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“Economic Civil War”: States Push Laws to Shield Oil and Gas Companies From Accountability

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Across the country, Republican-led state legislatures are passing a slate of laws that effectively shield oil and gas companies from legal claims that they are responsible for the destruction and mounting toll caused by climate change. Fifteen laws have either been passed or are currently being debated in 11 states. Together, they threaten to remove long-standing tools for the public to hold corporations accountable. A ProPublica investigation has found that most of these bills are part of a coordinated effort, orchestrated by a constellation of groups that share staff or have funding ties to the prominent conservative activist Leonard Leo , who is credited with placing conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court. These groups have drafted state legislation, planned its dissemination and engaged a well-connected lobbying firm to get them signed into law. The effort is unfolding as courts are weighing more than 30 significant lawsuits by states, counties and municipalities accusin...
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The Federal Government Is Rushing Toward AI. Our Reporting Offers Three Cautionary Tales.

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As a cybersecurity reporter at ProPublica, much of my work over the past two years has focused on how the federal government and its IT contractors, like Microsoft, have navigated major technological transitions. The one now in the news every day is artificial intelligence.  This emerging technology has its grip on everyone: Home users, corporations and the federal government are all rushing to use it. President Donald Trump and his Cabinet say AI will transform the nation, making us more prosperous, efficient and secure — if only we can adopt it fast enough.  But this messaging isn’t new. President Barack Obama’s administration used nearly identical language a decade and a half ago as the U.S. barreled into the technological revolution of cloud computing. I’ve studied how the federal government has handled — and mishandled — this transition over the past two decades, and my reporting offers some cautionary tales and valuable lessons as policymakers encourage the use of AI...
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RFK Jr. May Reverse a Peptide Ban He Calls “Illegal.” Former FDA Officials Say He Mischaracterized Their Work.

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Just under three years ago, the Food and Drug Administration deemed 19 peptide drugs too unsafe to be dispensed by compounding pharmacies, which mix components of approved drugs to create bespoke medication for people who have trouble taking commonly available products. Now, under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the agency is poised to reverse itself. That’s despite few clinical studies supporting the effectiveness or safety of these peptides, which are amino acid chains meant to help regulate functions in the body and have become popular among fitness and longevity enthusiasts. In February, Kennedy said the FDA acted illegally in 2023 when it categorized 19 peptides as too unsafe for compounders, whose final products aren’t tested or approved by the FDA. Kennedy, who described himself as a “big fan” of peptides, has used the therapies himself. “It was illegal because they’re not supposed to do that unless there’s a safety signal,” Kennedy said on “The Joe...
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Why We Went Looking for National Defense Areas Along the U.S. Southern Border

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Our reporting started, like much of our work, in a spreadsheet. As I parsed through federal court data, I noticed something odd: Within months of President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, prosecutors began filing obscure charges related to trespassing on military property — so many, in fact, that more cases were filed in 2025 than in the prior decade. Nearly all of these charges originated from cases along the U.S. southern border, where last spring, the White House designated large swaths of land as national defense areas. Putting them under military authority allowed troops to play an unprecedented role in apprehending undocumented immigrants; federal soldiers are generally barred from enforcing the law on domestic soil. If you were caught in one of these zones, the government could also now prosecute you for breaking federal laws, including one enacted in 1909 to keep spies away from arsenals. In an investigation we published recently, my co-reporters Perla Trevizo, ...
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The Trump EPA Official in Charge of Methane Regulations Helped Write Oil Industry Argument Against Those Rules

The Trump administration official leading an effort to loosen rules on methane pollution was an unnamed author of key industry arguments against those same rules just four years ago when he was an oil and gas lobbyist. Aaron Szabo, an assistant administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency, is listed in PDF metadata as the author of a January 2022 comment letter objecting to proposed controls on methane emissions in the oil and gas industry. The letter was submitted to the EPA by the American Exploration and Production Council, which represents some of the industry’s largest emitters of the planet-warming gas, including ConocoPhillips, Diversified Energy and Hilcorp. Szabo’s name does not appear in the document itself, but it can be found in information embedded by the software used to create the PDF file. Szabo was registered as a lobbyist for one of the AXPC’s lesser-known members, Ovintiv, when he drafted the arguments against the restrictions, which were finalized later in...
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Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations in Shift to Immigration

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In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice began shutting down pending criminal cases at a record pace. The cases included an investigation into a Virginia nursing home with a recent record of patient abuse; probes of fraud involving several New Jersey labor unions, including one opened after a top official of a national union was accused of embezzlement; and an investigation into a cryptocurrency company suspected of cheating investors. In total, the DOJ quietly closed more than 23,000 criminal cases in the first six months of President Donald Trump’s administration, abandoning hundreds of investigations into terrorism, white-collar crime, drugs and other offenses as it shifted resources to pursue immigration cases, according to an analysis by ProPublica. The bulk of these cases, which were closed without prosecution and known as declinations, had been referred to the DOJ by law enforcement agencies under prior administrati...
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