Brandon Roberts

youtube.comGeneric Drugs: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)YouTube video by LastWeekTonight

Our generic prescription drug look up app, Rx Inspector, and our FDA reporting was featured on John Oliver 🤩 so psyched www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM1E...

wsj.comExclusive | RFK Jr. Got Free Flights to Fiji and Greece From a Top DonorThe health secretary disclosed over $250,000 in gifts from security specialist Gavin de Becker.

21 Sept

Great scoop! I'm bummed and a little surprised that WSJ didn't publish the disclosure this reporting is based on. www.wsj.com/politics/rfk...

propublica.org“A Clear Watering Down”: Drug Transparency Bill Stripped of Critical Provisions Ahead of Senate VoteThe bill was designed to alert consumers about where their drugs came from. After two major changes to the proposed law, experts worry it won’t be as effective.

18 Sept

The CLEAR LABELS Act originally mandated that facility IDs appear on drug labels -- making it easy to know if the drug in your cabinet was made by a problem facility. They have significantly watered down the bill by removing this critical requirement. 😭 www.propublica.org/article/clea...

inquirer.comPennsylvania’s biggest Medicaid insurer is building political clout

12 Sept

Some great reporting here based, in part, on our 527 nonprofit data

Philadelphia Inquirer@inquirer.com

Newtown Square-based AmeriHealth Caritas has boosted its political giving and lobbying. “That’s money that’s supposed to be going out to our hospitals,” said one Pennsylvania Republican lawmaker.

26 Aug

The monthly 527 Explorer updates continue! I just published the Aug update, adding ~12k new contributions and expenditures. This brings the data current as of the end of July 2026. projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/

wired.comRogue AI Agents Aren’t Evil. They’re Just Eager to PleaseAI agents that break free and hack into other systems are only trying to make us happy.

13 Aug

Assigning intent to an AI system is just dumb I'm sorry www.wired.com/story/rogue-...

propublica.orgIs There Anyone Who Can Respond to My FOIA Requests? Anyone?Asking the federal government for public records didn’t always feel like a shell game. But bounced emails and broken portals seem like the new normal.

11 Aug

If you're a journalist in this administration you have probably realized that FOIA is broken. @shaw.al lays it all here www.propublica.org/article/foia...

404media.coInside an AI TikTok Shop Slop Factory That Shills Supplements Recalled By the FDAHow a company called Rosabella used AI content to market its supplements: "If you’re trying to sell health products to a 50-year-old, well, make your avatar 50 years old."

2 Aug

This is absolutely wild. There's so little enforcement of laws that these guys are just openly sharing all their AI slop product sales techniques (and turning THAT into a business too‼️). Great reporting www.404media.co/inside-an-ai...

31 July

We have a deal with ProPublica mgmt! So thankful for all the public support we received and for the effort of all the workers who make up ProPublica. If you were withholding your donation due to the fight, it's time to help us out so we can continue doing what we do best: holding power to account

ProPublica Guild@propublicaguild.org

🚨 WE HAVE A DEAL! After three years, in a major step forward for our members, we have ratified our first contract with @propublica.org’s management. We deeply appreciate everyone who supported us along the way. Here are some of our big wins👇

31 July

I just published an update to our 527 Explorer of political nonprofits. We added over 500k new records since our last update in June. It's an election year, meaning I will be updating this every month until the election. Happy Friday! projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/

propublica.orgFCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar DealsAccepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromised the commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of ticket...

30 July

So proud to have been awarded the 2026 @ire.org Freedom of Information Award for work on the Rx Roulette series and Rx Inspector. I wasn't able to attend IRE so this was my first time seeing it 🥰

Brandon Roberts reposted

ProPublica

@propublica.org

18 July

Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromises FCC commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. The agency’s chair, Brendan Carr, has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of tickets by CBS or its parent company.

17 July

Well if anything ever made me sure that humans are better than AI it's going state by state looking at statues and pulling out regulatory information. AI overviews are almost always wrong. They also frequently cite other (incorrect) AI sources that all refer back to completely made up sources. 🤦

Brandon Roberts reposted

ProPublica Guild

@propublicaguild.org

2 July

“I’m deeply concerned about wage disparities across the newsroom,” says Jeremy Kohler, a reporter based in St. Louis. We need @propublica.org management to agree to fair wages in our contract.

24 June

Nobody should be living paycheck to paycheck. Help us get a good contract at ProPublica!

ProPublica Guild@propublicaguild.org

News apps developer Brandon Roberts says it best: No one who works at ProPublica should be living paycheck to paycheck. Support our fight for fair wages: www.propublicaguild.org

23 June

UPDATE: New data has arrived on ProPublica's 527 explorer! See the latest filings made by political nonprofits, up to the end of May. projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/

hope.netHackers On Planet Earth - HOPEHOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is an annual conference for hackers, makers, and tech enthusiasts based in New York City.

18 June

Hey all! The Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference is back in Manhattan Aug 14-16. I'll be speaking about practical technical challenges facing journalists and how you all can help solve them. www.hope.net If you're going to be there, reach out.

Brandon Roberts reposted

Will James

@willjames.bsky.social

16 June

If you listened to @npr.org's Up First this weekend, you heard a local Seattle story that's haunted me and my reporting partners for years. Grateful that Up First aired the first episode of We Keep Us Safe, our podcast series investigating the unsolved killing of Antonio Mays Jr.

npr.orgHow an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death : Up First from NPRIn the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to be part of the racial justice movement. He arrived in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, known as C...

404media.coIt Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests"We show that a tiny snippet—just 13 words—of retrieved text on a UGC website like Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook can change AI agents to output spam / scam content pretty consistently."

16 June

🤦 www.404media.co/it-is-trivia...

propublica.orgHe Profits Off Raw Milk That’s Making People Sick. The Government Isn’t Stopping Him.With Raw Farm, the largest raw-milk dairy in the country, Mark McAfee has capitalized on a once-fringe product that’s been thrust into the mainstream in recent years and backed by Health Secretary Rob...

9 June

Such a good read about raw milk under Trump's FDA 👇

Annie Waldman@anniewaldman.bsky.social

NEW: In February, I visited Raw Farm. You may have heard of it. RFK Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow are customers. It supplies raw dairy products to 500 stores nationwide. And regulators have linked it to over a dozen recalls and outbreaks that have made hundreds sick. 🧵👇

I wanted to highlight this interesting paper by @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social and Mowafak Allaham about how often AI search engines cite AI-generated content Thread 1/

3/ AI search engines are more likely to cite AI-generated sources for queries about health and environmental issues like climate change.

4/ Copilot cited AI-generated sources 27.8% of the time! ngl that's a little shocking. There's a lot of other interesting data points buried in the paper. Love the investigative spirit of this work. Read it here: arxiv.org/pdf/2605.23684

I wanted to highlight this interesting paper by @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social and Mowafak Allaham about how often AI search engines cite AI-generated content Thread 1/

2/ The methodology is great. You could re-create it like so: 1. source a bunch of queries that people made to search engines on a number of topics 2. collect the responses that major search engines give to each 3. analyze the cited sources and attempt to identify those which were AI generated

propub.liPaper TrailInvestigative reporters at ProPublica chase down evidence of wrongdoing and bring it to light. Each episode, you’ll ride along as we talk to reporters and their sources, uncover hidden facts and show ...

3/ They found search summaries citing blatant AI-generated content like this

Brandon Roberts reposted

Rob Davis

@robwdavis.bsky.social

7 May

Beyond excited for the debut of ProPublica's podcast. Subscribe! propub.li/42ULaRa

ProPublica@propublica.org

NEW: Introducing “Paper Trail,” ProPublica’s new podcast. Each episode, we’ll take you inside an investigation, uncovering hidden facts and secrets — and doing what we do best: showing you the receipts. ▶️ Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. First episode drops May 14: propub.li/42ULaRa

projects.propublica.orgWhere Was My Generic Prescription Drug Made? - Rx Inspector - ProPublicaThe FDA won’t tell Americans where their generic drugs are made, so ProPublica did it instead. Use information on your prescription label to locate the factory and see inspection reports.

6 May

🥰 So proud to be a Pulitzer finalist in investigative reporting

Brandon Roberts reposted

Kevin Uhrmacher

@kevinuhrm.bsky.social

5 May

A special shoutout to the team behind @propublica.org's Rx Inspector, a part of this year's Pulitzer finalist entry for investigative reporting. Well done @bxroberts.org Ruth Talbot @nmcmillan.bsky.social @jdf.bsky.social and so many others projects.propublica.org/rx-inspector/

22 Apr

I just updated 527 Explorer, which includes filings through the end of Q1 2026. 1.2M total new records detailing contributions, expenditures and other organizational information. projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/

projects.propublica.orgAmerican Technology Excellence Project — 527 Explorer — ProPublicaEvery year, hundreds of millions of dollars flow through little-known political organizations called 527s. Use our database to explore who funds these organizations and how they’re spending their mone...

22 Apr

New entries include things like the American Technology Excellence Project, a pro-artificial intelligence PAC with a single funder: Meta projects.propublica.org/527-explorer...

22 Apr

People have been reaching out and letting me know how they're using this information which is always helpful to hear! You can always reach out on Signal if you find anything interesting: brandonrobertz.01

projects.propublica.orgSearch - Explore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,600 of His Appointees - ProPublicaUse this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their de...

21 Apr

Trump Admin financial disclosures update! We added Witkoff, Mullin, and a page to see who was recently added. (We're still awaiting Jared Kushner's disclosures) 👇👇

Al Shaw@shaw.al

We just updated our Trump Admin financial disclosures database with 27 new appointees/nominees including Kevin Warsh, Markwayne Mullin and Steven Witkoff. We also added a feature to sort names in our database by most recently added. 👉 projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

8 Apr

We are on strike today y'all. See this note about our event 👇

Al Shaw@shaw.al

If you registered to come to the event today on how to use the ProPublica Trump disclosures News app, the @propublicaguild.org is asking y’all NOT TO ATTEND in support of our strike today. We hate to do this, but management isn’t offering us a fair deal.

projects.propublica.orgDonald J. Trump - Explore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,500 of His Appointees - ProPublicaUse this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their de...

13 Mar

UPDATE: We just added more info to the Trump Team Financials app! Now including President Trump's most recent financial transactions, which were filed late + released the same day we published our app. You can now see his transactions up until late Jan 2026. projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

13 Mar

In case you don't know what a "transaction" is – officials must report any purchase, sale, or exchange of real property or securities (e.g., stocks) worth over $1k. These often come out in separate forms (278T) and are required to be filed within 45 days after a transaction occurs.

projects.propublica.orgExplore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,500 of His Appointees - ProPublicaUse this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their de...

THREAD: We just released a tool that allows you to search billions of dollars in wealth, ties to the most powerful companies in the country, and details of the personal finances of President Trump and over 1,500 of his appointees. Here’s how it works 1/

10/ Our new searchable database is the most comprehensive public source of financial disclosures across the executive branch. Let us know what you find! 👇👇 projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

propublica.orgHow to Contact ProPublica or Send a Tip Securely — ProPublicaOur job is to hold people and institutions accountable. To do that, we need evidence.

11/ We're going to continue digging into the people, entities and possible conflicts uncovered in this data. If you have information you'd like to share, reach out! Secure drop and encrypted tips form: www.propublica.org/tips/ And follow my fellow reporters: @shaw.al @coreygjohnson.bsky.social

8/ You can also see President Trump's debts. These include mortgages on properties like Trump Tower and Trump Villa. Also tens of millions of liabilities related to civil lawsuits by the New York Attorney General and E. Jean Carroll:

9/ Pro tip: You can directly share disclosures you find with the line number link. Here's Pam Bondi's sale of $1-5M of Trump Media stock, which occurred on "Liberation Day" last spring: projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f... (She hasn’t answered our questions.) Share/tag any interesting rows!

6/ Caveat: The data we have isn't standardized, so companies can be spelled in many different ways. To help search for common things, we've prepared queries you can use, like this one for people with ties to SpaceX 👇 projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...

7/ Trump's financial disclosure was more difficult to get. It came in a different format with a tiny, difficult to read font. We parsed the thousands of records, adding up to at least $1.4B in value, so you don't have to.

4/ With our tool, you can find other appointees who hold crypto, like Kenneth Howery, ambassador to Denmark, who holds a variety of bitcoin forks and other cryptocurrencies.

5/ On each appointee's page, we also make their ethics agreements docs available. Here, NASA Administrator Jared Taylor Isaacman details the steps he will take to avoid conflicts with SpaceX, which NASA has significant deals with.

2/ Political appointees are required to file disclosures detailing their finances and efforts to eliminate conflicts of interest. We've gathered over 3,000 of these forms and made them searchable.

propublica.orgTop DOJ Official Todd Blanche Shut Down Crypto Enforcement While Holding Crypto AssetsThe second-highest official at the DOJ, Todd Blanche rose to prominence as Trump’s personal defense attorney. His actions violated the federal conflicts of interest law and his ethics agreement, exper...

3/ In Dec, my colleagues @shaw.al and @coreygjohnson.bsky.social used this data to find that deputy AG Todd Blanche owned at least $159K in crypto when he shut down investigations into crypto companies. (The DOJ claimed his orders were "cleared in advance.") www.propublica.org/article/todd...

5 Feb

It's 2026, an election year (💀). That means its time to update ProPublica's 527 Explorer! This latest update brings us current through 2025, adding 460k new records. I'll be updating more frequently this year. Follow for updates & LMK what you do w/ it projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/