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A Puerto Rico Government Agency Exposed 1 Million Social Security Numbers

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Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica The government agency that collects property taxes in Puerto Rico inadvertently exposed the Social Security numbers of approximately 1 million people, Centro de Periodismo Investigativo and ProPublica learned. It was the latest cybersecurity lapse for the Puerto Rico government, which in the past three years has seen technology breaches interrupt government services, take websites offline and lead to citizens’ personal information being published on the dark web. CPI and ProPublica became aware of the vulnerability related to the Municipal Revenue Collection Center’s interactive property map, known as the Catastro Digital, and notified the agency in mid-June. The online tool provides information, such as size, boundaries, tax assessment, sale price and owner’s name, for every registered property on the island. While a simple search of the map wouldn’t reveal sensitive information, anyone who understands how websites req...
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Top Legal Adviser to Joint Chiefs Is Stepping Down Nearly a Year Before Completing Term

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Brig. Gen. Eric Widmar U.S. Army The senior legal counsel to the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the principal military adviser to President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — is stepping down nearly a year before his term is over, the latest in an exodus of the military’s top leaders and lawyers over the last 18 months.  Brig. Gen. Eric Widmar told ProPublica he did not take his decision to retire lightly and that he did so “for personal reasons.”  “Earlier this year, my wife and I reflected on the demands of this role, which have required me to live apart from my wife for the past two years and created additional challenges for me and my family,” Widmar said in an emailed statement. “After careful consideration, I decided it was time to place my family at the center of my life and focus on our next chapter together.” Widmar’s departure follows those of Gen. Chris “C.D.” Donahue, head of Army forces in Europe and Africa, earlier this mon...
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Have a 401(k)? Help ProPublica Investigate What’s Really Happening to Your Money.

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For some employees, the 401(k) system works great: They have easy access to low-cost funds with high returns. But many participants are stuck in investments with bloated fees and pay for costly advisory services on top — and may never know it because they’ve never scrutinized their plans’ disclosures. (If you’re worried this is you, our questionnaire below explains how you can check.) As we’ve reported , the Trump administration wants employers to include less-regulated “alternative” investments like private equity and cryptocurrency in 401(k) plans. To make that happen, the administration is changing regulations and pulling back on enforcement of the law that protects participants. ProPublica is taking this opportunity to investigate these changes and the broader 401(k) system. To do this reporting, we need detailed insight into what’s happening inside plans: what products financial services companies are pushing and what fees they are charging. Many of these details ar...
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Washington Law Says to Alert the Public When Doctors Are Accused of Misconduct. It Can Take Months.

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Illustration by Shoshana Gordon/ProPublica Experts on laws protecting patient safety give Washington state high marks for the types of information it is willing to disclose about doctors accused of wrongdoing. Like other states, Washington lets patients look up doctors by name online to read any state allegations against them. But decades ago, Washington lawmakers created a separate pathway that doesn’t leave the homework to patients, mandating that regulators issue a press release whenever an investigation results in formal allegations being filed against a doctor. Washington is alone in legally requiring such proactive outreach to the news media, the Federation of State Medical Boards says. Yet an examination of Washington discipline records by KUOW and ProPublica found that regardless of what the law calls for, Washington fails to reliably call the public’s attention to serious misconduct allegations against doctors who have been allowed to keep practicing while...
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Ken Paxton Vowed to Crack Down on “Illegal Voting.” He May Have Violated Texas Election Law.

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Emily Scherer for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Source images: Library of Congress, Texas Tribune, and documents obtained by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. Two weeks before this year’s primary elections, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced the creation of a tip line for the public to report people or groups suspected of voter fraud. “Free and fair elections are a cornerstone of a thriving republic, and with the authority granted to my office by the Legislature, we will stop at nothing to uncover and stop any illegal voting activity,” Paxton said in a February news release announcing the tip line. The announcement linked to guidance from his office about election laws in Texas, which included a requirement to be a U.S. citizen, a prohibition on collecting mail ballots on behalf of others and a warning that “it is illegal to misrepresent your residence on election records or to establish a residence for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an electio...
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The First Major Overhaul of Public Lands Grazing Regulations in a Generation Looks to Cut Out Public Involvement

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Cattle graze in Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in southern Arizona. 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 federal government is rewriting its rules governing ranching on public lands to increase the number of cattle, sheep and other livestock grazing on 155 million acres in the West, an area twice the size of New Mexico. Public lands grazing is overseen by a nearly century-old system that heavily subsidizes some of the wealthiest Americans while doing little to address its harms to the environment, ProPublica and High Country News found last year. Even though rangeland management experts say overgrazing has degraded public lands, the new rules being drafted by the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management — the first overhaul since 1995 — would instead expand the prac...
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Amid Mounting War Casualties, Pete Hegseth “Defunded and Impeded” Efforts to Protect Civilians, Lawmakers Say

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Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives a statement ahead of a NATO Defence Ministers meeting in Brussels in June. Omar Havana/Getty Images ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. Ten Democratic lawmakers told Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a letter Sunday that his gutting of a program focused on protecting civilians is a leadership failure that imperils service members and erodes the military’s moral standing. Led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the joint letter echoed concerns raised by a recent Defense Department inspector general report that described civilian protection efforts as largely “inactive.” Lawmakers also cited reporting by ProPublica and other news outlets in pushing to preserve the framework known as civilian harm mitigation and response, or CHMR. “The Trump administration — potentially in violation of federal law — has defunded and impeded ...
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