ProPublica
type: channel
description: Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest
date: 2025-12-31T14:33:56Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
generator agent: https://wordpress.org/
items: Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work
items: Oregon Faced a Huge Obstacle in Adding Green Energy. Here’s What Changed This Year.
items: 25 Investigations You May Have Missed This Year
items: The Most-Read ProPublica Stories of 2025
items: Medical Examiners Warn That Controversial Lung Float Test Could Be Dangerous
items: How GOP Lawmakers’ Power Transfers Are Reshaping Everything From Utilities to Environmental Regulation in North Carolina
items: Our Reporters Reached Out for Comment. They Were Accused of Stalking and Intimidation.
items: Someone Is Getting Away With Eunice Whitman’s Killing. Alaska’s Slow Justice System Let It Happen.
items: Medical License Revoked for Montana Doctor Linked to Suspicious Deaths
items: What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid

Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work
type: item
creator: Renee Dudley
date: 2025-12-31T10:00:00Z
description: The post Trump Signs Defense Bill Prohibiting China-Based Engineers in Pentagon IT Work appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: President Donald Trump signed into law this month a measure that prohibits anyone based in China and other adversarial countries from accessing the Pentagon’s cloud computing systems. The ban, which is tucked inside the $900 billion defense policy law, was enacted in response to a ProPublica investigation this year that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to service the Defense Department’s computer systems for nearly a decade — a practice that left some of the country’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary. U.S.-based supervisors, known as “digital escorts,” were supposed to serve as a check on these foreign employees, but we found they often lacked the expertise needed to effectively supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. In the wake of the reporting, leading members of Congress called on the Defense Department to strengthen its security requirements while blasting Microsoft for what some Republicans called “a national betrayal.” Cybersecurity and intelligence experts have told ProPublica that the arrangement posed major risks to national security, given that laws in China grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data. Microsoft pledged in July to stop using China-based engineers to service Pentagon cloud systems after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly condemned the practice. “Foreign engineers — from any country, including of course China — should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems,” Hegseth wrote on X. In September, the Pentagon updated its cybersecurity requirements for tech contractors, banning IT vendors from using China-based personnel to work on Defense Department computer systems. The new law effectively codifies that change, requiring Hegseth to prohibit individuals from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea from having direct or indirect access to Defense Department cloud computing systems. Microsoft declined to comment on the new law. Following t…

Oregon Faced a Huge Obstacle in Adding Green Energy. Here’s What Changed This Year.
type: item
creator: Tony Schick
date: 2025-12-30T11:00:00Z
description: The post Oregon Faced a Huge Obstacle in Adding Green Energy. Here’s What Changed This Year. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: A few months ago, Oregon’s green energy outlook was bleak. The state Legislature and Gov. Tina Kotek had repeatedly failed to address a huge obstacle that has held back wind and solar projects in the Northwest for years: aging electrical lines too jammed up to handle more renewable power. A series of articles by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica identified barriers in the federal and state bureaucracies that delayed improvements to beef up the grid. The failure to complete upgrades is the main reason Oregon, like its fellow progressive state and neighbor Washington, has lagged most of the nation in the growth of clean energy despite an internal mandate to go green. Bills to tackle the transmission problem continued to languish and die in the Oregon Legislature as recently as this spring. But there has been a groundswell of urgency since the stories were published. Kotek, a Democrat, has now issued two executive orders mandating that state agencies speed up renewable energy development by any available means, including fast-tracking permits and directly paying for new transmission lines. Those efforts could eventually be backed up by money. The state’s energy department, in a first, recommended lawmakers consider creating a state entity to finance, plan and build transmission lines. A lawmaker whose bill to create such an authority failed this year suddenly has hope for getting it done, and he said the governor’s office is working with him to make it happen. What was essentially an unacknowledged problem among many Oregon policymakers now has the full attention of the governor and the key agencies that report to her. There has been new attention on electrical transmission in Washington state, as well. The shift comes as President Donald Trump has created new obstacles to ramping up renewable energy. This year, he removed tax credits that made wind and solar cheaper to build, blocked new wind permits and fired employees of the federal agency that reviews them.…

25 Investigations You May Have Missed This Year
type: item
date: 2025-12-30T10:30:00Z
description: The post 25 Investigations You May Have Missed This Year appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Over the past year, ProPublica has published hundreds of investigations. In January, Kyle Hopkins of the Anchorage Daily News examined why a sexual assault case took seven years to go to trial in Alaska. In March, our video journalists told the stories of three mothers fighting to address America’s stillbirth crisis. In August, a team across the newsroom calculated how deeply President Donald Trump’s administration cut federal health agencies. And in December, Megan Rose and Debbie Cenziper reported how the Food and Drug Administration’s lax generic drug rules put a lung transplant patient’s life at risk. Here are 25 long-reads to add to your end-of-year reading list. You can also explore our most-read stories of the year. 1. Anchorage Police Say They Witnessed a Sexual Assault in Public. It Took Seven Years for the Case to Go to Trial. By Kyle Hopkins, Anchorage Daily News. Co-published with Anchorage Daily News. Published Jan. 7. In Alaska, where the time to resolve most serious felony cases has nearly tripled over the past decade, one case was delayed so long that both victims died. A former prosecutor called it “a travesty of justice.” 2. Dozens of People Died in Arizona Sober Living Homes as State Officials Fumbled Medicaid Fraud Response By Mary Hudetz, ProPublica, and Hannah Bassett, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Co-published with Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting. Published Jan. 27. Arizona officials acknowledged that a fraud scheme targeting Indigenous people with addictions cost taxpayers $2.5 billion. But they haven’t accounted publicly for the number of deaths tied to the scheme. 3. What a $2 Million Per Dose Gene Therapy Reveals About Drug Pricing By Robin Fields Published Feb. 12. Video by Jose Sepulveda/ProPublica Taxpayers and charities helped develop Zolgensma. Then it debuted at a record price, ushering in a new class of wildly expensive drugs. Its story upends the widely held conception that high prices reflect huge industry…

The Most-Read ProPublica Stories of 2025
type: item
date: 2025-12-30T10:00:00Z
description: The post The Most-Read ProPublica Stories of 2025 appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: When President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January, ProPublica’s reporters set out to cover how his second administration would reshape the government and the country. Our reporters detailed what happened when the Department of Government Efficiency, initially led by Elon Musk, slashed federal agencies, including the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Social Security Administration. We wrote about the people caught up in the administration’s immigration crackdown, including the more than 170 U.S. citizens who had been detained by immigration agents. We profiled key figures in the administration, including the 22-year-old picked to lead terrorism prevention and the man who has been described as Trump’s shadow president. Our newsroom also focused beyond the White House. Ginger Thompson wrote a five-part series, with research by Doris Burke, that told the story of American health care through the only hospital in Albany, Georgia. Ellis Simani and Lexi Churchill uncovered a Texas charter school superintendent who makes $870,000. And David Armstrong sought to understand why a single pill of his cancer drug cost the same as a new iPhone. Those were all among the investigations that readers spent the most time with this year. In the new year, ProPublica will keep reporting on these storylines — and new ones. In the meantime, revisit our most-read stories of 2025, as measured by the total amount of time spent reading them across several of our publishing platforms. 1. The Militia and the Mole By Joshua Kaplan Outraged by the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, a wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell family or friends. The one person he told was a ProPublica reporter. 2. Sick in a Hospital Town By Ginger Thompson, with research by Doris Burke Why were the people in Albany, Georgia, so sick, when the town’s most powerful institution was a hospital? 3. Insid…

Medical Examiners Warn That Controversial Lung Float Test Could Be Dangerous
type: item
creator: Duaa Eldeib
date: 2025-12-29T11:00:00Z
description: The post Medical Examiners Warn That Controversial Lung Float Test Could Be Dangerous appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: The nation’s largest organization for medical examiners has issued a warning about a controversial, centuries-old forensic test that has contributed to cases in which pregnant women have been charged with murder. The premise behind the lung float test is simple: If a baby was born alive and then died, air from its first breaths would cause its lungs to float in a jar with water. If the baby was stillborn, the lack of air in the lungs would cause them to sink. But the many critics of the test have long labeled it junk science and drawn parallels between the test and witch trials, where women were deemed witches based on whether they floated or sank. The National Association of Medical Examiners addressed the lung float test as part of a larger position paper released in October on investigating perinatal deaths, including stillbirths. A panel of 11 experts said the test has “known pitfalls” and is of “questionable value” and “without clearly defined error rates.” “Those who use the lung float should be wary of accepting the results when it conforms to their summation of the findings and rejecting the result if it conflicts; a ‘test’ used in such fashion inevitably becomes more dangerous than useful,” the authors wrote. The paper follows a 2023 investigation by ProPublica into the use of the lung float test in cases where women were charged with murder despite their claims that they had a stillbirth. ProPublica found that the test was deeply flawed, lacked the basic standardization of trusted forensic disciplines and did not have full support from any of the country’s 12 largest medical examiners’ offices. The test is typically used where someone gives birth outside of a hospital or without medical supervision. But the paper cautioned that the distinction between a liveborn and stillborn infant can be very difficult to discern. Other than food in the stomach, the authors wrote, there is no diagnostic tool or finding that can “stand alone as the sole determinant of whe…

How GOP Lawmakers’ Power Transfers Are Reshaping Everything From Utilities to Environmental Regulation in North Carolina
type: item
creator: Doug Bock Clark
date: 2025-12-29T10:30:00Z
description: The post How GOP Lawmakers’ Power Transfers Are Reshaping Everything From Utilities to Environmental Regulation in North Carolina appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: North Carolina voters have chosen Democrats in three straight elections for governor; the state’s Republican-led legislature has countered by siphoning off some of the powers that traditionally came with the job. These power grabs have had a profound effect on both democracy in the state and on the everyday lives of North Carolina residents, Democrats argue. The changes are “weakening environmental protections, raising energy costs, and politicizing election administration,” Josh Stein, North Carolina’s governor, said in a text message responding to questions from ProPublica. Republican leaders in the General Assembly did not respond to requests for comment or emailed questions about the power shifts. In the past, they have defended these actions as reflecting the will of voters, with the senate president describing one key bill as balancing “appointment power between the legislative and executive branches.” Read More Inside the North Carolina GOP’s Decade-Long Push to Seize Power From the State’s Democratic Governors Former state Sen. Bob Rucho, a Republican picked to sit on the state elections board after lawmakers shifted control from Stein to the Republican state auditor, said the changes would fix problems created by Democrats. “Republicans are very proud of what’s been accomplished,” Rucho said. Shifting authority over the elections board, he argued, would “reestablish a level of confidence in the electoral process” that Democrats had lost. ProPublica recently chronicled the nearly 10-year push to take over the board, which sets rules and settles disputes in elections in the closely divided swing state. Decisions made by the board’s new leadership — particularly on the locations and numbers of early voting sites — could affect outcomes in the 2026 midterms. Below, we examine how other power transfers driven by North Carolina’s Republican legislature are reshaping everything from the regulations that protect residents’ drinking water to the rates they pay for e…

Our Reporters Reached Out for Comment. They Were Accused of Stalking and Intimidation.
type: item
creator: Charles Ornstein
date: 2025-12-29T10:00:00Z
description: The post Our Reporters Reached Out for Comment. They Were Accused of Stalking and Intimidation. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: This summer, my colleagues were reporting out a story about the Department of Education’s “final mission,” its effort to undermine public education even as the Trump administration worked feverishly to close the agency. As we do with all stories, the reporters reached out to those who would be featured in the article for comment. And so began a journey that showed both the emphasis we place on giving the subjects of our stories an opportunity to comment, as well as the aggressively unhelpful pushback we’ve faced this year as we’ve sought information and responses to questions. Megan O’Matz, a reporter based in Wisconsin on ProPublica’s Midwest team, first asked the department’s press office for an interview in mid-August. At the same time, we emailed top administration officials who were making crucial decisions within the agency, including Lindsey Burke, deputy chief of staff for policy and programs, and Meg Kilgannon, director of strategic partnerships. In response to the outreach to Kilgannon, department spokesperson Madison Biedermann told O’Matz to “Please direct all media inquiries to press@ed.gov.” Reached on her cellphone that day, Biedermann said she was happy to look into the request. We asked for a response within a week. At that time, the published press phone number for the department appeared, at all hours, to be a black hole, with a recorded message saying it was “temporarily closed.” (It still indicates that.) Hearing nothing more, O’Matz emailed the press office again Aug. 18. And again Aug. 28 with detailed questions. She left follow-up messages on Biedermann’s cell. And on Burke’s cell, including once on her husband’s cell as ProPublica tried to find a direct way to contact Burke. To ensure fairness and accuracy, it is our long-standing practice to try to reach those who are part of our stories so that they have an opportunity to respond to them. We’d rather get responses before we publish an article than after. Reached on her cell Aug. 29, Kilgan…

Someone Is Getting Away With Eunice Whitman’s Killing. Alaska’s Slow Justice System Let It Happen.
type: item
creator: Kyle Hopkins
date: 2025-12-24T10:00:00Z
description: The post Someone Is Getting Away With Eunice Whitman’s Killing. Alaska’s Slow Justice System Let It Happen. appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Marcy McDannel slid a photograph across the steel jailhouse table to the convicted killer and watched his face for a reaction. Samuel Atchak, 27 at the time, was serving 115 years for an unusual killing. One August morning in 2014, a young woman was found stabbed in the throat and chest, her body displayed nude on the tundra at the center of the coastal Alaska village of Chevak and her clothes placed nearby. Atchak pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and attempted sexual assault in Roxanne Smart’s death. McDannel was interested in the death of a second young woman, less than nine months later, in another Alaska coastal community that neighbors Chevak. Eunice Whitman too was found stabbed in the throat and chest, her clothes placed nearby and her body displayed nude on the tundra in a well-trafficked area of Bethel. No one had been convicted in her death. “If you don’t want to see it,” McDannel said gently, “I won’t show it to you,” according to a recording she made. Atchak didn’t mind looking at the pictures, he assured her. “I’m all right.” Second of two parts. Previously: A man spends seven years in jail as the flawed evidence against him falls apart. Today: The unfinished search for justice in the murder of Eunice Whitman. McDannel recalls he did not flinch as he stared at a redacted printout of the crime scene photo. Over the course of two hours, McDannel coaxed responses from him bit by bit. He speculated that based on the position of the body, the killer likely caught the woman off guard. Maybe surprised her from behind and strangled her, he said, with a “rear naked chokehold,” using a martial arts term. He offered thoughts about why Whitman’s body was arranged just so, what the killer’s motive might have been, even the height of the murderer. Could be someone around 5’8” judging from how the attack seemed to go down, suggested Atchak, 5’6”. A former state prosecutor turned defense attorney, McDannel thanked him for the insight and headed home. Although she…

Medical License Revoked for Montana Doctor Linked to Suspicious Deaths
type: item
creator: J. David McSwane
date: 2025-12-23T20:45:00Z
description: The post Medical License Revoked for Montana Doctor Linked to Suspicious Deaths appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: Dr. Thomas C. Weiner, the oncologist who was the subject of a 2024 ProPublica investigation, will never again practice medicine in the state of Montana. Last week, medical board members revoked Weiner’s license, citing seven cases of malpractice. The board concluded that he had violated rules of professional conduct and provided substandard care. By law, it must report Weiner to a federal database that tracks doctors who’ve been disciplined — which will make it extremely difficult for him to practice medicine. That decision comes more than a year after ProPublica exposed how, for years, Weiner had been suspected of hurting patients, including some who died, at St. Peter’s Health, the only major hospital serving the state capital of Helena. The story, built on court and medical records, showed Weiner subjected patients who didn’t have cancer to chemotherapy and other dangerous treatments, neglected to properly treat patients who were seriously ill, overprescribed addictive narcotics and was suspected by colleagues to have hastened the deaths of more than a half dozen people. Weiner, 62, has denied mistreating patients. He did not respond to a request for comment about the board’s decision to revoke his license. St. Peter’s Health, which fired him in 2020, accusing him of malpractice, did not provide comment. The hospital has previously attributed the mistreatment of patients to a rogue doctor and says it provides high-quality care. Weiner sued St. Peter’s for wrongful termination, a case the hospital ultimately won. Weiner also filed a defamation claim against Dr. Randy Sasich, a former St. Peter’s colleague who lodged complaints about his care. Sasich remains a defendant in that lawsuit. According to an order by the Montana Board of Medical Examiners, Weiner agreed to never again seek a medical license in the state and said he no longer intended to practice there. Before his termination, Weiner was the highest paid doctor at St. Peter’s. Over the years, he made tens…

What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid
type: item
creator: Anna Maria Barry-Jester
date: 2025-12-23T11:00:00Z
description: The post What I Saw at a Maternity Ward in Kenya After the U.S. Cut Off Food and Foreign Aid appeared first on ProPublica.
encoded: In August, I traveled to Kakuma, Kenya, to try to understand what happened when the U.S. cut off food to the world’s third-largest refugee camp. Soon after President Donald Trump froze foreign aid on his first day in office, my colleague Brett Murphy and I began hearing from government experts. We learned that despite explicit promises from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that food and other life-saving care would continue during the administration’s review of foreign aid, programs were shutting down, putting millions of lives at risk. I’ve covered health in the U.S. and abroad for 15 years, and Brett has covered both the State Department and public health in the U.S. Brett and I teamed up, interviewing dozens of government officials and aid workers, and pouring over reams of internal government documents. Then, we traveled to Kakuma (and South Sudan) to see for ourselves how these policies were affecting people. <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" height="1668" width="2560" src="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1.Aerial-view-of-Kakuma-Camp-Transparent-PDcropMOBILE.png?w=752" alt="An illustration showing an aerial view of a refugee camp in the desert, with numerous small, simple huts, shrubs and dirt paths. In the foreground, a bird soars over the camp." class="wp-image-62360" srcset="https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1.Aerial-view-of-Kakuma-Camp-Transparent-PDcropMOBILE.png 3000w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1.Aerial-view-of-Kakuma-Camp-Transparent-PDcropMOBILE.png?resize=300,196 300w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1.Aerial-view-of-Kakuma-Camp-Transparent-PDcropMOBILE.png?resize=768,500 768w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1.Aerial-view-of-Kakuma-Camp-Transparent-PDcropMOBILE.png?resize=1024,667 1024w, https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/1.Aerial-view-of-Kakuma-Camp-Transparent-PDcropMOBILE.png?resize=1536,1001 1536w, https://www.propu…