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ProPublica Profile picture
ProPublica
@propublica
Pursuing stories with moral force Bluesky: https://t.co/EyqUiH0kn8 Newsletter: https://t.co/mGR9bzZXr1 Donate: https://t.co/kjR1VIlKOd
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Jun 14 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD: The Trump administration said their research did not "enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness."

Thousands of scientists disagreed.

We heard from 150+ researchers impacted by the NIH grant terminations on what is being lost in the cuts. 👇 2/ Their experiences reveal consequences that experts say run counter to scientific logic and common sense.

They spoke of the enormous waste generated by an effort intended to save money: Years of research that may never be published. Blood samples that may never be analyzed. ProPublica heard from more than 70 researchers who said that they were unable to continue their projects due to the terminations. "We are now scrambling to figure out if there are parts we can continue or salvage." - Julia Marcus, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, who was researching whether HIV prevention medicine can be made available over the counter
Jun 12 • 19 tweets • 5 min read
In April, President Trump and Salvadoran President Bukele shook hands in the Oval Office to celebrate a deal to ship gang members to the notorious CECOT prison.

But a new ProPublica investigation found there’s more to the story. 🧵👇 Photo of President Donald Trump and Nayib Bukele, El Salvador’s president, during a meeting in the Oval Office in April 2025. Trump has praised Bukele as “one hell of a president.” Credit: Al Drago/The Washington Post/Getty Images 2/ Bukele has a reputation as a crime fighter. He’s jailed some 80,000 gang members. Crime rates have plunged.

It turns out, though, that he’s protected another set of gangsters: the leaders of the violent MS-13 street gang, U.S. and Salvadoran officials told us.
Jun 3 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
This is Mertarvik, Alaska, population 300. It’s a new town.

Its residents, the vast majority of whom are Yup’ik, began moving in around 2019.

The move was by necessity: The nearby village where many residents previously lived, Newtok, is sinking, its riverbanks eroding. THREAD: An aerial view of Metarvik, Alaska, a small village of several dozen buildings in the middle of a vast snowy expanse. 2/ These residents are climate refugees, a term you may have heard before.

While many stories tend to focus on the conditions that displaced them, @EmilySchwing wanted to know: What is the quality of life for people after they’re forced to move?
propublica.org/article/newtok…
May 12 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD: We’ve reported that Veterans Affairs officials have warned that Trump’s cuts are hurting veterans.

@SecVetAffairs Doug Collins called our story a “false narrative,” but did not say anything was inaccurate.

Here’s what our story revealed and how we engaged with the VA. Thread from VA Secretary Doug Collins’ X account. The posts include the following: “Last Friday, ProPublica sent us a host of questions and allegations regarding @DeptVetAffairs facilities around the country and set an unreasonable deadline of early Monday morning. Why the rush? Apparently, they wanted to publish their story before my Tuesday testimony in front of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. The story itself was a typical liberal-media hit piece that’s all too common nowadays. It seems as if the reporters decided what negative narrative they wanted to push, carefully cherry-p... @SecVetAffairs 2/ First, @SecVetAffairs has pledged to “put veterans first.”

His boss, President Trump, has said, “We love our veterans. We’re going to take good care of them.”

youtube.com/shorts/BMNHEl1…
May 7 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
1/ For ProPublica’s “Life of the Mother” series, winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for public service, we reported on five pregnant women who died after not receiving timely medical care in states with strict abortion bans.

These are their stories 🧵 2/ Amber Thurman went to the hospital with telltale signs of sepsis, yet it took 20 hours for doctors to intervene with a D&C procedure after abortion became a felony in Georgia.
propublica.org/article/georgi…
May 1 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
1/ It’s been almost 27 years since Nike’s co-founder Phil Knight acknowledged the company's products had become synonymous with “slave wages.”

While investigating Nike’s claims about sustainability, we found that workers’ experiences cast doubt on Nike’s commitment to reform. 🧵 2/ Nike says its suppliers pay 1.9X the local minimum wage, excluding overtime, across most of the 1.1M people making its products.

But a payroll sheet for one Cambodian factory reveals few people making that much.
Apr 11 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
THREAD: Under a new law, thousands of prisoners in Louisiana have been cut off from ever getting a chance at parole.

Why?

Because an algorithm said so. 1/ 2/ The algorithm, called TIGER, focuses on immutable factors from a prisoner’s past — work history, age at first arrest, prior drug convictions — to assess risk of reoffending.

Yet it fails to take into account anything a prisoner has done to rehabilitate themselves.
Apr 3 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD: Last year, ProPublica started receiving tips from an unusual kind of source: flight attendants.

They said they'd worked on deportation flights for ICE, and they could tell us what it was really like on board. 1/ Most of the flight attendants hadn't knowingly signed up to help deport people. When they took their jobs, they’d expected to fly VIPs to glamorous locales.

Then the airline started working for ICE, and many or most of their passengers were detainees, people in chains. 2/
Mar 27 • 6 tweets • 4 min read
1/ We wanted to take a moment to quickly introduce you to our HHS reporters. THREAD 🧵 2/ @AnnieWaldman has recently reported on:
• The life-saving work fired HHS workers are leaving behind
• How NCI employees now need approval to write about topics like vaccines and autism

Reach her on Signal at 347-549-0332: propublica.org/people/annie-w…A ProPublica social media graphic with information on reporter Annie Waldman. The federal agencies she covers are the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Her email is annie.waldman@propublica.org and her Signal is 347-549-0332.
Feb 12 • 20 tweets • 9 min read
🧵 THREAD: In the second Trump administration, we’re devoting a significant part of our staff to detailing dramatic changes in the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans.

Here are some of the issues we’re watching — and how you can inform our work. 2/ Why trust us? We take your privacy extremely seriously, and we acknowledge the difficult situations people weigh as they decide whether to reach out.

We have a proven record of handling sensitive information and protecting our sources: propublica.org/article/the-in…
Dec 9, 2024 • 18 tweets • 4 min read
1/ Formaldehyde is a chemical that causes an inescapable cancer risk for everyone in America.

It’s in the air we breathe. And it’s in our homes: our couches, our clothes, even babies’ cribs.

So what can you do to reduce your exposure? THREAD 🧵 2/ First, furniture.

Composite wood is a material that essentially contains a mix of wood fibers glued together. The glues are the issue: They can contain formaldehyde that then gets released into the air over time.
Nov 27, 2024 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
This year, you’ve helped us hold power accountable and produce stories that made an impact, like these: 👇 (1/5) Texas lawmakers proposed new exceptions to the state’s strict abortion bans after the deaths of two women. (2/5)
propub.li/4eBEI53
Oct 26, 2024 • 25 tweets • 7 min read
1/ Business lobbyist Virginia Lamp once said anti-immigration attitudes are “based on a type of selfish nationalism.”

Today she's better known as Ginni Thomas: wife of Clarence Thomas, and an "America-first" election denier.

What’s changed — for her and the US? 🧵 2/ For decades, the business community’s role in politics was to fend off threats to immigrant labor.

Sure, it probably wasn’t more complicated than economic self-interest. But business orgs were always *involved.*

In doing so, they moderated the nation’s immigration debate. Side profile of a young Ginni Thomas, then Virginia Lamp, looking intently into the distance. She has curly, short hair, and her hand is placed on her chin in thought.
President George W. Bush speaks to a group of small business owners at the Chamber of Commerce in 2004. Behind him, a banner reads “Strengthening America’s Economy.”
Oct 9, 2024 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
1/ THREAD: After a large solar farm was proposed, it seemed to many in Knox Co., Ohio that an anti-solar machine took over news & politics overnight.

They were right.

Here’s how fossil fuel interests shaped the conversation, and how a hometown paper’s new owners amplified it 👇 2/ @MountVernonNews had been owned by the same family since 1939, but by 2020, it was barely holding on.

The paper was sold to Metric Media, a news network described by media researchers as “pink slime” — named for filler in processed meat. Side-by-side comparison of before and after the Mount Vernon News was sold to Metric Media. On the left, the front page of the paper in April 2014. Arrows and pullouts note that the paper was printed six days a week, that photos were taken by a local photographer, and that reporter’s bylines were visible. On the right, the front page in September 2024. Arrows and pullouts note that the paper is printed once a week, there are no bylines, a story is based on a press release and contains no original reporting, and the one photo on the page has no credit.
Jun 13, 2024 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
Microsoft has long downplayed its role in the 2020 "SolarWinds" attack -- one of the largest cyberattacks in US history -- but a new ProPublica investigation reveals that the tech giant ignored warnings that could have stemmed the damage... 🧵 Photo of a model of the Microsoft campus at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington. The buildings are all lit from within by bright white lights, but in the center is a plaza comprised of 4 squares lit up in the colors of Microsoft's green, yellow, blue, red logo. (Photo by Greg Kahn, special to ProPublica) 2/ In 2016, while researching an attack on a major tech company, Microsoft engineer Andrew Harris said he discovered a flaw that left millions of users — including federal employees — exposed to hackers.
propublica.org/article/micros…
May 6, 2024 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
"Friends of the Court," ProPublica's investigation into Supreme Court justices' beneficial relationships with billionaire donors, has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service!

Here are the highlights from the reporting 🧵👇 Image 2/ The series began with this story by @JustinElliott @js_kaplan & @Amierjeski that revealed how SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas had, for 20+ years, been treated to undisclosed luxury vacations by real estate titan and GOP megadonor Harlan Crow.
propublica.org/article/claren…
Dec 28, 2023 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
This year, ProPublica documentaries explored how university expansion led to Black land loss, retraced the steps of the Uvalde shooting response, documented the fallout of the Philips breathing machine recall and more... 🧵👇 2/ “Inside the Uvalde Response,” with @TexasTribune & @FRONTLINEPBS, reconstructs one of the most criticized mass shooting responses in history, providing real-time insight into officers’ thoughts & actions.
Nov 4, 2023 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
For more than a decade, the all-white judges of a Louisiana appellate court ignored thousands of petitions filed by prisoners, most of them Black, who claimed they had been wrongly convicted.

Efforts to expose the injustice went unheard. (THREAD)

propublica.org/article/louisi…
Photo of the exterior of the Louisiana 5th Circuit Court of Appeal building. Credit: Kathleen Flynn, special to ProPublica 2/ In Louisiana, all such 'pro se' (that’s Latin for "for oneself") petitions must be reviewed by 3-judge panels.

“It got somewhat cumbersome to have to select 3-judge panels for every writ, because you’d get hundreds of them,” said a longtime law clerk to Judge Edward Dufresne.
Oct 18, 2023 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
How does a legislature block and slow roll lawsuits that accuse it of drawing discriminatory electoral maps?

Simple: By claiming privilege.
🧵👇👇
propub.li/3Q8FnRw
Map showing Texas's current Senate District 10 overlaid on map of previous district outline, showing how the district was transformed dramatically after 2021 redistricting. The district previously represented racially diverse communities near Fort Worth, but it now encompasses portions of sprawling rural counties with mostly white constituents. 2/ GOP lawmakers across the US have been shielding their redistricting work from scrutiny by claiming 2 types of privilege: attorney-client privilege & legislative privilege, which allows members of state legislatures to deliberate in private.
propub.li/3Q8FnRw
Sep 22, 2023 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
NEW: A ProPublica investigation has found that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas secretly participated in Koch network donor events – a breach of judicial norms that one federal judge said “takes my breath away.” 🧵👇 2/ In 2018, Thomas flew to Palm Springs on a private jet and attended a dinner for the network’s donors.

The justice was brought in, former network staffers said, in the hopes that such access would encourage donors to continue giving.
Jun 21, 2023 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito took a luxury fishing trip to Alaska with billionaire Paul Singer, whose hedge fund then had repeated business before SCOTUS over the years that followed.

Alito never disclosed the trip or recused himself from Singer's cases. (THREAD) Photo of three men in fishi... 2/ Singer, a major GOP donor, wasn't just a fellow angler along for the trip with Alito. The investor flew the justice to Alaska in a private jet.

Had Alito chartered the plane himself, it could've cost him over $100K.