David Fahrenthold

How 3 Lives Intersected in the Final Moments of the D.C. Crash

NEW: A shaky pilot, a wary instructor, an overwhelmed air-traffic controller: How three lives intersected tragically in the Jan. 29 disaster over the Potomac.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/u...

How Conservative Christians Cracked a 70-Year-Old Law

NEW: How conservative Christians convinced the I.R.S. to grant them an exemption from a 70 year-old law, and let them endorse candidates from the pulpit.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/u...

Video: Why We Almost Got a MAGA-Branded Instant Pot Instant Brands announced a new line of pots emblazoned with the slogan “Make America Great Again.” David Fahrenthold explains what’s behind this decision and explores the link between this brand and o...

Why we almost got a MAGA Instant Pot.

www.nytimes.com/video/busine...

NEW: What happened to the MAGA Instant Pot?

A tale of a private equity company -- and a beloved rice cooker -- trying and failing to navigate Washington's new rules.

NEW: The V.A. was under pressure to slash its spending. Then it started to feed DOGE misleading budget cuts.

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit

NEW TONIGHT: The IRS says that churches can now endorse candidates from the pulpit, carving out an exemption to the decades-old ban on politicking by nonprofits.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

I.R.S. Says Churches Can Endorse Candidates From the Pulpit

NEW TONIGHT: The IRS says that churches can now endorse candidates from the pulpit, carving out an exemption to the decades-old ban on politicking by nonprofits.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/u...

NEW: DOGE seeks to investigate another government budget watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.

DOGE Removes Dozens of Resurrected Contracts From Its List of Savings

Update: @DOGE removes 31 more incorrect claims -- and $122M in savings -- from its "Wall of Receipts" after we identified they were wrong.

The listings were wrong b/c the contracts DOGE claimed credit for killing were not dead anymore: agencies had revived them.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/u...

DOGE’s Zombie Contracts: They Were Killed but Have Come Back to Life

NEW: Dozens of contracts killed by DOGE have now been resurrected by federal agencies.

DOGE's website still lists them as "terminated," however, inflating the group's success with $200M+ in savings that have already vanished.

www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/u...

After Trump Aid Cuts, Food Banks Scrounge and Scrimp In one of the country’s poorest areas, the quantity and quality of government deliveries have dropped, forcing one charity to make do with thin soup and dried cranberries.

NEW: After USDA cuts aid to food banks, one charity in WV tries to make lunch out of craisins, crackers and vegetable soup. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/u...

Leaders of Mental Health Giant Promised Big Bonuses to Deal With Federal Investigations Acadia Healthcare’s chief executive was awarded a $1.8 million bonus to respond to “unprecedented governmental inquiries” into allegations of holding psychiatric patients against their will.

The chief executive of Acadia Healthcare, one of the largest providers of mental health services in the U.S., was awarded a $1.8 million bonus to respond to “unprecedented governmental inquiries” into allegations of holding psychiatric patients against their will.

Why Did a Charity Tied to Casey DeSantis Suddenly Get a $10 Million Boost? The Hope Florida Foundation quietly gave the money to two nonprofit political committees that helped Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies defeat a ballot measure.

A charity tied to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis, gave $10 million to nonprofit political committees that helped the governor defeat a ballot measure.

Texas Lottery Director Resigns Amid Scrutiny of Rigged 2023 Draw Investigators are looking into how bettors were allowed to guarantee themselves a $95 million jackpot win, as state leaders question whether the lottery should go on.

The executive director of the Texas State Lottery resigned abruptly on Monday in the latest fallout from the agency’s decision in 2023 to help professional bettors in Europe purchase and print millions of its tickets and guarantee themselves a $95 million jackpot win.

DOGE Is Far Short of Its Goal, and Still Overstating Its Progress Elon Musk now says his group will produce only 15 percent of the savings it promised. But even that estimate is inflated with errors and guesswork.

I'm still looking for this document, too! If you know how to find Office of Personnel Management RFP ##47QFEA24K0008, let me know!

My offer of a free NYT coffee mug still stands!

(Here's the backstory: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/u...)

Schumer Asks for Documents That Prove a Claim on DOGE’s Website Elon Musk’s group says it saved $318 million by canceling a “request for proposal” from the Office of Personnel Management but did not release the request itself.

NEW: @schumer.senate.gov asks for the biggest "receipt" that's missing from DOGE's "Wall of Receipts" -- a $318M claim posted without documentation.

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/u...

Immigrants prove they are alive, forcing Social Security to undo death label The immigrants who have requested a reversal and been reinstated in Social Security databases include a Haitian asylum seeker and a minor child.

Exclusive: Immigrants falsely labeled dead by the Social Security Administration are showing up at field offices with documents proving they are alive, leading staff to reinstate nearly three dozen people over the past week, according to records obtained by The Post.

This is going to be an interesting experiment. I've got this request up now on X, BlueSky and LinkedIN, and we'll see which produces the mystery doc first.

If that doesn't work, I'm doing an investigative TikTok dance, which frankly we're all going to regret.

Elon Musk is looking toward the camera. He is wearing a black shirt. A headline reads: "DOGE Is Far Short of Its Goal, and Still Overstating Its Progress." Photo by Eric Lee/The New York Times

Elon Musk now admits his Department of Government Efficiency will produce only 15% of the savings it promised. But even that estimate is inflated with errors and guesswork. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/u...

A DOGE MYSTERY!
I'm trying to find OPM request for proposal #47QFEA24K0008.

DOGE says they saved $318,310,328 by cancelling it. But OPM won't release this doc, and it's not listed in govt databases.

Free @nytimes coffee mug to anyone with a copy! I'm at daf@nytimes.com

DOGE Is Far Short of Its Goal, and Still Overstating Its Progress

Via our colleagues @fahrenthold.bsky.social and @jsvine.com

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/u...

By the way, there's a mystery in here that I may ask your help in solving -- about a document that DOGE says proves $318M in savings, but that they won't show us. You may have a copy! More on that soon.

DOGE Is Far Short of Its Goal, and Still Overstating Its Progress Elon Musk now says his group will produce only 15 percent of the savings it promised. But even that estimate is inflated with errors and guesswork.

NEW: DOGE is falling far short of its goals — and still drastically over-stating its success. Here’s why:

www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/u...

Three people walking into the ICE Processing Center. The text reads: "IRS Agrees to Share Migrants' Tax Information With ICE." Photo by Michael Ciaglo for The New York Times.

The IRS has agreed to share information with ICE to help locate people for deportation, court records show, a fundamental change in how the tax collector uses its tightly regulated records. nyti.ms/3XQ9vWk

On Its Website, DOGE Deletes More Than 100 Government Leases It Said Were Canceled Elon Musk’s cost-cutting group dropped its total purported savings from eliminating federal office space after losing some battles within the Trump administration.

NEW: DOGE deletes more than 100 entries from its list of cancelled leases.

Suggests it is losing some of the internal battles over what offices to axe.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/u...

DOGE Reverses Move That Made Its Claims Nearly Impossible to Check After getting called out, Elon Musk’s cost-cutting group reinstated details about the grants that it canceled.

NEW: DOGE reverses change that made its claims near-impossible to check.

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/u...

We've heard from readers who ask "Why point out DOGE's mistakes? Don't you want them to find waste & fraud?"

What I reply:

Whether you support DOGE's mission or you don't, nobody benefits if DOGE is using bad data. Won't it be harder to find real waste or fraud if their data is plagued by errors?

That's where we stand today, one month after DOGE began posting its wall of receipts.

For all that time, the biggest "receipt" on the wall has always been wrong.

Read more of our coverage of DOGE's struggle with errors here: nytimes.com/2025/03/13/u...

Then, on March 5, DOGE brought back a claim it had previously deleted.

Once again, it said its largest savings came from cancelling the same $1.9 billion IRS contract.

Which, again, had actually been cancelled under President Biden.

After that, DOGE said its largest savings came from cancelling a USAID contract worth $596 million.

But they had missed a key distinction. While the govt's spending *limit* was $596M, it had not promised to spend anywhere near that much.

The savings from this cut was also later revised to $0.