Some Issues and Topics Our Reporters Will Be Following in a Second Trump Presidency — and How to Get in Touch
During Donald Trump’s second presidency, ProPublica will continue our focus on the areas most in need of scrutiny. Here are some of the issues our reporters will be watching — and how to get in touch with them.
Now that Donald Trump is the president-elect for the second time, we will once again turn our focus to the areas most in need of scrutiny at this moment in history. As our editor-in-chief wrote yesterday, that’s what our more than 150 working journalists do.
We will watch closely as the Trump/Vance administration takes shape and makes plans. To find stories, we will, as always, rely on insights from people closest to the issues. Concerned public servants are some of our most important sources. This has never been more true. If you are a federal employee, is there unfinished business — a sensitive project, a little-known but key policy, an important lawsuit — you worry will be quashed or left to molder? Are there records, research or databases you feel strongly should be preserved?
We appreciate the difficult situations people weigh as they decide whether to reach out to us, and we take source privacy very seriously. Read more about ProPublica’s approach to investigative journalism in our ethics code. If you have tips, documents, data or stories the public should know about, you can contact all of our journalists at propublica.org/tips. Here’s information on how to do so securely. And if you don’t have a specific tip or story in mind, we could still use your help. Sign up to be a member of our federal worker source network to stay in touch.
We will tell you more about our whole team and about our coverage plans in the months to come. We work across a number of beats and disciplines, from tax policy to education to health care. We have data reporters who can handle complicated datasets and public records specialists eager to strategize.
Here are just a few examples of the topics we’re thinking about, plus contact information for some reporters on the beat:
Rule of Law
Trump’s Business Interests
Immigration
Trump and Billionaires
Foreign Affairs/Policy
Environmental Regulations
Religious and Conservative Policy
Technology
Reproductive Health
Federal Poverty Policy
Health Care Policy
This is just a small sample of our reporting team. We will continue to share our areas of interest as the news develops. You can hear more from our journalists about their work by signing up for our Dispatches newsletter.
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We’ll be devoting a significant part of our staff to detailing what are expected to be dramatic changes in the role of the federal government in the lives of Americans.
A former aide to Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said she intervened on the company’s behalf even though she thought it was inappropriate. “It was specifically the congressman that suggested I needed to deal with it.”
The picture that emerged in the New York courtroom was of a person on top of details, aware of what his team is doing. Along with outside events, it suggests Trump will be even less constricted by rules and norms than he was before.
Messages reviewed by ProPublica represent the strongest indication yet that members of the Trump family inner circle were involved in financing and organizing the Jan. 6 “Save America” rally.
New filings show federal political committees significantly scaled back spending at Trump-owned hotels and restaurants, though some loyalist campaigns remain.
Text messages and interviews show that Stop the Steal leaders fooled the Capitol police and welcomed racists to increase their crowd sizes, while White House officials worked to both contain and appease them.
Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.
The second-term president likely will seek to cut off spending that lawmakers have already appropriated, setting off a constitutional struggle within the branches. If successful, he could wield the power to punish perceived foes.
Across the U.S., Latino immigrants who’ve been in the country a long time felt that asylum-seekers got preferential treatment. “Those of us who have been here for years get nothing,” said one woman from Mexico who has lived in Wisconsin for decades.
FEMA officials said they didn’t want their housing program for survivors of Maui’s 2023 wildfires to displace any residents. But they didn’t bar the agency’s contractors from leasing properties previously occupied by long-term tenants.
It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.
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