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After Millions in Stolen SNAP Benefits, Trump Administration Moves to Fight Theft

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Debit and credit cards have long used microchips, which protect against skimming. Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture is mandating that all 50 states adopt the technology to prevent SNAP benefit theft. Ramon Dompor The Trump administration this week announced an overhaul of the nation’s food stamp payment system, aimed at modernizing benefit cards to protect families from electronic theft. The move comes a week after ProPublica published an investigation showing how $470 million in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits were stolen from recipients last year alone, in large part because these cards are technologically outdated. ProPublica’s story highlighted victims’ experiences and examined repeated failures by Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to upgrade Electronic Benefits Transfer, or EBT, cards nationally. ProPublica’s reporting was shared around the department, according to two USDA officials. The new proposed rule , officiall...
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Ken Paxton Says He’s Tough on Crime. His Trust Invested $600,000 in a Convicted Fraudster’s Company.

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Photo illustration by Emily Scherer for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Source images: The Texas Tribune, documents obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, and YouTube. Four years after North Texas home builder Scott Sherman completed a federal prison sentence for mortgage fraud, his new construction materials business received a $600,000 cash infusion. The financial boost came from a blind trust set up to prevent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton , from any overlap in their personal investments and their actions as elected officials. But previously unreleased records from the attorney general’s 2023 impeachment investigation show the trust was far from blind and did not shield the Paxtons from its business dealings, including the investment in Sherman’s business. Before long, Wildcatter Sand Services and Grayson County Sand and Gravel, which Sherman built with his father, grew into a vast enterprise with various locations...
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Bird Flu Is Raging on a Mink Farm. It Could Spark a Human Pandemic, Experts Say, but Officials Won’t Act.

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A rescued mink from a Utah fur farm Julie Leopo for ProPublica The strain of bird flu that’s ripped through American barns for the last four years has killed two people who caught it from sick animals. But as far as anyone can tell, humans can’t spread it. The virus has remained a true “bird” flu, tailored to attach to avian cells, not invade human throats and noses, where coughing and sneezing reliably spew droplets.  Under the right conditions, however, that could change. A single mutation could give the bird flu a foothold in people and spark a pandemic that experts fear could be deadlier than COVID-19.  For that to happen, this bird flu would likely need to find an intermediate host — an animal vulnerable to viruses that infect both birds and humans. These animals would be crowded together, each infection raising the odds that a new strain could arise through mutation. Then, for that strain to jump across species, it would have to...
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Nuclear Weapons Waste Made Workers Sick. Despite a Law Meant to Help, the DOE Keeps Fighting Their Claims.

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Lonnie Rouse was diagnosed with a neurological disorder that medical experts attributed to exposure to chemicals during his work cleaning up the Hanford nuclear site in Washington. Margaret Albaugh for ProPublica Lonnie Rouse shuffled into a wood-paneled conference room at the Washington state Capitol in March 2018. It had been nearly a decade since medical experts diagnosed him with a neurological disease they attributed to his exposure to chemicals at work. In the time since, he had acquired a stutter, begun limping and lost several teeth biting into a banana. For nearly 20 years, Rouse had packaged plutonium and monitored radioactive waste at the Hanford Site , a now-decommissioned Department of Energy nuclear weapons production plant in south-central Washington and one of the most contaminated nuclear sites in the country. Tanks full of radioactive sludge exposed him to at least 48 potentially hazardous chemicals . The worksite was so toxic, he said, that the floor onc...
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