Irena Hwang, PhD

It looks like officers stopping a Massachusetts family as they drive home from church on Mother’s Day, shattering their window, and letting the kids in the back of the car watch as their dad is forced to kneel, then slammed chest-first to the ground. 9/

An article screenshot reads: "YOUR CAR is a constitutional gray zone. It doesn’t have the same Fourth Amendment protections as homes. You can refuse to open the door of your home if officers don’t have a judicial warrant; you can’t refuse to step out of your car. The Constitution still limits when officers can use force and how much they can use. But there are no firm rules. Should they shatter windows just minutes or seconds after making a vehicle stop? Should they drag someone through broken glass when they could wait to make the arrest another day? “Use of force has to be objectively reasonable,” says Bruce-Alan Barnard, a retired Fourth Amendment instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, where ICE officers train. The problem with “objectively reasonable,” Barnard says, is that “it’s an oxymoron. What’s reasonable to you might not be reasonable to me.” Immigration officers are given little guidance on whether or how they should breach car windows, former federal law enforcement..."

So “Is this legal?” may be the wrong question. “Is this normal?” was the better one. We did eventually find 8 instances of ICE and Border Patrol smashing car windows in the decade before Trump’s second presidency. But we’ve found nearly 50 instances in the six+ months since. 5/

THREAD: All over the country, immigration officers are smashing car windows to get at the people inside.

As we began tracking incidents, my @propublica.org colleague @nicolefoy.bsky.social and I had two questions: First, is this legal?

Second, is it, well, normal? Was this happening before? 1/

With Deep N.I.H. Cuts, Research Into Health Disparities Falters In its campaign against “woke” science, the Trump administration has closed down studies and programs focused on the gaps between racial and socioeconomic groups.

We can't address health disparities if we can't study them. These actions will harm so many communities.

With Deep N.I.H. Cuts, Research Into Health Disparities Falters www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/h... via @nytimes.com CC: @irenatfh.bsky.social @sarahpeitzmeier.bsky.social @sungheelee.bsky.social

What one historian says White House vetting of Smithsonian means for U.S. cultural institutions The White House said it wants to ensure the museums show the "unity, progress and enduring values that define the American story."

AHA executive director Sarah Weicksel appeared on @wbur.org's Here & Now today to speak about the sweeping review of the Smithsonian ordered by President Trump. 🗃️

Visa Whiplash Threatens Foreign Doctors Who Keep This Brooklyn Hospital Running Residents at Brookdale Hospital mostly come from overseas, working in jobs American medical students overlook.

"New York City’s hospitals... depend heavily on international residents... At Brookdale, the rate of visa-holding residents is even higher, in part because the hospital has challenges attracting American medical graduates." by @annaoakes.bsky.social www.thecity.nyc/2025/08/14/b...

‘Distracting the public’: group of health professionals call for RFK Jr to be removed Ahead of the second Maha report, grassroots Defend Public Health warns that everything HHS is doing is ‘horrifying’

#IHAT #IHATnotMAHA

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Nonprofit Refuses $1.5M Science Grant Due To New Federal DEI Rules A coding nonprofit turned down a $1.5M NSF grant after new DEI restrictions, highlighting the clash between federal policy and scientific community values.

I spoke with Kari Jordan and Erin Becker of The Carpentries about why they declined a $1.5M NSF grant intended to expand data science training. Their decision highlights the growing intersection of #science, #DEI, and federal policy.

Read the full story on Forbes: www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

Our New York members took their lunch outside today to demand that @propublica.org management agree to a fair discipline and performance evaluation system ✊

The FDA Let Substandard Factories Ship These Medications to the U.S. ProPublica identified more than 150 products that were exempted from import bans since 2013. Our list provides the names of the drugs or ingredients and their manufacturers, many of which are no longe...

NEW: In June, ProPublica reported that the FDA has given more than 20 foreign factories a special pass to send drugs to the U.S. even though they were made at plants the agency had banned.

Today, we’re publishing a list of those exempted drugs.

“We all show up every day in pursuit of a healthier country and world, and the person at the top of the HHS ladder is one of our biggest haters"

📽️ WATCH: Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, one of the men Trump sent to CECOT, told our reporters he was beaten the moment the plane landed.

He says when he regained consciousness and saw the polished concrete floor, the bright lights, the men in uniform, he just asked God: What am I doing here? Why?

These GOP Lawmakers Referred Constituents to the CFPB for Help. Then They Voted to Gut the Agency. Many of the same Republican lawmakers who have targeted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for cuts have collectively directed thousands of constituents’ complaints about banks, credit cards, lo...

NEW from me: The CFPB's consumer complaint system is more popular than ever, fielding over 2.7M complaints last year.

But Republican lawmakers still voted to slash the CFPB's budget, even after referring thousands of their own constituents' issues to the agency.

www.propublica.org/article/cfpb...

The Trump Administration Is Promoting Its Anti-Trans Agenda Globally at the United Nations U.S. delegates have objected to use of the word “gender” in U.N. documents during forums on topics as varied as women’s rights, science and technology, global health, toxic pollution and chemical wast...

At a United Nations meeting on pollution, the U.S. delegate said the U.S. has a "national position" on gender.

The position leaves no room for the existence of transgender, nonbinary and intersex people, who face discrimination around the world.

My latest:

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Adopt A Station - Rescue Public Media Help preserve independent journalism and community programming across America by adopting a public media station. Congress has voted to rescind public media's funding.

Been wondering how to support the public media outlets that are hurting most right now? The great Alex Curley built a tool to find a station that needs your help.

Adopt A Station: adoptastation.org

The Men Trump Deported to a Salvadoran Prison On March 15, President Donald Trump’s administration sent more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Last week, the men were released as suddenly as they’d been t...

5/ Today, we are publishing a database with the stories of 238 of the men. They are fathers and sons. They had easily plugged into the American economy – delivering groceries and trimming hair.
projects.propublica.org/venezuelan-i...

"The attacks target the Government Accountability Office, a roughly century-old agency formed to help Congress keep track of federal spending. The legislative office primarily produces detailed reports on ways that Washington can save money..."

Those recordings are also important because when local and state officials say things like “we couldn’t have seen this coming,” oral histories can show a sort of testimony from the past.

In Flash Flood Hotspots Like Texas, Many Federal Meteorologist Positions Remain Unfilled An analysis of National Weather Service job vacancies found that in more than a third of offices overseeing flash flood hotspots, one or more of three senior leadership roles are open.

Vacancies in National Weather Service leadership roles are more than double what they were last year. The Houston office is missing its entire top tier of managers.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/... w/ Hiroko Tabuchi

My latest: Why some potentially contaminated drugs are still allowed into the U.S., despite FDA knowledge of issues like filthy labs and falsified records.

We dug into the data and identified 70 hospitalizations and nine deaths related to these drugs.

To Protest Budget Cuts, Young Scientists Try Letters to the Editor

"The McClintock project was organized by science policy clubs at universities across the United States, including the Advancing Science and Policy Club at Cornell, with help from Science Homecoming, a similar project for scientists and faculty members." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/s...

Shattered Science: The Research Lost as Trump Targets NIH Funding The Trump administration cut research funding that sought cures for future pandemics, examined the causes of dementia and tried to prevent HIV transmission. More than 150 researchers shared with ProPu...

NEW: The Trump administration said their research did not "enhance health, lengthen life, or reduce illness."

Thousands of scientists disagreed.

We heard from +150 researchers impacted by the NIH grant terminations on what is being lost in the cuts. 🧵👇
projects.propublica.org/nih-cuts-res...

Dada, thank you for reading and I'm sorry to hear about your own delay. Our methodology explains that we took a conservative analysis approach in order to avoid identifying false positives, while bringing attention to this issue with a small set of delays that we are very confident about.

Our piece doesn't currently have that functionality, but I've shared your question with my team. It could be something we consider doing in the future. Thank you for reading.

Computational Journalist, Data Reporting Application Instructions Please list all professional experience and explain any gaps in employment history. All of your application materials, which may include PDF files of work samples and/or links...

🚨We're hiring! 🚨
The @wpdatateam.bsky.social is looking for a computational journalist -- someone who can help tell big national stories but also work across our team in developing best devops and big data practices. We value camaraderie, learning and collaboration. Feel free to reach out w/ Qs:

David Burnham-TRAC Data Reporting Fellowship Remote, United States

We have a new fellowship meant for an early-career data reporter to work at @propublica.org for two years on issues related to the federal government: job-boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/j...

Dear Steve and Robin, Since we unionized in 2023, we have worked hard to reach a contract that honors ProPublica's mission. In order to fulfill that vision, our values of fairness, transparency and accountability must apply not only to our reporting but also to our workplace. Our proposals have sought basic contractual rights that align with those values and exist at many other unionized newsrooms. Instead of working with us to codify those rights, you have struck through many of our proposals, called for broad carve outs and delayed discussion of key provisions such as protections against layoffs and overwork. Those tactics are not in line with the ProPublica you say you want to build. In recent months: ● You have refused to allow stewards in performance meetings that could lead to discipline. ● You have resisted attempts to reform our disciplinary system, rejecting a standard approach to just cause and measures to improve transparency and clarity. ● You rejected our proposal that would ensure our jobs will not be replaced by artificial intelligence. What we are seeking is simple: ProPublica management must uphold its values in its own workplace. We expect that your proposals going forward will reflect these shared values. Sincerely, ProPublica Guild

Today, we issued a letter — signed by 70% of our unit — to @sengelberg.bsky.social and @robinsparkman.bsky.social asking them to uphold ProPublica’s values of fairness, transparency and accountability at the bargaining table.

In federal court in Vermont today, lawyers will challenge the ICE detention of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish grad student & former Fulbright scholar charged with no crime, targeted b/c of an op-ed in a campus paper. You've probably seen the jarring video of her arrest. Here's more:

“Not Just Measles”: Whooping Cough Cases Are Soaring as Vaccine Rates Decline While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak, experts warn that whooping cough and other preventable diseases could get much worse with falling vaccination rates and Trump’s…

NEW: While much of the country is focused on the spiraling measles outbreak, experts warn that whooping cough and other preventable diseases could get much worse with falling vaccination rates and Trump’s slashing of public health infrastructure.

@deldeib.bsky.social & @sheinvestigates.bsky.social