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by Renee Dudley ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. The Pentagon issued a “letter of concern” to Microsoft documenting a “breach of trust” over the company’s use of China-based engineers to maintain sensitive government computer systems, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced this week. At the same time, the Defense Department is opening an investigation into whether any of those employees have compromised national security. The actions came in response to a recent ProPublica investigation that exposed Microsoft’s “digital escort” system, in which U.S. personnel with security clearances supervise foreign engineers, including those in China. ProPublica found that the escorts often lack the expertise needed to effectively supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills. The tech giant developed the arrangement as a work-around to a Defense Department requirement that...

by Kyle Hopkins , Anchorage Daily News This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Anchorage Daily News . Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week. Leaders in Alaska and elsewhere have repeatedly promised action in recent years to address the nation’s chronic failure to solve the murder or disappearance of Indigenous people. Federal legislation backed by Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski called for improving data collection and information sharing among law enforcement and tribes. Gov. Mike Dunleavy said again and again and as recently as May 5 that the state government would work with Alaska Natives to address the crisis. “My administration will continue to support law enforcement, victim advocacy groups, Alaska Native Tribes and other entities working together to solve these cases and bring closure to victims’ families,” Dunleavy said in a news release last year. Yet when an Alaska Native group asked state law...

by Tim Golden ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. More than two decades after victims of the 9/11 attacks began trying to hold the government of Saudi Arabia responsible for helping the Qaida terrorists who carried out the plot, a federal judge has ruled that a civil lawsuit against the kingdom can go to trial. The decision on Thursday, by Judge George B. Daniels of the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, represents a crucial victory for survivors of the attacks and relatives of the 2,977 people who were killed. “This is a historic win for the families,” said a spokesperson for the families, Brett Eagleson, whose father was killed in the World Trade Center. “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is going to be held accountable.” A spokesperson for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Fahad Nazer, did not respond to requests for comment on the judge’s ruling. The Saudi kingdom, which ...

by Lauren McGaughy , The Texas Newsroom , and Yilun Cheng , Houston Chronicle ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom , the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Tribune as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas. The devastating flooding in Houston caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017 killed dozens of people, inundated hundreds of thousands of homes and left the community desperate for a solution. Since then, local flood experts have extensively studied the possibility of a multibillion-dollar tunnel system across Harris County, where Houston is located. Studies have focused on the construction of pipelines, 30 to 40 feet in diameter, that could ferry massive amounts of water out to the Gulf in the event of a storm. Now, after years of research and discussion, Elon Musk wants a piece of the project. An investi...

by Jennifer Berry Hawes 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. In the fall of 2016, as wind-stoked wildfires raced across parched forest and threatened lives around Gatlinburg, Tennessee, state and local officials went back and forth about blasting an evacuation order over the federal government’s emergency alert system. As they consulted one another, a critical 15 minutes slipped away. Cell service and electricity failed. Many people in the fire’s path could no longer receive the alert ultimately sent out. More than a dozen people died. A few months later, across the country, torrential storms drenched the Santa Cruz Mountains in California, flooding the area around San Jose’s Coyote Creek. Local officials there didn’t send alerts over the federal system, which can, among other things, sound a blaring alarm with evacuat...

by Peter Elkind , ProPublica, and Katherine Mangan , The Chronicle of Higher Education ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. When Los Angeles attorney Leo Terrell, a legal commentator, lifelong Democrat and fiery fixture on Fox News, announced on the network’s “Hannity” show that he was voting for Donald Trump in 2020, the MAGA universe went wild. Oliver North hailed him on his “Real American Heroes” podcast . Fox News signed him on as a paid contributor, at a six-figure salary. Terrell, meanwhile, rebranded himself as “Leo 2.0,” complete with red Trump-style caps he offered for sale online . Leo 1.0 had slammed Trump for cozying up to white supremacists, blamed him for a surge in violent attacks on Jews and donated to Democrats. Leo 2.0? He attacked “DEI nonsense,” compared Black Lives Matter to ISIS and declared the 2020 election was “stolen from President Trump and America!” In...