ProPublica
type: channel
description: Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest
date: 2026-03-19T14:22:14Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues
items: Transportation Lobbyists Have Donated Thousands to Sean Duffy’s Son-in-Law as He Runs for Congress
items: Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway.
items: Oil Regulators Found Hundreds of Wells Violating Oklahoma Rules. Then They Ignored Their Findings.
items: The Trump Administration’s “Disturbing” New Legal Strategy to Prosecute Border Crossers Is Taxing Courts and Testing the Law
items: This DHS Official Oversees the Security of Federal Elections. He Wants to Ban Voting Machines.
items: They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth.
items: Oregon Voters Overwhelmingly Said Yes to Limiting Money in Politics. Then Politicians Had Their Say.
items: Nevada Regulators Fine Peptide Providers at Anti-Aging Festival Where Two Women Became Critically Ill
items: Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say

How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues
type: item
creator: Patricia Callahan
date: 2026-03-19T10:00:00Z
description: The post How Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Agenda Risks a Resurgence of Deadly Childhood Plagues appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Dr. Adam Ratner hovered over a gravely ill infant in a New York City intensive care unit on a grim day in 2022. The 3-month-old girl spiked a fever two days earlier and had become lethargic. Soon she was having seizures and struggling to breathe. She didn’t register Ratner’s towering frame or the bright hospital lights. Her eyes stared up and to the right, eerily frozen. He ran his hand over the soft spot on her head, which should have been flat. Instead, it bulged, a sign that too much fluid was building up inside her skull. The baby’s life was in danger, and Ratner needed to figure out why. He worried the culprit was bacterial meningitis, an infection of the membranes that protect the brain. What came back on her lab tests was something out of the history books. The infant’s meningitis was caused by invasive Haemophilus influenzae type b, or Hib, a type of bacteria that used to kill nearly 1,000 children a year in the U.S. A shot introduced in the late 1980s was so effective that Ratner, a veteran pediatric infectious disease doctor, was among the generations of physicians who had never seen a case. But the baby’s parents, Ratner learned, had chosen not to vaccinate her. Disheartened, he told his colleagues, “This should be a never event.” It wasn’t. The following year, Ratner treated another infant with Hib, then another, each of them unvaccinated. Two went home, but one had to be discharged to a rehabilitation facility. That 5-month-old boy had huge black pupils that didn’t respond to light, and he needed a ventilator to breathe. Ratner and his colleagues noted an “absence of brain stem reflexes,” indicating severe damage. The U.S. government took a half century to build a vaccination system that shielded children from such a fate. Its success depended on two fundamental pillars: parents trusting in vaccines and children having access to them. Both are now in peril, thanks in no small part to the man steering America’s health policy. Health and Human Services Se…

Transportation Lobbyists Have Donated Thousands to Sean Duffy’s Son-in-Law as He Runs for Congress
type: item
creator: Megan O’Matz
date: 2026-03-18T18:15:00Z
description: The post Transportation Lobbyists Have Donated Thousands to Sean Duffy’s Son-in-Law as He Runs for Congress appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: The $16 billion Hudson Tunnel Project, under construction between Manhattan and New Jersey, will improve passenger rail service, an important issue for New York City commuters. It would seem to have nothing to do with what’s happening in northern Wisconsin. But after the White House froze federal grant funding for the project in the fall, citing concerns about diversity and equity measures, lobbyists with an interest in the tunnel donated $2,500 to a political novice running in the Republican primary in Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District. The young candidate, Michael Alfonso, has no sway over the matter. However, his father-in-law does: Sean Duffy is secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The contributions are among dozens to Alfonso’s campaign from lobbyists, business executives and political action committees tied to industries — from rails and highways to shipping and air travel — that Duffy’s department funds and regulates. His department also oversees the Federal Aviation Administration. Duffy held the 7th Congressional District seat for nearly a decade before resigning in 2019. He was succeeded by Tom Tiffany, who is now running for Wisconsin governor, leaving the seat open again. Alfonso, 26, who has worked in construction and podcasting, has been endorsed by President Donald Trump. A ProPublica analysis found that many of the Alfonso donors with transportation interests had never given to Duffy or Tiffany. While legal, such donations set up the appearance that helping Alfonso might assist the donors with issues influenced by Duffy. (Politico has reported on some of these contributions.) “The law, as it stands, provides very little constraint,” said Daniel Weiner, director of the Elections and Government Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute based in New York. “There’s a very large gulf between what is legal and what is ethical. Obviously, this raises numerous ethical questions.” This is not the first time a Ca…

Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway.
type: item
creator: Renee Dudley
date: 2026-03-18T10:00:00Z
description: The post Federal Cyber Experts Thought Microsoft’s Cloud Was “a Pile of Shit.” They Approved It Anyway. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: In late 2024, the federal government’s cybersecurity evaluators rendered a troubling verdict on one of Microsoft’s biggest cloud computing offerings. The tech giant’s “lack of proper detailed security documentation” left reviewers with a “lack of confidence in assessing the system’s overall security posture,” according to an internal government report reviewed by ProPublica. Or, as one member of the team put it: “The package is a pile of shit.” For years, reviewers said, Microsoft had tried and failed to fully explain how it protects sensitive information in the cloud as it hops from server to server across the digital terrain. Given that and other unknowns, government experts couldn’t vouch for the technology’s security. Such judgments would be damning for any company seeking to sell its wares to the U.S. government, but it should have been particularly devastating for Microsoft. The tech giant’s products had been at the heart of two major cybersecurity attacks against the U.S. in three years. In one, Russian hackers exploited a weakness to steal sensitive data from a number of federal agencies, including the National Nuclear Security Administration. In the other, Chinese hackers infiltrated the email accounts of a Cabinet member and other senior government officials. The federal government could be further exposed if it couldn’t verify the cybersecurity of Microsoft’s Government Community Cloud High, a suite of cloud-based services intended to safeguard some of the nation’s most sensitive information. Yet, in a highly unusual move that still reverberates across Washington, the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, or FedRAMP, authorized the product anyway, bestowing what amounts to the federal government’s cybersecurity seal of approval. FedRAMP’s ruling — which included a kind of “buyer beware” notice to any federal agency considering GCC High — helped Microsoft expand a government business empire worth billions of dollars. “BOOM SHAKA LAKA,” Richard…

Oil Regulators Found Hundreds of Wells Violating Oklahoma Rules. Then They Ignored Their Findings.
type: item
creator: Nick Bowlin
date: 2026-03-17T09:00:00Z
description: The post Oil Regulators Found Hundreds of Wells Violating Oklahoma Rules. Then They Ignored Their Findings. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Five years ago, Oklahoma oil regulators took on a project with an impressive name: the Source of Truth. State officials wanted a comprehensive database capturing all vital information about the more than 11,000 wells in Oklahoma that shoot the toxic byproduct of oil production back underground. I’d heard about this project from several people during the 18 months I had spent reporting on the growing number of cases where oilfield wastewater blasted out of old wells, known as purges, after being injected underground at high pressures. State employees also referenced the project in internal communications that I received after filing nearly a dozen public records requests to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry. Just before the new year, the Source of Truth itself landed in my inbox in response to an unrelated records request. And it was explosive, revealing a pattern of rule violations by oil and gas companies that state regulators allowed to continue. The project was supposed to clean up or fix state data regarding how much wastewater was being injected and the pressures at which it was being pushed underground. The agency’s databases, many of which were based on decades-old paper records, were riddled with contradictory or missing information. In many cases, the agency failed to update its records. More than 1,300 errors were identified. But the Source of Truth found more than just messy data. It also allowed regulators to pinpoint nearly 600 wells that were operating illegally: injecting wastewater above their permitted pressures or volumes. Excessively high injection pressures and volumes can lead to purges and groundwater pollution. That wasn’t all. The report also showed that regulators had allowed more than 1,400 other older injection wells to operate for decades without any limits whatsoever on injection pressures or volumes — grandfathered in from an earlier era of permissive oversight. In the course of my reporting o…

The Trump Administration’s “Disturbing” New Legal Strategy to Prosecute Border Crossers Is Taxing Courts and Testing the Law
type: item
creator: Agnel Philip
date: 2026-03-16T09:00:00Z
description: The post The Trump Administration’s “Disturbing” New Legal Strategy to Prosecute Border Crossers Is Taxing Courts and Testing the Law appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Jose Omar Flores-Penaloza was willing to admit that he had entered the United States illegally. He was ready to be deported, according to his attorneys. But federal prosecutors would not let him go last spring without making him answer for another crime — one he had never heard of. Weeks earlier, President Donald Trump, to address what he called a national emergency, ordered a stretch of borderland transferred to the military so that troops could help apprehend unauthorized migrants. Because prosecutors believed Flores-Penaloza had crossed through that zone, now called a national defense area, they charged him with trespassing on military property under statutes including one enacted in 1909 to keep spies away from arsenals. The added misdemeanors were unlikely to lengthen his sentence; they typically result in time served and deportation. But Flores-Penaloza maintained his innocence in the face of the allegation that could cast him as a national security threat. So he awaited trial in a New Mexico jail. One year into the second Trump administration, federal courts are facing a surge of immigration-related litigation, including a record number of habeas petitions from detainees who say they are being unlawfully held. In Minnesota last month, after a frustrated judge asked why defendants he had ordered released were still in custody, a government attorney blurted out: “What do you want me to do? The system sucks. This job sucks.” ProPublica and The Texas Tribune spent four months investigating a persistent source of pressure in border districts — one experts say is taxing the courts and challenging long-standing principles of criminal law. Since last April, at least 4,700 immigrants already charged with entering the country illegally have faced additional misdemeanor counts accusing them of trespassing on military property. Court records reviewed by the news organizations show that more than 90% of cases have been resolved, and that most did not end in convictions on…

This DHS Official Oversees the Security of Federal Elections. He Wants to Ban Voting Machines.
type: item
creator: Doug Bock Clark
date: 2026-03-14T18:00:00Z
description: The post This DHS Official Oversees the Security of Federal Elections. He Wants to Ban Voting Machines. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: In his top post at the Department of Homeland Security, David Harvilicz sets policy on protecting the nation’s elections infrastructure, including voting machines. He’s also the co-founder of a company with James Penrose, who helped hatch debunked conspiracy theories blaming hacked voting machines for Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election. Penrose assisted in a push to seize voting machines to overturn Trump’s defeat. On social media, Harvilicz has called for doing away with voting machines, saying they are “eminently vulnerable to exploitation.” In a March post, he wrote that “DHS needs to ban voting machines for all federal elections. The time is now.” He also has repeatedly questioned the validity of Democratic electoral victories and pushed for Republicans to overhaul electoral systems to their advantage. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" js-autosizes height="682" width="527" src="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?w=527" alt="A man wearing a gray T-shirt smiles at the camera against a plain white background." class="wp-image-70485" srcset="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg 2318w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?resize=232,300 232w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?resize=768,994 768w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?resize=791,1024 791w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?resize=1187,1536 1187w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?resize=1582,2048 1582w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/h_14689371_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg?resize=863,1117 863w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-…

They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth.
type: item
creator: Amy Yurkanin
date: 2026-03-14T09:00:00Z
description: The post They Didn’t Want to Have C-Sections. A Judge Would Decide How They Gave Birth. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: On the afternoon of Sept. 9, 2024, Cherise Doyley was in her 12th hour of contractions at University of Florida Health in downtown Jacksonville when a nurse came in with a bedsheet and told her to cover up. A supervisor brought a tablet to Doyley’s bedside. Gathered on the screen were a judge in a black robe and several lawyers, doctors and hospital staff. “It’s a real judge in there?” Doyley asked the nurse at the beginning of what would be a three-hour hearing. “Now this is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.” Doyley hadn’t asked for the hearing. The hospital had sought it. Doyley had mere minutes to prepare. She had no lawyer and no advocate — no one to explain to her what, exactly, was going on. Judge Michael Kalil informed her that the state had filed an emergency petition at the hospital’s behest — not out of concern for Doyley, per se, but in the interest of her unborn child. He described the circumstances as “extraordinary.” The hospital and state attorney’s office wanted to force Doyley to undergo a cesarean section. Doyley, a professional birthing doula, didn’t want that and had been firm about it. She’d had three prior C-sections, one that resulted in a hemorrhage, and hoped to avoid another serious complication and lengthy recovery. She was aware that doctors were concerned about the risk of uterine rupture, a potentially deadly complication for her and her baby. She would say during the hearing that she understood the risk to be less than 2% and didn’t want to agree to a C-section unless there was an emergency. But the choice would not be hers. The judge would decide how she would give birth. Watch How a Court Hearing Was Convened in Cherise Doyley’s Hospital Room Obtained by ProPublica Mentally competent patients typically have the right to choose their medical care — or refuse it. But there is one notable exception: pregnant patients. That inconsistency is particularly striking in Florida, a state that has pushed to expand medical freedom for those who…

Oregon Voters Overwhelmingly Said Yes to Limiting Money in Politics. Then Politicians Had Their Say.
type: item
creator: Rob Davis
date: 2026-03-13T09:30:00Z
description: The post Oregon Voters Overwhelmingly Said Yes to Limiting Money in Politics. Then Politicians Had Their Say. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Back in 2019, it looked like Oregon lawmakers might finally commit to ending the state’s outlier status on campaign finance. I had just authored an investigative series for The Oregonian/OregonLive, my previous newsroom, revealing how Oregon’s lack of limits on campaign donations had allowed corporate America to give more to lawmakers, per capita, than anywhere else in the country and led to some of the weakest environmental protections on the West Coast. The state Supreme Court had allowed it to happen by saying campaign donations were protected free speech under the Oregon Constitution. Lawmakers in Oregon, one of five states without any limits at all, seemed willing to do something about what we’d revealed. They asked Oregonians to change the constitution and explicitly allow contribution limits, something legislators had repeatedly tried and failed to do before. At the ballot in 2020, 78% of voters said yes, one of the widest margins for any ballot measure in decades. All lawmakers needed to do was to write legislation limiting donations. But for the next four years, no limits were adopted. When lawmakers eventually set caps in 2024, individual donations were restricted to $3,300 per election, well short of caps in the $1,000 to $2,000 range that good-government groups had sought previously. Lawmakers left other avenues for donors to give their time and money. They allowed corporate donations, which many states ban, to continue. They made it so the limits wouldn’t take effect until 2027, after the current race for governor is over. And now, lawmakers have voted to ratchet the spigot open further — and perhaps, campaign reform advocates say, all the way. On March 5, Oregon’s Democratic-controlled Legislature approved a bill that supporters described as containing little more than technical fixes to what they’d written two years ago. Groups that seek to limit the influence of money in politics said the changes are far more serious than housekeeping. They said the …

Nevada Regulators Fine Peptide Providers at Anti-Aging Festival Where Two Women Became Critically Ill
type: item
creator: Anjeanette Damon
date: 2026-03-13T09:00:00Z
description: The post Nevada Regulators Fine Peptide Providers at Anti-Aging Festival Where Two Women Became Critically Ill appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Nevada regulators have fined three people who played a role in offering peptide injections last year at a Las Vegas anti-aging conference where two women became critically ill following treatment. Last month, the Nevada Pharmacy Board levied $10,000 fines against a doctor and a pharmacist who are licensed in California but who don’t have permission to practice in Nevada. It imposed a $5,000 fine against a third man who describes himself as an “integrative health coach” but who doesn’t appear to be a licensed health care practitioner. The pharmacy board also imposed a $10,000 fine against a Texas-based private membership association, which authorities accused of mailing the peptides to Nevada. The group, Forgotten Formula, claims a constitutional right to conduct private transactions with its members and contends those transactions occur “outside the scope” of state commercial regulations. The citations stem from an incident in July at the Revolution Against Aging and Death Festival, which is put on by an Arizona-based organization that promises pathways to an “unlimited lifespan.” Dr. Kent Holtorf, whose anti-aging medical practice is based in El Segundo, California, operated a booth at the festival offering alternative health therapies, including peptide injections. Peptides are short amino acid chains that have exploded in popularity thanks to claims they can fight aging and chronic disease. The board alleged that Forgotten Formula mailed the peptides to the casino resort hosting RAADFest, marking the package “to the attention of Dr. Kent Holtorf.” That shipment constituted “unlicensed wholesaling of drugs,” according to the board’s citation. A trustee of Forgotten Formula told ProPublica his association was not present at the festival and did not provide peptides to be offered for public use. After being injected with peptides at Holtorf’s booth, two women left the conference in ambulances, so ill they had to be intubated to assist them in breathing. They have si…

Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say
type: item
creator: Jen Fifield
date: 2026-03-12T17:30:00Z
description: The post Election Records Handed Over to the FBI in Maricopa County, Arizona, Could Be Fatally Flawed, Experts Say appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: This week, when 2020 voting information from Maricopa County, Arizona, was handed over to the FBI, it might have seemed like a replay of the agency’s late January raid in Fulton County, Georgia. Both are large counties in swing states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and both have long been targets of President Donald Trump’s claims that that year’s presidential election was stolen from him. But the evidence collected from Maricopa County is fundamentally different, in ways that election experts say threaten the accuracy and integrity of the federal government’s investigation. In Fulton, the FBI took the actual ballots cast in the county’s 2020 election, which had been kept in secure court storage facilities. In Maricopa, a federal grand jury subpoenaed digital data related to a partisan audit of the county’s vote, according to Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen, the subpoena’s recipient. This material — which may have included scans and photos of ballots — was stored by the Senate, not the county. Maricopa County destroyed the original ballots after two years, as state law requires. The firm hired by Senate Republican leaders to run the audit, the Cyber Ninjas, was funded by and took direction from Trump allies. Its leader, Doug Logan, privately admitted in text messages obtained by journalists via public records requests that its ballot recounts were “screwy.” County leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, and nonpartisan outside observers documented several ways Logan’s team had failed to follow procedures to prevent tampering. (Logan didn’t respond to a request for comment.) Several election experts, including some who watched the Arizona audit in person in 2021, said any investigation based on the Cyber Ninja data would be fatally flawed. “Accessing invalid data will only draw inaccurate conclusions and risk further degradation of public confidence,” said Ryan Macias, a national elections technology consultant who observed the audit on behalf of the Ari…