Nick Varchaver

After Law School adjunct Jay Lefkowitz, CC ’84, Law ’87, reached ‘sweetheart deal’ for Epstein, he maintained a personal relationship with him <i>Updated Feb. 6 at 1:46 p.m.</i>

Key Epstein lawyer, from Kirkland & Ellis, apparently invited the convicted sex offender to his son’s bar mitzvah. Same lawyer rep’d Columbia in settlement with the Trump admin www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2026/02...

Exclusive: White House uses USAID funds for budget director Vought's security, documents show The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump's budget chief and an archit...

www.reuters.com/world/us/whi...

If he finds the answer, can you let us know?

Fighting for Breath: The FDA’s Lax Generic Drug Rules Put Her Life at Risk Lung transplant patient Hannah Goetz’s life depended on the generic version of the critical drug tacrolimus. It was supposed to be equivalent to the brand-name medication — but the FDA doesn’t always ...

This narrative is absolutely gutting and a must read for anyone who wonders how gov’t policies affect lives. @longreads.com www.propublica.org/article/fda-...

How the Trump Administration Abandoned Plans for a Major Cut in Disability Benefits for Older Workers After meeting with advocates, the Trump administration confirmed it has scrapped a controversial regulation that would have cut disability benefits for older workers.

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

Choosing to let kids go hungry The USDA asserts that Democrats are blocking funding to secure “health care for illegal immigrants” and funding for “gender mutilation procedures.” All of these claims are false.

popular.info/p/choosing-t...

www.propublica.org/article/russ...

This passage from @andykroll.bsky.social’s revelatory profile of Russell Vought, tells you everything you need to know:

Days after $5 million donation to MAGA Inc., Trump freezes Medicare waste crackdown Trump pledged to root out "waste, fraud and abuse." Then a big contribution to his Super PAC came in.

popular.info/p/days-after...

UPDATE: Neuralink claims that it filed for federal diversity certification by accident After an investigation from Musk Watch found that Neuralink, Musk's brain-machine implant startup, had self-certified as a "Small Disadvantaged Business" (SDB) with the federal government, the company...

www.muskwatch.com/p/update-neu...

Tweet screenshot: SunDog @SUNDOG_TRX You never truly know who’s pulling the strings… 🤫 [AI-generated image of a corgi dog with a collar depicting the Tron logo, paws raised above the White House, with strings attached to the paws like a marionette] 2:30 AM Jul 24, 2025

Sundog, a memecoin by crypto billionaire Justin Sun, just posted a meme depicting its mascot controlling the White House. Sun has spent (or will shortly spend) a total of $213 million on Trump-connected crypto projects.

A Startup is Selling Data Hacked from Peoples’ Computers to Debt Collectors Infostealer data can include passwords, email and billing addresses, and the embarrassing websites you use. Farnsworth Intelligence is selling to to divorce lawyers and other industries.

www.404media.co/a-startup-is...

The secret to Baltimore's extraordinary year This April, Baltimore saw five homicides.

1. We interrupt this programming for some LEGITIMATELY GOOD NEWS

Violent crime in Baltimore has PLUMMETED to historic lows

How did the city do it?

Baltimore adopted a comprehensive set of "woke" policies, treating violence as a public health issue

X’s Sales Pitch: Give Us Your Ad Business or We’ll Sue Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino launched a campaign to strong-arm advertisers back onto the platform.

www.wsj.com/business/med...

Ben Schrader • 3rd+ Former Chief, Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney' 2w • + Follow Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned as Chief of the Criminal Division at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I've ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons. I wish all of my colleagues at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Nashville and across the Department the best as they seek to do justice on behalf of the American people. 176 35 comments • 3 reposts

Around the time that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was indicted in the Middle District of Tennessee, the chief of the criminal division in that district posted this on LinkedIn:

“Earlier today, after nearly 15 years as an Assistant United States Attorney, I resigned…”

The Trump Administration’s War on Children The administration is quietly putting America’s children at risk by cutting funds and manpower for investigating child abuse, enforcing child support payments, providing child care and much more.

The list of Trump cuts to programs that protect kids—including from sexual abuse and internet predators—is disturbing. www.propublica.org/article/how-...

“They Don’t Care About Civil Rights”: Trump’s Shuttering of DHS Oversight Arm Freezes 600 Cases, Imperils Human Rights The closure of the 150-person office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, strips Homeland Security of its internal guardrails as the Trump administration turns DHS i...

www.propublica.org/article/home...

U.S. Housing Agency Considers Launching Crypto Experiment The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees billions in aid and insures more than a trillion dollars in mortgages, is pondering using the blockchain and a stablecoin. One HUD offic...

HUD Considers Crypto Experiment With Blockchain, Stablecoin www.propublica.org/article/hud-...

BREAKING: SEC halts fraud prosecution of Chinese national who sent Trump millions In December, Popular Information reported that Chinese crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial (WLF), a new venture backed by President Donal...

open.substack.com/pub/populari...

😳😬

Trump Vowed to Clean Up Washington, Then His Team Hired a Man Who Pushed a Scam the IRS Called the “Worst of the Worst” Frank Schuler was a leading promoter of a tax deduction derided as a scam by prosecutors, senators and the IRS. Now he’s a senior adviser to the General Services Administration, which manages the fede...

www.propublica.org/article/fran...

The Movement to Redirect Billions of Taxpayer Dollars to Private Religious Schools Private letters reveal the strategy behind the decadeslong quest — successful in 12 states and counting — by politicians, church officials and activists to make taxpayer-funded school vouchers availab...

"An initiative that was promoted for years as a civil ­rights cause — helping poor kids in troubled schools — is threatening to become a nationwide money grab."

www.propublica.org/article/scho...

The NYC subways' electrical equipment is so old it frequently explodes A Harlem substation is full of so much old equipment that MTA managers look for parts on eBay. A black rotary phone is the only line of communication to the outside world.

When electrical components fail in the substation, MTA Chief Superintendent Joseph Daidone searches eBay for replacements.

If Daidone needs to reach the outside world from 40 feet below a Harlem sidewalk, he must use a rotary phone that was installed in 1969.

A bar chart showing funding and funding rescissions for the IRS from the Inflation Reduction Act.

This flew under the radar in last week's shutdown fight, but Republicans have basically unwound all of Biden's investment in tax enforcement.

The CR clawed back $20 billion from the IRS after GOP in Congress revoked another $20 billion last year.

If the IRS hasn't spent the money yet, it's gone.

Investors Extracted $400 Million From a Hospital Chain That Sometimes Couldn’t Pay for Medical Supplies or Gas for Ambulances Prospect Medical, which mostly serves low-income patients, has suffered a litany of problems: broken elevators, dirty surgical gear, bedbugs and more. Its owners, including Leonard Green & Partners an...

A bipartisan Senate investigation excoriated private equity firms like Leonard Green for extracting massive dividends at the cost of hospital patients…just as ProPublica reported in 2020: www.propublica.org/article/inve...

Endo’s End Around: How One of the Nation’s Largest Opioid Makers Escaped a $7 Billion Federal Penalty For a decade, the Justice Department delayed a winning criminal case against Philadelphia-based Endo Health Solutions. That allowed the company to vastly expand its narcotics empire and execute a corp...

These two numbers tell you everything you need to know about our legal system: $40 million (amount paid to victims of an opioid company); $119 million (amount paid to Skadden, the corporate law firm that made sure the victims got no more). An outrageous saga: www.propublica.org/article/endo...

A Strange Alliance: Oxygen Companies and Their Medicare Patients Want Congress to Pay the Companies More Some patients who have suffered at the hands of Lincare and Philips Respironics have joined forces with these corporations to lobby for an end to Medicare’s competitive bidding process for oxygen and ...

New: Advocates for oxygen patients — in an improbable alliance with the companies that have victimized them — are lobbying for legislation that would pay the scandal-scarred industry hundreds of millions of dollars more than it currently receives.

The Landlord, the Tenant and a House Fire in Milwaukee A young mother rents a house near Milwaukee. The previous tenant tells her, “Baby, they shouldn’t have let you move in.”

July 18: Knowing nothing about the house’s landlord, Angelica signs a lease and moves with her kids.

“This place looked like a dream come true,” she’ll write later.

In the kitchen, one light flickers...

This story from @raquelrutledge.bsky.social & @bykenarmstrong.bsky.social still haunts me.

The Man Behind Project 2025’s Most Radical Plans As Donald Trump tried to disavow the politically toxic project, its director, Paul Dans, stepped down. But the plans and massive staffing database that he prepared — to replace thousands of members of...

MORE! Here's Paul Dans. He's the guys who compiled a huge database of people who wanted to serve in a Trump Administration. The appointments are coming fast. So take a look... by Alec MacGillis @propublica.org
www.propublica.org/article/proj...

How Lincare Cashed In on the Disastrous Recall of Philips Breathing Machines — at the Expense of Patients Amid reports of thousands of injuries and hundreds of deaths, Lincare was supposed to supply the most ailing patients with new CPAP machines, but instead diverted the devices to new customers who woul...

UPDATE: Hours after this @propublica.org story published, Lincare announced internally that “effective immediately, Greg McCarthy is no longer Chief Operating Officer. Greg is leaving Lincare to pursue other opportunities.”