Unews

What Happened: The Department of Justice and Texas software-maker RealPage announced Monday that they have reached a settlement in a case involving price-fixing allegations in some of the nation’s largest rental markets. At issue was algorithmic rent-setting software the tech company sold that prosecutors said enabled landlords to compete less and boost prices in apartment buildings in ways that could violate antitrust laws. The proposed settlement, which must now be approved by a judge, said RealPage will stop offering software that uses nonpublic, “competitively sensitive” data shared among landlords to recommend how much to charge tenants, officials said. Under the agreement, RealPage will stop conducting market surveys to gather such information, and it agreed not to discuss pricing strategies or trends based on nonpublic data at meetings it holds for property managers, officials said. The company also must remove or redesign software features that restrict rent decreases or al...

In the first 18 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of pregnant women were wheeled into hospitals where they fought for their lives and the lives of the babies they carried. It took the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention until August 2021, eight months after the first vaccine was administered, to formally recommend the COVID-19 shot for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers. The CDC had found that pregnant women with COVID-19 faced a 70% increased risk of dying, compared with those who weren’t. They also faced an increased risk of being admitted to the intensive care unit, needing a form of life support reserved for the sickest patients, and delivering a stillborn baby . In recommending the vaccine, the CDC assured them that the shot was safe and did not cause fertility problems. ProPublica examined the harm caused by the delay in rolling out and endorsing the vaccine for pregnant mothers. Federal officials at the time told us that they wanted to ensure “an abund...

As the Trump administration’s immigration dragnet intensified in June, a nurse in Portland, Oregon, left work one midafternoon and drove to a nearby detention facility to voice his opposition. Federal agents had set off smoke grenades, driving away many protesters at the front of the facility, but Vincent Hawkins lifted his megaphone anyway. “You should stop and think about what you’re doing!” The shot came seconds later, a silver projectile launched through the small facility’s closed gate, hitting him in the face. The tear gas canister shattered his glasses, ripped apart his brow, crushed against his eye and concussed him. In video footage, the projectile can be seen bouncing off his face and arcing back toward the unknown Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who fired it. Hawkins, a 25-year veteran of the emergency room, was rushed to one, bleeding and wondering if he’d ever see through his left eye again. A frequent demonstrator, he knew the risks. He’d seen friends struggl...

The Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles has fired a longtime employee nearly five years after investigators found he used his position to garner steep discounts on cars he bought from a towing company, according to a termination letter obtained last week. The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica reported in March on the accusations against Dominik Stefanski and the DMV’s failure to take action against him or the towing company. The story was part of a larger series about how Connecticut’s towing laws have come to favor tow truck companies over vehicle owners and how the DMV’s lack of oversight has allowed abuses in the system. The DMV investigated Stefanski for over a year beginning in 2020 but didn’t fire him until early November, months after the news organizations’ story. According to the 2020-21 DMV investigation, when employees of D&L Auto Body & Towing in Berlin, Connecticut, went to the main DMV office in nearby Wethersfield, they would make eye contact with Stefan...

In recent days, five U.S. senators and two representatives requested documents from the Department of Homeland Security and a formal investigation into how a firm closely tied to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem ended up receiving money from a $220 million, taxpayer-funded ad campaign. The demands came in response to a ProPublica story this month that revealed that the Republican consulting firm had been secretly working on the ads , which star Noem. The company, called the Strategy Group, has long-standing personal and business ties to Noem and her senior aides at DHS. Its CEO is married to Noem’s chief spokesperson at DHS. Under Noem, DHS bypassed the normal competitive bidding process when awarding the contracts — allocating the majority of the money to a mysterious Delaware LLC that was created days before the deal was finalized. The Strategy Group does not appear on public documents about the deal. “The public deserves to know that government officials are not using taxpayer dollars t...

One by one, the prisoners — all immigrants — appeared briefly over video before a special panel of the Louisiana parole board. The August hearings were unusual in a state that, under Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, has made it increasingly difficult for most prisoners to get early release. Unlike normal parole hearings, the board didn’t grill the prospective parolees about their crimes — ranging from car theft to vehicular homicide — to gauge their remorse. Nor did it review their disciplinary records to determine if they posed a threat to public safety. And no one was present to represent or speak on behalf of their victims. In fact, most of the nine men, clad in black-and-white-striped jumpsuits or plain orange ones, did not say a word besides their names and inmate numbers. Only one was even eligible for parole. But in each case, the three-member panel voted unanimously for release after just a few minutes of consideration. “Today you’ve been paroled,” panel chair Steve Prator sai...

Our investigation of a little-known church community in northeastern Minnesota started with something that has become depressingly familiar: child sex abuse. ProPublica and the Minnesota Star Tribune found that some members of the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church community in Duluth enabled Clint Massie, who pleaded guilty to sexually abusing young girls. Massie is currently in prison in Faribault, Minnesota. The Old Apostolic Lutheran Church — which has no affiliation with mainstream Lutheran denominations and is known as the OALC — is an insular community with many old-world traditions. There is no official count, but one academic study estimated 31,000 members worldwide as of 2016, with most in the United States. We examined hundreds of pages of criminal records, conducted more than a dozen interviews with alleged victims across the country, reviewed video and audio of police interviews with Massie, victims and church leaders, and attended a service at the Old Apostolic Lutheran Chu...

Two key Senate Democrats have launched an inquiry after a ProPublica investigation revealed this week that a White House official had intervened on behalf of his former legal clients — pro-Trump influencer Andrew Tate and his brother — during a federal investigation. On Thursday, Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Gary Peters sent letters to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security asking for a full accounting of the official’s activities, calling his actions a “brazen interference with a federal investigation.” ProPublica reported this week that the official, Paul Ingrassia, told senior DHS officials to return electronic devices seized from the Tate brothers when they arrived in the U.S. in February. Ingrassia made clear the request was coming from the White House, according to interviews and records that ProPublica reviewed. The Tates are facing sex trafficking accusations in three countries. Ingrassia, who has served as White House Liaison to DHS and to the Departme...

A year ago, the federal Indian Health Service posted dozens of flyers on Facebook promoting flu and COVID-19 vaccine clinics across the Navajo Nation, where the pandemic had inflicted a staggering toll just a few years earlier. The notices, featuring photos of smiling families and elders in traditional clothing, tied immunization to tribal values like community responsibility and made a clear case for getting the shots. “Vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness or hospitalization,” one of them said. But this year, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic, has put his stamp on federal immunization policy, IHS’ public messaging on vaccines has taken a stark turn. In internal emails obtained by ProPublica, IHS officials have flagged terms such as “immunizations” and “vaccines” for additional scrutiny, deeming them risky “buzzwords” that require approval from agency public information officers to be used in social media posts, pamphlets ...