Hi Reader,
The current administration’s approach to reducing waste, fraud and abuse in government has, thus far, not held precision in high regard. Elon Musk has described the Department of Government Efficiency as a “wood chipper for bureaucracy.” Drastic cuts in staffing and contracts and swift realignments of policy priorities have thrown federal agencies and their work into disarray. There appears to be a campaign to overwhelm federal workers and “put them in trauma,” while incorrect facts and figures flood the zone of public conversation.
But ProPublica’s newsroom has the power and muscle to cut through the chaos and surface the facts. In this moment of document dumps, sloppy accounting and sweeping consequences, our journalists know how to find the truth in large troves of information.
Last month, Sen. Ted Cruz released a database of allegedly “woke” science research grants his office had flagged because the grants prioritize “radical political perspectives” or “neo-Marxist theories.” Our reporters decided to take a closer look and dug in with an experiment of their own. They surfaced confounding examples that were clearly unrelated to the social or economic themes cited by Cruz’s office. Among them were a $470,000 grant to study the evolution of mint plants that referred to “biodiversity” (emphasis ours) and another for creating biosensors to detect infectious diseases that appears to have been flagged for the repeated use of “POC,” an acronym often used for “people of color” but in this context meaning “point of care” — that is, the place where people receive medical treatment.
The lack of precision in the committee’s methodology is “obviously laughable,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at Princeton University who studies the rise and fall of constitutional governments. But she also worries about what might happen if lawmakers take a more serious approach. Our reporters found other projects were singled out for simply acknowledging that people from certain demographics face unique challenges, including a study of racial disparities in maternal mortality in the U.S. — a topic ProPublica has been covering since 2017. It’s not clear if approved projects that are still waiting for payments will get their money. Neither Cruz’s office nor the other Republicans on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation responded to requests for comment.
When the news is chaos, we respond with our own urgency to chronicle what’s happening in verifiable and painstaking detail. We must. A healthy democracy requires strong journalism like ProPublica’s, with the power to insist upon transparency up to the highest levels of government, businesses, institutions and more. Our work has proven time and again that people and policymakers, when confronted with difficult truths, will be inspired to push for change.
Who funds this critical work? Readers. Thanks to donations from folks like you, we’re growing larger, getting stronger and spurring more impact than ever before. Give today, and help ProPublica ensure that we continue to have the resources to follow the most important stories wherever they lead — for however long it takes.
Thanks so much,
Tova Genesen
Proud ProPublican
