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“No One Is Watching”: How Trump Reversed Biden’s Crackdown on Gun Trafficking

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Collage by Alex Bandoni/ProPublica. Source images: Bloomberg/Getty Images, Firearm Transaction Record Form via U.S. Department of Justice and Alec MacGillis/ProPublica. Marianna Mitchem grew up in the Denver suburbs, where she played high school soccer. One day in April 1999, her team faced off against a nearby rival, Columbine High. The next day, two teenagers went on a shooting rampage at Columbine, killing more than a dozen people. The massacre left an imprint on Mitchem. After graduating from Providence College, she joined the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Fearing for my friends and watching what was happening — you don’t forget things like that,” she told me. “I wanted to make a difference.” She started in the ATF’s Denver office as an industry operations investigator, the bureau’s term for inspectors who ensure that firearms dealers are conducting the required background checks on buyers and maintaining sales records. When the bureau foun...
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Alaska’s Deteriorating Schools Could Receive More Than $148 Million for Repairs. It’s a Fraction of What They Need.

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Brian Smith teaches students at the school in Sleetmute, Alaska, in 2024, which has suffered from a leaky roof and structural problems as a result. One lawmaker has labeled the school “the poster child” for what’s wrong with the state’s public school infrastructure. Emily Schwing/KYUK Alaska would more than triple the funding it devotes to school construction and maintenance projects next year under a budget approved this month by the state Legislature. The funding, which awaits Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s signature, follows reporting by KYUK, ProPublica and NPR last year that documented a severe health and safety crisis inside the buildings used daily for public education. The bill would allocate more than $148 million toward construction and maintenance in the 2027 fiscal year, up from $40 million in fiscal 2026, which ends June 30. The new budget line is an effort to help with millions in backlogged major maintenance needs for schools around the state. Years of lacking ...
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The White House Intervened to Get a $620 Million Deal for a Company Tied to Donald Trump Jr.

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President Donald Trump, with son Donald Trump Jr., returns to the White House from Florida in May. Anna Rose Layden/Getty Images When the Pentagon announced a $620 million loan last year to a small North Carolina startup linked to Donald Trump Jr., defense officials and the company tried to tamp down suspicions of cronyism.  The president’s eldest son said through a spokesperson that he wasn’t involved. The Pentagon said Trump Jr. played no role in the record-setting deal. And the startup’s founder told reporters that his company, Vulcan Elements, received no political favoritism. But interviews and Defense Department records reviewed by ProPublica show that the request to loan hundreds of millions of dollars to the firm linked to Trump Jr. was made by Peter Navarro, a White House adviser to President Donald Trump and a friend of Trump Jr.’s. Of the dozens of companies the Pentagon was considering funding at the time, Vulcan’s was the only deal initiated by a to...
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U.S. Lawmakers Demand Reforms to Immigration Officers’ Use of Tear Gas and Pepper Spray

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Federal agents fire tear gas and pepper spray into a crowd of protesters, including children, in Portland, Oregon, on Jan. 31. Courtesy of Kylie Cleveland Three U.S. senators have called for an overhaul of federal agents’ use of tear gas and pepper spray, citing a ProPublica investigation that found at least 79 children were left screaming, coughing or hurt by these chemicals during President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Lawmakers said the findings showed more restrictions are needed to avoid injuring bystanders — including children — with chemical munitions. Such weapons were designed to combat rioters and soldiers, and their compounds are toxic, especially to children, who breathe more rapidly than adults relative to their body weight.  “This reporting makes clear that we need federal legislation to rein in the over-use and misuse of tear gas and chemical agents,” Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, said in a statement. “We cannot allow another...
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She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.

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Emily Waldorf Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica On the morning of Sept. 16, 2024, Emily Waldorf’s preschooler found her curled on the bathroom floor. Waldorf had felt a strange pressure during a shower, like a balloon bulging into her vagina, and was now bleeding. “I can be your pillow, mommy,” her daughter said, nuzzling into her neck.  Waldorf was 17 weeks pregnant. She and her husband, Justin, dropped their daughter off at her grandparents’ and rushed to Washington Regional Hospital in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where Waldorf worked as an acute care physical therapist.  In a dark room, a doctor pointed to an hourglass shape glowing on the ultrasound screen: There was her amniotic sac, funneling into her dilated cervix, and there was their tiny daughter’s foot, dipping out.  “Your body is about to miscarry,” the doctor said.  Three doctors gathered and told the couple that the longer Waldorf’s cervix remained open and her uterus exposed to bacteri...
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