November 18, 2025 · View in browser

Federal authorities were chided for seizing electronic devices from Tate and his brother, and told to return them, records and interviews show. Experts said the intervention was highly inappropriate.

ProPublica news applications developer Nat Lash traced a devastating outbreak of bird flu that occurred earlier this year, and found its source: an egg farm in Ohio. The U.S. Department of Agriculture urged farmers to follow a longstanding playbook that assumes that bird flu is spread by wild birds and tracked into barns with lax safety practices. The agency blamed the outbreak on “shared people and equipment.” But our analysis shows it’s plausible that the virus — which led to the deaths of over 18 million hens — spread over the wind. Within weeks of the start of the outbreak, we found, farms downwind from that Ohio egg farm were about 20 times as likely to see outbreaks as those that weren’t. Some highlights from the investigation:

• After a bird flu outbreak tore through Midwestern barns, killing hens and spiking egg prices, the USDA didn’t investigate whether the virus was airborne. ProPublica did. 
• Experts say ProPublica’s analysis offers a plausible explanation for how the wind could have helped spread the virus, exposing a flaw in the USDA’s playbook to fight it.
• To combat bird flu spread, other countries have authorized poultry vaccines, but the U.S. has held off amid political and economic opposition.

A USDA spokesperson said it was “conjecture” to say vaccination would offer flocks better protection from airborne spread than its current strategy, which “remains rooted in real-time data, internationally recognized best practices and a commitment to transparency and continuous improvement.” The agency told ProPublica it has made no decision on whether to vaccinate hens and has no timeline on when it might announce one — though it is “proactively assessing” the possibility. 

Using his clemency power, President Donald Trump has undone prosecutions made by his own Department of Justice during his first term, reports ProPublica’s Jeremy Kohler. Experts say the actions show a broad contempt for the justice system. “He’s rejecting ... the work of people he appointed but didn’t fully control,” one law professor who studies clemency said.

Here are a few of the individuals Kohler wrote about who were prosecuted, then pardoned by Trump:

P.G. Sittenfeld: Convicted of taking a bribe. (After his 2020 indictment, Sittenfeld insisted that he was the target of a wrongful prosecution and that he never promised official actions in exchange for campaign donations. Neither he nor his lawyers responded to requests for comment.)

Devon Archer: Convicted of defrauding $60M from a tribal entity. (Archer denied wrongdoing and said he was a victim of financial fraud. He did not respond to requests for comment.)

Brian Kelsey: Convicted of illegally funneling ~$100K into his campaign. (Kelsey pleaded guilty in November 2022 to two campaign finance felonies. Four months later, he moved to withdraw his plea, saying he’d entered it “with an unsure heart and confused mind.”)

Neither the White House nor the Justice Department responded to questions about why Trump had issued pardons in some of the cases prosecuted in his first term. A Justice Department spokesperson said in an email that the agency was committed to “timely and carefully reviewing all applications and making recommendations to the President that are consistent, unbiased, and uphold the rule of law.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Nov. 4 that there was a “whole team of qualified lawyers who look at every single pardon request” and that Trump was the final decision-maker.

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