ProPublica

by Matthew Kish, The Oregonian/OregonLive

This article was produced in partnership with The Oregonian/OregonLive. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In May 2015, President Barack Obama gave a big speech about dropping trade barriers with other nations. He delivered it on a sunny day at Nike’s world headquarters in Oregon.

“Sometimes when we talk about trade, we think of Nike,” Obama said, before making his pitch for a trade deal with Asian countries that he described as the “highest-standard, most progressive trade deal in history.”

by Mario Ariza

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has quietly ended its body camera program barely four years after it began, according to an internal email obtained by Propublica.

On April 2, DEA headquarters emailed employees announcing that the program had been terminated effective the day before. The DEA has not publicly announced the policy change, but by early April, links to pages about body camera policies on the DEA’s website were broken.

by Jasmine Demers, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

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.

Two years after Arizona officials revealed a $2.5 billion Medicaid fraud scheme that targeted Native Americans seeking treatment for addictions, the state has recovered just a fraction of the taxpayer funds lost to fraud.

by Anna Clark

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.

Just one year ago, JD Vance was a leading advocate of the Great Lakes and the efforts to restore the largest system of freshwater on the face of the planet.

As a U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance called the lakes “an invaluable asset” for his home state. He supported more funding for a program that delivers “the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem” so that the Great Lakes would be protected “for generations to come.”

by Eric Umansky, Vernal Coleman and Maryam Jameel

As the Trump administration pledges to eliminate 80,000 employees at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, ProPublica reporters are investigating how changes at the VA are affecting veterans themselves. Trump has promised to put veterans first, but our reporting shows veterans’ care is suffering amid wide-ranging cuts. If you’ve experienced setbacks in your care, we want to hear from you.

We would also appreciate firsthand insights about changes happening within the VA from agency employees. Please do not fill out this form if you work for the VA or another federal agency. Instead, contact our reporters via the encrypted messaging app Signal:

by Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Earlier this year, doctors at Veterans Affairs hospitals in Pennsylvania sounded an alarm. Sweeping cuts imposed by the Trump administration, they told higher-ups in an email, were causing “severe and immediate impacts,” including to “life-saving cancer trials.”

The email said more than 1,000 veterans would lose access to treatment for diseases ranging from metastatic head and neck cancers, to kidney disease, to traumatic brain injuries.

by ProPublica

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ProPublica on Monday won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for public service for the series “Life of the Mother,” which the judges described as “urgent reporting about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion laws.” The prize is given to the staff of a news organization that performed “meritorious public service.” This is the second consecutive year the organization was awarded the distinction. It is the eighth Pulitzer for ProPublica.

by Peter Elkind

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The Trump administration has eliminated or stifled critical data at dozens of federal agencies. Now the administration’s actions are hitting a new realm: the energy industry.

For decades, the Energy Information Administration, an independent agency housed inside the Department of Energy, has provided crucial reports on everything from oil and gas to the future of alternative energy. Relied on by oil company CEOs and government policymakers alike, the EIA’s data has been called the “gold standard” by Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of S&P Global and an éminence grise in the world of oil. No less a source than Project 2025 described the EIA as historically providing “independent and impartial analysis.”

by Adam Friedman, Tennessee Lookout

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Tennessee Lookout. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

We are continuing to report on flex loans. Have you been sued by Advance Financial, Harpeth Financial or another flex loan lender? To share your experience, call or text reporter Adam Friedman at 615-249-8509.

Rosita Hansen was working an evening shift at a tubing factory in 2023 when a sheriff’s deputy showed up and handed her a court summons. She was being sued for failing to pay off a loan of $2,050. What confused Hansen was she had already paid a couple thousand more than she borrowed. But now the company, Advance Financial, said she owed more. Between what she’d already paid the company and the lawsuit, Advance stood to receive over $12,500 from Hansen, records show.

by Mary Hudetz

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.

The director of Arizona’s embattled Medicaid agency resigned this week, just as she was expected to face questions from lawmakers about her handling of a massive fraud scheme that largely targeted Native Americans.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, announced Wednesday that she had accepted the resignation of Carmen Heredia, director of the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. The governor lauded Heredia’s leadership of the agency while blaming Republican lawmakers for politicizing the confirmation process, saying it had become clear they would not confirm Heredia’s nomination.