The Republican race for the presidential nomination is becoming increasingly nasty as voters prepare to head to the polls in South Carolina on Saturday.

So far this month, more than 15,200 TV ads have been blasted at South Carolinians, with nearly two-thirds of them negative, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data provided by advertising monitoring firm Kantar Media/CMAG. The negative ad total includes spots that contrast multiple candidates and typically cast at least one in a disparaging light.

Since TV ads from GOP candidates, super PACs and political nonprofits first began airing in South Carolina, nearly half have been negative. That’s a marked change from previous contests. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states to host votes for a presidential nominee, only about one-third of all TV ads were attack ads.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and his super PAC allies are primarily responsible for the recent onslaught.

So far this month, Cruz and his supporters have aired more than 5,400 TV ads— an average of about one every four minutes. Many of these have gone after his rival Republican White House hopefuls Donald Trump, a real estate mogul who currently leads in the polls, and Marco Rubio, a U.S. senator from Florida.

Both Trump and Rubio have also been attacked by super PAC Right to Rise USA, which supports former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the 2016 presidential race.

Meanwhile, in his own TV ads, Trump has repeatedly chastised Cruz, who bested Trump to win the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1.

At the same time, both Trump and Cruz have been criticized by groups whose donors are not immediately apparent.

Our Principles PAC, a super PAC formed last month by a former aide to 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, has spent nearly $4 million attacking Trump, according to Federal Election Commission records. Because of a quirk in campaign finance regulations, the group won’t be required to reveal any of its donors until Saturday.

Meanwhile, an Iowa-based group called the American Future Fund has spent more than $1.5 million attacking Cruz in South Carolina. Because the American Future Fund is organized as a “social welfare” nonprofit whose primary purpose isn’t influencing elections, it’s not required to disclose its donors.

“It’s really ramped up recently,” said Jeffrey Peake, a political science professor at Clemson University, of the intense battle in the Palmetto State. “South Carolina is really important for setting the stage for March 1.”

March 1 is Super Tuesday, when a dozen states will hold their Republican primaries or caucuses, including several others in the South.

Since 1980, the winner of South Carolina's Republican presidential primary has gone on to become the party's nominee every time except one.

This story was co-published with the Huffington Post and Al Jazeera America.

Saturday didn’t just play host to Democrats’ Nevada caucus and Republicans’ South Carolina primary.

Federal rules also required presidential candidates — and the legion of super PACs that support them — to reveal and detail their income and spending during January.

Raise money they have: Candidates and their allied groups have collectively spent more than $700 million so far competing in the 2016 White House race.

But some fared better than others. Here’s a rundown of the more curious statistics to emerge:

$4.38 million: What Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders spent in January on his campaign’s payroll alone — part of $34 million in overall expenditures last month. Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s campaign payroll? Less than one-tenth that of Sanders’ organization.

$3.5 million: Value of contribution on Jan. 11 from billionaire hedge funder James Simons to Priorities USA Action, the main super PAC backing Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The money helped boost the super PAC’s cash-on-hand figure to almost $45 million through January — and gives Sanders’ new rhetorical fuel for his argument that Clinton is beholden to Wall Street.

$1,590,423: The pittance, by presidential candidate standards, that former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s campaign raised in January. That’s about one-fifth what fellow Republican White House hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas raised for the month.

$1,078,875: Debt owed by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's defunct presidential campaign, as of Jan. 31. More than 40 creditors are awaiting payment from Walker's technically-still-active committee, including Google Inc., Koch brothers-backed data firm i360 and telemarketing operation FLS Connect LLC. Walker, who suspended his presidential bid in September, has taken to selling "sturdy and attractive" coffee mugs to clear his campaign's financial obligations. Several dozen people made debt-slashing contributions of more than $200 in January, including various members of the DeVos family— storied GOP megadonors whose patriarch, Richard, co-founded Amway and owns the Orlando Magic.

$424,955: What Republican Rick Santorum's presidential campaign collectively owed vendors on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. These consultants, fundraisers and data workers in part have themselves to blame, though: Santorum's 2012 presidential campaign remains more than $450,000 in debt.

$372,809: Amount of money pro-Bush super PAC Right to Rise USA raised in January. It proved to be a disastrous development for the group, which raised more than $117 million last year but could do little more than burn through its once-prodigious reserve as Bush’s campaign flailed — and, on Saturday night, ended.

$250,000: That’s how much the pro-Cruz super PAC Stand for Truth collected in January from a California-based limited liability company called Children of Israel LLC. Formed in June 2015, Children of Israel LLC donated $150,000 last year to Pursuing America’s Greatness, the super PAC that supported Republican Mike Huckabee’s failed presidential bid. Reached by the Center for Public Integrity, Shaofen “Lisa” Gao, a real estate agent who is listed on state records as the LLC’s registered agent, declined to discuss the company or its political contributions. “I don’t want to make any comment,” she said.

$204,000: What Trump’s campaign spent during January producing hats, many emblazoned with Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.” (They sell for $25 a pop on the campaign’s website.) The campaign spent another $708,000 on other swag: t-shirts, mugs, stickers and related freight.

$99,889: Cash that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton herself contributed her campaign in January — part of more than $468,000 she’s contributed since last year.

$32,907: Amount American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-backed granddaddy of super PACs, raised during January. Despite its meager haul, the group still has about $2.9 million in the bank and may accept unlimited donations at any juncture.

$2,700: Amount self-styled “green Republican” Trammell S. Crow, son of Dallas real estate tycoon Trammell Crow, contributed on Jan. 26 to Democrat Martin O’Malley’s presidential campaign. O’Malley quit the race on Feb. 1.

$1,000: The amount some Nevada prostitutes are reportedly asking clients to donate to Clinton's campaign in exchange for … extra services. Legal? Maybe so: It could fall under a volunteer services exception to campaign finance law, said Kenneth Gross, a political law attorney and former chief of the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement decision. But matters get complicated. If the prostitute is working for a corporation — say, a bunny ranch — the value of her time and use of corporate facilities could be considered an improper in-kind corporate contribution to the Clinton campaign. If her employer isn't coordinating with the campaign "the Citizens United ruling would kick in allowing unlimited corporate independent expenditures,” Gross says. “That would be legal, but the corporation would have to report the value of services since soliciting campaign contributions for the services provided would likely constitute express advocacy." Moral of the story? Campaign finance law applies to everything.

309: Number of people, couples or entities — Hillblazers, if you will — that have raised at least $100,000 for Clinton’s campaign, as of Jan. 31. Bold-faced names include Vogue editor Anna Wintour, lobbyist Heather Podesta, media mogul Fred Eychaner and Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.

16: Number of days after its formation that a company called “Decor Services LLC,” which materialized Jan. 12, contributed $250,000 to the pro-Chris Christie super PAC America Leads. As the Center for Public Integrity has previously reported, limited liability companies formed in Delaware are essentially black boxes. The only name connected to Decor Services LLC in public records is the Wilmington-based Corporation Service Company, a firm that serves as a registered agent for thousands of corporate entities. Campaign finance rules say contributions cannot be made in the name of another. Thus, companies cannot be created solely to mask individuals’ political giving. Is that what happened here? “There is definitely reason to believe the law has been violated,” said Paul S. Ryan, an attorney at the Campaign Legal Center. “The Campaign Legal Center will likely file a complaint on this.” Christie exited the race after the New Hampshire primary.

$0: What GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson gave to presidential super PACs in January — much to the chagrin of candidates who’d love the billionaire casino mogul’s aid.

-$16,339: Net cash former Huckabee’s campaign had (or didn’t) the night before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, in which the Republican vowed to “finish first.” Huckabee finished ninth. He dropped out that night.

Chris Zubak-Skees and Alexander Cohen contributed to this report.

Though they operate thousands of branches across the country, the nation’s three biggest auto title lenders want Virginia officials to treat them as private citizens and afford them the same right to keep their financial records out of public view.

The three lenders — TitleMax of Virginia Inc.; Anderson Financial Services LLC, doing business as Loan Max; and Fast Auto Loans Inc. — have filed legal arguments asking Virginia officials to prevent financial reports they submitted to the state from being disclosed to the Center for Public Integrity.

The annual reports include detailed sales figures, volume of loans, interest rates, the number of cars repossessed when borrowers default, and how often the lenders get into trouble with state and federal regulators. TitleMax, Loan Max and Fast Auto Loans submitted heavily redacted reports last month at the request of the commission before its hearing.

In defending the redacted reports, the companies argued in their latest filings that the reports constitute “personal financial information” that should be exempt from disclosure, just as it would be for any person.

“Fast Auto’s personal financial information should be treated as confidential just as an individual’s personal financial information would be treated,” the company wrote in its filing submitted Friday.

At a Jan. 27 hearing in Richmond, the Virginia State Corporation Commission, which oversees financial institutions in the state, called for more legal argument. At issue is whether the reports should be made public, as the commission’s own staff recommended last year, or if the information should be withheld from the public. Much of the debate at the hearing centered on whether the lenders should enjoy the same privacy rights for financial records as a private individual would under the law.

Attorney Erin Witte, who represented the Center for Public Integrity, argued that state financial privacy laws are meant to protect consumers, not major lending firms. The title lenders “are national corporations who are subject to tight regulations in accordance with the type of business they conduct; loaning money at triple digit interest rates to consumers at the fringes of society who often have no other financial means or option,” she wrote.

The commission’s Bureau of Financial Institutions, the regulatory division of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, agreed that companies aren’t people when it comes to shielding their finances. For 25 years the bureau “has steadfastly construed personal financial information as being limited to financial information relating to individuals,” the bureau wrote in its filing. The bureau said there is no “legal basis” for keeping the reports confidential, and they should be released.

In its brief, TitleMax noted the reports contain what it called “trade secrets,” whose release could cause the company “irreparable damage.” LoanMax called for a change in state law or an administrative rule process before a decision is made.

The Center for Public Integrity requested the annual reports from Virginia officials in November as part of an investigation into the costs of title loans nationwide. In Virginia, where nearly 500 title loan shops are operating, average interest rates were 222 percent in 2014, according to aggregate state figures.

Title lenders don’t deny interest rates they charge are steep. But the companies say they provide a vital service to people denied credit by banks.

Critics argue that title loans exploit low-income people and should be banned, or at least strictly regulated, to keep interest rates manageable. That argument has made little headway in the Virginia General Assembly, which earlier this year killed several bills to tighten industry oversight, including one bill that would have capped interest rates at 36 percent.

One bill that failed would have directed state officials to assess title loan profit margins and study whether allowable interest rates should be scaled back.

The House Joint Resolution sponsored by Del. Mark D. Sickles, a Fairfax Democrat, argued that the General Assembly “does not have access to data that would enable it to consider whether the costs of such loans are excessive or unreasonable.”  

Witte said that releasing the annual reports could help regulators get a handle on how the businesses operate.

“Scrutiny into these businesses is appropriate and in fact necessary to ensure that they do not take further advantage of Virginia's most vulnerable consumers,” Witte wrote.

It’s legal in about half the states to pledge a car title as collateral for a loan. Some states impose caps on interest rates they charge, while in other areas borrowers can pay 300 percent or more for small loans.

Getting a complete picture of the full costs of title loans — both in fees paid and vehicles lost — can be challenging. Regulators in many states either don’t require lenders to file detailed financial figures, including interest and default rates, or they keep the information confidential. Yet in Missouri, where all three of the Virginia title lenders also operate, annual financial reports are public records and anyone can request copies.

Ariel Zimman is taking a decidedly grassroots approach to supporting Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. But the legality of her handiwork is hazy, at best.

The 29-year-old resident of Portland, Oregon, is marketing homemade ceramic pipes emblazoned with decals of Sanders’ head and campaign logo.

Her pro-Sanders “smoking ware” — targeted at the “Burners for Bernie” set — sells for $60 apiece. And she advertises that 10 percent of her proceeds will benefit the self-described socialist from Vermont who has emerged as an unexpectedly serious challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

“It was really just a way to show my support for him as a candidate,” Zimman told the Center for Public Integrity. “People love [the pipes], and once they hear they are contributing in some way to the campaign, they are all about that too.”

But artists like Zimman looking to make a buck off Bernie best beware: While most observers say political campaigns are unlikely to take legal action against their own supporters, attorneys say entrepreneurs open themselves to risk by using candidates’ names, likenesses or logos — especially when promising to donate a specific portion of their sales.

“You can’t promise to pass the money along to the candidate,” said Joe Birkenstock, an attorney at Sandler Reiff who previously served as the chief counsel of the Democratic National Committee.

“If I was advising one of these vendors, I would probably advise them to be a little less specific in their solicitation,” echoed Larry Noble, a former top lawyer for the Federal Election Commission who now works at the Campaign Legal Center.

That’s a step that Sanders-supporting artist Jackie Dandelion of Beacon, New York, has already taken.

Dandelion sells her “Another Mermaid for Bernie Sanders” bumper stickers for $8.50 apiece. She used to advertise that she’d donate 25 percent of each sale to Sanders. Now she simply notes that a portion of the proceeds — an unspecified figure greater than 25 percent — goes to his campaign.

“Just know when you purchase from me, you're purchasing from someone who actively supports Bernie Sanders for president,” she wrote on the peer-to-peer e-commerce website Etsy.com.

That website, and others like it, offer Bernie fans a number of imaginative ways to show their support, including pendants, makeup bags and candles.

Other lawyers contacted by the Center for Public Integrity didn’t find these activities as troubling.

Ken Gross, who leads the political law practice at Skadden Arps, noted that such artists are “actually doing good for the campaign,” even if the products they make are not licensed or authorized.

“I can’t imagine the campaign going against them,” Gross said. “They’re supporters. They don’t want to turn them off.”

Dan Backer, an attorney at DB Capitol Strategies, said pro-Sanders artists pledging to donate a portion of their profits are “attempting to entice sales from a target audience” and “are saying what they will do with their revenues,” not engaging in formal fundraising.

“It only becomes a problem if they say they will forward the money — not the profits — to the campaign,” Backer continued. “If they specifically say ‘Give me $10, I will send $2 to the campaign in your name, and the other $8 will go towards this stuff,’ that’s a problem.”

Like any donor, artists cannot exceed the $2,700 limit on political contributions to federal candidates. And donations must also be made from personal funds, not a corporate account — although some limited liability companies are allowed to give so long as the money is attributed to a living, breathing human being.

Kenneth Pennington, Sanders’ digital director, told the Center for Public Integrity that the Sanders campaign doesn’t “authorize or condone” volunteer fundraising through the selling of products with the intent of passing along money to the campaign.

He declined to comment on the specific examples raised by the Center for Public Integrity, although he noted that “it’s not okay to sell things with the campaign’s logo.”

Zimman, the Portland-based pipe-maker, said she hasn’t heard one way or the other from Sanders’ campaign. But, she added, “If they need me to stop and they ask me to stop, I’ll stop.”

To date, Zimman said she’s contributed about $150 to Sanders. She plans on donating another $200 within a month. That amounts to about $3,000 worth of pipe sales, she said.

To hit the legal limit on how much she could donate to Sanders, she would need to sell about 400 more — likely a stretch for her one-woman operation.

“There is profit on my side of the business, but I’m also doing it for their profit as well,” Zimman said.

“It’s not a huge profit scheme that I’m working on,” she continued. “I would hope that Mr. Sanders would be like, ‘Yeah, you’re a small business, and you’re doing something that obviously is filling a need in the marketplace.'”

From a February 4, 2016 note from Center for Public Integrity CEO Peter Bale.

Facts are still sacred

Comment may be free and facts sacred, as a former editor of The Guardian once said, but I have been encouraging some of our most experienced journalists to step a little more briskly into news events in their areas of responsibility or to write curated pieces in which they can pull together the main elements of a subject they know well and use their decades of experience to shed light on current trends.

A couple of good examples lately include R. Jeffrey Smith, our National Security managing editor and a Pulitzer Prize winner formerly of the Washington Post, with a small item — really a blog entry — about the outlook for U.S foreign policy this election year, while deputy executive editor and long-time Money & Politics leader John Dunbar wrote a timely commentary on dark money and the anniversary of the Citizens’ United decision by the Supreme Court.

Jim Morris, the managing editor of the Environment team, stepped into the horror story of Flint Michigan, the kind of story his team specializes in across the country and on which it is holding the EPA and others to account.

Jeff, for me, was one of the inspirations behind this push — which I stress is not a huge shift in approach, more an attempt to use the great minds of the Center more visibly and topically — when at the turn of last year he stepped into the row over who presided over bringing torture into the armory of the U.S military. It wasn’t an investigation as such but Jeff had the attitude and the expertise to shed fresh light on it.

Our multi-media editor Eleanor Bell is going to “put some of these pieces to music” like this short video analysis of John Dunbar on Super-PACs and dark money on YouTube.

This shouldn’t be considered a huge shift. Political lead Dave Levinthal had his bottom practically welded to the chair at C-Span today and is a regular on Al Jazeera. Today, Carrie Levine and Cady Zuvich built on the excellent work we’ve done on tracking the advertising spending to produce a piece on why “nice” ads worked better than attack ads in Iowa. It also comes together in the superb ad-tracker by Chris Zuba-Skees. Michael Beckel showed that nearly a billion dollars has been raised so far without even an actual vote cast in the race to the White House. The team did a nice job looking at where some of the money goes, including to the Trump hat obsession.

Fire in the belly

I was struck talking with a major donor yesterday talking about giving to groups with “fire in their belly”. We may not be advocates but we do want reaction to our work.

Jim Morris notes that the investigation into the failure of the EPA to counter environmental racism, a series by Kristen Lombardi and Talia Buford, reverberates as the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights convenes in Washington Friday to take testimony from an Alabama resident and a New York lawyer featured in our stories.

A quite controversial story last year from Jared Bennett which looked at what happened to homeowners whose mortgages were sold by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in large packages to asset management firms on Wall Street has prompted two senators to ask HUD to explain the program. We and the New York Times and others have looked at the issue, some of us from the perspective of the firms packaging large numbers of mortgages as a legacy of the financial crisis and others — us included — for what it meant to have your house to some extent bought and sold underneath you, with significant numbers leading to foreclosures.

ICIJ – teaching by doing

In the ICIJ, Africa editor Will Fitzgibbon has been in Nigeria teaching a workshop on investigative journalism for local reporters. It's one of a handful of trips (funded independently by various NGOs) Will has made in the past 18 months that have combined training and hands-on reporting, and that have also become an important outreach tool for ICIJ as we build our network in Africa. Will led the remarkable Fatal Extraction project on the ground.

ICJJ reporter Hamish Boland-Rudder points out the ICIJ has also had some terrific ongoing impact over the course of January: European competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager publicly thanked the Luxembourg Leaks reporters and whistleblowers for their integral role in shedding light on questionable corporate tax maneuvers practiced by some of the world's largest companies; and U.S authorities announced a new clamp down on anonymous buyers using the luxury real estate market in cities like New York and Miami to hide "dirty money" - ICIJ reported on this in 2014 (long before the New York Times took on the same subject.).

New recruit

A great new recruit to the Center’s Money & Politics state team started this week. Michael Mishak joins the team from the National Journal. We believe our state reporting work and the consortium of state reporters involved in it combined with the huge State Integrity Investigation is a rich area to grow for us.

What we’re reading and thinking about

A great write-up from an important ICIJ member. Gerardo Reyes from Univision wasn't the first reporter to write about why they turned down an interview with notorious drug lord 'El Chapo' Guzmán, but Gerardo's write-up is from the perspective of a dedicated investigative journalist who has spent years telling important stories from Mexico's drug wars. An excellent read about a journalist who ultimately 'chose not to trade his ethics for a scoop,' as recommended by Marina Guevara Walker.

Rafat Ali, an old friend of mine who founded PaidContent.org, wrote a highly personal account of his travel news start up Skift. For me there are huge lessons for us and anyone trying to create or turnaround a media organization and how to focus on what matters.

The rise of the news “product manager” has been the story of my business life for the past 15 years and was well described in a Nieman report this week.

I welcome feedback on this note.

From January 21, 2016 note from Center for Public Integrity CEO Peter Bale.

Track the television battleground

TV is the big money battleground on which the political forces confront each other. Tracking how those ad dollars are spent and by whom gives a near-real-time picture of the campaign. It shows where big donors believe they can have the greatest impact. Public Integrity committed to tracking this by acquiring data from Kantar Media/CMAG. It’s been a rich vein of stories on who is buying ads where, which super-PACS are backing whom and which candidates are funding their own ads. 

Our award-winning data journalist Chris Zubak-Skees has turned the data into a dynamic map which should be a reference point for anyone throughout the campaign to make the scale and focus of spending clear. It is a remarkable example of how data can efficiently and effectively tell a hard-to-grasp story. It is very clear who is spending where and why, even in these early days before the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries. Over the year the map will fill out and become richer and richer. I encourage you to explore and bookmark Chris’ map. It’ll only get better. Here’s a "how to" guide.

Shining a light on dark money

Sitting beside the data work is the political team of Dave Levinthal, Michael Beckel and Carrie Levine.

Michael told the story of “dark money” well this week in a piece that was widely used by partners. It’s a simple piece explaining what on earth the Beltway crowd mean by dark money. Like an old primer on the Supreme Court Citizens United judgement by deputy executive editor John Dunbar, the dark money piece will run and run.

Another project from that team is Source Check and Cady Zuvich did a sharp job of pointing out some of the inconsistencies in what Bernie Sanders says about big money in politics, noting that Friends of the Earth is paying for pro-Bernie ads.

State Integrity has impact

At the state level, the one-year State Integrity Investigation led by Nick Kusnetz is still reverberating. New York governor Andrew Cuomo — whose state scored a D-minus in our investigation—called for big changes to ethics and campaign finance laws in the state. Last week AP reported that Vermont politicians– chagrined at their D-minus rating perhaps – considered new ethics legislation. In Washington State, attorney general Bob Ferguson proposed a bill to establish a one-year lobbying prohibition for former high-ranking state officials, citing State Integrity and the D-plus his state scored.

What we’re reading, thinking about

Jane Mayer, the New Yorker reporter who has done more than anyone to unveil the political influence of Charles and David Koch, has a new book out on them “Dark Money: the hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right"

Her latest New Yorker piece  is on how the brothers are reframing themselves as campaigners on issues like prison reform. Mayer, in an event in DC before the launch, was kind enough to credit Public Integrity and Dave Levinthal in particular for his work the Koch Bros. influence in universities.

And in an appearance on NPR Mayer talked about the Center’s founder, Chuck Lewis: "I quote someone named Chuck Lewis, who was the head of the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan group in Washington that's kind of a watchdog group. And he describes the Kochs as the Standard Oil of our time. And he says they have a record of lawbreaking and obfuscation like almost no other company. They have a long record of environmental legal cases where they held the record for the largest judgment against a company for pollution at one point. They also had the largest judgment against them at the time for a disastrous work-safety situation in which a pipeline blew up and killed two teenagers who lived near it. And there were - just one case after another after another.” Here’s her interview.

As always, I welcome your feedback on this note.

From February 12, 2016 note from Center for Public Integrity CEO Peter Bale.

Science for Sale

David Heath on the Environment team gave birth this week a story more than a year in the making and based on analysis of tens of thousands of documents. Like tobacco litigation,  his work on the health risks in chemicals and the impact on communities, workers and consumers takes time and patience. Smoking guns — as it were — aren’t easy to find. A big issue for him has been the perversion of scientific fact by well-placed doubt.

“Meet the ‘rented white coats’ who defend toxic chemicals” was the first piece in the series to show just how extraordinary the path can be between a lawyer keen to defend his chemical company clients and the readiness of a commercial scientist to find evidence to match. It would be funny if it didn’t then prejudice true science and affect important decisions on litigation and regulation. It’s a good, even amusing (in places) read.

Close to the heart of the work is an amazing database the Center for Public Integrity created in partnership with the City University of New York and Columbia University. The latest investigation adds 7,000 once-confidential documents to a database of 200,000 already in the “Chemical Archives”. Scroll down this story on cancer clusters and see how it works. It’s one way in which our investigative work lasts. The Center’s Chris Zubak-Skees developed it with others.

Vice News was our distribution partner on the story off our own network and there’s more next week.

One aspect I really liked was Environment editor Jim Morris’ explanatory commentary on why we should give a damn. I believe the Center has to push this much harder and Jim did it with a quote from Hippocrates: 

“Science is the father of knowledge but opinion breeds ignorance.”

Nearly 2 and a half millennia after the father of Western medicine offered that insight, science and opinion have become increasingly conflated, in large part because of corporate influence. Read more.

Lobbyists find fresh territory in the states

There’s a widespread sense in Washington that with a gridlocked Congress that lobbying energy and money has moved to the states. Now we have quantified it and shown it in a way that allows any state reporter or citizen to see just how true it is and who is behind that money from Big Pharma, to Uber, to trade unions.

The package on lobbying from reporters Liz Essley Whyte and Ben Wieder and our exceptional crew of data visualization journalists Yue Qiu and Chris Zubak-Skees, is another example of creating lasting value in our work. The spot story is strong on the human impact and scale of the money moving into the states but the underlying database, rendered for every state is hugely powerful and is an asset for any state reporter. It is exactly what the state project led by Kytja Weir “Who’s Calling the Shots in State Politics” is supposed to do.

Making political spending visible

Another example of the world-class data work by Chris Zuba-Skees— which gets better with every dollar and every caucus— is this ad-tracker on presidential race political advertising spending and the  the 2016 presidential contender fundraising & spending graphic. I strongly believe this is some of the best work the Center has done.

What we’re reading and thinking about

Spotlight, the movie about the Boston Globe investigation into pedophile priests, is practically a recruiting ad for investigative journalism and has been great at raising the profile of the business. CPI board co-chairman Scott Siegler and I went to a talk with Spotlight writer Josh Singer, then Boston Globe editor and now Washington Post editor Marty Baron and Columbia Journalism School dean Steve Coll in Los Angeles this week.

Josh is clearly deeply committed now to investigative reporting. If you haven’t seen the movie yet it’s perhaps the best portrays in cinema of the actual job of journalism. The Center’s own Kristen Lombardi was interviewed by the filmmakers and gets a shoutout in it for her coverage of the issue of priests in the alternative Boston Phoenix.

As always, I welcome your feedback on this note.

With Election 2000’s voting debacle still raw, President George W. Bush, in 2002, signed into law the “Help America Vote Act,” which he promised would help “ensure the integrity and efficiency of voting processes in federal elections.”

A key component: the Election Assistance Commission, a new, bipartisan federal agency tasked with adopting voting system guidelines, distributing grants and otherwise aiding states in improving their election processes.

But the little commission soon hit downdrafts. Congress routinely cut its already modest budget. The federal government moved its headquarters from prime digs in downtown Washington, D.C., to a nondescript office tower in suburban Maryland. Then, in 2010, the Election Assistance Commission began a nearly five-year stretch where it lacked enough appointed commissioners to conduct meetings, and, therefore, conduct its most important business. Some members of Congress tried, and failed, to kill what had effectively become a zombie agency.

Now, after years of such turbulence, three of the agency’s four commissioner slots are filled — enough, at least, to function. And today, Thomas Hicks, a Democrat and former attorney for the Committee on House Administration, assumes the Election Assistance Commission’s chairmanship. For Hicks, the post is years coming: President Barack Obama initially nominated him in early 2010, but the U.S. Senate didn’t appoint him to the Election Assistance Commission until late 2014. His challenges are numerous, from helping ensure elections are free and fair to grappling with advocacy groups’ outrage over the actions of his agency’s executive director.

The Center for Public Integrity recently spoke with Hicks about his plans for his one-year chairmanship, which will coincide with 2016 presidential and congressional elections. The interview has been edited for length and clarity:

Center for Public Integrity: What are your top agenda items for the year that you’ll have the chairmanship?

Thomas Hicks: I would like to focus on the machine issue — to insure that the states that bought machines with [Help America Vote Act] funds in the last 10 years or so have those machines up and running and are up to the standards they should be. I want to make sure that those with disabilities are not being left behind. HAVA is very strong in saying that it [aims] to ensure that those with disabilities have the same access to the ballot, and the same opportunity to cast those ballots. Third, I want to get more people involved … We can encourage states to recruit more poll workers. We can encourage states to get more information out to voters. A fourth thing: More states should participate in online voter registration. You get rid of a lot of [the] issues you have with poor handwriting, clerical errors, errors in general. It saves money and more people are likely to use electronics now as opposed to use a paper form of registration.

Center for Public Integrity: What grade would you give the state of voting machines right now?

Hicks: I don’t know if I could overall give a grade. There are different aspects to the machines that range from A to F. States are doing a lot to ensure that they are keeping these machines up and running on the limited budgets they have. They are looking at ways to improve or replace these machines, whether that’s commercial, off-the-shelf software or upgrading their machines, in general.

Center for Public Integrity: Explain the merits of — or downsides to — early voting in the states.

Hicks: Early voting helps those individuals who, like myself, are never in the jurisdiction on Election Day. Virginia allows me to either go to my government center and vote early or to cast a mail-in ballot. It’s particularly helpful for individuals who don’t have the ability to vote on Election Day during that 12-hour period, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. It’s something that should be used more.

Center for Public Integrity: What challenges do we have in 2016 in regard to giving proper polling access to people who may have, for one reason or another, some challenge in casting their ballot?

Hicks: I look at New York City. It has the largest population of Chinese individuals outside [of China]. A certain percentage of those folks only speak Chinese — Mandarin or some variation. If you do not offer some sort of assistance for these folks to cast their ballots, that is doing a disservice. English is not the official language of this country. A large percentage of folks speak English, but that does not mean that English has to be offered exclusively. Offering this does not necessarily mean we are giving up what it means to be American. It gives folks who can vote an opportunity to participate in the system and understand what they’re actually doing.

Center for Public Integrity: What’s the proper amount of identification needed in order to cast a ballot — and prevent against fraud?

Hicks: The proper amount is the amount that’s not incumbent on the individual to seek that identification. If I have to jump through nine hoops just to obtain identification that allows me to exercise my constitutional rights, that’s too cumbersome and shouldn’t be in place. The photo ID issue should be looked at in terms of helping people who may not have photo ID obtain photo ID … whether that’s public assistance, or whatever.

Center for Public Integrity: Is voter fraud real and widespread? Or is the issue overblown?

Hicks: You’re always going to hear about cases of voter fraud. To what extent it is affecting elections should be looked at. But you also have cases of voter suppression. That should be looked at with the same fervor. If my vote is being denied, it is the same as someone who is committing voter fraud.

Center for Public Integrity: We’re entering an election season where presidential candidates and congressional candidates — and their allies — will have more resources than ever before. To what degree to you believe this will have an effect on voter issues, be it voter promotion or suppression efforts from Democrats or Republicans?

Hicks: If you look at any election, you will see false materials being put out. This is one of the reasons why election officials need to have updated websites as much as they can — and clear websites so individuals know that they can trust that information. We hope we can provide direction to information about polling hours; what forms of ID they need to bring to the polls, if any; what kinds of assistance that is available; what rights they have once they get to the polls.

Center for Public Integrity:Internet voting seems to be all the rage in some quarters. What are the pros and cons to a state allowing a state allowing Internet voting in some form or fashion?

Hicks: A pro is that it looks at the voting process more so in the 21st century. One of my friends talked to me about how we can get a robot to Mars about 150 million miles away and land it in the space of a football field and get it to function. Yet we can’t electronically transfer voting ballots back to precincts from other places. But that goes to the major con: security. If there’s going to be electronic return of ballots, it needs to be done in a secure manner to ensure votes are not being manipulated. If the integrity of the election itself is called into question, people will not want to participate in the system.

Center for Public Integrity: Is it closer to two-to-four years, or 20-to-40 years before we see widespread Internet voting?

Hicks: We might not be voting using these methods in my lifetime, but I hope we can in my children’s lifetime. I don’t think it’s in two years, but I don’t know if it’s as long as 40 years, either.

Center for Public Integrity: What are the pros and cons to the government automatically registering an eligible person to vote whether they want it or not?

Hicks: I look at it in the realm of the Selective Service. When I was 18, I was told I had to register for the Selective Service. When individuals turn 18, they should be given the option to be automatically registered to vote. Part of my 1st Amendment rights is not only the ability to speak — but also the ability not to speak. So it has to be a serious consideration that rights are not being trampled. We also must not unduly give information out that might be compromising an individual’s safety. For example, some voter registration lists are public. So if I’m automatically registered to vote, and my information is made public and I’m a police officer, or a law enforcement individual whose information should be kept private, is this putting my life in jeopardy or my family’s life in jeopardy? Also, there are people who are victims of domestic violence. You have to do it in a realm that ensures safety and isn’t done haphazardly.

Center for Public Integrity: What keeps you up at night as you enter your chairmanship? Hanging chads? Five-hour-long lines outside the polls?

Hicks: The things that keep me up at night go from A to Z, from registering voters to actually having ballots accurately counted and races properly certified. The EAC is poised to assist states and groups to ensure that we move the election process forward. 2000 was the bellwether. But issues happen in every election. The EAC needs to be there to assist states and individuals to ensure these things don’t happen.

Center for Public Integrity: How do you ensure that, though?

Hicks: One of the big things I hope to do is poll worker recruitment. There’s always been that joke that poll workers are old and afraid of technology. Why are we not using more young people, more disabled people, more people with bilingual status? Part of that comes from saying you have to have people who are willing to work the entire day, willing to be on their feet for 12 hours. If we could break it up, say, four hours here, four hours there, you might get a lot more people to do it.

Center for Public Integrity: What would be your pitch to states to make them go in this direction?

Hicks: Look at ways to provide incentives for people getting involved. Give school credit to students. Or look at the tax code to provide pay incentives. Also, consider government employees who couldn’t do it for 12 hours, but possibly four or six. Then there are teachers. If schools are being used for polling stations, could the teachers work the polls for four hours that day. They have a wealth of individual knowledge to help as poll workers. This is for the states to really delve into.

Center for Public Integrity: You’ve heard the criticism, particularly from some Republicans that the EAC has outlived its usefulness — that it should be wrapped into another agency or disbanded altogether. Why is the EAC still relevant?

Hicks: Until Congress passes a law in their chambers and the president signs it, I’m approaching my job as if the agency is here today, here tomorrow. The relevancy comes from more than just giving money to states. We give guidance to states and individuals to help improve their elections. The agency is as relevant now in 2016 as it was in 2002, when President Bush signed it into law.

Center for Public Integrity: Your annual budget for the entire agency — less than $10 million — is equivalent to what a single super PAC might spend in a month. Do you have the resources to adequately fulfill its mission?

Hicks: Any agency would love to have additional resources. We will do the best with what the Congress and the president gives us. There are always additional things we’d love to do, but for right now, with budgets all over being cut, we’re happy with what we have.

Center for Public Integrity: The agency went through a period of time when it effectively could not function because it didn’t have commissioners. Now that you do have a quorum of commissioners, what is the EAC able to do today that you couldn’t do before?

Hicks: One of the biggest things is addressing voting system guidelines. The guidelines were written before the iPhone. To update our standards and bring them into the second decade of the 21st century [would be] huge and couldn’t be done without commissioners. We also can help give states confidence that elections are being run properly.

Center for Public Integrity: For you personally, is your tenure going to be one where you lead from behind the scenes, or do you expect to be public-facing?

Hicks: It’s the agency, not the official. We’re here to help, and I’m a conduit. I don’t need the limelight. I just want to ensure elections run smoothly. And it’s something I’ve always believed in. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have waited the five years for the appointment to come through.

This story was co-published with PRI.

The environmental damage caused by decades of nuclear weapons production will take at least 60 more years to clean up and cost taxpayers nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars, according to the Energy Department’s latest estimate, disclosed at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Feb. 23.

The $240 billion tally was included in prepared testimony by an official of the Government Accountability Office, who estimated that an additional $280 billion dollars will be needed to finance the U.S. government’s planned  modernization of its nuclear warheads over the next 25 years.

David Trimble, who directs the GAO’s Natural Resources and Environment Division, remarked that the government faces challenges in its contracting procedures for this work, and in aligning “its plans with future budgets.” He said the Energy Department’s estimate of cleanup costs — as large at it is — was billions of dollars short of what the government will actually have to spend, because expenses associated with fixing some additional damaged sites were not included.

Trimble also noted that the government’s estimate of the final tally has been growing as the work proceeds. Over the last four years, for example, it grew by $77 billion. The Energy Department could do a better job of prioritizing cleanup work and tackling it more systematically, he said.

This year, the budget for the Environmental Management component of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is $6.2 billion. President Barack Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2017 seeks $6.1 billion — a 1.6 percent reduction from the current level.

Environmental Management oversees projects that include the stabilization and disposal of liquid waste held in tank farms at the Hanford Nuclear Site, uranium disposal at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, general cleanup of the highly plutonium contaminated grounds of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and many more tasks.

While cleanup would get cut back, Obama has proposed to increase spending on weapons modernization in the NNSA budget, from $8.8 billion to $9.2 billion, a 4.5 percent increase.

Monica Regalbuto, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for Environmental Management, said her division has set clear priorities, beginning with reopening the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico. The deep geological repository for nuclear waste produced by the weapons program has been shut down since February 2014, when a series of accidents led to its contamination and a radiation leak escaped into the environment.

The plant plays a key role in the national nuclear cleanup campaigns, and while it’s been shut, waste is piling up at sites around the country that are ill-equipped for long-term storage of such hazardous materials. Regalbuto said the repository is on track to begin accepting waste again in December 2016.

Subcommittee chairman Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, criticized the NNSA for exceeding its budgets for such work and missing deadlines. “We’re giving people pink slips that want to stay in the military,” he said, because the nuclear work requires more funding than anticipated.

Some of the most generous donors to Donald Trump’s campaign thus far — other than the candidate himself — are people with jobs titles a lot like his. They just don’t make quite as much money.

Excluding retirees, the most identifiable contributions to the billionaire businessman have come from owners, presidents and CEOs, in that order, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of Federal Election Commission data through January.

But they’re hardly corporate titans. They’re owners and operators of mostly small to mid-sized businesses. And while the companies themselves vary, the proprietors share a common trait.

They are fed up with politicians.

“Just get somebody in there who’s different,” said Anthony Forlini, whose Ocean Park, New Jersey, firm disposes of contaminated dirt. “I don’t even care anymore.”

Forlini, who donated $207 to Trump's campaign last year, speaks for many.

Hugh Joyce of Richmond, Virginia, owns James River Heating Air Conditioning Co. and gave Trump’s campaign $2,700, the legal maximum.

“I don’t agree with everything [Trump] does, but what I do like about him, he’s not being bought by anybody else,” Joyce said. “When I see establishment people petrified, I’m interested.”

Plenty of establishment people are petrified — particularly Republican establishment people. And despite constant predictions of a flame-out, prompted by a steady stream of outrageous comments from the candidate, Trump is winning. On Saturday, for example, he obliterated his South Carolina primary competition, capturing every one of the state’s 50 delegates.

And at the Nevada caucuses on Tuesday night, he repeated his success, capturing 46 percent of the vote on his way to victory.

The Center for Public Integrity identified about 500 business owners and/or operators who gave an average of around $660 apiece to Trump. The businesses ranged from heating and air conditioning contracting companies to exterminators to restaurants. There were auto dealerships, real estate offices, retail outlets and small manufacturers.

The Center for Public Integrity then contacted a cross-section of them to learn why they pulled out their checkbooks and sent their hard-earned cash to the billionaire/reality television star.

The message was clear. They are ready for an alternative to any establishment conservative, regardless of how bombastic he is. And many of the candidate’s talking points on immigration, taxes, jobs, education and the economy seem to resonate — even if the backers aren’t clear on the details.

“I like that he’s not on the inside. Washington’s broken. If we send another insider there, we are going to get the same garbage,” said Burl Hiles, owner of Burl’s Termite and Pest Control in Estill Springs, Tennessee, who gave Trump $2,700.

Most campaigns rely on funds from contributors.

But through January, about 70 percent of the $26 million Trump’s campaign has raised comes from Trump himself, almost all of it loans. Another 22 percent comes from small-dollar donors, who have given $200 or less.

But a relatively small portion, roughly $1.9 million, has come from donors who have given more than $200 and are thus required to be named in FEC reports. Of that amount, at least $336,000 has come from business owners and top executives.

Lower taxes for all

One position Trump has taken that pretty much every business owner can get behind is the slashing of the corporate income tax rate from a high of 35 percent to 15 percent.

“No business of any size, from a Fortune 500 to a mom and pop shop to a freelancer living job to job, will pay more than 15 percent of their business income in taxes,” reads Trump’s policy paper on the issue.

Heather Nally, owner of the Micro Diner in Pittsburgh, could use a break on taxes. She’s been running her 29-seat restaurant for almost four years and pays her employees better than the $7.25 minimum wage.

“If I didn’t pay so much money on taxes I might be able to give these people more money,” Nally said.

She contributed $230 to Trump in January.

Trump’s reasoning for the tax cut, in part, is aimed at larger businesses. He wants to prevent corporate “inversions.” That’s the practice of companies reincorporating overseas to take advantage of lower tax rates. This would, in theory anyway, help manufacturing by keeping companies and jobs in this country.

Trump would also lower the personal income tax rate for everyone, but especially the wealthy, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, which analyzed his plan. The largest benefits, according to the study, “would go to the highest-income households.” It would provide an average $1.3 million tax cut for the top 0.1 percent of earners, the study found.

It’s safe to say Trump would fall into that category.

As for the impact of his policy on the debt, well, that’s a bit troublesome, according to the Tax Policy Center. It would cost the government $9.5 trillion over 10 years and could cause the national debt to soar, according to the analysis.

Experience wanted

Trump’s business experience inspires a lot of his small business supporters, particularly around job creation.

Trump, in a video on his website, says with characteristic understatement, “I will be the greatest jobs producing president that God ever created.”

Says Joyce, the donor from Richmond: “The most important thing we can create for America is jobs. I have a great amount of interest and respect to anyone that can grow a business with that many people — a wild amount of respect.”

Joyce says the regulatory environment in the country is “so unbearable — so impossible. We are having so few new businesses start because of the environment. Are we working through it? Yes. Is our business viable? Yes. But it’s terrible when you look at the dollars lost. It’s terrible and nobody cares.”

Forlini, the donor from New Jersey, agrees Trump is best suited to bring in jobs.

“He’s at least the best suited to get that under control just because he’s a businessman,” Forlini said. “Just because he understands whatever comes in he had to work to get that. If we get another liberal in there, I’m out of here.”

Forlini is a Democrat, and he believes “you’re going to see a lot of Democrats moving over to Trump.”

At least one poll says he may be on to something.

Civis Analytics, a data analytics consulting company, interviewed more than 11,000 Republican-leaning individuals and came to the conclusion that Trump’s best voters are“self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registered as Democrats.”

Education and Obamacare

Trump donor Richard Edwards, of Stevens, Pennsylvania, is president of Edwards Electric & Telecom. He’s frustrated with the nation’s lousy educational system and sees it in his job candidates.

“As a business owner, I get to see the young men who apply to work here and I see the junk in the market,” he said. “Schools are horrible.”

Trump — whom Edwards supported with a $2,700 contribution — has been a bit vague on his education plan, but did release a video blasting one initiative that’s taken a lot of flak from conservatives.

“I’m a tremendous believer in education, but education has to be at a local level. We cannot have the bureaucrats in Washington telling you how to manage your child’s education,” Trump said. “So Common Core is a total disaster. We can’t let it continue.”

The Common Core State Standards Initiative’s goal is to lay out what students, from kindergarten through high school, should be proficient in when it comes to math and English as they complete each grade.

Edwards is also especially upset with Obamacare — a common refrain among Trump donors contacted by the Center for Public Integrity.

“I watched Obama take small business owners and use them to fund all of his garbage,” he said. “Obamacare has taken a great health system and turned it into garbage. My insurance rates have tripled.”

Fairness or xenophobia?

Among Trump’s more radical ideas is the desire to deport the roughly 11 million people who have entered the United States illegally. He also wants to build a wall along the Southern border of the nation and make Mexico pay for it.

Even his staunchest supporters are a little skeptical of the wall idea.

“He’s a little far stretched on that and he couldn’t do it anyways,” said Nally of the Micro Diner. “I don’t think he means that either. I think it’s the way he talks.”

However, she supports legal immigration and a more limited deportation plan. “Look, if they committed crimes or never paid any taxes, send them back,” she said of immigrants living in the United States illegally.

“What’s wrong with doing it the right way?” she asked. “Illegal immigration wasn’t how we built this country, legal immigration was. That’s how distorted reality’s become – is it fair to the ones that are doing it the right way?”

Many of Trump’s supporters weren’t terribly concerned with the details of his proposals. They just want change and they want it now — especially folks in the three top donor states for business owners and top executives: Texas ($41,800), Florida ($37,785) and California ($30,200).

Wendell Reeder, owner of Clarksville Oil & Gas in Clarksville, Texas, and nearby ranches is one of those people.

“He tells it like it his,” Reeder said of Trump, to whom he gave $1,000 last year. “He’s telling the truth — from illegal aliens to taxes. Everything he talks about; it's really the way it is. I hope that we can get someone up there would do what’s best for America and not just what is politically correct.”

Ben Wieder and Michael Beckel contributed to this report.

This story was partnered with Huffington Post.

Virginia legislators have rejected three bills crafted to limit school policing statewide, exposing a rift among GOP lawmakers, in particular, over a prominent criminal justice issue being debated across the nation. A pair of other related measures are still winding their way through the legislative process. 

Among the bills that failed this month was a Republican-sponsored proposal to bar police from criminally charging students 14 and younger with disorderly conduct at school or on school buses. Another proposal that faltered would have eliminated language in state code mandating that educators inform law enforcement of any incident that could be construed as a misdemeanor. A third bill would have prohibited expulsion or student referrals to law enforcement unless “feasible” alternative responses are first considered or if a student is found with a gun or other weapon.  

Last year, the Center for Public Integrity found that Virginia schools, collectively, led the country in the rate at which they referred students to law enforcement agencies. National data showed that special-needs students and black students were disproportionately affected. A sampling of local police data in Virginia revealed that thousands of students have been arrested mostly for misdemeanor charges that critics say should be matters of school discipline, rather than crimes — especially disorderly conduct or simple assault allegations. In one jurisdiction, Chesterfield, more than half of 3,538 complaints police filed over three years were against students 14 or younger. Felony arrests for any age were comparatively few.

During a floor debate in the Virginia House of Delegates, Dave LaRock, a Republican  representing parts of Clarke, Frederick and Loudoun counties, argued in favor of his bill, HB1134, which would have exempted students 14 or younger from criminal disorderly conduct charges at school or on a school bus. The debate between skeptics and supporters was posted on YouTube.

“This bill merely proposes that disruptive but otherwise non-criminal behavior of our children in the schools be handled by in-school discipline rather than courts and police,” LaRock said. “HB 1134…is very targeted. Current law makes it a crime to act up in school.”

Delegate Robert D. Orrock, Republican of Caroline and Spotsylvania counties, objected to carving out a schools exception.  

“I think it sends the wrong message to our students. In spite of their young age of 14 or younger, the law is the law,” said Orrock, who is a Spotsylvania High School teacher. He said that “we shouldn’t be down here telling them that the law doesn’t apply” as long as students are on school grounds.

The Center’s analysis of national education data for the 2011-2012 academic year — the most recent available — found that in Virginia, the rate of student referral to law enforcement was about 16 per 1,000 students enrolled statewide. That was close to three times the U.S. average of about six referrals per 1,000. The Spotsylvania County school district — Orrock’s district — had an even higher rate of referral at 35 students per 1,000. Spotsylvania High School’s rate was 62 per 1,000.

Orrock did not respond to requests for an interview.

The Center’s story last year focused on Kayleb Moon-Robinson, a student in Lynchburg, Va., who is African-American and autistic—and was charged with disorderly conduct twice, as well as a felony, within three months of starting sixth grade.

Kayleb’s school police officer first charged the 11-year-old with disorderly conduct after he saw Kayleb kick a trash in the fall of 2014. Days later, the same officer grabbed Kayleb, who had left class without permission. Kayleb struggled and swore, and the officer handcuffed him and put him under arrest for disorderly conduct again as well as for a charge of felony assault on a police officer. The child has been in and out of court for months, facing the possibility of detention if he acts up at school again.

During the floor debate on LaRock’s bill, co-sponsor Jennifer McClellan, a Democrat representing the city of Richmond and parts of Henrico County, said that she’s been gathering examples of students “being held to a higher standard than developmentally they should be.” She said that a 13-year-old child in a school for students with special-needs was charged with disorderly conduct for failing to obey instructions, storming out of a room and banging on a keyboard. “He had no history of violence,” McClellan said.

“What this bill says is they should be handled through the discipline process — for young kids, who are going to act out,” McClellan said, “but aren’t criminals.” 

Other legislators who opposed the bill suggested finding ways to reduce referrals without “blanket immunity,” or allowing for future review of the proposal before the House Committee on Courts of Justice. LaRock’s bill passed the House Committee on Education with a bipartisan 16-6 vote but subsequently failed 60-30 on the House floor. The Virginia School Boards Association came out against LaRock’s bill, but did not respond to Center requests for an interview.

In 2013, Texas legislators  adopted a bill that prevents school police from issuing court summonses to students, at school, for “disruption” of classes or transportation, such as a school bus. However, officers can still file complaints with prosecutors. 

Another LaRock bill, HB1132, also passed the House Committee on Education with a 20-2 vote, but subsequently died after being referred to the Committee on Courts of Justice. By amending state code language, it would have eliminated a requirement for school principals to report a range of incidents to law enforcement if they could be considered misdemeanors.  

LaRock told the Center that he attended a dinner not long ago with members of the Prison Fellowship, a socially conservative religious organization seeking criminal justice-reforms. He was part of a discussion about Kayleb’s story, LaRock said.

“How did this 11-year-old boy in Lynchburg get charged with felony assault for what seemed such a fairly minor incident?” LaRock said. “I’m certainly glad I didn’t come away from school with a record that could have lasted long into my life.” 

The third failed bill directly related to school policing was HB1061, by Lamont Bagby, Democrat representing parts of Henrico and Charles City County and Richmond. The bill would have blocked students, except those found with weapons, from expulsion or referral to law enforcement unless alternative responses to conduct were attempted. It passed the House Committee on Education 17-7 but was referred to the Committee for Courts of Justice, where it died. 

A pair of other school discipline –related measures are still alive. The House of Delegates approved 95-2 a proposal by McClellan that would relieve school police officers whose positions are funded with state grants from responsibility to enforce school rules in addition to criminal law. The bill, HB487, has been assigned to a Senate public education subcommittee. Most school resource officers, however, are not funded by the grant program referenced in the bill.

Another bill that the House approved 99-0 would allow students facing disorderly conduct charges in court to submit special-needs behavioral assessments as part of a defense they did not act willfully. That proposal, HB1213, was sponsored by David Albo, Republican of Fairfax County. The bill is now before the Senate Committee for Courts of Justice.

After the Center’s story came out last year—along with a radio piece done in collaboration with Reveal Radio—some jurisdictions in Virginia began reforming local school-police agreements to explicitly keep officers out of disciplinary matters.   Gov. Terry McAuliffe appointed cabinet members to figure out how to reduce unnecessary student arrests statewide. State officials also began a program to train school police statewide.

In July, the nonprofit Strategies for Youth group conducted training for about 80 school police officers in Virginia. The group’s organizers, who have trained school police nationally, said a short time frame allowed only for relatively deep training on adolescent brain development and the “traumatized” child brain. But the training did not cover the implications of learning disabilities, organizers said. Time was also too short and the group too big, they said, to effectively tackle the problem of “implicit bias” — meaning how children of certain ethnicities might be judged more harshly.   

Lisa Thurau, executive director of Cambridge, Mass.-based Strategies for Youth, said the training was a “good start” but would be more effective with smaller groups of 30 to 40 officers. “To be effective,” she said, “these trainings must also address students with special education needs and the way students' race is perceived by school personnel and officers.”  

Our data journalism across the Center for Public Integrity and in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is second to none in my view. It’s also a core competence I want to strengthen. With the growth in “big data” we are well-placed to lead in data journalism as the Center has for many years.

Data design win

Chris Zubak-Skees, Yue Qiu and Erik Lincoln have won outstanding recognition for their work in data journalism and visualization from the Society of News Design.

A portfolio from the Center for Public Integrity— incorporating work from Yue, Chris and in the case of State Integrity from Erik, won an award of excellence in the society’s Best of Digital Design competition. I recognize that many people contribute to the work underlying all of this and so do the data and digital teams I am sure.

Separately, Yue won the same award with her own portfolio of work from both at the Center and her time at ProPublica and for a specific project from ProPublica Workers' Compensation Reforms by State.

Unfortunately Yue will shortly leave the Center to join Bloomberg in Hong Kong but she has done great work here and added to the Center’s skills. Personally, I think the work she did on State Integrity with this imaginative “wheel” of data to take the reader through into deeper data of this huge investigation was incredibly clever.

ICIJ in big data

Data pervades much of our work and no more so than in the ICIJ whose data team led by Mar Cabra won the investigations section of the Data Journalism Awards of the Global Editors Network last year. [Full disclosure: I am the president of GEN but I had no hand in the award.] The ICIJ is particularly strong in crunching enormous datasets from leaks as it has with Swissleaks and LuxLeaks. Watch this space for another project of even greater scale.

Political data

We acquire and analyze advertising data as part of the Buying of the President project and in Who’s Calling the Shots in State Politics. That, combined with the regular dumps of data on the campaign costs provides rich seams of stories mined by our data journalists and the political team. Chris Zubak-Skees built what I think is by far the best political ad tracker powered by weekly data. Dave Levinthal, Michael Beckel and Carrie Levine on the federal political team did a nice job this week in digesting the big numbers on the campaign so far. The data visualization that goes with that — again by Chris Z-S– brings great clarity to the money race whether or not Donald Trump is spending his own. The 2.17am timestamp suggests Erik Lincoln and Kimberley Porteous were working late on it too.

John Dunbar and Cady Zuvich capitalized on all that background and fresh reporting to produce an analysis of what type of people are backing Donald Trump financially.Turns out they’re aspirant small business people.

Bongs for Bernie

Michael Beckel is our resident comedy writer and trivia hunter and came up with a beauty this week which was immediately picked up by CNN, the San Antonio Express-News, High Times and something called Bustle. Can you sell marijuana pipes to help fund Bernie Sanders?

What we’re reading and thinking about:

Executive Editor Gordon Witkin notes this Fortune article on metrics that matter to BuzzFeed…food for thought on the changing measures of success in the new media world.

Chief Digital Officer Kimberley Porteous is thinking about her next gig by reading:

Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers which is helpful for conceiving new business models for digital journalism.

The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company which she recommends as essential reading for the creation of any new digital products or organizational pivots.

And: The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford: laugh-out-loud funny in the way it skewers the English aristocracy and more absurd than any P.G. Wodehouse story.

I am a big fan of Emily Bell from the Tow Institute at Columbia and here’s her dystopian view of journalism being swallowed by the big Internet platforms.

I welcome feedback on this note.

A small video camera stashed in a row of bushes silently recorded the comings and goings of the family of a Brussels-area man with an important scientific pedigree last year, producing a detailed chronology of the family’s movements. At one point, two men came under cover of darkness to retrieve the camera, before driving away with their headlamps off, a separate surveillance camera in the area revealed later.

The Belgian police discovered the secret film on Nov. 30 while searching the Auvelais home of a man with ties to the Islamic State terror group. But they became far more alarmed when they figured out that its star was a senior researcher at a Belgian nuclear center that produces a significant portion of the world’s supply of radioisotopes.

That realization quickly got the attention of the world’s counterterrorism experts.

A diagnostic tool used by hospitals and factories around the globe, radioisotopes are also capable of causing radiation poisoning and sickness, making them a potential target for terrorists seeking to build a so-called “dirty” bomb that could contaminate the downtown area of a major city, sowing panic and causing billions of dollars in financial losses.

Belgian authorities have since speculated that the group was trying to figure out a way to collect such materials from the nuclear center, perhaps by kidnapping the man or one of his family members as the first step in building a bomb.

Many U.S. experts — including Laura Holgate, the National Security Council’s senior director for weapons of mass destruction terrorism — consider the eventual detonation by terrorists of a dirty bomb containing radiological materials to be inevitable. “I’m surprised it has not happened yet,” Holgate told a Washington symposium three years ago, because the mechanics of such a device are simple and widely-known.

“We know that it would not require a team of nuclear physicists or even a particularly sophisticated criminal network to turn raw material into a deadly weapon,” an internal Energy Department report on the threat, designated “Official Use Only,” declared in May 2013. “In many cases, a determined lone wolf or a disgruntled insider is all it might take.”

But until now, there has been no public, concrete evidence that a particular terrorist organization is aggressively pursuing the radioactive building blocks of a dirty bomb. Experts have noted that such materials are too plentiful to count precisely, but roughly estimate they are contained in more than 70,000 devices, located in at least 13,000 buildings all over the world – in many cases without special security safeguards.

“The potential for a bad outcome when you have ISIS looking at nuclear people is substantial,” said William H. Tobey, a former deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration. Several other experts said they are particularly alarmed that the incident occurred in Belgium, which they say has a troubled record on nuclear safety issues and lacks armed guards at its nuclear facilities.

Mohamed Bakkali, who rented the home where the films were seized in a raid, was captured on Nov. 26 and has been charged with engaging in terrorist activity and murder stemming from his alleged involvement in the complex Nov. 13, 2015, siege in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more.

Belgian regulators said they are still investigating exactly what Bakkali and his colleagues had in mind, but the options are unsettling. “We can imagine that the terrorists might want to kidnap someone or kidnap his family,” so they can force their target to turn over the radioactive innards of such a device after removing the materials surreptitiously, said Nele Scheerlinck, a spokeswoman for Belgium’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Control, the nation’s nuclear regulator.

The researcher in question, who has not been identified, was sufficiently senior to have had broad access to sensitive sites throughout the research center. Officials declined to say if he is now under police protection.

Scheerlinck added that in the view of her colleagues, whatever was being planned would have failed, because the nation’s radiological materials are under tight control. But other Western experts are not so sure, given their belief that Belgian nuclear authorities have historically been too casual about security risks.

U.S. complaints about Belgian security practices

The facility where the targeted researcher works, known as the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre or SCK-CEN and located near the Bocholt-Herentals Canal 53 miles northeast of Brussels, is the site of a large nuclear research reactor, commissioned in 1961, that was tagged by the Bush administration in 2004 as having woefully inadequate security precautions.

It regularly receives U.S. shipments of highly enriched uranium – a key sparkplug of nuclear weapons – so it can make medical isotopes. But U.S. officials decided in 2004 not to send any more until security precautions at the site were significantly tightened, according to a former senior U.S. official familiar with the dispute. Washington was “concerned about the adequacy” of the Belgians’ response to a potential attack by Al Qaeda sympathizers at the research center, given that the country bars its private security guards from carrying firearms, the former official said.

These concerns were stoked in part by the conviction in 2003 of a former Belgian soccer player, Nizar Trabelsi, for plotting to set off a bomb at an air base in Kleine Brogel , 18 miles from the nuclear research center. The base is home to an estimated 10-20 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stored near a squadron of F-16 fighters. (Trabelsi, a Tunisian citizen who admitted meeting Osama Bin Laden, was extradited from Belgium to the United States in 2013.) The facility’s security barriers were breached in 2010 by a group of peace activists, who walked around for an hour, took videos they posted on the internet, and taped anti-nuclear messages to some of the buildings.

In 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell raised the reactor security issue with foreign minister Louis Michel, according to a February 2005 U.S. diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks. U.S. nuclear authorities also asked their counterparts in France — which arms guards at its own nuclear sites — to help persuade the Belgians to take the issue seriously.

Three years later, many of the security upgrades urged by Washington were still not in place, due to what Belgian officials termed “unforeseen technical, budgetary, and management issues,” according to a March 2007 U.S. cable disclosed by Wikileaks. But by late 2009, Belgian security authorities had completed some of the work and invited American officials to witness a security drill there.

In the drill, 13 armed police units from the surrounding area responded to a mock attack on the reactor site by five supposed terrorists equipped with rifles and small explosives, who pretended to be trying to gain access to dangerous radioactive materials. U.S. officials on the scene termed the exercise a sign of progress, but said room for improvement remained, and urged the Belgians to witness more robust “force-on-force” exercises conducted at similar facilities in the United States.

It wasn’t until 2013, nine years after Powell’s complaint, that Belgium enacted laws strengthening its security clearance procedures and providing serious criminal penalties for both improper handling of radioisotopes and for attempted break-ins at the high-security areas of nuclear sites. An inspection team sent to SCK-CEN and other nuclear sites by the International Atomic Energy Agency in December 2014 concluded that “the physical protection system…is robust” but also recommended additional measures to improve security.

Matt Bunn, a nuclear security expert and former White House official who is now at Harvard University, said Belgium needs to do more —much more.

“Every country, no matter how safe it thinks it is, needs to protect nuclear weapons and the materials you could use to make them against the full spectrum of plausible threats. And wherever there are potential nuclear bomb materials, they need to have armed guards,” Bunn said.

Government studies have shown that in many cases, he explained, attackers can reach sensitive areas at nuclear sites quickly, and that “it’s really hard to design systems” capable of significantly delaying a concerted assault. That’s why Britain, Canada, France, Germany and the United States have posted armed guards at sensitive nuclear sites.

Scheerlinck, the nuclear regulatory spokeswoman, responded that although the government recently decided to create a “Nuclear Quick Response Team” within the federal police, arming the guards stationed on-site at such facilities is not being considered. Doing so “would give people a false sense of security and…weapons should only be used by people who are properly trained to deal with the kind of situations that require an armed intervention (i.e. the police and military),” she said in an emailed comment.

Even after taking some of the security precautions urged by Washington, Belgium — which has seven operating nuclear reactors — was embarrassed by several 2014 incidents that suggest important gaps remain. One was the discovery in August of that year that someone had improperly opened a spigot to drain a turbine lubricant at the Doel nuclear reactor 56 miles west of the research center. The reactor seized and stalled, costing millions of dollars in immediate damages and missed revenues.

U.S. and Belgian experts have called it one of the costliest acts of nuclear sabotage ever. Investigators have not identified the saboteur, but according to Scheerlinck suspicions have fallen on workers at the plant. “That was a clear case of insider threats,” she said.

The motive remains a mystery. “[Terrorism] has not been ruled out, but has not been confirmed by the investigation either,” Eric Van der Sijpt, spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office, said in an email.

A Belgian nuclear worker joins ISIS

Worries about insider threats at Belgian nuclear sites were further stoked in October of that year, when officials discovered that a 26-year-old Moroccan-born man who had worked in a sensitive area of the Doel power plant, Ilyass Boughalab, had died in the spring while fighting for the Islamic State in Syria.

At the time of his death, Boughalab was already under indictment in Belgium for participation in the activities of a group known as Sharia4Belgium, a now defunct radical movement bent on converting Belgium to an independent Islamic state, Van der Sijpt of the federal prosecutor’s office said.

Boughalab passed a Belgian security services background check in 2009, when he was hired by a contractor to inspect welds in highly sensitive and vulnerable areas of the reactor. Since his death in Syria, “several people have…been refused access to a nuclear facility or removed from nuclear sites because they showed signs of extremism,” Scheerlinck said.

Independent groups have reported that more radical Islamic fighters come from Belgium than from other European nations, a claim that Belgian officials dispute. “There are generally concerns about the ability of Belgian authorities to do counterterrorism stuff in a systematic, national way in coordination with other countries,” the former U.S. official said.

“Given what happened before and after the Paris attacks, you can see why” people have such concerns, he added. He was referring to the fact that a suspect in the attack was tracked to a home near Brussels two days later but not arrested due to a Belgian law restricting nighttime police operations. By the morning, the man had escaped.

While neighboring France has done much over the last decade to upgrade security for its nuclear materials, and Belgium has taken some useful steps, “you would be hard-pressed to find a comparable list of accomplishments” by the Belgians, the former official added.

Didier Vanderhasselt, a spokesman for the Belgian foreign ministry, responded that the security of “our nuclear sites is of the highest concern,” and that the country’s counterterrorism experts were “constantly monitoring the situation of all sensitive potential targets, including nuclear sites.” He also said that “as far as we know we have been implementing the same measures as the French did the last few years,” and that Belgian security precautions meet the International Atomic Energy Agency’s standards.

This story was co-published with Foreign Policy. A version of this story was also published with NBC News.

The victory of documentary drama Spotlight in the Best Picture category in the Oscars is a timely reminder of the value of investigative journalism.

“We would not be here today without the heroic efforts of our reporters,” [Spotlight] producer Blye Pagon Faust said in her acceptance speech. “Not only do they effect global change, but they absolutely show us the necessity for investigative journalism.”

“Spotlight” is the true story of the investigative journalists of The Boston Globe who exposed the scale and the cover up surrounding paedophile priests in the Catholic Church. The series rocked the Catholic Church, shook the faith of thousands of Catholics, not just in Boston, but across the country and around the world.

As you think of Spotlight and the focus it gives to investigative reporting at a time of financial crisis in the media industry, we hope you’ll also consider supporting the journalism of the Center for Public Integrity. 

Our award-winning team works every day to expose abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions: from the influence of money on politics to children being treated like criminals in the school system to workers exposed to dangerous chemicals.

Journalism isn’t cheap and we can't do it without your support.

Congratulations to the Spotlight movie team and to The Boston Globe journalists on whom they based the story: it’s the investigative reporting that made the movie.

Thank you,

Peter Bale, CEO, The Center for Public Integrity

Days before a dozen states conduct their Super Tuesday nominating contests, one super PAC has made a six-figure national ad buy with one purpose: take down Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump.

This isn’t its first foray in doing so either.

Since the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, Our Principles PAC has spent nearly $4.2 million skewering Trump.

The latest ad airing knocks Trump for having once hired immigrants working in the United States illegally. The ad contrasts the billionaire businessman’s hiring record with his anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric that, among other things, calls for the Mexican government to pay for a wall across the United States’ southern border.

“Trump makes big money off illegal immigrants,” the ad’s narrator says. “Can conservatives trust Donald Trump?”

The ad’s sponsor

Our Principles PAC formed in mid-January — days before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses.

As a super PAC, Our Principles PAC has no limit on how much it may raise and spend. It almost instantaneously filled its coffers with millions of dollars.

But it’s not yet clear that the moneyed super PAC will see a return on investment, despite spending its millions on anti-Trump material.

“We have weakened him considerably," Our Principles PAC founder Katie Packer told The Washington Post. "If we had more money and more time, it might have made more of a difference."

Who’s behind it?

Our Principles PAC founder Katie Packer previously served as deputy campaign manager for Republican Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential run. Romney himself is no fan of Trump, just today accusing Trump of “coddling … repugnant bigotry.”

Packer works at Burning Glass, an all-female Republican consulting firm that specializes in targeting messages to women voters. She is also a founder partner at consulting firm WWP Strategies, which once produced an ad for Romney’s presidential campaign.

Money in

The super PAC has one known major financial backer: Marlene Ricketts.

Ricketts donated $3 million to Our Principles PAC — nearly all of the money the group raised through January, according to the most recent report with the Federal Election Commission.

Ricketts is the wife of billionaire Joe Ricketts, founder of TD Ameritrade. The Ricketts family also owns the Chicago Cubs.

Marlene Ricketts has spent the election cycle throwing money at most anyone standing between Trump and the Republican presidential nomination.

So far, she’s donated to various super PACs supporting seven different GOP candidates: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Marlene Ricketts gave the most — $4.9 million — to Unintimidated PAC, a super PAC that backed Gov. Scott Walker, who dropped out last year. Super PACs backing the other candidates have received a more modest sum: $10,000 each.

Together, Marlene and Joe Ricketts have donated millions of dollars to conservative efforts over the years. Joe Ricketts himself also leads super PAC ESA Fund, which in January aired ads against Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, and its sister nonprofit. Otherwise, Ricketts has so far this election cycle only donated $100,000 to Unintimidated PAC.

Money out

So far, Our Principles PAC has spent nearly $4.2 million in efforts to derail Trump, according to federal independent expenditure records. These records must be filed immediately after such expenditures are made.

Our Principles PAC’s efforts this election include TV ads, digital ads and printed mailers. They’ve targeted voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina just before their respective caucuses and primaries. The latest anti-Trump ad flurry is different, airing nationally as opposed to zeroing in on specific Super Tuesday states.

Why it matters

Efforts by Our Principles PAC don’t appear significant enough to prevent Trump from a massive win on Super Tuesday, according to most recent polls.

The super PAC appears resigned to this outcome, but isn’t giving up: Just last week, Our Principles PAC founder Katie Packer urged fellow Republicans to donate money to her efforts. She also urged called on the remaining Republican presidential candidates — Cruz, Rubio, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich — to coalesce into a single anti-Trump force.

Since the memo circulated last Monday, Conservative Solutions PAC — a super PAC supporting Marco Rubio — has started an anti-Trump campaign of its own. One recent ad criticized Trump’s refusal to disavow the endorsement of David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Club for Growth and American Future Fund, two other conservative organizations, have unleashed their own ads targeting Trump.

Senior reporter Fred Schulte’s investigative series into systematic waste in the Medicare Advantage program has been awarded second place in the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism, business category, for the second year in a row.

The awards recognize the previous year’s best health reporting in 11 categories, and are given by the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Schulte’s project for the Center found that billions of dollars paid to privately run Medicare Advantage plans are wasted every year through manipulation  of “risk scores. “ Risk scores” are a formula meant to pay health plans more for sicker patients and less for healthy people – but the formula often pays too much. Medicare Advantage plans now cover more than 16 million seniors at an estimated cost to taxpayers of more than $150 billion last year.

Since the Center’s stories were published, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa,  has rebuked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for not reigning in overpayments fast enough. In addition, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.,  asked federal officials to increase oversight of the Medicare Advantage plans. In a letter last year to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell, White House budget director Shaun Donovan wanted a “more aggressive strategy” to combat government overpayments to doctors, hospitals and insurance companies. The Government Accountability Office is expected to release the results of an audit of Medicare Advantage billing errors and overcharging by insurers this year.

The Center’s reporting on Medicare and Medicare Advantage has previously won the Philip Meyer Journalism Award for social science reporting twice, an Excellence in Financial Journalism Award, and the print journalism award from the National Institute for Health Care Management.

March, 2 2016: This story has been corrected and updated.

In the final two weeks before Super Tuesday, Republican super PACs coalesced, airing roughly 8,500 ads blasting GOP front-runner Donald Trump, according to a Center for Public Integrity review of new data provided by Kantar Media/CMAG.

The ad blitz, however, may be too little, too late. Trump’s Republican rivals have been slow to attack him and only recently have singled him out on the airwaves.

“I don’t think [Republicans] saw him as a true threat,” said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks political advertising. “He breaks the mold of what we’ve seen in the past 50 years.”

Super Tuesday’s GOP nominating contests in 12 states came after a three-state winning streak for Trump. His streak continued when he won in seven states and added an expected 234 delegates to his grand total. Trump’s success heightens anxiety among the Republican establishment wing that once doubted his ascendance.

 “People are starting to panic,” said Johanna Dunaway, a political science professor at Texas A&M University. “So now, you see the efforts to try to stop his path to nomination.”

This spending frenzy will likely persist, especially after the real estate mogul’s Super Tuesday haul.

Following last night’s results, Ridout said it’s too soon to say if the ads slowed Trump’s momentum, though he said he is noticing more criticism of Trump.

 “In order to successfully take him down, you need a coherent counter narrative — a way to define him other than the way he’s defined himself,” Ridout said.

The week going into Super Tuesday, 64 percent of negative or so-called contrast ads were anti-Trump. Conservative Solutions PAC — a super PAC supporting Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida — waged a $4.5 million anti-Trump campaign in just the past week, according to federal campaign finance filings.

Ahead of Super Tuesday, Conservative Solutions PAC saturated the TV airwaves, launched digital ads and even turned to the mobile messaging application Snapchat.

At a rally in Georgia on Saturday, attendees could use a Snapchat “geofilter”— location-based images that overlay photos or video — to don a virtual red cap similar to Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” hat, which was instead emblazoned with the words “Stop the Con Artist.”

Conservative Solutions PAC reserved more than 4,500 spots that hounded Trump during the past week, according to Kantar Media/CMAG data. One ad titled “Know Nothing” slams Trump for not immediately disavowing the endorsement of David Duke, former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Katie Packer, a former Mitt Romney campaign staffer, established a super PAC solely dedicated to discrediting Trump. Formed days before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, Our Principles PAC has spent about $4.4 million on anti-Trump ad barrages that cast him as a liberal.

For Super Tuesday, it aired anti-Trump spots nine times nationally, spending just over $400,000.

Also targeting Trump is Club for Growth and American Future Fund — two conservative outside groups that have spent millions of dollars in recent elections.

Club for Growth aired nearly 1,000 ads ahead of Super Tuesday.

Meanwhile, American Future Fund — a group with ties to conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch — released three ads this week featuring former Trump University students who say they were scammed and forced into debt by Trump’s educational endeavor, which is now facing lawsuits in New York and California.

“I was trumped by Trump,” said one ex-Trump University student over a melancholy piano tune. “I was duped by the Donald.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Stand for Truth — a super PAC supporting Cruz — took jabs at Trump as well. Together they aired hundreds of ads critical of Trump.

The anti-Trump ads do not come without retaliation. Trump assailed Super Tuesday states in the South with more than 3,000 ads since Feb. 22.

So will the sustained barrage of anti-Trump ads slow the candidate's momentum?

“A sustained coordinated effort could definitely knock him down a notch or two,” said Ridout of the Wesleyan Media Project. “Is that enough for someone else to come in to prevent him from a nomination? Perhaps.”

Michael Beckel contributed to this report.

This story was co-published with TIME.

Correction, March 2, 2016, 1:32 p.m.: An earlier version of this story reported that 6,000 anti-Trump ads were aired in the two weeks prior to Super Tuesday. Super PACs and candidates aired about 8,500 ads.

Two government reform organizations today accused a mysterious Delaware-based company of violating federal campaign finance laws.

As first reported by the Center for Public Integrity, Decor Services LLC contributed $250,000 on Jan. 12 to America Leads, a super PAC that backed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s failed presidential bid.

Donald Simon, general counsel for Democracy 21, argued that this limited liability company could simply be an “anonymous conduit” for “hiding the true source of the funds.” That’s why, along with the Campaign Legal Center, the group has now asked the Federal Election Commission to investigate the matter.

The only name connected to Decor Services LLC in public records is the Wilmington, Delaware-based Corporation Service Company, a firm that serves as a registered agent for thousands of corporate entities.

Adding to the mystery? Decor Services LLC’s six-figure donation came just 16 days after the company’s formation.

As the Center for Public Integrity has previously noted, limited liability companies formed in Delaware are essentially black boxes.

Certain limited liability companies have long been allowed to make limited donations directly to political candidates. But in such cases, a living, breathing human must be named as the source of the money.

At the federal level, LLCs cannot be used by individuals to evade campaign contribution limits.

Super PACs, however, have no contribution limits. And rules for politicking by corporations, including LLCs, have been loosened in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision in 2010.

The result: an increased flow of money into federal politics from LLCs — with no additional disclosure about where the money is coming from.

“Thanks to the FEC’s inaction, we’re seeing a growing trend of campaign donors skirting disclosure laws by hiding behind corporations to anonymously fund elections,” Paul S. Ryan, deputy executive director of the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. “We call on the FEC to enforce the law. Otherwise, big super PAC donors face no consequences, while Americans have no way of knowing who is funding and influencing elections, including whether illegal foreign money is creeping into American elections.”

Virginia-based consultant Tim Koch, treasurer of America Leads, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The pro-Christie super PAC raised nearly $20 million before Christie dropped out of the GOP primary in early February.

Christie has since endorsed Republican Party presidential front-runner Donald Trump.

Ben Carson’s presidential bid has failed.

But the retired neurosurgeon’s campaign succeeded wildly at one thing: collecting personal — and lucrative — information from more than 700,000 donors and millions of fans.

This database is a potential post-campaign money machine: The remnants of Carson’s campaign could wring riches from a legion of small-dollar supporters for years to come, as other campaigns have done before it.

How? By renting supporters’ information to other candidates, political committees — even for-profit data brokers — that may, in turn, use it to raise money.

If history is a guide, some of the primary beneficiaries of renting Carson’s list would likely be his own campaign consultants and political operatives, who typically oversee marketing such lists and administering what remains of the campaign apparatus.

Some Carson donors are unaware their information could be marketed to others, and when they find that’s the case, they’re not pleased.

“I would be really, really surprised if Dr. Carson did that,” said Travis Creed, 76, a donor from Pine Bluff, Arkansas. “I would be very disappointed if someone else called me, especially if they told me they bought a list with my name on it. There’s too much of that kind of thing going on in this country already.”

A high percentage of Carson’s contributors hasn’t previously given to political candidates, the Center for Public Integrity recently reported, which means those donors are less likely to be on other political lists already in circulation. This makes Carson’s supporter database an even more valuable commodity, to the party and to others who want to raise money.

Larry Ross, a spokesman for the Carson campaign, said the campaign would not answer detailed questions about how donor information would be used.

“As Dr. Carson is still running for President of the United States, and intends to stay in the race as long as he continues to receive revenue and support of 'We the People,’ the campaign does not answer hypothetical questions, including use of mailing lists,” he said in an email to the Center for Public Integrity.

On Wednesday, Carson released a statement saying, “I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening’s Super Tuesday primary results.” He did not explicitly say he would suspend his campaign, but indicated he would not attend Thursday’s Republican debate.

“However, this grassroots movement on behalf of ‘We the People’ will continue,” Carson said in the statement, promising that he would address “the future of this movement” in a speech Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C.

Six bucks a head

So what’s the market value for a typical Carson donor’s personal information?

About $5 to $6 per donor name, said Walter Lukens, head of direct response marketing firm the Lukens Company.

Lukens has worked for a long list of political clients, including the Republican National Committee and presidential candidates such as U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

The price goes up if Carson is himself willing to sign solicitations for other political committees that rent his supporter database, Lukens said.

Lukens conservatively estimated Carson’s campaign committee could earn $4 million or so over three years of renting its supporters’ information.

“As long as he continues to be a viable spokesman for a particular perspective around politics, an agenda, then he can make money on that forever and ever and ever,” Lukens said of the list.

Some defunct political campaigns operate like small corporations designed to sell an asset — like donor lists.

During the 2010 election cycle, for example, Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign committee reported more than $3.1 million in list rental income.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s presidential campaign, which still owes about $1.1 million to various vendors, is charging $10,500 to send one email to its list of 675,000 supporters, according to Politico.

Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign committee still functions in zombie state, and reported raking in nearly $1.4 million in list rental income in 2015.

Romney’s list, the most recent national list assembled by a Republican presidential nominee, has been rented by a variety of political and special interests: the National Republican Senatorial Committee, a nonprofit that promotes gay and lesbian rights, even Carson’s campaign.

Much of the money flows right back out.

One of the top recipients of the Romney campaign committee’s cash is Red Curve Solutions, which was founded by Bradley Crate, the former deputy chief financial officer for the Romney campaign. Red Curve received about $430,000 in 2015 for compliance and communications consulting, according to campaign finance records.

Roughly another $420,000 went to a consulting company headed by Romney aide Matthew Waldrip for “list rental consulting.”

Crate said Red Curve handles the administrative work for the campaign committee, including campaign finance filings and paying taxes on the list rental income.

“The reason [the campaign committee] stays open is so that the list can remain on the market for those future candidates and current candidates,” he said.

Big money

Carson’s campaign has been a fundraising juggernaut, taking in $57.9 million through Jan. 31 — more than any other Republican candidate’s campaign, although the pace of contributions fell off late last year as Carson faded in the polls.

Its spending on fundraising has been equally striking. Expenses have soared so high that Carson found himself fending off a direct question about whether his campaign was one, big direct mail scam.

His response was hardly definitive.

“Not that I know of,” Carson said.

On CNN last week, Carson laughingly suggested that his campaign’s former senior staff “didn’t really seem to understand finances” or “maybe they were doing it on purpose.”

The Carson campaign has churned through managers, but most insiders give senior adviser Mike Murray credit for spearheading the grassroots strategy that made the campaign a striking success among small-dollar donors, giving Carson’s bid instant credibility.

Murray’s relationship with Carson dates back to 2013, when the neurosurgeon reached new heights of public awareness after his remarks criticizing the president’s health care overhaul at the National Prayer Breakfast.

Carson agreed to become the face of an anti-healthcare reform effort by American Legacy PAC, a political action committee founded by Murray. That effort far exceeded expectations, something Murray has attributed to Carson’s appeal, and its supporters were an obvious source of money for Carson’s presidential bid.

When Carson decided to run for president, he stepped down from the American Legacy PAC chairmanship. Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager and confidant, stepped into it, Williams confirmed in a February interview with the Center for Public Integrity.

American Legacy PAC agreed to provide the nascent Carson campaign with information about its donors in an arrangement commonly referred to as a list exchange.

Williams said he wasn’t involved in the list exchange arrangement. In an interview with the Center for Public Integrity last month, Murray confirmed the list exchange agreement, as is typical, calls for American Legacy PAC to get information of equal value from the campaign in return.

American Legacy PAC will not be entitled to any ownership rights over the full Carson campaign list, he said.

The agreement between American Legacy PAC and the Carson campaign, though, has been clarified since it was first signed.

Murray and Williams, who has no official role with the campaign but has acted as a high-profile public surrogate for Carson, confirmed that earlier this year, lawyers were directed to clarify language in the list exchange agreement to make it absolutely clear Carson America, Carson’s campaign committee, was the sole owner of the campaign’s donor list because “the language to some could have been confusing.”

“They made sure the ambiguity was removed and it was clear that Carson America owns the list,” Williams said. Murray confirmed that lawyers had “added a letter to the file.”

Nice work if you can get it

Since launching last year, Carson’s campaign committee has paid Murray’s company, TMA Direct, about $5.7 million.

Other top-earning vendors include Aston, Pennsylvania-based Action Mailers Inc., which has received nearly $6.9 million; Akron, Ohio-based Eleventy Marketing Group LLC, which has taken in about $10 million; and telemarketing company Infocision, also based in Akron, which has received about $4.9 million.

Those numbers don’t distinguish profit from expenses and the Carson campaign’s costs are high, in significant part because Carson’s team used expensive tactics such as direct mail and telemarketing to build its list. On some nights, the campaign through Infocision had as many as 400 people making fundraising calls.

Williams said the expensive fundraising was necessary to boost the first-time candidate, and the campaign’s strategy at one point had Carson at or near the top of the polls.

“The bottom line is what they set out to do they’ve accomplished overwhelmingly. And you can’t criticize something that works,” he said of the campaign.

There is considerable overlap between Carson campaign vendors and American Legacy PAC. Two Murray companies, TMA Direct and Precision Data Management, are also on the payroll of American Legacy PAC. The companies have taken in more than $370,000 since 2013, according to federal campaign finance filings.

Eleventy Marketing has been paid more than $30,000 by American Legacy PAC over the same period, and Infocision has received $4.8 million.

Armstrong Williams Productions LLC, Armstrong Williams’ company, has received approximately $170,000 from American Legacy PAC for strategic consulting and media production since 2013.

Angry donors

Many Carson donors are upset with the notion that their names could be shopped around.

“You mean they give my name to other people?” asked South Carolina donor Lucille Thompson. “I’m not interested in that. I get more junk mail than I can handle. I’m not interested in my name being given to anybody,” she said before hanging up on the Center for Public Integrity.

“I don’t like that but I think it’s just something I can’t do much about,” said Frederick Tedesco, 74, of Bonita Springs, Florida, who has given $265 to Carson’s presidential campaign in $10 increments.

Tedesco says he would throw away solicitations from candidates he’s not interested in, though if Carson were to make the request on behalf of someone else “I would definitely pay attention to that.”

Another 88-year-old Arkansas donor, who asked to have her name withheld, said Carson is the first political candidate she had ever donated to and she hadn’t realized her information could be marketed to others.

“Can you prevent that?” she asked.

A substantial portion of Carson’s contributors giving more than $200 described themselves as “retired,” “semiretired” or “retirees,” suggesting they may be elderly.

Campaign finance data tracked by the Center for Responsive Politics shows Carson’s campaign has reported receiving more money from retired donors than any other Republican candidate’s campaign, as of the end of January.

Some said they know candidates typically rent their donor lists to others, and are preparing for the avalanche that is sure to come.

“I get so many requests for money,” said Clair Saxton, 93, of Cherry Log, Georgia. “The only one[s] I’m giving anything to [are] Dr. Carson and the church.”

This story was co-published with PRI. A version of this story was published with NBC News. 

Forty-five members of Congress have called for reforms to mortgage sales programs run by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — including one program that was the subject of a Center for Public Integrity probe.

The proposed changes are outlined in a March 1 letter to both Julian Castro, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which oversees the FHA, and Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Watt’s agency regulates the government sponsored entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The letter acknowledges prior reforms to the mortgage sales programs, such as the launch of sales to community-based nonprofit groups, rather than just commercial investors,  as a “step in the right direction.”

“However,” the letter continues “sale after sale seems to indicate…that the fundamental approach of these programs, to bundle up hundreds or thousands of properties at a time for sale to the highest available bidder, and without sufficient attention to potential outcomes for homeowners, communities, and the affordable housing missions of your agencies, has not changed.”

The letter was first circulated by Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., who sits on the House Committee on Financial Services, including subcommittees on financial institutions and consumer credit and housing and insurance. Among the other signatories are fellow House financial services committee members Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y. and David Scott, D-Ga.

The Center for Public Integrity’s 2015 story about the FHA bulk sales program found that more than 98,000 mortgages have been sold through the so-called Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) since 2010, and that only a small fraction of those successfully avoided foreclosure. FHA began selling mortgages in bulk, often more than 900 loans at a time, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as a way to move troubled mortgages off its books.

Critics have argued that many of the mortgages are going to wealthy investors, who have not provided the original borrowers a second chance at avoiding foreclosure, which was also supposed to be a goal of the initiative.   

The letter recommends four “key improvements” that would allow FHA and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to continue selling mortgages to improve their financial footing, while also encouraging neighborhood stabilization and preserving homeownership.

The signees ask the housing agencies to disqualify “bad actors” from participating in auctions, improve transparency of the sales and require buyers to commit to foreclosure prevention, rehabilitation and affordable housing efforts as part of these transactions.

HUD declined to comment on the letter, but said it would respond directly to the members of Congress who had signed it.

Capuano told the Center for Public Integrity that changes to mortgage sales programs should involve more nonprofit and community development organizations in the sales. The Center reported in 2015 that only 2 percent of DASP mortgages were sold to nonprofits.

“It’s very simple,” Capuano said, “it comes down to whether you think local communities are best served by nonprofit or a for-profit entity.”

While institutional investors are attracted to the sales because of the chance to obtain discounted mortgages and turn a profit, “public entities like Fannie and Freddie have an obligation that’s a little bit higher than that,” Capuano said..

Laurie Goodman, director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute said bulk mortgage sales are working as planned. “There’s no question that it’s a good program,” Goodman says of the HUD program in particular. “Yes, there are ways to improve the program; most of these recommendations (in the letter) involve transparency. For example, you don’t know what kind of modifications are being done in these programs. That’s one of our suggestions.”

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland have also asked HUD to address concerns about bulk mortgage sales.