by Jasmine Demers, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting

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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.

The Arizona attorney general’s office is leading the criminal investigation into the network of behavioral health providers and sober living homes that from 2019 to 2023 exploited the American Indian Health Program to obtain inflated Medicaid payments. Investigators found fraudulent operators didn’t provide the services they’d billed for and sometimes allowed patients to continue the substance use for which they had sought treatment.

The state has so far indicted more than 100 individuals and recouped $125 million — or about 5% of the funds the state estimates it paid to bad actors.

Attorney General Kris Mayes said in a May 1 press conference that she hopes to retrieve “at least hundreds of millions” from fraudsters. But she warned that “it’s hard, because what happens is these … criminals get the money, they buy lavish homes, they buy multiple expensive cars, they hide the money offshore, they spend the money in ways that is unrecoverable.”

“My team is working day in and day out to seize those assets,” Mayes said.

The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System struggled to rein in the rampant fraud under two governors, leaving more than 11,000 people vulnerable to the chaos that followed. Prior reporting by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica found that at least 40 Indigenous residents of sober living homes and treatment facilities in the Phoenix area died as the state fumbled its response.

The damage also rippled out through the state’s behavioral health industry, which was nearly brought to a standstill when the agency suspended some 300 providers and enacted policies that halted or substantially delayed payments to those still operating. Those reforms included enhanced scrutiny when screening and reimbursing providers.

Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, recently signed legislation further increasing oversight of sober living homes by requiring the facilities to promptly report resident deaths. But advocates like Reva Stewart, a Diné activist who has helped Indigenous victims of the scheme through her group Stolen People Stolen Benefits, don’t think the state has done enough.

“I feel like I’m on a hamster wheel, and we’re still at the beginning,” Stewart said. “They have a lot of indictments and people being charged, but at the same time … they’re just getting a slap on the wrist.”

The U.S. Department of Justice has also indicted several individuals and is conducting parallel investigations into the fraudulent billing schemes under federal statutes.

Yet despite these state and federal efforts, it’s likely that most of the stolen taxpayer money won’t be recovered.

From 2019 to 2023, the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System allowed about 13,000 unlicensed providers to enter its system, including some that exploited weak oversight by overbilling or charging for services that were never delivered.

The agency also didn’t act decisively when solutions to stem the fraud were proposed internally. It initially yielded to pressure from special interest groups connected to the behavioral health industry, which argued that reforms to the fee-for-service American Indian Health plan would threaten their financial interests.

Now, AHCCCS says its efforts to unravel the crisis could take many years, describing its investigation as a “highly complex and manual process.”

Officials must review improper payments, whether they were obtained by fraud or not, on a case-by-case basis. Though providers are required to repay AHCCCS as soon as they become aware of overpayments, they often cannot do so in one lump sum. Repayments may occur over months or years.

Because state Medicaid agencies receive much of their funding from the federal government, improper payments come with added financial consequences: States must repay the federal government for its share.

In Arizona, the federal government covered 70% to 76% of Medicaid costs between 2019 and 2023. The rate was even higher for people who received services through the American Indian Health Program.

AHCCCS has repaid $49.1 million to the federal government since January 2023, according to spokesperson Havona Horsefield, who has since left the agency. That amount will likely grow as AHCCCS continues to review fraudulent cases.

The agency is not, however, required to reimburse the federal government for overpayments made to facilities that are now bankrupt or out of business. Of the 322 providers suspended on suspicion of fraud, 90 have closed, according to AHCCCS.

The agency could not provide an estimate of how much those providers were overpaid, but said it notifies the attorney general when a provider goes out of business and provides information to support criminal cases against them.

State Sen. Theresa Hatathlie, a Democrat from Coal Mine Mesa on the Navajo Nation, has been critical of the state’s response and continues to call for stricter regulation of sober living facilities. During a March floor vote, she expressed frustration over the reforms Hobbs later signed into law, contending they did not go far enough.

“It’s time to stop protecting bad actors or even those people who continue to allow bad actors to keep coming back,” she said.

As the state slowly works to untangle the fraud and recover taxpayer funds, national debates over Medicaid’s future are intensifying. Republican majorities in both Arizona’s Legislature and Congress are pushing to cut Medicaid to offset President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cuts. Among their justifications are fraud and abuse of the system.

Health policy experts, however, say that most Medicaid spending pays for legitimate care, and that fraud is typically committed by a small number of providers — not patients.

Instead of the current system where the federal government covers a larger share of Medicaid costs in lower-income states, conservatives are advocating to cap Medicaid funding tied to inflation, a model that would shift more of the cost to state budgets.

Arizona is one of nine states where such a change could trigger the end of Medicaid expansion, which currently insures 648,000 low-income residents, or about 30% of AHCCCS recipients.

Despite Medicaid’s uncertain future, Arizona officials are pressing forward with efforts to address the lasting damage the fraud scandal inflicted on tribal communities. In November, Mayes announced a $6 million grant initiative offering up to $500,000 per organization to fund victim compensation and housing support for those displaced or otherwise affected by fraudulent treatment centers. Recipients include tribal nations and Native health organizations.

But Stewart says the state’s work is far from over, and many of those harmed have yet to see real accountability or support.

“They call it a travesty … and they want to get justice,” she said. “But where’s the justice when it comes to the amount of deaths that we have, the amount of Native relatives that are still missing?”

Hannah Bassett and Christopher Lomahquahu, a Roy W. Howard fellow at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, contributed reporting.

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.”

But times have changed.

This spring, Vance is vice president, and President Donald Trump’s administration is imposing deep cuts and new restrictions, upending the very restoration efforts that Vance once championed. With the peak summer season just around the corner, Great Lakes scientists are concerned that they have lost the ability to protect the public from toxic algal blooms, which can kill animals and sicken people.

Cutbacks have gutted the staff at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Severe spending limits have made it difficult to purchase ordinary equipment for processing samples, such as filters and containers. Remaining staff plans to launch large data-collecting buoys into the water this week, but it’s late for a field season that typically runs from April to October.

In addition to a delayed launch, problems with personnel, supplies, vessel support and real-time data sharing have created doubts about the team’s ability to operate the buoys, said Gregory Dick, director of the NOAA cooperative institute at the University of Michigan that partners with the lab. Both the lab and institute operate out of a building in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that was custom built as NOAA’s hub in the Great Lakes region, and both provide staff to the algal blooms team.

“This has massive impacts on coastal communities,” Dick said.

Gregory Dick, director of the Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research, which works side by side with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, says that cuts to the lab will have a massive impact on coastal communities. (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

Multiple people who have worked with the lab also told ProPublica that there are serious gaps in this year’s monitoring of algal blooms, which are often caused by excess nutrient runoff from farms. Data generated by the lab’s boats and buoys, and publicly shared, could be limited or interrupted, they said.

That data has helped to successfully avoid a repeat of a 2014 crisis in Toledo, Ohio, when nearly half a million people were warned to not drink the water or even touch it.

If the streams of information are cut off, “stakeholders will be very unhappy,” said Bret Collier, a branch chief at the lab who oversaw the federal scientists that run the harmful algal bloom program for the Great Lakes. He was fired in the purge of federal probationary workers in February.

The lab has lost about 35% of its 52-member workforce since February, according to the president of the lab’s union, and it was not allowed to fill several open positions. The White House released preliminary budget recommendations last week that would make significant cuts to NOAA. The budget didn’t provide details, but indicated the termination of “a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs, which are not aligned with Administration policy” of ending “‘Green New Deal’ initiatives.”

An earlier document obtained by ProPublica and reported widely proposed a 74% funding cut to NOAA’s research office, home of the Great Lakes lab.

Vance’s office didn’t respond to questions from ProPublica about how federal cuts have affected Great Lakes research. The White House also didn’t respond to messages.

Water samples from bodies of water in the Great Lakes region (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

Municipal water leaders in Cleveland and Toledo have written public letters of support on behalf of the lab, advocating for the continuation of its work because of how important its tools and resources are for drinking water management.

In a statement to ProPublica, staffers from Toledo’s water system credited the Great Lakes lab and NOAA for alerting it to potential blooms near its intake days ahead of time. This has saved the system significant costs, they said, and helped it avoid feeding excess chemicals into the water.

“The likelihood of another 2014 ‘don’t drink the water’ advisory has been minimized to almost nothing by additional vigilance” from both the lab and local officials, they said.

Remaining staff have had to contend with not only a lack of capacity but also tight limits on spending and travel.

Several people who have worked in or with the lab said that the staff was hampered by strict credit card limits imposed on government employees as part of the effort to reduce spending by the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been spearheaded by presidential adviser Elon Musk.

“The basic scientific supplies that we use to provide the local communities with information on algal bloom toxicity — our purchasing of them is being restricted based on the limitations currently being put in by the administration,” Collier said.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s custom-built hub for the Great Lakes region in Ann Arbor, Michigan (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

NOAA and the Department of Commerce, which oversees the agency, didn’t respond to messages from ProPublica. Neither did a DOGE official. Eight U.S. senators, including the minority leader, sent a letter in March to a top NOAA leader inquiring about many of the changes, but they never received a response.

The department described its approach to some of its cuts when it eliminated nearly $4 million in funding for the NOAA cooperative institute at Princeton University and emphasized the importance of avoiding wasteful government spending. ProPublica has reported on how the loss of research grants at Princeton and the more significant defunding of the NOAA lab it works with would be a serious setback for weather and climate preparedness.

A number of the staffing losses at the Great Lakes lab came when employees accepted offers of early retirement or voluntary separation; others were fired probationary workers targeted by DOGE across the government. That includes Collier, who had 24 years of professional experience, largely as a research professor, before he was hired last year into a position that, according to the lab’s former director, had been difficult to fill.

A scientist specializing in the toxic algal blooms was also fired. She worked on the team for 14 years through the cooperative institute before accepting a federal position last year, which made her probationary, too.

A computer scientist who got real-time data onto the lab’s website — and the only person who knew how to push out the weekly sampling data on harmful algal blooms — was also fired. She was probationary because she too was hired for a federal position after working with the institute.

And because of a planned retirement, no one holds the permanent position of lab director, though there is an acting director. The lab isn’t allowed to fill any positions due to a federal hiring freeze.

At the same time, expected funds for the lab's cooperative institute are delayed, which means, Dick said, it may soon lay off staff, including people on the algal blooms team.

In March, Cleveland’s water commissioner wrote a letter calling for continued support for the Great Lakes lab and other NOAA-funded operations in the region, saying that access to real-time forecasts for Lake Erie are “critically important in making water treatment decisions” for more than 1.3 million citizens.

In 2006, there was a major outbreak of hypoxia, an issue worsened by algal blooms where oxygen-depleted water can become corrosive, discolored and full of excess manganese, which is a neurotoxin at high levels. Cleveland Water collaborated with the lab on developing a “groundbreaking” hypoxia forecast model, said Scott Moegling, who worked for both the Cleveland utility and Ohio’s drinking water regulatory agency.

“I knew which plants were going to get hit,” Moegling said. “I knew about when, and I knew what the treatment we would need would be, and we could staff accordingly.”

The American Meteorological Society, in partnership with the National Weather Association, spotlighted this warning system in its statement in support of NOAA research, saying that it helps “keep drinking water potable in the Great Lakes region.”

Collier, the former branch chief, said that quality data may be lacking this year, not just for drinking water suppliers, but also the U.S. Coast Guard, fisheries, shipping companies, recreational businesses and shoreline communities that rely on it to navigate risk. In response to a recent survey of stakeholders, the president of a trade organization serving Great Lakes cargo vessels said that access to NOAA’s real-time data “is critically important to the commercial shipping fleet when making navigation decisions.”

Because federal law requires NOAA to monitor harmful algal blooms, the cuts may run against legal obligations, several current and former workers told ProPublica. The blooms program was “federally mandated to be active every single day, without exception,” Collier said.

First image: Harmful algal bloom on Lake Erie, observed during weekly sampling in 2022. Second image: A beaker holding a water sample taken from Lake Erie during a peak harmful algal bloom, shown at its natural concentration in 2017. (The Cooperative Institute of Great Lakes Research at the University of Michigan)

The 2024 bloom in Lake Erie was the earliest on record. At its peak, it covered 550 square miles. Warming temperatures worsen the size and frequency of algal blooms. While the field season was historically only about 90 days, Collier said, last year the team was deployed for 211 days.

As the shallowest of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is typically first to show signs of problems. But it’s also an emblem of environmental stewardship, thanks to its striking recovery from unchecked industrial pollution. The lake was once popularly declared “dead.” A highly publicized fire inflamed a river that feeds into it. Even Dr. Seuss knocked it in the 1971 version of “The Lorax.” The book described fish leaving a polluted pond “in search of some water that isn’t so smeary. I hear things are just as bad up in Lake Erie.”

But the rise of agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA, and labs like the one protecting the Great Lakes, along with legislation that protected water from pollution, led to noticeable changes. By 1986, two Ohio graduate students had succeeded in persuading Theodor Geisel, the author behind Dr. Seuss, to revise future editions of his classic book.

“I should no longer be saying bad things about a body of water that is now, due to great civic and scientific effort, the happy home of smiling fish,” Geisel wrote to them.

Early this year, headlines out of the Midwest suggested that “Vance could be a game-changing Great Lakes advocate” and that he might “save the Great Lakes from Trump.”

A 2023 report to Congress about the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a popular funding mechanism for projects that protect the lakes, including the research lab’s, described the lab’s work on harmful algal blooms as one of its “success stories.” Last year, with Vance as a co-sponsor, an act to extend support for the funding program passed the Senate, but stalled in the House. Another bipartisan effort to reauthorize it launched in January.

Nicole Rice was recently fired from her position at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory after 10 years with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. A promotion put her on probationary status. She’s worried that federal cuts are placing the Great Lakes system at risk. (Nick Hagen for ProPublica)

Project 2025, the plan produced by the Heritage Foundation for Trump’s second term, recommended that the president consider whether NOAA “should be dismantled and many of its functions eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

NOAA is “a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” the plan said, and this industry’s mission “seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”

“That is not to say NOAA is useless,” it added, “but its current organization corrupts its useful functions. It should be broken up and downsized.”

When asked at his confirmation hearing in January if he agreed with Project 2025’s recommendation of dismantling NOAA, Howard Lutnick, head of the commerce department, said no.

One month later, the Great Lakes lab’s probationary staff got termination notices. That includes Nicole Rice, who spent a decade with NOAA. A promotion made her communications job vulnerable to the widespread firings of federal probationary workers.

In recent testimony to a Michigan Senate committee, Rice expressed deep concern about the future of the Great Lakes.

“It has taken over a century of bipartisan cooperation, investment and science to bring the Great Lakes back from the brink of ecological collapse,” Rice said. “But these reckless cuts could undo the progress in just a few short years, endangering the largest surface freshwater system in the world.”

Vernal Coleman contributed reporting.

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:

• Eric Umansky: Ericumansky.04
• Vernal Coleman: vcoleman91.99

We appreciate you sharing your story, and we take your privacy seriously. We are gathering these stories for the purposes of our reporting and will contact you if we wish to publish any part of your story.

by Eric Umansky and Vernal Coleman

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If you’ve experienced setbacks in your care or benefits amid the changes at the Department of Veterans Affairs, ProPublica wants to hear from you. Share your story.

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.

“Enrollment in clinical trials is stopping,” the email warned, “meaning veterans lose access to therapies.”

The administration reversed some of its decisions, allowing some trials to continue for now. Still, other research, including the trials for treating head and neck cancer, has been stalled.

President Donald Trump has long promised to prioritize veterans.

“We love our veterans,” he said in February. “We are going to take good care of them.”

After the Department of Veterans Affairs began shedding employees and contracts, Trump’s pick to run the agency, Secretary Doug Collins, pledged, “Veterans are going to notice a change for the better.”

But dozens of internal emails obtained by ProPublica reveal a far different reality. Doctors and others at VA hospitals and clinics across the country have been sending often desperate messages to headquarters detailing how cuts will harm veterans’ care. The VA provides health care to roughly 9 million veterans.

In March, VA officials across the country warned that a critical resource — databases for tracking cancer — would no longer be kept up to date. As officials in the Pacific Northwest explained, the Department of Government Efficiency was moving to kill its contract with the outside company that maintained and ran its cancer registry, where information on the treatment of patients is collected and analyzed. DOGE had marked it for “immediate termination.”

Officials at the VA centers in the Pacific Northwest said funding for their cancer research was “updated for immediate termination” after a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. (Obtained by ProPublica)

The VA in Detroit raised a similar alarm in an email, warning of the “inability to track oncology treatment and recurrences.” The emails obtained by ProPublica detail a wide variety of disruptions. In Colorado, for instance, layoffs to social workers were causing homeless veterans waiting for temporary housing to go without help.

The warnings, sent as part of a longstanding system at the VA to alert higher-ups of problems, paint a portrait of chaotic retrenchment at an agency that just three years ago was mandated by Congress through the PACT Act to expand care and benefits for veterans facing cancer and other issues after exposure to Agent Orange, burn pits or other toxins.

Doctors and other health care providers across the VA have been left scrambling and short-staffed amid an ever-shifting series of cuts, hiring freezes and other edicts from the White House.

VA officials in Pittsburgh sent warnings about studies being impacted by a hiring freeze. These included studies on cancer, suicide prevention and exposure to toxins. (Obtained by ProPublica)

The upheaval laid bare in the emails is particularly striking because the cuts so far would be dwarfed by the dramatic downsizing in staff and shift in priorities the administration has said is coming.

The VA has cut just a few thousand staffers this year. But the administration has said it plans to eliminate at least 70,000 through layoffs and voluntary buyouts within the coming months. The agency, which is the largest integrated health care system in the U.S., currentlyhas nearly 500,000 employees, most of whom work in one of the VA’s 170 hospitals and nearly 1,200 clinics.

Despite an expanded role mandated by Congress through the PACT Act, administration officials have said their goal is to trim the agency to the size it was before the legislation passed.

“The Biden Administration understood what it meant to pay for the cost of war; it seems the Trump Administration does not,” said Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat and chief author of the PACT Act.

Documents obtained by ProPublica show DOGE officials working at the VA in March prepared an outline to “transform” the agency that focused on ways to consolidate operations and introduce artificial intelligence tools to handle benefits claims. One DOGE document proposed closing 17 hospitals — and perhaps a dozen more.

VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz told ProPublica that there would be no hospital closures. “Just because a VA employee wrote something down, doesn’t make it VA policy,” he said in a written statement. But he did say that use of AI will be a big part of what he called VA’s “reform” efforts.

Kasperowicz dismissed the idea that the emails obtained by ProPublica show chaos.

“The only thing these reports show is that VA has a robust and well-functioning system to flag potential issues and quickly fix them so we can provide the best possible care to Veterans,” he wrote.

DOGE did not respond to requests for comment.

Have You Been Affected by Changes at the Department of Veterans Affairs? Tell Us About It.

The White House released a budget proposal last week that calls for a 4% increase in the VA’s budget. That total includes more money for medical care, though a portion of that would be used to pay for veterans to seek care outside the VA medical system.

More answers to the VA’s larger plans may come today, when Collins is scheduled to testify before the Senate Veterans Committee, his first hearing on Capitol Hill since coming into office.

David Shulkin, who headed the VA in Trump’s first term, said the administration is too focused on cuts rather than communicating a strategy for improving care for vets.

“I think it’s very, very hard to be successful with the approach that they’re taking,” Shulkin told ProPublica.

One way local VA officials have tried to limit the damage has been by sending warnings — formally known as an issue brief — to higher-ups. And sometimes it works.

After officials in Los Angeles warned that “all chemotherapy” would stop unless Washington backed off killing a service contract, the VA reversed its decision.

And, amid growing scrutiny, the administration also made some researchers in Pennsylvania and elsewhere exempt from cuts. The laid-off social workers who helped homeless vets in Colorado were also brought back after about a month away from their jobs. Kasperowicz said that four social workers were affected but “their caseload was temporarily redistributed to other members of the homeless team.”

The warnings from officials across the country underscore how the comparatively modest cuts so far are already affecting the work of the VA’s medical system, with the study and treatment of cancer cited in multiple warnings to agency leadership.

“We have absolutely felt the impact of the chaos all around us. We’re already losing people,“ said one senior researcher, who spoke to ProPublica anonymously for fear of retaliation.

Referring to studies, he added: “We’re going to be losing things that can’t restart.”

And while Kasperowicz told ProPublica that the issues in Pennsylvania have been resolved, locals there said that’s not the case and that the impact is ongoing.

In Pittsburgh, two trials to treat veterans with advanced head and neck cancer, which officials in March had warned were at risk because of hiring freezes, have still not started, according to Alanna Caffas, who heads a Pittsburgh nonprofit, the Veterans Health Foundation, that partners with the VA on research.

“It’s insane,” Caffas said. “These veterans should be able to get access to research treatments, but they can’t.”

VA employees in Pittsburgh sent a warning that they had lost research staff because of the hiring freeze. (Obtained and highlighted by ProPublica)

A third trial there, to help veterans with opioid addiction, wasn’t halted. Instead, it was hobbled by layoffs of key team members, according to Caffas and another person involved in the research.

Regarding the issues with cancer registries, Kasperowicz said there had been “no effect on patients.” He added that the VA is moving to create a national contract to administer those registries.

Rosie Torres, founder of Burn Pits 360, the veterans advocacy group that also pushed hard for the legislation, called the emails showing impeded cancer treatment a “crisis in the making” and “gutwrenching.”

That the decisions are being made without input from the communities of vets they affect is worse, she added.

“If they are killing contracts that may affect the delivery of care, then we have a right to know,” she said.

Last week, as the second Trump administration marked its first 100 days in office, Collins celebrated what he described as its achievements.

In a recorded address, he said that under his stewardship the VA processed record numbers of benefit claims, ended “divisive” spending on diversity initiatives and redirected millions of agency dollars from “non-mission-critical” programs back toward services to benefit veterans.

“We will not stop working to put veterans first,” he wrote in an accompanying op-ed.

Others say Collins has done no such thing. Instead of focusing on veterans, said one VA oncologist, “we’re spending an enormous amount of time preparing for a staffing catastrophe.”

“Veterans’ lives are on the line,” the doctor said. “Let us go back to work and take care of them.”

Alex Mierjeski contributed research, and Joel Jacobs contributed reporting.

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.

“America’s Mental Barrier,” an examination of how insurance companies interfere with access to necessary mental health care across the United States, was named a finalist in the explanatory reporting category. In addition to the Pulitzer winners, the designation is ProPublica’s 12th Pulitzer finalist in 17 years.

The “Life of the Mother” series, which ProPublica continues to pursue, is a landmark investigation into the unexamined, irreversible consequences of state abortion bans. Kavitha Surana, Lizzie Presser and Cassandra Jaramillo mined hospital and death records in states whose strict abortion bans threatened physicians with prosecution. From the tragic death of Amber Thurman in Georgia to gutting accounts of women denied lifesaving miscarriage care in Texas, the investigations illuminated the profound human cost of these policies. They exposed the chilling impact on medical professionals forced to choose between their oath and the law, the anguish faced by families and the broader erosion of women’s health and autonomy.

Stacy Kranitz’s immersive photo essay, “The Year After a Denied Abortion,” documented the unraveling of a Tennessee family after a denied abortion for a life-threatening pregnancy, especially in a state with meager support for poor mothers. The piece, reported with Surana, helped audiences see, feel and understand how decisions made by those in power impact families.

These stories ignited outrage around the country, became talking points during the presidential election and inspired action. Lawmakers have filed more than a dozen bills to expand abortion access in at least seven states.

Last week, the Texas Senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 31, called The Life of the Mother Act, which aims to prevent maternal deaths under the state’s strict abortion ban by making clear that a life-threatening medical emergency doesn’t need to be imminent for doctors to follow their medical standards and intervene to terminate pregnancies.

The bill represents a significant reversal for Republican leaders who had for years insisted no changes were needed. It was written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of the original ban who initially said that exceptions for medical emergencies were “plenty clear.” The bill stops short of removing what doctors say are the ban’s biggest impediments to care, including its threat of major criminal penalties for medical professionals, and it doesn’t expand abortion access to cases of fetal anomalies, rape or incest. Sen. Carol Alvarado, the Democratic lawmaker who co-authored the bill, said that its limits were a “real hard pill to swallow” but that it could still make a difference. “I believe this bill will save lives,” she said.

A U.S. Senate Finance Committee investigation, launched in response to our reporting, released a 29-page report in December 2024 that found that hospitals are providing minimal guidance to doctors navigating abortion restrictions, often leaving them without clear protocols in life-or-death situations.

A host of ProPublicans helped elevate this project, including Alexandra Zayas, Ziva Branstetter, Andrea Wise, Tracy Weber, Boyzell Hosey, Mariam Elba, Robin Fields, Anna Donlan, Allen Tan, Kirsten Berg, Jeff Ernsthausen, Doris Burke, Lexi Churchill, Andrea Suozzo, Audrey Dutton, Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Amy Yurkanin, Emily Goldstein, Diego Sorbara, Samantha Cooney, Grace Palmieri, Colleen Barry, Kassie Navarro, Sarah Childress, Lynn Dombek, Sophie Chou and Sophia Kovach.

From left: visual strategy editor Andrea Wise, Zayas, Presser, Surana, Jaramillo, editor Ziva Branstetter and research reporter Mariam Elba. ProPublica continues to pursue stories in the “Life of the Mother” series. (Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica)

“We knew early that abortion bans were likely to have deadly consequences for women, and not just those seeking abortions,” said Weber, ProPublica’s managing editor for the national staff. “Our reporters and their editor, Alex Zayas, were endlessly creative, dogged, humane and careful in surfacing the deaths of these women when the states themselves were not looking. We are so honored that the Pulitzer Board has recognized their efforts.”

In the series honored as a Pulitzer finalist in explanatory reporting, reporters Annie Waldman, Duaa Eldeib, Max Blau and Maya Miller revealed how health insurers are engaging in aggressive tactics that push therapists out of networks; deploying an algorithmic system to limit coverage; creating “ghost networks”; cutting access to treatment for children with autism; relying on doctors whose judgments have been criticized by courts; and using patients’ progress to justify denials.

The reporters crowdsourced thousands of tips; obtained explosive internal company documents; reviewed thousands of pages of lawsuit filings to identify the doctors doling out denials; and included shattering and intimate stories of patients for whom care was prematurely cut off, leading to devastating consequences.

In September 2024, the Biden administration announced that it had finalized new regulations to strengthen protections for mental health care coverage and hold insurance companies accountable for unlawfully denying it. In December 2024, following several of ProPublica’s stories, U.S. Sens. Chris Murphy, Tina Smith and Ben Ray Luján reintroduced the Parity Enforcement Act to better hold insurance companies accountable by providing the U.S. Department of Labor the authority to impose civil monetary penalties for violations of the mental health parity law. The following month, the Labor Department found widespread noncompliance and violations of federal law in how health plans and insurers cover mental health care, findings that mirrored ProPublica’s investigation. The department also began investigating the oversight and management of doctors hired by insurers who repeatedly denied mental health coverage for patients.

Steve Mills, Mara Shalhoup, Charles Ornstein, Ariana Tobin, Zisiga Mukulu, Tony Luong, Alex Bandoni, Agnel Philip, Vanessa Saba, Chris Morran, Cengiz Yar, Isabelle Yan, Lena Groeger, Zayas, Weber, Berg, Ernsthausen, Tan, Goldstein, Palmieri, Sorbara, Wise, Barry, Cooney and Paige Pfleger of WPLN/Nashville Public Radio contributed to the series. Some of the pieces were published in collaboration with NPR.

“People who need mental health care often cannot get it. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, insured or uninsured, the lack of access is widely felt,” said Ornstein, ProPublica’s managing editor for local. “So many people on our staff wanted to be a part of this project. Through immersive storytelling and investigative digging, they adeptly documented the causes of the crisis, those responsible and the regulators who have stood by and done little to fix it.”

ProPublica received Pulitzers for public service in 2024, national reporting in 2020, feature writing in 2019, public service in 2017, explanatory reporting in 2016, national reporting in 2011 and investigative reporting in 2010. Local Reporting Network partner Anchorage Daily News won the Pulitzer for public service in 2020.

by Peter Elkind

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

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.”

Last month, the EIA released its signature report: the Annual Energy Outlook for the United States. Largely based on data gathered during the administration of Joe Biden, the report projected rapid growth in alternative energy and declines in American reliance on coal, oil and natural gas. Agency officials feared that the findings would rankle the “Drill, Baby, Drill” proponents in the Trump administration, according to multiple EIA sources. So instead of promoting the report’s publication with an hourlong webcast and PowerPoint presentation spotlighting key findings, as it has in recent years, the agency released it without any of that. And at a late stage, the EIA deleted the analytical narrative — then 53 pages in draft form — that is typically the centerpiece of the report. Instead the agency posted links to hundreds of data-filled tables and charts and a seven-page explanation of its methods.

That didn’t stop the Energy Department from pillorying the findings. In a press release on the same day the report was published, a department spokesperson attacked the EIA’s report for featuring “the disastrous path for American energy production under the Biden administration” and failing to reflect Trump-initiated policy changes aimed at “ensuring America’s future is marked by energy growth and abundance — not scarcity.”

Now the EIA has privately informed staff that it is scrapping publication of its closely followed International Energy Outlook for 2025. The previous edition of the international outlook, released every two years, contained 70 pages detailing global trends. The paradox: That will leave the field open to the equivalent publication from the Paris-based International Energy Agency, which conservatives accuse of bending its forecasts to promote climate-change goals. (Unlike the U.S. agency, whose projections take into account only formally adopted policies, the international one includes some policies that haven’t been adopted and are considered “aspirational.”)

In an April 16 internal email announcing the cancellation of the international report, which has not previously been reported, Angelina LaRose, assistant administrator in the EIA’s office of energy analysis, blamed the decision on the departure of so many staff experts. More than 100 of the EIA’s 350 staff have left as a result of firings or resignations, in the wake of “Fork in the Road” buyout offers from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “At this point, you can assume we will not be releasing the IEO this year,” she wrote. “This was a difficult decision based on the loss of key resources.”

In the same memo, LaRose ordered an “‘all hands-on-deck’ type of effort,” before even more EIA analysts departed, to “try to preserve as much institutional knowledge as possible” about the models and procedures used to formulate the international report.

Failing to publish that report is viewed as consequential. Amy Myers Jaffe, a prominent energy consultant and research professor at New York University, called the EIA’s reports and analysis essential. “These are global markets,” she said. “The only way to figure out which policies work or don’t is to have accurate EIA data. Everybody benefits from that analysis, whether you’re in the private sector or the public sector.”

The EIA was established nearly a half-century ago, amid the energy crises of the 1970s, to tackle what had become an urgent need: to collect and report objective data on energy production and consumption. Its regular stream of postings now track oil and gasoline prices, electricity rates, natural gas and crude oil exports, automobile fuel consumption, wind and solar energy generation, coal production and nuclear plant outputs.

Its U.S. Annual Energy Outlook projects long-term trends, based on multiple scenarios, and customarily provides detailed analysis discussing key takeaways from reams of data. For 2025, its baseline “reference case” projected how markets would operate through 2050 under laws and regulations in place as of December 2024, prior to the Trump administration’s efforts to promote fossil fuels. In addition to eight “side cases” based on variations in economic growth, energy pricing and supply, the EIA also modeled two “alternative policy” scenarios. These projected impacts from the elimination of Biden-era laws and regulations reducing carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants and boosting adoption of electric vehicles.

According to the contents pages from the draft, which ProPublica obtained, the deleted narrative highlighted projections in the reference case showing that increased electricity demand would be met through 2050 “mainly by generation from renewable sources”; that “coal generation falls to close to zero”; and that there would be “declines” in domestic consumption of oil and natural gas.

The decision to jettison the report’s traditional explanatory narrative was announced to EIA staff in a March 10 internal email, after the document was largely complete following months of work. “After conferring with the [EIA] front office, we are shifting gears on the material that will be released with this year’s AEO,” assistant administrator LaRose wrote. “We will not be releasing the narrative as currently written and will not be hosting a release event.”

The omission of the analytical section left readers to sort through the data for themselves. Joseph DeCarolis, who served as EIA administrator under Biden and is now an engineering professor at North Carolina State, called the annual outlook’s narrative “extremely important. It’s important to be able to look at the results, interpret them, and explain to your audience what you think the insights are.”

EIA employees said they believe the changes were made out of fear that spotlighting unwelcome findings and projections would make the agency a Trump target. “There was a concern that any narrative we put out would be seen as ideological,” said Emily Schaal, an EIA statistician who worked on the U.S. report. Another EIA employee commented: “Fewer people were going to get mad if we just threw the numbers out.”

Asked about the decision, EIA spokesperson Chris Higginbotham said the agency’s leadership jettisoned the analysis because it “decided it was most important to prioritize getting our AEO results to the public as soon as we could rather than waiting longer to complete a written market analysis.” He added, “We do not make decisions about our data or our analyses with the goal of influencing outcomes or avoiding pushback.”

With regard to EIA’s international report, Higginbotham said, “We remain committed to maintaining our long-term energy modeling capabilities.” He asserted that the staff reductions will not compromise the agency’s work. “We are committed to meeting EIA’s quality standards,” he said, “and we will not publish any data or analysis that doesn’t meet those standards.”

Meanwhile, the EIA has canceled or delayed other data reports and projects. Those moves, combined with the turmoil and departures, have devastated morale, according to current and former EIA employees.

Schaal was among those grappling with the tumult. After completing a doctorate in math, Schaal, 28, joined the EIA as a statistician in June 2024, working remotely from Michigan, and expected to remain at the agency for years. Instead, she was one of about 30 probationary employees who were abruptly terminated on Feb. 13, just weeks into the new administration. A lawsuit challenging firings at six agencies, filed by a union that represents government workers, prompted a federal judge to order their reinstatement, and Schaal returned to the EIA in mid-March.

“Everyone at EIA had been through a month of torture,” she told ProPublica. Employees were dealing with chaos, uncertainty and fears of termination. In early April, Schaal accepted a new deferred resignation offer, with plans to depart on April 19.

On April 11, hours before a midnight deadline for the resignation program, EIA’s acting administrator presided over an all-hands meeting with a top deputy, where he read a prepared statement urging employees to take the offer. Then the two managers gave assurance they had done “a great job” defending the agency in a meeting with DOGE officials, who were certain to treat them all “appropriately,” according to four people who attended the all-hands meeting.

Schaal was furious. After the session ended, she pounded out an angry email to the two bosses and then shared it with everyone who still remained at EIA. “DOGE doesn’t care what we do and will treat us the same as all other agencies: with contempt,” she wrote. “Shame on you for falling in line and giving up without any perceptible effort to fight. Shame on you for keeping those you purport to lead in the dark. Shame on you for betraying the mission set to us by Congress and selling out the American people.”

On the following Monday, Schaal was summoned to a virtual meeting with her supervisor, where she was presented with a formal letter of reprimand for her “unprofessional and disrespectful email,” as well as a second letter notifying her that she was being placed on administrative leave, a week ahead of her planned departure. The episode made her something of a hero among colleagues who remained behind, who have taken to sharing their frustrations with one another on private Signal groups. (EIA’s spokesperson declined to comment on the episode. Neither DOGE nor the White House replied to requests for comment for this article.)

The EIA, whose director is a presidential appointee, typically chosen from among apolitical academic or industry figures, is poised to get new leadership. Trump’s nominee is Tampa energy consultant Tristan Abbey, a self-described “think-tanker” at conservative groups who has called U.S. dominance in natural gas exports a “generational opportunity.” Abbey, 39, served as an energy staffer on the National Security Council in the first Trump administration. His financial disclosure reports $103,083 in “senior fellow fees” since 2024 from the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation and $435,833 in income from his consulting business, whose clients included Thiel Capital. (Abbey worked for Trump-friendly billionaire Peter Thiel’s investment firms before going into government.) Abbey’s consulting firm also has an eclectic side business focused on publishing books written by or about explorers and historical figures in philosophy and math.

Abbey enjoyed a friendly confirmation hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee. He testified that he would leave his “policy role” behind and affirmed his commitment to the EIA providing “nonpartisan facts.”

Abbey praised the EIA as “the world’s premier energy data agency” but also said it is “in urgent need of revitalization.” He presented an ambitious must-do list seemingly at odds with the current administration’s wholesale cuts. The EIA, Abbey declared, “must clear the decks of unfinished projects,” “recruit and retain the best talent” and “develop the most powerful analytical capabilities.” Among his top priorities, Abbey testified: “the expansion of global energy data collection and analysis.”

Doris Burke contributed research.

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.

Hansen, 57, had taken out the loan in 2021 after her mortgage company threatened to foreclose on her modest three-bedroom house outside Morristown, a small city in East Tennessee. Hansen made enough money to support herself, but after taking in her four grandchildren, she struggled to cover the costs of extra food and school supplies, and she stopped paying her mortgage. That’s when she turned to Advance.

“I was providing for all of them,” Hansen said. “Financially, it was rough.”

Like most borrowers, Hansen could not afford an attorney to handle the suit, but she hoped to work out a payment plan with Advance. When she arrived at the Hamblen County courthouse in Morristown in May 2023, she was directed to a line of half a dozen people waiting to meet with an attorney representing the company.

Across Tennessee, Advance has sued over 110,000 people since 2015, significantly more than any other payday lender, making it one of the largest plaintiffs of any Tennessee-based company collecting debt. In Hansen’s Appalachian county of 66,000, where nearly half the households make less than $50,000, the company has filed one case per every 32 residents over that time, the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica found.

Advance began filing thousands of lawsuits soon after Tennessee lawmakers approved the Flex Loan, a product pioneered by Advance in Tennessee. The loan’s $4,000 cap is nine times higher than the limit for most payday loans, and the company charges the equivalent of a 279.5% annual interest rate. Before Flex Loans became legal in 2015, payday lenders could only lend $425, and the borrower could never be required to pay back more than $500. Since then, those protections have been eliminated and thousands of borrowers have been defaulting.

Flex Loans only stop growing when they’re completely paid off, when a flex lender declares the loan is in default or when it sues the borrower. If the loans do end up in court, the law allows lenders to recoup attorneys fees — which can’t be done with payday loans — a practice that can add up to a third of the loan amount. Court judgments against customers are often thousands of dollars, with some exceeding $10,000, records show. About 40% of all cases end up with a wage garnishment, court records show.

The consequences of Flex Loans were predicted when the Tennessee legislature legalized them 10 years ago, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wanted to regulate products like Flex Loans when Congress created the agency in 2011. The Trump administration’s efforts to dismantle the CFPB are currently being reviewed by the courts.

Advance has argued that the new product would help consumers by offering them loans that are technically cheaper than a payday loan. It downplayed concerns from consumer advocates that these high-interest loans targeted and trapped low-income borrowers in debt they could never pay off. The company’s leaders made their case just as federal regulators planned to crack down on other Tennessee lenders for making different high-interest loans to people they knew could not pay them back.

After just a few years, evidence started mounting that the loans were exacting a high toll on low-income borrowers while generating huge profits for lenders. Since then, the Flex Loan has buried tens of thousands of Tennesseans such as Hansen in a deep financial hole.

Gabe Kravitz, a consumer finance researcher at The Pew Charitable Trusts, said loans above $1,000 paired with triple-digit interest rates are hard to pay off.

“It gets very expensive very quickly,” he said.

Only a few other states have approved products similar to the Flex Loan but, unlike Tennessee, when other states saw problems with the loans, they acted to rein them in.

Virginia allowed banks to make line-of-credit loans but had never seen the need to cap interest rates as banks competed for customers. But soon after Advance showed up, regulators noticed the company filing thousands of lawsuits. The state attorney general’s office investigated the company for deceptive practices in 2020, ultimately labeling the company as “predatory” and helping to pass legislation to shut down Flex Loan-like products in the state. Advance declined to answer a question about the Virginia attorney general’s investigation. California and North Dakota also passed bills capping interest rates on open-ended lines of credit after Advance and other companies began to operate in those states.

The Lookout and ProPublica sent Advance Financial detailed questions about its operations, including each of the cases cited in the article.

Cullen Earnest, the senior vice president of public policy at Advance Financial, declined to answer specific questions and said he could not discuss individual cases due to privacy concerns. Earnest said in an email that the company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. He added that the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions has received just 91 complaints on flexible credit lenders since 2020, representing less than 0.001% of all new flex loan agreements, and that this data reflects the satisfaction of the vast majority of Advance’s customers.

Company records show Hansen made her twice-a-month payments on time, paying over $6,600 in 10 months. The required minimum monthly payments are supposed to act like a safety net, ensuring borrowers pay enough to cover the interest, fees and 3% of the principal.

But many times after Hansen made a payment, the company allowed her to immediately borrow the principal back, which she often did, extending the time it would take to pay off the loan. After almost a year of payments, she still owed more than $3,000.

One Borrower Owed Over $8,000 in Interest and Court Fees Sources: Rosita Hansen’s loan billing statements and court records. (Lucas Waldron/ProPublica)

Hansen said she knew the loan was costly — every loan statement warns, “This is an expensive form of credit. Only borrow what you can afford to pay back” — but she didn’t realize how hard it would be to keep up with the interest and fees.

The loan from Advance only made Hansen’s financial situation worse. As the payments became too much to handle, she lost the house. But the Flex Loan continued to grow, almost doubling in size by the time she received a court summons a year later.

Who Is Advance?

Michael and Tina Hodges started their payday lending business in the 1990s with a few stores in Nashville.

The company, then called Advance Pay Day, steadily expanded, making payday loans and offering products like bus passes, check cashing and money transfers. In 2009, the Hodges told a local news outlet that they wanted to shed the image of a “simple payday advance company,” so the company took on a new name, Advance Financial.

By 2010, Advance had generated a modest $15 million in revenue from about two dozen stores, according to statements it made in news reports at the time.

Not long after, the growing business collided with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal regulator Congress created after the banking crisis. The CFPB had started to take aim at high-interest payday lenders, releasing a 2013 report on the dangers of the loans as debt traps. A subsequent agency report found that payday lenders, particularly in Tennessee, relied heavily on offering loans to those who couldn’t afford them. Advance declined to respond to a question about the CFPB report.

Advance Financial lobbied Tennessee lawmakers to approve bigger loans that accumulate higher fees, saying the new offering would be “a little bit more expensive” but arguing it would be good for consumers. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica)

Looking for an alternative product that wouldn’t fall under the CFPB’s looming regulations, Advance turned to Tennessee lawmakers, who have power over statewide interest rates. The company hired Earnest, the former top aide for the Tennessee Department of Financial Institutions, which regulates payday lenders. It also opened up a political action committee and began to push lawmakers to allow it to create the Flex Loan.

In a hearing discussing the Flex Loan legislation before its passage, Earnest told a Tennessee Senate committee the new loan was like a line of credit you could get at a bank, acknowledging it would be “a little bit more expensive.”

But the proposal added significant potential costs. To allow lenders to circumvent the state’s interest rate cap, the legislature simply called the interest something else: a “customary fee.” The law would permit flex lenders to charge 24% interest plus a daily fee until the loan is paid off. The fee is calculated by multiplying the loan amount by 0.7%. Over 365 days the fee adds 255.5% to the cost of the loan. Advance’s own documentation tells borrowers that although the state and Advance call it a fee, the federal government sees it for what it is, an interest rate.

The bill passed the state Senate without opposition. In the House, only Democratic state Rep. Mike Stewart spoke against the bill, which passed overwhelmingly and was later signed by Republican Gov. Bill Haslam.

Stewart pointed out the new law allowed companies to recoup attorneys fees in court, something payday lenders had not been allowed to do, and a practice he knew as a lawyer would likely increase the number of lawsuits.

“The legislation was structured to maximize the amount of money they could extract from these debtors,” Stewart, who has since left the legislature, said in an interview.

After legalization of the Flex Loan, Advance Financial’s business boomed. The company expanded to all corners of Tennessee, growing to 105 locations by the end of the 2010s.

As a private company, Advance is not required to release financial information. But Advance and the Hodges were vocal about their success, at least at first. The company self-reported to the Nashville Business Journal in 2019 that it made $392 million, quintupling its revenue from the year before it started offering the Flex Loan, and making more than 25 times as much as it had at the start of the decade. Advance’s revenue no longer appeared on any of the business journals’ lists after 2019.

Those numbers parallel the growth of the flex loan industry in Tennessee. By 2019, all flex lenders across the state had generated about $730 million in operating income, a number that has continued to grow, according to state records. In 2022, the latest available year of data, flex lenders earned $880 million in operating income.

The company is one of the top campaign donors to Tennessee politicians, having spent roughly $2.5 million since 2014. Advance has also spent over $3 million lobbying state lawmakers over the past decade.

The Hodges have also made roughly $10 million in political donations to federal candidates since 2014, including over $3 million to support President Donald Trump’s campaigns. In a 2019 recording obtained by The Washington Post, Hodges told a payday lending industry group his political donations granted him better access to Trump. Hodges told the Post he was an enthusiastic supporter of Trump and never used his status to ask the Trump administration for help.

A Trump-appointed CFPB director rescinded most of the payday lending regulations in 2020.

The new Trump administration has tried to gut the CFPB, but an appeals court on April 28 upheld a lower court ruling preventing the acting CFPB director from firing about 90% of the department’s employees.

Today, Advance’s only product is the Flex Loan.

A Wave of Lawsuits

Before the Flex Loan, court records show that payday lenders like Advance rarely took borrowers to court. The low $500 cap on loan amounts and the prohibition on collecting attorneys fees often made suing people unprofitable.

The Flex Loan law changed all that, unleashing a wave of lawsuits.

Across the 59 counties where electronic court records are available — home to over four-fifths of the state’s roughly 7 million people — Advance has brought one lawsuit for every 50 residents since 2015, according to a data analysis by the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica.

For Tonya Davis, a single mother who works at a local hospital, Advance waited six years to sue. Tennessee’s debt collection law allows lenders to file a suit within six years and, if the company wins a judgment in court, to pursue the debt for another decade.

Davis lives in Davidson County, where Advance operates more stores than in any other county in Tennessee. Advance has filed over 22,000 lawsuits in Davidson over the decade since it began offering Flex Loans, its highest county total. Its stores in Nashville, which is located in that county, are generally in neighborhoods where households have lower incomes.

Davis said Advance contacted her in 2018, claiming she owed money on a Flex Loan taken out the previous year. Davis said she never borrowed the money and was the victim of identity theft, a claim the company told her it would look into after she told Advance in a phone call that the Social Security number on the account wasn’t hers.

The company never reached back out to her, she said, and for years, she heard nothing from Advance, but in 2024, she received a summons declaring it was suing her for almost $4,800.

Tonya Davis says she never borrowed money from Advance and was a victim of identity theft. The company told her it would look into the matter and then, almost six years later, sued her for $4,785. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica)

At the time Davis was caring for her dying mother and missed her court hearing. Because she didn’t appear, Advance won a default judgment against her for the full amount.

Davis could not afford an attorney, so she filed an appeal on her own, but she never got a chance to challenge the judgment. Soon after the hearing began, attorneys for Advance noted that Davis had filed her appeal one day past the filing deadline and the judge denied her appeal.

The company’s default judgment means Davis is required to pay Advance $175 a month.

“I’m not a lawyer,” Davis said in an interview. “I’m trying to do the best I can with what I have. I don’t know anything about this, or I would have paid, but they didn’t even give me the opportunity to present my information.”

Challenging Advance in court can be daunting. When Advance goes to court for a Flex Loan, it wins a majority of the time, in part because borrowers often fail to show up and in part because the company has more legal resources. The company has won over $200 million in judgments since the start of 2015.

Mandy Spears, the deputy director of the Tennessee-based think tank The Sycamore Institute, said in court that lenders have all the advantages because they have lawyers with vast experience in the system.

“It’s just complicated for the average person versus a more sophisticated business or law firm,” she said. “It’s really a gap in knowledge and expertise.”

Many defendants don’t realize that when they fail to appear in court, the company doesn’t have to provide detailed documents proving what a borrower owes.

Tessa Shearon, a 27-year-old mother in McMinnville, thought she paid off her loan with Advance Financial in 2020. When the company sued her almost three years later, she missed her court hearing because she was eight months pregnant and on bed rest. A judge ruled her in default and Advance won a judgment for $4,700.

Tessa Shearon thought she paid off her loan with Advance in 2020. The company sued her three years later. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica)

Shearon didn’t keep any documentation after paying off her loan, but she said she reached out to Advance’s lawyer to dispute the lawsuit. The company has not sought to garnish her wages. But she remains in limbo: Under the law, the company can choose to file a wage garnishment any time in the next 10 years to recover the judgment amount.

“My only worry is them attempting to collect,” Shearon said. “I don’t have anything.”

Marla Williams, a consumer law attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Middle Tennessee, is one of a handful of lawyers who’ve helped defend borrowers against Advance.

In several cases, Williams has been able to block wage garnishments and reduce the customary fee the company charges.

Marla Williams is a lawyer who has helped defend borrowers against Advance. (Stacy Kranitz for ProPublica)

Williams said that in a 2024 case, she was able to lower the payments from an unaffordable several hundred dollars a month to around $50 per month, which her client could afford. Advance fought the reduction, but a judge ruled in her favor.

In another case, Williams said Advance tried to charge a borrower thousands of dollars in additional fees months after he stopped paying the loan. After a hearing, which most borrowers without lawyers don’t ask for, a judge reduced the fees, calling the added charges “unconscionable and unjust,” court records show.

Williams said the company often uses aggressive tactics in court, something that she’s observed over the past decade.

“This is their business model,” she said.

Advance declined to discuss its business model or legal strategy.

Sometimes Advance has already made money off the borrower before suing them, as in the case of Hansen. Over 10 months, Hansen paid Advance nearly $2,200 more than she borrowed, records show.

She still owed almost $3,000 when she stopped paying Advance. The company waited around three months before declaring her in default, letting her debt grow before it sued her several months later. With the addition of attorneys fees and court-added interest, the company sued her for $6,000.

Hansen, who asked to use her maiden name because she’s no longer married, lost her home in 2022, moving into an apartment, which she said costs more than her mortgage had.

Hansen said she plans to pay Advance by the summer. A February bonus check, which the company garnished 25% of, has helped.

“I understand it’s every person for themselves, and they’re out to make a buck,” Hansen said about Advance. “But you know what, people out there are struggling every single day, and that’s what they take advantage of.”

How We Tracked Advance Financial’s Lawsuits

For this story, the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica used online portals to find civil cases in Tennessee General Sessions Courts for the 59 counties where electronic court records are available. More than four-fifths of the state’s population lives in these counties. Our analysis included cases filed and uploaded to the online portals from 2009 through 2024. We filtered the data for cases brought by payday lenders in Tennessee, using company names, and found that Advance was filing significantly more suits than any other payday lender, according to court records.

Advance Financial often uses a related company called Harpeth Financial Services to file lawsuits against borrowers. Not every case listed the type of loan behind the lawsuit, but a pattern emerged: After Advance started offering Flex Loans in 2015, the number of lawsuits it filed significantly increased.

Of the cases in our data that were filed by Advance, over half had a judgment amount awarded, indicating the company won its lawsuit. About three-quarters of the cases filed had information on whether a wage garnishment was or wasn’t filed against a borrower. Our analysis found that among cases where that information was available, 40% included wage garnishment.

Have you taken out a flex loan and struggled to pay it back? Have you been sued by Advance Financial, Harpeth Financial or another flex loan lender?

Reporters at the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica want to hear from you as they investigate flex loan lenders, who have sued more than 100,000 Tennesseans.

To share your experience, call or text reporter Adam Friedman at 615-249-8509.

Mollie Simon contributed research and Joel Jacobs contributed data reporting.

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.

Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Republican and chair of the Senate’s Committee on Director Nominations, said in a statement that in responding to the fraud scheme, Heredia had “poorly executed” the suspensions of hundreds of behavioral health providers. Heredia had served as the head of AHCCCS without Senate confirmation since early 2023, several years after officials say the fraud likely began during the Republican administration of former Gov. Doug Ducey. In the year before Heredia became director, records show that officials were warned that the fraud was harming patients, but they struggled to respond and failed to alert the public, which Heredia did along with other state leaders in May 2023.

(Earlier this year, a spokesperson for Ducey did not comment on missed opportunities to stop the fraud but said that the former governor went to great lengths to assist in Hobbs’ transition.)

Under Heredia’s leadership, AHCCCS withheld payment to more than 300 businesses as the agency investigated allegations that they were fraudulently billing Medicaid for treatment services. Often, the services had not been provided, and business owners were accused of allowing patients to continue the substance use they had hoped to overcome through treatment.

In a statement, Heredia said she submitted her resignation with a heavy heart and expressed concern that a partisan agenda had resulted in professionals being dragged “through career damaging hearings.” Two years ago, Senate Republicans derailed the nomination of one of Hobbs’ previous picks to lead the health department.

Last September, more than a year after the crackdown began, the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and ProPublica reported that the suspensions had rendered patients homeless. Victims of the scheme, some from other states, were also left without access to the drug and alcohol treatment they were seeking.

Over several years, businesses across much of Arizona, but mostly in Phoenix, reaped huge Medicaid reimbursements by enrolling Native Americans in their programs and billing the state’s American Indian Health Program at exorbitant rates for services, like counseling sessions. (The AIHP is a Medicaid insurance option that, until the fraud was discovered, had no set limit on the amount of money providers could bill for services.)

At a news conference Thursday, Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said there had been more than 100 indictments and 25 convictions so far related to the scheme. She also said she expected more indictments to come.

AHCCCS said over the past two years that officials’ top priority was patient safety, and in May 2023, the agency set up a hotline for victims. It provided brief hotel stays for people displaced from shuttered facilities. However, AHCCCS said last year that it had no record of what happened to a majority of the hotline’s then 11,400 callers, largely because after six months it had stopped tracking outcomes for people who did not stay in a hotel. According to available data, more than 575 people ended up without housing as of last September. AZCIR and ProPublica also found that at least 40 Indigenous residents of sober living homes and treatment facilities in the Phoenix area died as the state fumbled its response.

A handful of the suspended providers, out of hundreds investigated, were allowed to resume billing Medicaid after clearing allegations with the state. But they said the suspensions still pushed them to the brink financially and upended their patients’ care, AZCIR and ProPublica found. As a result, Heredia’s swift and aggressive response to the crisis — which authorities said was needed to root out fraud and save lives — caused concerns that behavioral health care, especially for Native Americans, was increasingly difficult to access.

“Under Katie Hobbs’ leadership, Heredia’s response has been incredibly disturbing, to say the least,” Hoffman said. “We are left with a broken system due to Heredia’s mismanagement, and our vulnerable populations are caught up in this collapse.”

A spokesperson for Senate Republicans declined a request for an interview with Hoffman.

While Hoffman’s statement mostly focused on the fraud scheme that authorities say cost the state $2 billion, he said he also took issue with other matters within AHCCCS involving long-term care.

In addition to Heredia’s resignation, Jennifer Cunico, the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, also stepped down this week. Like Heredia, Cunico was set to appear before lawmakers for a confirmation hearing. Cunico said she was proud of her work at the department but made the difficult decision to withdraw her nomination after it became clear she wouldn’t be confirmed either. Her resignation comes two years after Hobbs’ previous pick to lead the health department withdrew her nomination following a heated confirmation hearing.

Hoffman said Cunico had defended public health officials’ pandemic response during meetings with lawmakers but did not provide details. Hoffman previously sponsored legislation that prohibited state and local agencies from enacting vaccine mandates.

The governor defended Heredia’s response to the fraud crisis and said both Heredia and Cunico had worked on a range of initiatives, including improving access to maternal health care.

“Carmen Heredia helped root out a multi-billion dollar wave of Medicaid fraud and the related humanitarian fallout which the previous administration ignored,” Hobbs said in a statement. “Her work to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in our healthcare system is a model for the nation, and she always ensured people who needed help continued to get it.”

She added, “The Senate’s unprecedented politicization of the director confirmation process has ended the directorship of two healthcare professionals who have made our state government run more efficiently and more effectively.”

Christopher Lomahquahu, an investigative reporter and Roy W. Howard fellow for AZCIR, contributed reporting.

by Asia Fields, Ashley Clarke, Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards

Since President Donald Trump took office, his administration laid off nearly half of the Department of Education division that handles civil rights investigations and shifted its focus. The administration halted work on thousands of pending discrimination cases while ordering investigations aligned with its priorities.

Some people have spoken out about their cases being in limbo or about not receiving updates. We know there are thousands of other people who are affected. We need your help to see the full picture of how the dismantling of the Office for Civil Rights is affecting students, parents, school employees and their wider communities.

If you submitted a complaint or had a case closed this year, or if you have a currently pending case, we want to hear about your experience. We’re also interested in connecting to people with other insights about the Department of Education.

If you work or worked for the Department of Education, please do not fill out the form. Instead, use Signal to contact reporter Jennifer Smith Richards at jsmithrichards.93 or reporter Jodi Cohen at jodireporter.88.

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As journalists, our role is to write about issues. We cannot provide legal advice or other support. However, there are resources available. We know these cases can stem from painful experiences, and mental health support is available if you need it:

• The National Sexual Assault Hotline is available online or by calling 800-656-4673.
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by Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen

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In California, the federal government was deep into an investigation of alleged racial discrimination at a school district where, a parent said, students called a Black peer racial slurs and played whipping sounds from their cellphones during a lesson about slavery. Then the U.S. Department of Education in March suddenly closed the California regional outpost of its Office for Civil Rights and fired all its employees there. That investigation and others went silent.

In South Dakota, the OCR abruptly terminated its work with a school district that had agreed to take steps to end discrimination against its Native American students. The same office that helped craft the agreement to treat indigenous students equally made a stunning about-face and decided in March that helping Native American students would discriminate against white students.

During its first 100 days, as the Trump administration has dismantled the Education Department, one of its biggest targets has been the civil rights arm. Now, Education Secretary Linda McMahon is “reorienting” what’s left of it.

Part of that shift has been ordering investigations related to the administration’s priorities, such as ending the participation of transgender girls and women in girls’ and women’s sports. After hearing that a transgender woman from Wagner College in New York competed in a women’s fencing tournament at the University of Maryland last month, the head of the OCR launched a special investigation into both schools and threatened their access to federal funding.

Through internal memos and case data, interviews with more than a dozen current agency attorneys, and public records requests to school districts and other targets of investigations across the country, ProPublica has documented how the Trump administration has radically reshaped the OCR.

Only 57 investigations that found a civil rights violation and led to change at a school or college were completed in March, ProPublica has learned. Only 51 were resolved by finding violations in April. The Biden administration completed as many as 200 investigations a month.

Leadership under President Donald Trump also has made it easier for the OCR to drop discrimination complaints quickly. In March, 91% of cases closed by the office were dismissed without an investigation, and 89% were dismissed outright in April, according to internal case data obtained by ProPublica. Typically, 70% of cases are dismissed because they don’t meet criteria to warrant an investigation.

With more than half of the Education Department’s civil rights offices closed and the division reduced to a fraction of its former staff, families’ pleas for updates and action have gone unheard. One OCR attorney, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, told ProPublica that their caseload went from 60 to 380 as they absorbed cases previously handled by employees who worked in offices that had been closed. Some remaining employees have not been able to access documents, voicemail and email of fired employees.

As with civil rights divisions in other federal agencies that the Trump administration has fundamentally altered, the OCR has worked for decades to uphold constitutional rights against discrimination based on disability, race and gender.

“OCR is the most useless it’s ever been, and it’s the most dangerous it’s ever been. And by useless, I mean unavailable. Unable to do the work,” said Michael Pillera, who until recently was an OCR attorney in Washington, D.C. He is now with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Investigating cases that allege racism, discrimination based on sexual orientation or mistreatment of students with disabilities now requires permission from Trump appointees, according to a memo from OCR leadership. As a result, thousands of discrimination investigations are idled, even ones that were nearing a resolution when Trump took office again.

“I thought we were somewhere, and now we are back to square one because they are closed,” said K.D., the mother of the Black California student who said her daughter has been called racial epithets by her classmates. She emailed the agency more than a month ago to try to get an update on the investigation, but said the agency has not responded. ProPublica is identifying her by initials to protect her child’s privacy. “I never would have imagined that something so essential would go away,” she said.

Education Department spokespeople did not respond to questions and requests for comment sent over several weeks about changes in the civil rights division.

The OCR attorney who said they are working through 380 cases said the job is now “impossible.”

“The people who remain are doing all they can. We’re doing all we can. But it isn’t enough, and it keeps us up at night,” they said.

Another OCR attorney who, like others, asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said the administration’s new vision for civil rights enforcement has harmed families.

“We were sort of the last bit of hope for them,” he said, “and now they’re calling and emailing and saying, ‘Hey, I thought you all were going to help me.’”

Protesters rally outside of the headquarters of the Department of Education in Washington in March. More than half of the department’s Office of Civil Rights outposts have been closed, and more than half of its employees have been laid off since the new administration took over. (Jason Andrew for ProPublica) A Shadow Division

The arduous, grinding work undertaken by OCR attorneys is starkly different from the high-speed investigations that the Education Department announces in press releases every few days.

The OCR, historically one of the government’s largest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has been known for being a neutral fact-finder. Its investigators followed a process to determine whether complaints from the public met legal criteria for a civil rights claim, then carried out investigations methodically.

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The vast majority of investigations were based on discrimination complaints from students and families, and a large share of those were related to disability discrimination. The inquiries typically took months and, in complex cases, years. The lengthy investigations sometimes were a source of criticism. The agency didn’t share details of the investigations until they were completed, and the agreements often involved federal oversight going forward.

Investigations being publicized now have largely bypassed the agency’s civil rights attorneys, according to Education Department employees. McMahon and OCR head Craig Trainor created what amounts to a shadow division.

The Trump administration has ordered more than a dozen investigations in the past three months on its own, not initiated by an outside complainant. These “directed investigations” are typically rare; there were none during President Joseph Biden’s administration.

The investigations have targeted schools with transgender athletes, gender-neutral bathrooms and initiatives that the administration views as discriminatory to white students. OCR attorneys told ProPublica they’ve been given prewritten letters, which they’ve reluctantly signed, to send to targets of these investigations. Some letters describe transgender girls as “biological males,” which is ideologically pointed language that OCR attorneys say they’ve never used before.

“They’re blowing through past precedents, past practices, best practices,” said Catherine Lhamon, who led OCR under former Presidents Barack Obama and Biden and departed the office in January. “And they’re not even attempting to appear like neutral arbiters of the law.”

In a first, McMahon and Trainor created ways to divert complaints and investigations away from the OCR’s legal experts entirely. The administration made an “End DEI” portal that bypasses the traditional online complaint system and seeks only grievances about diversity, equity and inclusion in schools. Unlike the regular complaint system, the diversity portal submissions are not routed to OCR staff.

“We have no idea where that portal goes, who it goes to, how they review the cases. No idea,” said the attorney who said he struggles with being unable to help families. “That avoids us interfering with the games they’re trying to play, if they silo off the real civil rights lawyers.”

McMahon then announced a “Title IX Special Investigations Team” last month to work with the Department of Justice and appointed Trainor to it. It launches its own investigations into schools that include transgender girls in athletics.

In an internal memo to the new team that was obtained by ProPublica, Trainor defined the special team’s purpose: “To effectively and efficiently address the increasing volume of Title IX single-sex sports/spaces cases, expedite those investigations and resolutions, and collaborate seamlessly with DOJ to conclude investigations that go to DOJ for enforcement.”

There’s no indication that more complaints related to transgender students are coming from the public, according to internal case data. Last month, in what appears to be the first case assigned to the Title IX team, the group notified the University of Maryland and Wagner College that it would investigate each school. The investigation began after Fox News and other media reported about a fencing tournament at the University of Maryland in which a transgender player from Wagner competed. Trainor signed the notification letters himself, a departure from Lhamon’s practice.

A Wagner College spokesperson declined to comment. A University of Maryland spokesperson declined to comment about the investigation but said the tournament, while on the university’s campus, was run by USA Fencing.

The public used to be able to see what the OCR was investigating. But an online database that is supposed to list all investigations underway hasn’t been updated since Trump took office.

At that time, about 12,000 pending investigations were listed. Among them were two related to a family’s complaints that their California school district discriminated against students with disabilities, including by barricading them inside what it called a “reset” room. But then the OCR closed its California office and fired its employees.

“All work came to a halt. They stopped responding. Nothing was being done to stop the practice and protect kids,” Genevieve Goldstone, the parent of the Del Mar Union School District student who filed the disability discrimination complaint, said in an interview. “My federal complaints were meant to protect more kids and stop the abuses in the district.”

The district said it could not comment on the pending investigation but said it participated in more than a dozen interviews with an OCR attorney. It also said it conducted its own review of the allegations and determined that they were unsubstantiated.

OCR attorneys say they have been repeatedly blindsided by public announcements about policy changes and investigations. To find out what Trainor and McMahon have launched on their behalf, they check the Education Department’s website daily for press releases.

Those statements sometimes quote Trainor preemptively saying a school “appears to violate” civil rights law. The attorneys worry they will have no choice, despite what their investigations uncover, but to find against schools that have already been excoriated by the department publicly.

For example, in a press release announcing an investigation into a transgender athlete participating in girls’ track and field in Portland Public Schools in Oregon, Trainor said, “We will not allow the Portland Public Schools District or any other educational entity that receives federal funds to trample on the antidiscrimination protections that women and girls are guaranteed under law.”

A third current OCR attorney, who asked not to be named for fear of losing her job, said the administration is misinterpreting civil rights law. “It’s subverting our office, or weaponizing it in these ways, without following our process,” she said.

Conservative groups with complaints about diversity or transgender students have been able to file complaints directly with Trainor and get quick results — another norm-breaking way to operate outside of the OCR’s protocol.

America First Legal, a group founded by Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller that considers itself the “answer to the ACLU,” emailed Trainor a few days after Trump’s “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling” executive order. The order directs schools to stop teaching about or supporting diversity, equity and gender identity.

“AFL respectfully requests that the Department of Education open investigations into the following public-school districts in Northern Virginia for continuing violations of Title IX,” the letter read, listing five districts that have policies welcoming to transgender students.

Senior leadership in Washington opened the cases the following week. America First issued a press release headlined “VICTORY.” The group declined to comment further.

First image: A letter from Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, claims that American educational institutions have discriminated against white and Asian students. Second image: A letter addressed to the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools announces a Title IX investigation into a gender-neutral bathroom. (Obtained and highlighted by ProPublica) Backtracking on Civil Rights

Remaking the OCR isn’t just about increasing caseloads and reordering political priorities. The Trump administration now is taking steps to roll back OCR’s previous civil rights work.

Last month, Trump issued an executive order that directs all federal agencies, including the Education Department, to stop enforcing cases involving policies that disproportionately affect certain groups — for example, when Black students are disciplined more harshly than white students for the same infractions or when students with disabilities are suspended more than any other group even though they represent a small percentage of student enrollment.

Trump’s order requires the agencies to “assess all pending investigations, lawsuits, and consent judgements” that consider disproportionate discipline and “take appropriate action.” Complaints made to the OCR that students were unfairly disciplined could be thrown out; existing enforcement actions or monitoring of schools that had disciplined students disproportionately could be revoked.

The OCR under Trainor did this in Rapid City, South Dakota — even before the executive order. About a year ago, the office had signed an agreement with Rapid City Area Schools after an investigation found that the district’s Native American students were disciplined far more harshly than white ones. They also were kept from enrolling in advanced courses.

The OCR said that when speaking with an investigator, the superintendent of schools at the time said that Native American students in her district had higher truancy rates because they operated on what she termed “Indian Time.” She said, too, that they don’t value education, according to the investigation’s findings.

The former superintendent, Nicole Swigart, denied saying any of that.

“I recognize those comments are horrendous,” Swigart said in an interview with ProPublica. She noted that the OCR investigation was opened in 2010 and that she first spoke to an investigator in 2022. “I’m not lying when I say I didn’t say it. I didn’t say it, and I don’t know where it came from.”

In the agreement with the OCR, the district promised to examine its practices and make things right; the OCR would monitor its progress. The district also brought in a new superintendent.

But last month, the OCR abruptly terminated that agreement, based on its differing interpretation of civil rights law. The OCR’s new view is that equity and diversity efforts discriminate against white students. It was, in the view of agency attorneys, the most severe breach of the OCR’s mission and methods to date. There was no public announcement.

“Native students in Rapid City just lost a layer of protection,” the Lakota People’s Law Project announced on Facebook. “Native students are still being pushed out of classrooms and denied opportunities.”

Darren Thompson, who is Ojibwe, said the OCR’s decision to abandon the agreement was “another cycle of the federal government failing to uphold its promises.”

“And this time, they are partisan, political,” said Thompson, who works for the nonprofit Sacred Defense Fund affiliated with the Lakota group in Rapid City.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the school district said it has completed much of the work — including broader access to educational opportunities and an improved behavior tracking process — and plans to continue it even without federal oversight. But it also said this week that under the OCR’s new directives, “we must shift our approach.” The district did not elaborate on what will change.

It’s unclear whether the OCR has ended agreements with other districts or colleges. Education Department spokespeople did not respond to questions from ProPublica.

Pushing Back

Some subjects of the OCR’s new directives and investigations have capitulated. A school district in Tumwater, Washington, that Trainor targeted for allowing a transgender basketball player from an opposing team to compete responded by voting to support the state athletic association excluding trans players altogether.

But some are pushing back.

Denver Public Schools was the first target of one of Trainor’s “directed investigations” in late January — over the existence of one all-gender, multistall bathroom on one floor of a Denver high school. According to communication obtained by ProPublica through public records requests, the district called out the OCR for “continuing to take a different approach with this case without explanation, a case with no complainant who is awaiting any form of relief or remedy.”

Kristin Bailey, a Denver Public Schools attorney, wrote to an OCR supervisor that the way the investigation is being handled “appears to be retaliatory.”

Since February, at least half a dozen lawsuits have been filed to try to stop the dismantling of the Education Department and its civil rights functions — among them, suits by Democratic state attorneys general and from the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers. A recent suit by the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates on behalf of children and their parents — all of whom have pending complaints alleging discrimination — claims they’re suffering from the OCR’s “abandonment” of its core mission.

The NAACP also sued the department, McMahon and Trainor, citing the “End DEI” portal and seeking a halt to such anti-diversity efforts. And the Victim Rights Law Center, representing students and parents, sued to try to restore what has been cut from the OCR so the agency can fulfill its mandate. It noted that under McMahon and Trainor, “cherry-picked investigations appear to be the only matters the Department is currently pursuing.” Those lawsuits are pending. The government has argued in the NAACP lawsuit that the group lacks standing, and in the other it has not filed a response.

Several OCR attorneys told ProPublica that they hope these groups and school districts continue to push back. In the meantime, they said, they will continue to try to work on behalf of the public to uphold the nation’s civil rights laws.

“I have to keep putting one foot in front of the other, helping the people I can help, and keep my eye on the long game,” said a fourth OCR attorney. “Hopefully we’re still here and can help rebuild in the future.”