drunk and dangerous driving. Defense attorneys in those cases have cited Kriv’s perjury case and his credibility issue. ProPublica and the Chicago Tribune previously detailed Kriv’s history of alleged misconduct as an officer, including that he’d been investigated at least 26 times over allegations of dishonesty for falsifying records, making false arrests and other matters. He was the subject of nearly 100 complaints from citizens and fellow officers in his career; most officers face far fewer. Kriv denied the allegations in many of those cases and blamed others on how often he made stops and arrests. In the end, many of the investigations could not be pursued because his accusers did not sign formal complaints, and some complaints, including those that involved allegations of dishonesty, were not sustained by police oversight officials. In other cases, oversight officials found Kriv responsible for the misconduct. He retired in 2023, just before prosecutors charged him. Kriv’s plea deal was filed in Cook County court on Sept. 24, about a week before his case was scheduled to go to trial. Prosecutors for the Cook County state’s attorney’s office told ProPublica this week that Kriv had 56 of his own traffic tickets dismissed after providing false testimony to judges. That’s more than the 44 tickets that prosecutors had previously indicated in court records. The fines for those tickets would have been $4,515, the amount he was ordered to pay in restitution. Addressing the fallout from Kriv’s perjury case on other court cases built on his policing, the state’s attorney’s office said it dropped pending cases against individuals who Kriv had arrested or ticketed because it could not proceed without his testimony. “We could not call him as a witness due to the false statements he previously made in order to have his own personal tickets dismissed,” the office wrote in response to questions from ProPublica. One case was dismissed as recently as August, records show. Prosecutors said there are no pending cases in which Kriv’s testimony is needed. The state’s attorney’s office said that, going forward, any claims from individuals who had been convicted in Kriv-involved cases will be “carefully reviewed.” There also are defendants who have not shown up in court and have warrants out for their arrests, so their cases could be called again. “Our priority is to uphold our legal and ethical responsibilities while ensuring fairness,” the office said. Under the plea agreement, Kriv admitted that he repeatedly blamed a girlfriend for stealing his BMW to get his tickets dismissed. “Well, that morning, I broke up with my girlfriend and she stole my car,” Kriv told one judge. He repeated similar stories again and again to get out of tickets for speeding, parking and red light camera violations involving his personal vehicles. Kriv also provided fraudulent police reports of car thefts as evidence. The judges then dismissed the tickets. Kriv had been charged with four counts of perjury and five counts of forgery, all of them felonies. Each of those offenses would have been punishable by up to five years in prison. Kriv’s attorney, Tim Grace, told ProPublica that he and Kriv would not comment. The executive director of the Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund of Chicago said the pension board will meet to decide if Kriv can continue to collect his pension benefits, given the felony conviction. Illinois law prohibits officers who are convicted of felonies related to their service from receiving pension benefits. Kriv’s pension payment is more than $6,000 a month. In court last year, Kriv told a ProPublica reporter that he was innocent. “I am going to fight it,” he said at the time. “I don’t plan on taking any plea.” He complained that people accused of carjacking and gun offenses get probation, and he criticized prosecutors for treating him like a criminal. “I’m worse than a carjacker, allegedly,” he said. He also said “it’s a shame” and “it’s terrible” that prosecutors have dropped cases against alleged drunken drivers and others because of concerns about his credibility. He said he wanted to testify in those cases and said prosecutors had sidelined him prematurely. “You know how the system is: You are guilty until proven innocent,” he said.

by Avi Asher-Schapiro, Jeff Ernsthausen and Mica Rosenberg ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. The first time a Pennsylvania consultant named Charles Sowell connected with border czar Tom Homan was when Sowell reached out on LinkedIn in 2021, looking for advice about border contracting work. Homan had finished a stint as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, capping a three-decade career in federal government. He and Sowell built a rapport, based partly on their shared criticisms of then-President Joe Biden’s border policies. By 2023, the men had gone into business together. Sowell was paying Homan as a consultant to his boutique firm, SE&M Solutions, which advised companies — in some cases for a fee of $20,000 a month — seeking contracts from the agencies where Homan had once worked. In 2024, Sowell became chair of the board of Homan’s foundation, Border911, which championed tougher border security. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump made it clear that if he won reelection he would appoint Homan to oversee the sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration that he’d promised his supporters, which would likely involve billions of dollars in new contracts for private companies. At the Republican National Convention speech in which Trump accepted his party’s nomination in July, he said Homan would have a role in launching “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country.” “Put him in charge,” Trump said, “and just sit back and watch.” After Trump won and formally announced Homan would be returning with him to the White House, Sowell kept Homan on his payroll until the end of the year. Once named as the border czar, Homan said he would recuse himself from contracting, saying he would have no “involvement, discussion, input, or decision of any future government contracts.” But several industry executives who spoke with ProPublica said at least half a dozen companies vying for a slice of the $45 billion Congress has allocated for immigration detention work had hired Sowell because he had led them to believe his connections to Homan would help their chances of winning government work. Homan’s business relationships are under greater scrutiny after MSNBC reported an FBI sting that allegedly caught him on tape accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover agents posing as would-be government contractors before he took the border czar post. His relationship with Sowell raises fresh questions about the integrity of the billion-dollar contracting process for immigration enforcement, ethics experts say. Just last month, Sowell and Homan’s senior adviser Mark Hall visited one of Sowell’s clients seeking to cash in on an unprecedented plan by the Trump administration to build temporary immigrant detention camps on military bases, sources told ProPublica. As recently as February, Hall too had been paid by Sowell’s firm, records show. At the same time, the extent of Homan’s recusal has been called into question: Records of internal meetings obtained by ProPublica showed that over the summer Homan was in conversation with industry executives about the government’s contracting plans. ProPublica gleaned more details than previously reported by examining federal disclosure forms, government documents and internal communications from firms in the Homeland Security industry, and from interviews with Sowell and several current and former government officials, as well as executives at companies seeking contracts in the burgeoning detention sector. Most spoke on condition of anonymity because of their ongoing work in the sector. Government officials in Homan’s position are required to steer clear of any activity that could impact their former business associates for a year after entering government. Discussing immigration-related contracts with industry players would represent a “clear-cut violation” of federal ethics regulations, said Don Fox, the former general counsel for the Office of Government Ethics, an independent agency in the executive branch. “You shouldn’t be in those briefings,” Fox said. “You are either recused or you are not.” It’s common for companies looking to land federal contracts to hire consultants and seek expertise of former government employees. Those relationships are subject to federal ethics rules designed to guard against conflicts of interest. The White House and DHS did not provide requested copies of Homan’s formal recusal documents, which might outline exactly what kinds of activities government lawyers told Homan should be off limits. Homan and Hall did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview, Sowell said he and Homan no longer have a financial relationship. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said Homan has “no involvement in the actual awarding of a government contract.” In his role as border czar, Homan “occasionally meets with a variety of people to learn about new developments and capabilities to serve the needs of the American people,” she said. Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis and an expert in government ethics, said, however, “It’s not just about tainted awards. If the industry believes the system is corrupt, then the public is harmed. And the damage has already been done.” Growing Wealth Homan spent more than 30 years in public service, eventually rising to become a senior figure at ICE, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, during the administration of President Barack Obama. He was acting ICE director during Trump’s first term until he left government seven years ago. While out of public office, Homan was highly critical of Biden’s border policies and formed the nonprofit Border911 to “educate Americans on what it means to have a secure, well-managed border.” Homan’s private-sector work before he returned to government transformed his finances. In 2017, he declared assets totaling a maximum of just $250,000 on his ethics disclosures following a career in federal service, a figure that excludes certain government retirement accounts. By 2025, his net worth had grown to between $3 million to $9 million, the disclosure documents show. (The forms list assets in ranges, and a portion of his net worth may come from money he had saved in government retirement

by Justin Elliott and Joshua Kaplan ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has taken money directly from Chinese investors, according to previously sealed testimony, raising new questions about foreign ownership interests in one of the United States’ most important military contractors. The recent testimony, coming from a SpaceX insider during a court case, marks the first time direct Chinese investment in the privately held company has been disclosed. While there is no prohibition on Chinese ownership in U.S. military contractors, such investment is heavily regulated and the issue is treated by the U.S. government as a significant national security concern. “They obviously have Chinese investors to be honest,” Iqbaljit Kahlon, a major SpaceX investor, said in a deposition last year, adding that some are “directly on the cap table.” “Cap table” refers to the company’s capitalization table, which lists its shareholders. Kahlon’s testimony does not reveal the scope of Chinese investment in SpaceX or the identities of the investors. Kahlon has long been close with the company’s leadership and runs his own firm that acts as a middleman for wealthy investors looking to buy shares of SpaceX. SpaceX keeps its full ownership structure secret. It was previously reported that some Chinese investors had bought indirect stakes in SpaceX, investing in middleman funds that in turn owned shares in the rocket company. The new testimony describes direct investments that suggest a closer relationship with SpaceX. SpaceX has thrived as it snaps up sensitive U.S. government contracts, from building spy satellites for the Pentagon to launching spacecraft for NASA. U.S. embassies and the White House have connected to the company’s Starlink internet service too. Musk’s roughly 42% stake in the company is worth an estimated $168 billion. If he owned nothing else, he’d be one of the 10 richest people in the world. National security law experts said federal officials would likely be deeply interested in understanding the direct Chinese investment in SpaceX. Whether there was cause for concern would depend on the details, they said, but the U.S. government has asserted that China has a systematic strategy of using investments in sensitive industries to conduct espionage. If the investors got access to nonpublic information about the company — say, details on its contracts or supply chain — it could be useful to Chinese intelligence, said Sarah Bauerle Danzman, an Indiana University professor who has worked for the State Department scrutinizing foreign investments. That “would create huge risks that, if realized, would have huge consequences for national security,” she said. SpaceX did not respond to questions for this story. Kahlon declined to comment. The new court records come from litigation in Delaware between Kahlon and another investor. The testimony was sealed until ProPublica, with the assistance of lawyers at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the law firm Shaw Keller, moved in the spring to make it public. SpaceX fought the effort, but a judge ruled that some of the records must be released. Kahlon’s testimony was publicly filed this week. Buying shares in SpaceX is much more difficult than buying a piece of a publicly traded company like Tesla or Microsoft. SpaceX has control over who can buy stakes in it, and the company’s investors fall into different categories. The most rarefied group is the direct investors, who actually own SpaceX shares. This group includes funds led by Kahlon, Peter Thiel and a handful of other venture capitalists with personal ties to Musk. Then there are the indirect investors, who effectively buy stakes in SpaceX through a middleman like Kahlon. (The indirect investors are actually buying into a fund run by the middleman, typically paying a hefty fee.) All previously known Chinese investors in SpaceX fell into the latter category. This year, ProPublica reported on an unusual feature of SpaceX’s approach to investment from China. According to testimony from the Delaware case, the company allows Chinese investors to buy stakes in SpaceX so long as the money is routed through the Cayman Islands or other offshore secrecy hubs. Companies only have to proactively report Chinese investments to the government in limited circumstances, and there aren’t hard and fast rules for how much is too much. After ProPublica’s report, House Democrats sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth raising alarms about the company’s “potential obfuscation.” “In light of the extreme sensitivity of SpaceX’s work for DoD and NASA, this lack of transparency raises serious questions,” they wrote. It’s unclear if any action was taken in response. Kahlon has turned his access to SpaceX stock into a lucrative business. His investor list reads like an atlas of the world. The investors’ names are redacted in the recently unsealed document, but their addresses span from Chile to Malaysia. One is in Russia. At least two are in mainland China. One is in Qatar. (In one email to SpaceX’s chief financial officer, Kahlon said a Los Angeles-based fund had money from the Qatari royal family and was already invested in SpaceX.) “You made a big fortune,” a China-based financier wrote to Kahlon four years ago. “Lol something like that. SpaceX has been the gift that keeps on giving,” Kahlon responded. “All thanks to you.” Kahlon first met with SpaceX when it was a fledgling startup, according to court records. SpaceX’s CFO, Bret Johnsen, who’s been there for 14 years, testified that Kahlon “has been with the company in one form or fashion longer than I have.” Johnsen also testified that SpaceX has no formal policy about accepting investments from countries deemed adversaries by the U.S. government. But he said he asks fund managers to “stay away from Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean ownership interest” because that could make it “more challenging to win government contracts.” There are indications that by 2021, Kahlon was wary of raising funds from China. The U.S. government had grown increasingly concerned about Chinese investments in tech