The chairman of a panel charged with protecting workers at nuclear weapons facilities as well as nearby communities has told the White House he favors downsizing or abolishing the group, despite recent radiation and workplace safety problems that injured or endangered people at the sites it helps oversee.

Republican appointee Sean Sullivan, a former Navy submarine officer, told the director of the Office of Management and Budget in a private letter that closing or shrinking the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board he chairs is consistent with President Trump’s ambition to cut the size of the federal workforce, according to a copy of Sullivan’s letter. It was written in June and obtained recently by the Center for Public Integrity.

The five-member Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, chartered by Congress, has helped persuade the federal government to impose tighter safety rules and regulations at most of the eight nuclear weapons sites — employing more than 40,000 workers — where nuclear weapons and their parts are produced or stored.

Nonetheless, the nuclear weapons complex in recent years has experienced alarming problems, including the mishandling of plutonium, a radioactive explosive; the mis-shipment of hazardous materials, including nuclear explosive materials;  and the contamination of work areas and scientists by radioactive particles — shortcomings detailed in a recent Center for Public Integrity investigation.

Sullivan’s position is consistent with the longstanding preferences of the large private contractors that produce and maintain the country’s nuclear arms, most of which also contribute heavily to congressional election campaigns and spend sizable sums lobbying Washington. The board and its expert staff are now probing what it considers to be additional safety lapses or deficiencies that would cost weapons contractors millions of dollars to fix.

Three other board members, all Democrats, have said in written complaints about Sullivan’s proposal that he was not speaking for them, and argued that that other government agencies assigned to safeguard nuclear workers and the public near weapons sites are not capable of handling the task by themselves.

A spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Wood, declined to comment about the letter but said no announcement would be made by the White House about the issue until February, when the board’s fate will be decided as part of a Trump administration reorganization and consolidation plan.

Funding for the board’s operation in fiscal 2018 remains in versions of the defense funding bill, and in an effort to block Sullivan’s request, a Senate Democrat has added language to his chamber’s version that would bar the board’s elimination. But the bill is still being discussed between the Senate and House.

An influential voice

Eliminating the safety board entirely would annually save the government about $31 million a year in direct costs, while an alternative proposal to trim and disperse its personnel would save $7.2 million, Sullivan said in his June 29 letter to OMB director Mick Mulvaney, a former South Carolina Congressman. The larger sum amounts to less than a hundred-thousandth of Trump’s proposed $4.1 trillion federal budget for 2018.

Sullivan, who was a member of the board’s Republican minority for more than four years until Trump’s election elevated him to its top post, minced no words in his missive, calling the board he chairs a “relic” of the Cold War that performs work duplicative of the safety oversight provided by the Energy Department or the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), which finances the contractors’ work.

“Although the Board may have been helpful in providing for the adequate protection and public health and safety during its early years, that value today is provided only on the margins,” Sullivan’s letter said.

Sullivan, who has sparred regularly with other board members and repeatedly voted against sending specific safety warning notices to the Department of Energy, said further that the board’s recommendations have imposed “myriad unnecessary” costs for the department. He did not cite specific examples.

Under the board’s charter, its advice — always given in public letters — can be ignored. But the Secretary of Energy is obligated by law to state publicly whether he or she agrees or disagrees. And in many cases, the department has reacted by imposing safety rules and requirements that contractors have complained are excessive.

At the Uranium Processing Facility under construction at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee, for example, the board’s technical staff identified shortcuts contractors had taken that elevate the risk of a fire or a runaway nuclear chain reaction by eliminating protective barriers that had once been part of the building plan.

In a letter to NNSA Administrator Frank Klotz dated June 26 — three days before Sullivan suggested the board’s elimination– Sullivan said its technical staff found the construction contractors’ plans called for fire-suppression pumps that could fail in an earthquake. And the building design called for the wrong kind of glass enclosures for work stations where highly-enriched uranium would be housed.

"DOE’s own operational challenges demonstrate a continuing need for truly independent nuclear safety oversight,” wrote Democrat Jessie Roberson, a former assistant secretary of energy who has been on the board since 2010, in a June 30 letter to colleagues and the board’s general counsel.

Joyce Connery, a former DOE and National Security Council staff member who chaired the board until Trump’s election, similarly wrote that the board “provides confidence to Congress and stakeholder communities these facilities are operating safely” and said Sullivan failed to understand “the importance of independent safety oversight.”

Sullivan’s unilateral position statement to the White House budget office “does not reflect the collective opinion of the Board and does not reflect my opinion or support,” board member Daniel Santos said in his own letter to colleagues; he is a nuclear engineer who formerly worked on the technical staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Asked for comment, Sullivan said in a phone conversation that he regards his letter as a privileged communication with the White House, and declined to comment about it. The fifth board member, Republican Bruce Hamilton, also declined comment.

Worries about “complacency” in nuclear weapons work

Congress created the defense board in 1988 in response to widespread public concern about nuclear safety, stoked by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Union, the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant, and reports of widespread plutonium contamination at Rocky Flats, the Colorado site where the government then made triggers for nuclear bombs. Rocky Flats was closed in 1989 after the FBI raided it, and its contractors later pleaded guilty to environmental crimes.

The board’s purpose, according to a Senate report at the time, was “to restore public confidence that [DOE’s nuclear facilities] are operated without undue risk to the public health and safety.” A new panel of experts supported by an independent technical staff was needed, the report said, because “complacency” towards safety problems was seeping into nuclear weapons operations — as evidenced by widespread environmental contaminations.

The board’s jurisdiction extends to all the sites where private contractors, acting under federal direction, conduct nuclear weapons research and fabricate, assemble, or maintain the components of thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads for the U.S. arsenal. The firms that perform this work — including corporate giants such as Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell, and Northrop Grumman — have collectively earned more than $2 billion in pure profit for it over the past decade, according to the Center’s analysis.

The board currently employs 120 people, and ten of its technical experts are stationed at five of these weapon sites. They prepare weekly public reports on their safety practices, providing a unique window into contractors’ periodic mistakes, some of which may affect the safety of workers and communities that live nearby. Those reports have frequently irritated contractors and top NNSA officials.

Over the past decade, the board’s warnings in particular helped push the managers of a nuclear waste cleanup project in Hanford, Washington, to heed the complaints of a whistleblower there and redesign key facilities in order to prevent an accidental nuclear chain reaction.

The board’s investigators also documented and warned about repeated safety problems at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which eventually closed the nation’s sole facility for making and comprehensively testing plutonium weapon cores so it could try to fix them. LANL struggles to this day to meet the board’s safety expectations.

The board’s warnings also helped force the government’s adoption of uniform emergency preparedness standards at nuclear weapon sites across the country. And it has recently tangled with contractors over what it considers to be serious seismic vulnerabilities at nuclear weapon installations in New Mexico, Washington state and South Carolina.

Reacting to Sullivan’s proposal, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who represents a state with two national laboratories and the nation’s only nuclear weapon waste repository, recently attached an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would thwart any efforts to shut down the DNFSB.

Udall’s language was in the version of the bill adopted by the Senate in September. But the House and Senate must reconcile differences in their versions of the NDAA in conference committee during the weeks ahead.

Udall said in a written statement to CPI that he disagrees with Sullivan “that the NNSA alone will always provide sufficient oversight of public health and safety.”

“Repeated, serious safety and security lapses at the labs, including the two in New Mexico, are among the reasons for strengthening — not eliminating the outside oversight board,” Udall said in the statement. “These incidents have demonstrated that there is a need for a strong watchdog that does not have a direct financial or political stake in the success of the labs.”

A stream of contractor complaints about the board

Laboratory officials have repeatedly chafed at what they termed invasive inspections by the board’s experts and safety recommendations that they deem excessive.

A 2012 National Academy of Sciences report, reviewed before publication by former lab executives and consultants or contractors as well as independent scientists, picked up this theme and questioned why the labs had to “spend a great deal of time and overhead” worrying about the board’s inspections. It also endorsed the idea that the government should accept more operational risks in its work supporting the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The chairman of the panel that wrote the report was Charles Shank, a former director of the Energy Department-funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who at the time the report was published was paid by a corporation running a nuclear weapons laboratory in Albuquerque, N.M. to chair its research advisory board.

At a 2012 congressional hearing by the House Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces, Shank joined several former nuclear weapons laboratory directors in calling for less Washington-based scrutiny and more autonomy at the labs, arguing that they no longer needed “special attention” from the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board or others.

At the same hearing, a senior Government Accountability Office analyst disputed this view. Referring to repeated cost overruns and technical snafus at the weapons labs, GAO director of natural resources Eugene Aloise said “the problems we continue to identify in the enterprise are not caused by excessive oversight, but rather by ineffective oversight by NNSA and DOE” and “a laboratory culture that did not prioritize safety and security in its daily operations.”

Sullivan, in his letter to Mulvaney, cited the Energy Department’s “robust regulatory structure” as a reason for allowing the board to die — noting in particular inspections and penalties undertaken by the department’s Office of Enterprise Assessments. But he said that shrinking the facilities safety board was worth considering to forestall the “political blowback” that might ensue from killing it outright.

Whether the government’s own safety efforts are robust enough remains a highly contested issue, however. An internal NNSA report in 2014 about Los Alamos blamed the NNSA itself for failing to recognize how significant the lab’s lapses were. It said “the safety culture that existed within NNSA was to allow the contractor to manage the problem with minimal Federal intervention.” The NNSA itself called its policy “Eyes On, Hands Off.”

Obtained by the Center under the Freedom of Information Act, the 55-page report faulted NNSA leaders for failing to adopt a “questioning attitude” about assurances by Los Alamos contracting officials that the risks of an accidental nuclear chain reaction — caused by the improper positioning of unstable plutonium — were being ameliorated, when they were not.

The report disclosed, for example, that a senior NNSA official sent an email to a key manager about the lapses in October 2012 that highlighted “A…Train Wreck Coming at LANL.” But little action was required or taken until the following summer, and another email later that month warned that LANL officials were inattentive and “still in denial.”

Bob Alvarez, a former senior Energy Department official, said the current wrangle over the board’s future is alarming. “DOE doesn’t really regulate these guys,” said Alvarez, who also spent five years as a senior investigator for the U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs chaired by Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) when Glenn sponsored legislation that led to creation of the DNFSB. “There always needs to be some form of independent eyes and ears watching these guys.”

Alvarez, who was a senior policy advisor to the Secretary of Energy and deputy assistant secretary for national security and the environment from 1993 to 1999, said the DNFSB plays an indispensable role in the oversight of nuclear weapon sites because of its independence from the nuclear weapon production mission that he says has been a barrier to firm oversight of contractors by the Department of Energy.

“DOE’s Office of Enterprise Assessments [responsible for punishing contractors for safety and security lapses] is like a watchdog chained to a doghouse. All they do is threaten to bark. They don’t even bark. They just threaten to bark.” Asked for comment on the remark, a spokesman for the Energy Department did not respond in time for publication.

The Center for Public Integrity’s year-long investigation, published between June and August, concluded that over the past decade, contractors at the weapon sites have reliably received more than 85 percent of the bonuses available to them, despite safety records that often fell short of expectations. Meanwhile, about half of the fines the Energy Department proposed for accidents on the contractors’ watch were forgiven.

Alvarez described the work conducted at the nuclear weapon sites as the “largest, most high-hazard enterprise in the federal government” and said it poses “serious catastrophic dangers to the public and workers” in the form of nuclear waste, fissile materials and dangerous chemicals.

“Without the defense board,” Alvarez said, the public would not know about some of “the hazards the government is imposing on them.”

Five separate Center for Public Integrity projects covering a disparate array of subjects in the news have been honored with EPPY Awards from Editor & Publisher, it was announced Wednesday.

The five awards for the Center were the most for any single news organization in the 2017 EPPY contest.  Last year the Center won two EPPY Awards.

“We are delighted with the depth of recognition by the EPPYs,” said Center Executive Editor Gordon Witkin. “Work by four different project teams at the Center was recognized, and each of these investigations involved months of the sort of in-depth investigative reporting that is our specialty.”   

The EPPY for Best Collaborative Investigative/Enterprise Reporting went to “Politics of Pain,” a joint effort of the Center and the Associated Press. The project provided a unique look at how drug makers and their allies sought to thwart steps intended to combat the opioid epidemic. CPI reporters Liz Essley Whyte and Ben Wieder worked with AP reporters Geoff Mulvihill and Matthew Perrone for 10 months to piece together the series, digging into campaign contributions, lobbying reports, company documents and government emails crucial to understanding the role that political considerations played in shaping the response to the crisis. The series was edited by AP’s Kristin Gazlay and Tom Verdin, and the Center’s Kytja Weir. “Politics of Pain” has also been honored by the National Press Club and the Association of Health Care Journalists.

The award for Best News or Event Feature on a Website went to the Center’s “Nuclear Negligence” project. The six-part series documented alarming safety problems at sites involved in the production of America’s nuclear arsenal, including the mishandling of plutonium; the mis-shipment of hazardous materials and the avoidable contamination of work areas and scientists by radioactive particles — all abetted by lax government oversight and weak contracting.  The series was written by reporter Patrick Malone, managing editor R. Jeffrey Smith and contributing reporter Peter Cary, and edited by Smith; design and layout was done by news developer Chris Zubak-Skees.

The Center’s “Carbon Wars” series won the EPPY for Best Community Service on a Media-Affiliated Website. An ongoing investigation launched in September 2016, “Carbon Wars” examines the damage caused and the political influence wielded by the powerful fossil-fuel industry.  The authors included reporters Jamie Smith Hopkins and Jie Jenny Zou, and managing editor Jim Morris; Morris edited the project. Complex graphics were compiled by news developer Chris Zubak-Skees, and digital editor Jared Bennett contributed layout, design and production work. “Carbon Wars” was earlier honored by the National Press Foundation and the Society of Environmental Journalists.  

The prize for Best Social Media/Crowd Sourcing went to “Citizen Sleuth,” a collaboration between the Center and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting. The project — #CitizenSleuth — was a crowdsourced investigation into the Trump Administration appointees’ financial disclosures, accessed through the #CitizenSleuth spreadsheet. The project represented the work of Reveal reporter/producer Amy Walters; Center senior reporters Dave Levinthal and Carrie Levine; news developer Chris Zubak-Skees and contributing reporter Christina Wilkie. 

“Buying of the President 2016” was the winner of the EPPY for Best News/Political Blog. The project revealed the money and motivations behind the candidates, political committees and nonprofits that made last year’s presidential election the most expensive in history. After the election, the series chronicled the continuing efforts by special interests to influence Donald Trump’s presidential transition and nascent administration. Reporter Michael Beckel, senior reporters Dave Levinthal and Carrie Levine and deputy executive editor John Dunbar spearheaded the project.   

In July 2016, the Federal Election Commission slapped the 60 Plus Association with a $50,000 fine, charging that it hadn’t revealed its donors as legally obliged.

The penalty — along with fines assessed to two other politically active nonprofit groups likewise connected to billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch — represented one of the most decisive decisions this decade at an FEC best known for intramuralbickering and ideological gridlock. Government reformers rejoiced.

But 15 months later, the Virginia-based 60 Plus Association has only paid one-tenth of its fine. Chairman Jim Martin says the senior advocacy group, which backs “free enterprise, less government” while supporting conservative politicians, has no plans to pay more. The FEC, meanwhile, isn’t forcing the 60 Plus Association’s compliance — or anything close.

The 60 Plus Association has plenty of debt-dodging company: More than 160 political committees and similar groups together owe the government more than $1.3 million worth of unpaid fines, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of Federal Election Commission and U.S. Treasury records since 2000.

Some of those unpaid fines amount to as little as $10 while others soar into five figures. Many cases concern all-but-forgotten also-ran political candidates, but others involve political luminaries — the Rev. Al Sharpton, MSNBC host Joe Scarborough and Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein, among them. Super PACs and politically active nonprofits have joined the nonpayment parade of late. And there’s little evidence any of that cash will soon begin to roll in.

Uncooperative political committee leaders, bureaucratic bumbling and flaccid fine enforcement efforts all contribute to election law breakers outrunning penalties during a time when campaign shenanigans — from Russian advertisements to government contractors bankrolling super PACs — are increasingly brazen and sophisticated.

The situation “reinforces the view of many political actors that there really isn’t a sheriff in town,” said Adam Rappaport, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which filed a complaint against the 60 Plus Association that prompted the FEC’s fine. “Political actors feel confident and comfortable that the FEC will not enforce campaign finance laws against them.”

Commissioners argue — and agency records confirm — that the FEC collects on the vast majority of fines it doles out for election law violations great and small. This decade, the FEC has, on average, assessed about $997,000 in fines each year.

Besides, FEC Chairman Steve Walther said, most political committees want to do what’s right, including those ruled in violation of one federal law or another.

“We’re pretty diligent in our offices on how we handle fines — and overall, we’ve been pretty effective,” said Walther, an independent whose one-year chairmanship expires in December.

Nevertheless, some political committees simply won’t comply.

And when they don’t, they have little to fear.

How to beat an FEC fine

A Center for Public Integrity review of dozens of political committees’ election violation case files and interviews with FEC, U.S. Treasury and political committee officials shows how political committees typically avoid payment:

• Offenders often just begin by waiting 180 days after the FEC makes its final ruling on the fine, and ignoring the FEC’s strongly-worded letters. The FEC has no unilateral power to seize a political committee’s assets, and it rarely sues in federal court. Generally, Walther says, such legal action is too costly and time-consuming. The FEC isn’t allowed to pocket fine money derived from its own enforcement actions — cash it collects goes straight to the U.S. government’s general fund. “We can’t justify the expense,” Walther said.
   
• If there’s no payment after 180 days, the FEC itself gives up and refers the debt to its de facto collection agent, the U.S. Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service.   

• Officials at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service typically try to compel payment with more phone calls, demand letters or even referral to a private collection agency. But many offenders just ignore these efforts as well. And why wouldn’t they? Despite having the power to do so, the bureau “has not referred any debts originating with FEC to [the Department of Justice] for litigation,” said Alyssa Riedl, director of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s Debt Collection Program Management Directorate. 
   
• The Bureau of the Fiscal Service then often declares the debt “uncollectable” and refers it back to the FEC. “Fiscal Service may return a debt to an agency if it determines that the cost of additional collection efforts will exceed anticipated collections,” Riedl said. 
   
• The FEC then typically mothballs the debt, keeping it on the books but making no substantive effort to collect. “If Treasury, which has greater collection resources than the FEC, was unsuccessful, the commission has no reason to believe it would be more successful in collecting the second time around,” Walther said. 

The case of three-term New York State Assembly member Kieran Lalor, R, is illustrative.  

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran and avowed fiscal hawk, Lalor boasts in his website biography that he’s “refused per diem allowances, taxpayer-funded travel expenses and a taxpayer-funded pension.” 

But a federal PAC Lalor operated, Warriors for Liberty, has eluded a $7,150 fine stemming from FEC commissioners’ unanimous ruling late 2015 that it didn’t properly disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars of income, expenditures and debt — thereby violating federal law. 

Months passed. Warriors for Liberty’s fine went unpaid despite Lalor’s signed agreement to pay it.   

On Aug. 16, 2016, the FEC transferred Warriors for Liberty’s $7,150 debt to the Bureau of Fiscal Service for collection.  

Six weeks later, Warriors for Liberty filed a request with the FEC to terminate itself. The FEC could have said no. Instead, the agency approved Warriors for Liberty’s request — all but guaranteeing that Lalor’s now-defunct PAC will never pay up.  

Lalor did not respond to multiple emails and messages left on his cell phone and with his New York State Assembly office staff. The FEC also declined to comment on Lalor’s case.

Sharpton’s 2004 Democratic presidential campaign still owes $2,150 from three fines the FEC issued from 2004 to 2005. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service has deemed Sharpton’s debt “uncollectable” even though Sharpton, whose old campaign committee owes numerous other debts to public and private creditors, remains omnipresent in U.S. politics — President Barack Obama enshrined Sharpton as a key, if informal adviser, and Sharpton even has his own MSNBC television show. 

Sharpton’s longtime spokeswoman, Rachel Noerdlinger, referred questions to attorney Michael Hardy, who did not respond to messages. 

Then there’s former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., who resigned in 2012 before federal authorities charged him with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from his campaign account. (Jackson, who could not be reached for comment, pleaded guilty and spent nearly two years in a federal prison or halfway house.)  

Jackson’s defunct campaign committee has stiffed taxpayers for more than $25,000 in connection with three FEC election law violation rulings from earlier this decade. 

And what about the 60 Plus Association, which spent more than $3.2 million during the 2012 election cycle on ads advocating for Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and against Obama? 

President Jim Martin said former 60 Plus Association President Amy Frederick, who could not be reached for comment, agreed to pay the fine without approval of the association’s board of directors. It last year paid $5,000 of the $50,000 it owed “on advice of counsel,” Martin said. But the 60 Plus Association board then “decided to contest the remainder of the unprecedented large fine given the situation …. We continue to work with Treasury and FEC on this matter.” 

Several former FEC officials are skeptical these and other political committees will ever pay up. 

“People are emboldened because they know the commission isn’t enforcing much,” said David Kolker, the FEC’s former chief of litigation and current attorney at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. 

Said Ann Ravel, a Democrat who served as FEC chairwoman in 2015: “The FEC is pretty powerless to make them pay other than to use its moral authority, if you can call it that.” 

‘Soon as possible’ 

Some political committees say they will pay their months- or years-old fines. 

They just won’t say when. 

One such committee is Mississippi Conservatives. A gaggle of prominent political players — former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, former Facebook President Sean Parker, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce among them — bankrolled this super PAC, which  spent about $3.3 million during 2014 to help Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., survive a GOP primary challenge from upstart conservative Chris McDaniel. 

But the pro-McDaniel Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund had in mid-2014 filed a complaint with the FEC alleging Mississippi Conservatives failed to disclose the true identity of a donor. The FEC ultimately concurred — in October 2016 — and Mississippi Conservatives settled the case by agreeing to pay a $19,000 fine within 30 days. 

Except it never did. 

“The super PAC intends to pay the fine,” said Henry Barbour, Haley Barbour’s nephew and current treasurer of Mississippi Conservatives. “However, the fact that the federal government waited almost two years to assert their position pertaining to 2014 disclosures makes this a bit more challenging on top of the fact that we never anticipated any fine. That said, it is what it is and we will have to convince some donors to help us put this to rest.” 

Mississippi Conservatives reported having less than $1,500 cash on hand as of June 30. 

In 2013, Chicago Alderman Anthony Beale, D, ran for Congress in hopes of replacing Jackson upon his resignation. Beale finished third in a Democratic primary. His campaign also failed to file reports on time, and it earned $32,230 in fines from 2013 to 2015 across several different FEC enforcement cases.   

More than four years later, Beale’s congressional committee, which is broke, still hasn’t paid the fines. 

“He aims to retire this debt as soon as possible,” Beale spokesman Brian Berg explained. 

Steve Salazar’s story is similar: An attorney and former Dallas City Council member, Salazar finished sixth in a 2012 Democratic congressional primary — then amassed more than $34,000 in FEC-issued fines across five election violation cases.  

“It’s something I’m intending to take care of,” said Salazar, whose committee’s most recent financial disclosure report, filed in 2012, indicated it had no money. 

Pleading ignorance

Other political candidates said they had no idea their congressional committees owe the FEC money until informed by the Center for Public Integrity. 

Among them: MSNBC “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough, who before becoming a TV personality served as a Republican congressman from Florida. In the course of running for Congress, Scarborough’s Friends of Joe Scarborough congressional committee ran afoul of the FEC, which fined the group $6,031.25 during 2002 and 2003 for a pair of election law violations.  

Scarborough’s committee paid most of the fine. But $80.56 remained on the FEC’s books — for more than 14 years. In an email, Scarborough said he was “unaware” his committee owed any money but would “quickly resolve the issue.” Scarborough paid the fine that day, FEC records indicate. 

Jill Stein’s associates also pleaded ignorance, saying they had no idea the 2012 and 2016 Green Party presidential nominee still owed the FEC $120.31 after otherwise paying off a couple of relatively minor FEC violations. 

“We will immediately connect with the FEC and pay it if it’s something we owe,” said David Cobb, Stein’s 2016 campaign manager. FEC officials said they had not yet received payment as of this week.

For Louisiana state Sen. Dan Claitor, R, tragedy — two weeks before Election Day 2014, a car crash killed his mother and injured his father — led to his congressional campaign unraveling in the days before voters cast their ballots. (Claitor finished fourth out of 12 candidates.)  

His committee failed to file a post-election financial disclosure report on time, according to the FEC, and the agency in mid-2015 dinged it with a $4,950 fine.  

Claitor, who remains a state senator, said he wasn’t aware of the debt and isn’t sure what his committee owes: “I cannot confirm whether the debt(s) you question is/are actually owed or not, whether it’s valid or not, or what it may be for,” he said in an email. He added that he’s now consulting with his campaign’s old accounting firm to determine how to address the FEC fine. 

When the Center for Public Integrity told fellow Louisianan Craig Romero that FEC records show his congressional committee had never paid a $5,000 fine settlement from 2009, he didn’t believe it.  

“There’s nothing owed. It was resolved,” insisted Romero, a former state senator and current executive director of Louisiana’s Port of Iberia. But said he’d check with his former campaign treasurer to make sure. 

That treasurer, Bill Potter, acknowledged the debt, recalling that FEC officials even visited Louisiana while conducting an audit of Romero’s campaign committee. But Romero’s committee ran out of cash, and Potter hasn’t heard from the FEC since the dawn of the Obama administration, so nobody ever paid the fine, he said.  

Cindy Sheehan earned internationalattention last decade for camping outside then-President George W. Bush’s Texas ranch in protest of U.S. military involvement in Iraq. In 2008, she ran as an independent against Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. Pelosi easily defeated Sheehan, whose campaign failed to file a mandatory campaign finance disclosure report on time. The FEC fined it $10,000; Sheehan’s committee paid part of the fine, and a $3,125 balance has lingered for eight years.

Asked if she was aware of this fine balance, Sheehan said she wasn’t. Now that she is, will she pay it?

“No,” Sheehan replied.  

Riedl of the Bureau of the Fiscal Service says her bureau sends all political debtors “at least one demand letter” notifying them that that the bureau is seeking payment. If a debt is referred to a private collection agency, at least one more demand letter is sent.  

If the bureau believes a political committee it’s pursuing has a new address or no address at all, it’ll perform “skip tracing” — collecting public and private information about a person to determine his or her whereabouts — in order to contact the committee, Riedl said.  

What can be done? 

If the federal government spends months or even years attempting to collect — to no avail — a political committee’s fine, is there anything left to do but quit? 

Yes and no, according to interviews with former FEC officials.  

First, what the agency can’t do: In most instances, candidates by law are not personally liable for their campaign committees’ debts, meaning the FEC cannot garnish candidates’ bank accounts. 

And to be sure: The FEC is a civil law enforcement agency. As such, it has no judicial authority and no uniformed service. While some municipalities employ marshals who round up people for skipping out on matters as minor as traffic tickets, there’s no pistol-packing FEC cop hauling politicians off to campaign debtor detention. 

“Right now, the FEC does not have a great deal of recourse,” said Daniel Petalas, an attorney at law firm Garvey Schubert Barer who served as the FEC’s acting general counsel from 2015 to 2016 and led the agency’s enforcement division from 2012 to 2015. 

The FEC and U.S. Treasury could, however, choose to more regularly sue problem political committees in federal court, if only to make examples out of them. The FEC could also decide to more frequently void payment agreements violated by fined political committees, potentially causing the committees additional legal headaches.  

Each year, the FEC also asks Congress for various changes in campaign finance laws to help it better administer those laws.  

Congress usually ignores these requests. Nevertheless, the agency could ask Congress to give it more power or resources to punish the most troublesome political committees. For example, it could ask to keep fines it collects to bolster litigation efforts. Congress could also increase the FEC’s modest budget — just north of $71 million during fiscal year 2017 — to include, for example, more collection and enforcement specialists. (The agency began the decade with an annual budget of $66.5 million.) 

But no matter what additional abilities the FEC obtains, there’s one certain way to beat an FEC fine. 

Die. 

That’s what eccentric real estate mogul and former U.S. Senate candidate “Honest” Abe Hirschfeld did in August 2005, months after running as a minor-party candidate in 2004 against Sen. Chuck Schumer.

Hirschfeld lived to see the FEC hit his campaign with six separate fines. Total penalty: more than $105,000. 

He went to his grave without paying.

A version of this article was published by Politico.

LOS ANGELES – In their worst moments, the victims’ faces are blue. Their skin is cool and damp to the touch. They are starving for oxygen. Pedora Keo, a critical-care nurse, sees them with distressing regularity: asthmatics in the thrall of attacks that can kill them or decimate their brains. Sometimes they fight while undergoing tracheal intubation and must be restrained. “They’re panicking,” says Keo, 42. “The look on their face is the fear of dying.”

Keo works at St. Mary Medical Center, an Art Deco-style hospital on the west side of Long Beach founded by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word in 1923. She treats mostly low-income people who live in the brown haze of coastal Southern California’s industrial underbelly. Within six miles of the hospital lie five oil refineries, the sprawling ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the truck-clogged 710 and 110 freeways. Los Angeles’ Wilmington neighborhood, a nine-square-mile enclave of Latino immigrants just inland from the ports, gets the worst of it. Its 54,000 residents, many seeking refuge from steep housing prices, breathe some of the foulest air and suffer some of the highest rates of asthma in California. The 92,000 people in neighboring Carson — like Wilmington, working-class and heavily minority – fare no better.

Now, amid the Los Angeles area’s worst smog season in at least 13 years, come new aggravations and anxieties. Andeavor — formerly Tesoro Corp. — plans to merge its Wilmington and Carson refineries into the biggest crude-processing complex on the West Coast. The $460 million project will involve, most notably, the construction of eight hulking storage tanks capable of holding 3.4 million barrels of oil. Meanwhile, state climate legislation endorsed by an unlikely amalgam of businesspeople, environmentalists, lawmakers from both parties and Gov. Jerry Brown has extended a market-based system of pollution-control that some fear will at best maintain the status quo or even make things worse for California’s most vulnerable citizens.

Dolores Linares and her family are among them. Linares, 42, lives in a two-bedroom apartment on East Sandison Street in Wilmington with her partner; her 20-year-old son from a previous union; and two younger sons, both of whom have asthma. Earlier this year the older of the two, 8-year-old Christian Moreno, had an attack so severe it put him in the hospital for a week. Five-year-old Manuel has coughing spells that render him unable to catch his breath or talk. “He starts turning purple, and it’s like he’s going to faint,” his mother says in Spanish. Three refineries clamor and belch within a mile of the apartment. Linares wants to leave as soon as the family can afford it. “We have to move,” she says. “If not, [Christian and Manuel] are always going to be like this.”

Asthma can be triggered by factors such as tobacco smoke, mold and diet. But decades of studies show an unmistakable tie between the respiratory condition and smog. A landmark investigation begun by researchers at the University of Southern California in 1992 found that early-childhood exposure to pollutants can have lifelong consequences, from diminished lung function to chronic absences from school and work. Linda Bassett, a 4^th-grade teacher at Gulf Avenue Elementary School in Wilmington, says she paid little mind to the bad air for years but has come to understand its effects on her students. “Every year I’ll have kids come up to me and say, ‘My stomach hurts, my head hurts,’” she says. “I used to think they were trying to ditch class. I don’t dismiss it anymore. I realize they are really hurting.”

The South Coast Air Quality Management District, or AQMD, regulates air pollution in the 10,743-square mile South Coast Air Basin, which includes all of Orange County and urban portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The basin’s dusky air — blamed for up to 5,000 premature deaths a year in one state estimate — fuels a growing indignation in places like Wilmington and Carson, where oil dominates, as it does in slices of the Bay Area and the San Joaquin Valley. The industry’s influence extends from city halls to Sacramento, forming a narrative that seems counterintuitive in a state known for its forward-thinking climate and public-health policies. Just in the first half of 2017, three of the top four spenders on lobbying in California were oil interests: Chevron, Andeavor and the Western States Petroleum Association, a trade group, which invested a collective $13.5 million. They got much of what they wanted in the climate legislation, signed by Brown in July.

After the city of Carson threatened to sue the AQMD, one of 35 regional pollution-control agencies in California, for approving the Andeavor refinery project this spring, the company offered $45 million over 15 years for landscaping, road repairs and parks. The cash-poor city took the deal and dropped the threat. Mayor Albert Robles says the settlement reflected the city’s lack of faith in officials who blessed the project. The choice, as Robles and the four other members of the city council saw it, was to accept the company’s money or gamble that a judge would convince the AQMD to change its position. The latter seemed unlikely, Robles says. “People talk about environmental justice, how minority communities like Carson are disproportionately affected by pollution,” he says. “This is a clear example. This isn’t 1950 or 1970. This is 2017. To think that in California, the quote-unquote most environmentally progressive state in the country, this regulatory body allowed this to happen is incomprehensible to me.”

The AQMD says that while the Andeavor project will spawn increased emissions of volatile organic compounds — easily evaporable, sometimes cancer-causing chemicals that contribute to smog — “it will not have a significant impact on air quality.”

‘So heavy that it’s unbearable’

In the grand scheme of things, oil refineries account for a small portion of the four-county region’s air pollution. The bigger culprits are cars, trucks, buses, trains and the gargantuan cargo ships that berth at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. In Wilmington and Carson, however, refineries have an outsize effect on people’s health. Last year, AQMD data show, the five refineries in the immediate area — owned by Andeavor, Phillips 66 and Valero — reported releasing nearly 14 million pounds of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, and so-called criteria pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and fine particles. Studies show the poisons in this brew can cause cancer and heart disease as well as asthma.

The ports recently unveiled a $14 billion plan to switch from diesel trucks and other dirty equipment to zero-emission technologies by 2035. The city of Los Angeles is moving toward an all-electric bus fleet by 2030. The AQMD doesn’t regulate these mobile pollution sources; that duty falls to the state. The district does oversee stationary sources such as refineries, which, an AQMD spokesman says, will be subject in coming years to new prohibitions and penalties for extreme episodes of flaring — the burning of excess gases, which can yield towers of black smoke — and additional requirements to monitor for toxic pollutants along their perimeters.

Relief can’t come soon enough for Dolores Linares, who says the refineries leave a sticky dust on her car and give off an odor“so heavy that it’s unbearable. You even wake up because the smell is so strong — very, very strong, especially in the early morning.” Wilmington Park Elementary School, which Linares’ sons attend along with 800 or so other children, lies less than three-quarters of a mile from Andeavor’s Wilmington refinery, whose tanks and towers are visible from the school’s playground. That operation reported discharging more than 3.3 million pounds of pollutants in 2016, including 95,095 pounds of toxic chemicals such as the carcinogen benzene. The company’s Carson refinery eclipsed those numbers, reporting releases of more than 4.5 million pounds of pollutants, including 374,621 pounds of toxics. In 2015, data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency show, seven California refineries — three in the south, four in the north — were among the top 10 industrial sources statewide for both greenhouse-gas and toxic air emissions.

It gets worse. A study commissioned by the AQMD in 2015 and published this year found that VOC emissions from the Wilmington and Carson refineries — and two others in nearby Torrance and El Segundo — over a 2 ½-month period were 2.7 to almost 12 times higher than what had been assumed. Benzene emissions were undercounted by factors ranging from 3.2 to 202. Researchers with a Swedish firm called FluxSense Inc. used optical remote sensing devices to calculate levels of chemicals wafting invisibly from storage tanks, pipes and other equipment and compared that data to estimates made by the refinery operators. FluxSense’s Johan Mellqvist says all refineries lose gases and vapors “from many points. Many small leaks make a big leak.”

For this reason and others, the AQMD’s green-lighting of the Andeavor project in May did not sit well with public-health advocates. Two groups sued the agency, claiming, among other things, that its review of the company’s environmental impact report glossed over the FluxSense findings. Phyllis Fox, an expert hired by one of the groups, Safe Fuel and Energy Resources California, calculated that VOC emissions from the new crude storage tanks and other equipment within the 930-acre complex could be almost 30 times what the report predicts. AQMD officials wouldn’t respond to the allegation, citing the nascent litigation. In comments attached to the report, however, the district said it must rely on estimates “because real-time monitoring cannot be performed on equipment that has not been built.”

Andeavor says there’s no reason to believe that the anticipated bump in refining capacity — 6,000 barrels of oil per day on top of the 380,000 barrels already coursing through the Wilmington and Carson sites — will translate into dirtier air. In fact, it claims the replacement of old equipment will lead to a reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions — “the equivalent of removing more than 13,500 passenger vehicles from local roads each year” — and pollution from sulfur and nitrogen oxides, fine particles and carbon monoxide. But Julia May, a senior scientist with Communities for a Better Environment, the other group that’s suing over the project, says Andeavor’s own statements to investors suggest it expects to bring in greater amounts of highly volatile crude from North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation and asphalt-like tar sands from Alberta, raising the prospect of explosions during transport and more air pollution. The environmental impact report fails to account for this likely shift, the lawsuit alleges. The company insists the mix of crudes it refines won’t change.

The AQMD says it received more than 2,100 written or verbal comments on the refinery merger, more than three-quarters of which were supportive. Many of those who objected did so passionately. Maria Brizeño of Wilmington wrote, “We are already surrounded in all directions by refineries. I see them from all my windows. I cannot open my windows at night because the oil smell is too strong and noxious. In the morning, my yard is covered with soot. We do not need more hazards.” Sylvia Arredondo, also of Wilmington, collected comments from fellow residents, including Armando G. Soto, who wrote, “The only thing I’ve ever received from the refineries is the f***ing asthma I suffer from today.” In April, the annual People’s Climate March Los Angeles was held in Wilmington for the first time, and about 5,000 people turned out. Much of their ire was directed at the company then known as Tesoro.

U.S. Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán, a Democrat whose district includes Wilmington and Carson, urged the U.S. EPA in a June 1 letter not to grant Andeavor the permit revisions it needed to go forward with the project, saying its impacts “are not theoretical or abstract but would [have] real-life consequences that my constituents, many of whom are low-income or of color, would live with every day of their lives.” The EPA responded that it had approved the revisions after consulting with the AQMD and conducting its own review to confirm that Andeavor would use the best pollution controls and that the company’s emissions estimates were accurate. Philip Fine, a deputy executive officer with the AQMD, says refineries in the L.A. area are rigorously policed. “We probably have the most stringent rules and regulations in the nation when it comes to refineries,” he says. Pollution violations alleged by the district led to a collective $145 million in settlements with refiners from 2002 through July of this year, records show; $81 million of that came in a single settlement with BP in 2005, when it owned the Carson refinery now operated by Andeavor.

But Barragán, a lawyer raised in an immigrant family, suspects her district’s demographics make it easier for regulators to dismiss residents’ concerns. “My mother would always say, ‘We’re just happy to be here. We don’t ask questions. We don’t challenge people.’” Fear of deportation or other forms of retribution looms large in a place where much of the conversation and signage are in Spanish. “Having the largest [West Coast] refinery in my district, one of the most heavily polluted in the country, is not something I’m proud of,” the freshman congresswoman says. “This would not be happening in Hermosa Beach or Beverly Hills or Malibu.”

Her counterpart in the state Assembly, Mike Gipson, has been a top recipient of oil-industry largesse. Lobbying reports show that from the time he was elected in 2014 through 2016, Gipson accepted meals and lodging valued at $4,585 — the highest dollar amount in the California legislature for that period — from the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), which represents oil and gas producers and refiners, and the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), which represents only producers. Among the perks was a nearly $1,500 stay at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, south of San Francisco, for a WSPA conference. He also took in at least $71,950 in oil-industry contributions during his 2014 and 2016 campaigns — fourth-most among state lawmakers. And in 2015, WSPA made a $10,000 charitable donation at Gipson’s request to a wilderness camp for underprivileged boys. All of this was legal.

Gipson, a Democrat whose district runs from Wilmington in the south to Watts in the north, has taken positions aligned with his benefactors — opposing, for example, a provision in a 2015 clean-energy bill that would have committed the state to a 50-percent reduction in oil use within 15 years. The provision was stripped from the bill before it passed. A spokesman said Gipson would have no comment for this article. WSPA said in a statement that its “lobbying activities are a direct reflection of the enormous number of issues confronting the energy industry in California, and the potential impact those issues have on energy producers, refiners, consumers and businesses.” CIPA said its spending “reflects the complexity of the issues facing oil producers and the need to educate lawmakers about the impacts state policy will have on jobs, the economy, and the price of energy in California.”

Battle over cap-and-trade

While the air in the South Coast basin is cleaner than it was decades ago, the basin is still classified by the U.S. EPA as one of only two “extreme non-attainment” areas in the nation for ozone, the main ingredient in smog. (The San Joaquin Valley is the other.) Regulators have struggled to find ways to cut industrial emissions without crippling the region’s economy, and nearly 30 years ago took a stab at what’s known as cap-and-trade. Facing new federal mandates, the AQMD began discussions in September 1990 with Robert Wyman, a lawyer in the Los Angeles office of Latham & Watkins who represented oil companies, power generators and other business interests. Wyman, himself an asthmatic who spent part of his youth in Pasadena, had helped shape amendments to the Clean Air Act that would be signed into law later that fall by President George H.W. Bush. The amendments ratcheted up pressure on industry to slash emissions even though “the [pollution-control] technologies weren’t obvious,” Wyman says. Rather than stick with prescriptive, “command-and-control” enforcement — ordering businesses to adopt measures that in extreme cases would expunge pollution at the staggering cost of $100,000 per ton — the AQMD should move to a market-based system that set a price on emissions and gave companies flexibility to develop their own solutions, Wyman argued. The law explicitly encouraged such creativity.

The Regional Clean Air Incentives Market, or RECLAIM, was born on January 1, 1994. The idea was straightforward: Emission limits were established for big sources of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and lung-searing sulfur oxides; each participating facility received an annual allotment of credits equal to its limit. Excess credits could be sold to companies that couldn’t or chose not to stay under the emission cap. Over time, the number of credits would decrease, the price would rise and pollution would diminish.

From 1994 through 2015, levels of both nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides in the basin fell by 71 percent, AQMD data show. “I would classify [RECLAIM] as a resounding success,” says Laki Tisopulos, a deputy executive officer with the district. But the program didn’t achieve the pollution reductions envisioned when it was launched; credits stayed cheap and “artificially depressed” prices, the U.S. EPA found. Companies had little motivation to install costly emission controls. The AQMD’s own staff reported in November 2015 that emissions of nitrogen oxides — mostly from refineries — still totaled 20.7 tons per day in 2011. Had the old, command-and-control framework remained in place, the staff calculated, emissions would have been less than half that amount: 9.5 tons per day.

The AQMD staff, backed by then-Executive Officer Barry Wallerstein, recommended that the supply of credits for nitrogen oxides be curtailed to squeeze fat out of the program. WSPA had anticipated a more modest trim and objected. At a hearing in December 2015, the AQMD’s governing board, then with a Republican majority, voted to reject the staff proposal and side with WSPA. Three months later, Wallerstein — who could not be reached for comment for this article — was fired with no public explanation. In March of this year, the board — having shifted back to a Democratic majority — voted to phase out RECLAIM on a timetable yet to be determined. “The fact of the matter is, the program just wasn’t as tight as it should have been,” says Adrian Martinez, a staff attorney in Los Angeles with the nonprofit law firm Earthjustice who welcomes RECLAIM’s demise. Martinez offers grudging kudos to the oil companies for milking the program, saying, “Refineries are masters at using credit systems to their benefit – better than any other polluting industry out there. They are the LeBron James of using credit systems.”

For this reason, some environmental advocates grew leery this spring when Brown began prodding the California Legislature to extend the state’s four-year-old cap-and-trade program. The program places a gradually tightening limit on greenhouse gases while allowing polluters to either cut emissions or buy credits, known as allowances. The results have been mixed. Greenhouse-gas emissions statewide are edging down despite a growing economy, and Brown has won international praise for taking on climate change. Because of an oversupply of allowances and lenient policies exploited by polluters, however, low-income, mostly minority communities like Wilmington — where dirty industries tend to cluster — have yet to see significantly cleaner air. Oil refining shows an especially strong correlation between greenhouse-gas and toxic-air emissions, a study this year by the California Environmental Protection Agency found. Under cap-and-trade, greenhouse-gas emissions for the industry have barely budged.

California’s cap-and-trade program is the outgrowth of 2006 legislation that set ambitious goals for greenhouse-gas cuts. Emissions are to drop to 1990 levels by 2020 and another 40 percent by 2030. By most legal interpretations, the program needed a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to keep going beyond 2020. Brown, whose term ends in 2019, took it upon himself to broker a deal and sought early buy-in from WSPA and other oil interests. Those interests helped derail legislation introduced in June by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, a Democrat whose industry- and traffic-heavy district lies southeast of downtown Los Angeles. Garcia’s bill would have made continued participation in the cap-and-trade program contingent upon the reduction of toxic air pollutants, not merely greenhouse gases. It failed in the Assembly by three votes, with Assemblyman Gipson abstaining. “The biggest pushback, in all honesty, came from the oil industry,” Garcia says. (Brown’s relationship with the industry is complicated. Despite his reputation as a climate-change evangelist, he drew criticism for firing two state regulators whose aggressive approach to enforcement had provoked powerful oil companies. The industry came through when he needed business support for a 2012 measure raising taxes on the wealthy to bolster education. Oil’s imprint on California is undeniable: It contributes “more than $148 billion in direct economic activity” and “support[s] 368,100 total jobs,” according to a recent study commissioned by WSPA.)

Two new pieces of legislation — Assembly Bill 398, addressing cap-and-trade, and AB 617, addressing air quality — took shape after Garcia’s bill went down. AB 398 extended cap-and-trade through 2030 and restricted, but didn’t ban, polluters’ use of offset allowances, which enable the owner of a refinery in Los Angeles to meet some of its climate obligations by planting trees in Arkansas. It took away local air-quality districts’ power to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from refineries — something the Bay Area Air Quality Management District was pondering as recently as June. AB 617 was an attempt to get skeptical environmental-justice advocates on board with the cap-and-trade legislation. It increased penalties for air-pollution violations and called for advanced air-quality monitoring in “fence-line” communities such as Wilmington. It decreed that industrial facilities in smoggy areas install state-of-the-art controls no later than Dec. 31, 2023.

The bills passed on July 17 — AB 398 by the narrowest of margins, AB 617 more comfortably since it needed only a simple majority (Gipson voted yes on both). Accolades came quickly. The editorial board of The New York Times congratulated California for making a “bold, bipartisan commitment that invites similarly ambitious policies from other states [and] sends a strong signal to the world that millions of Americans regard with utmost seriousness a threat the Trump administration refuses to acknowledge, let alone reckon with.” Brown declined through a spokesman to be interviewed for this article, though the spokesman noted in an email that an “unprecedented coalition of more than 150 environmental, business, health, labor, agricultural and community organizations all came together to shape this legislation.” On July 25 – the day he signed AB 398 into law on Treasure Island, with San Francisco’s skyline in the background — the governor praised lawmakers for acting on “the existential threat that humanity faces.” He thanked former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, seated to his right, for Schwarzenegger’s support of the original, 2006 climate legislation. He cautioned that de-carbonization would not happen right away – “We can’t just say, overnight, ‘We’re not going to use oil anymore’” — but said California’s initiative was “pretty great” and destined to be copied by other states and nations.

WSPA later said in a statement that AB 398 would help “the [oil] industry compete in the world’s most stringent regulatory environment.” Indeed, the industry dodged a bullet: In January, six months before the bill became law, the staff of the California Air Resources Board, a regulatory agency, proposed that California refineries be forced to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 20 percent by 2030, saying such a move “may provide co-benefits of reducing criteria pollutants and toxic air contaminants in some of the most polluted and disadvantaged communities in the State.” The proposal could have led to a rule. “What we know now is, that won’t happen,” says board member Diane Takvorian.

The Natural Resources Defense Council was among the mainstream environmental groups that endorsed AB 398. “There was no path to getting a two-thirds vote that didn’t involve compromise,” says Alex Jackson, legal director of the NRDC’s California Climate Program. “Were there concessions to industry? Absolutely. But they didn’t cross a line.” Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia, a Democrat from Southern California’s Coachella Valley who is not related to Cristina Garcia, was the bill’s lead sponsor. Garcia says the successful auction of allowances by the Air Resources Board in August shows that businesses welcome the certainty afforded by the legislation. The auction raised $642 million for California’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund; if historical patterns hold, half of that money will go to projects in poor communities. “Extending the [cap-and-trade] program sent strong signals to the market and the market responded,” Garcia says. “These are very capitalist, Republican types of principles.”

‘Born in original sin’

Not everyone shares Garcia’s enthusiasm. RL Miller, who chairs the California Democratic Party’s Environmental Caucus, helped lead the charge against AB 398 by environmental-justice groups. “It was born in original sin,” she says. “It literally came from WSPA’s wish list.” Kathryn Phillips, director of Sierra Club California, which also opposed the legislation, says it was a product of Brown’s “kowtowing to the oil industry.” Phillips says that some of the bill’s worst provisions were excised, but at least one survived: The prohibition against local air districts regulating carbon dioxide. Her worry is that clever industry lawyers might argue the districts also can’t regulate co-pollutants like nitrogen oxides or benzene.

AB 398 left it to the Air Resources Board to fix a core flaw in the cap-and-trade program: the glut of allowances, which, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office said, “potentially increases emissions and puts downward pressure on prices.” Some of these allowances are, and will continue to be, handed out for free. Danny Cullenward, an energy economist and a lawyer who advised legislators during last summer’s debate in Sacramento, says the giveaways are justified in certain cases; businesses that operate on thin margins could be forced to shut down or flee California without help. But 72 percent of the free industrial allowances last year went to the oil and gas sector, which includes production and refining. AB 398 locked in these subsidies – worth “many billions of dollars,” Cullenward says – through 2030. Air Resources Board Member Dean Florez says the agency “needs to be much more discerning” about the handouts and ask itself, “Are very large companies really going to leave? When we talk about the oil companies – come on, they aren’t going anywhere.

Board spokesman Stanley Young acknowledges that refineries are unlikely to move but says “they could reduce production and import more fuel from out of state.” Young says there are mechanisms in place to deal with the oversupply of allowances and warns critics against missing the bigger picture: California is doing something tangible and consequential about climate change. The extension of cap-and-trade means that greenhouse-gas emissions statewide will have to come down “four percent a year, every year, from 2020 to 2030,” he says. “One way or another, all of the industries in California are going to have to meet these ambitious greenhouse-gas limits.”

But the cap-and-trade program could have been made even stronger. A bill introduced just prior to AB 398 by state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, a Democrat from the East Bay, would have done away with offsets and free allowances and set slowly rising floors and ceilings on the price of carbon to make it more expensive to pollute. The idea, Wieckowski said in June, was to make companies “pay real money” for their emissions. His bill was held in committee and became moot when AB 398 passed – though it could, in theory, be revived at some point.

The nurse, the mom and the mayor

Pedora Keo, the nurse in Long Beach, wasn’t happy when she learned how the climate negotiations in Sacramento had played out. “I think it’s a giveaway to the oil companies,” she says. For Keo the fight is intensely personal. Her 15-year-old son, Vincent Rol, was diagnosed with asthma when he was a year old and had to be hospitalized for several days when he was 5. “Shallow, rapid breathing,” his mother says, recalling the boy’s symptoms. “I could hear the wheezing sound.” Vincent’s asthma is mostly under control, Keo says, but he remains at risk. “One day he could have an attack, and it could be the end of his life.”

Dolores Linares says her two asthmatic sons “don’t have a good quality of life right now — like normal boys” in Wilmington. When the older one, Christian, had his attack earlier this year, “He had been coughing for, like, two days. And one day, around midnight, he was wheezing and his stomach hurt when he was breathing. He was really agitated, so I took him to the emergency room and they told me he had to stay. They put him on oxygen to stabilize him, and a lot of medicine.” The boys’ doctors, she says, “have told me it’s too contaminated and we need to leave.” For now, she and her partner, a chauffeur, are stuck. The money isn’t there.

In Carson, Mayor Robles is trying to be pragmatic. The city, which declared a fiscal emergency in August, will try to improve its quality of life with the $45 million from Andeavor. And, at Robles’ urging, it will go a step further. On the November ballot will be a measure to boost taxes on all petroleum operations in the city — refineries owned by Andeavor and Phillips 66 as well as facilities owned by Shell Oil and Kinder Morgan. Research by city staff shows that Carson brought in about $5 million from these operations last year. Torrance and El Segundo, each with a single refinery, saw double that amount. The Bay Area city of Richmond, also with one refinery, collected nearly $33 million. “The time has come,” Robles says, “for Carson to be treated fairly.”

Michael J. Mishak, Maryam Jameel and Joe Yerardi contributed to this story.

This story was produced in collaboration with StateImpact Pennsylvania.

JESSUP, Pa.—The biggest new natural-gas power plant in a state awash with them is taking shape on a mountain ridge overlooking the community it cleaved apart.

First came questions about pollution and property values. Lawyers and public-records requests followed. Now this borough of 4,500, where it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that everybody knows everybody, is embroiled in a full-out political revolt.

Pro-plant incumbents up for election this year — two council members and the mayor — were booted in the May primary. A ticket organized by plant opponents boasts five people on the ballot in next week’s general election — candidates for all the open council seats and even school board director, which shows just how far the fault lines over the Lackawanna Energy Center extend. Relationships have been upended. Mistrust in local government has surged.

“It’s like a raw nerve,” said Ellen Nielsen, president of the school board.

Pennsylvania has long been a power-plant colossus, exporting electricity to other states because it makes more than it uses — historically with coal and nuclear. The Jessup plant is at the vanguard of a new boom fueled by the state’s plentiful natural gas.

Only Texas has more planned gas-fired generation in the queue, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Energy firms have proposed over 40 gas-fired projects in Pennsylvania since 2011, including in Jessup's neighbor Archbald. Fourteen are under construction or operating. At 1,485 megawatts, Jessup’s Lackawanna Energy Center is one of the largest in the works nationwide, according to EIA data — part of a dramatic coast-to-coast expansion of gas-fired plants.

Electricity needs aren’t driving this upturn. Instead, in this part of the country, it’s developers hoping cheap gas will fuel profitable power plants in an increasingly crowded market. In the large, interstate electrical grid that includes Pennsylvania, the gas-plant rush is so huge it’s “poised to create a glut of supply” amid “little prospect of growth in demand,” credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service warned in May.

Customers will likely benefit from lower electricity bills, at least for a while. People who live near coal plants that close in the face of this stiff competition will breathe healthier air. But the rapid reshaping of U.S. electric power comes with some unpredictable, long-lasting implications.

Consider global warming. Natural gas produces roughly half the greenhouse gases as coal when burned, but it also leaks into the atmosphere as the potent warming agent methane when drilled, transported and consumed. Because the full extent of these leaks isn’t known, scientists can’t say just how much better for the climate gas is than the coal it’s replacing — and some fear it’s worse. Newly built gas plants are also displacing zero-carbon nuclear plants, competing with renewable-energy sources and locking in decades more fossil-fuel use at a time when nearly all the world’s countries agree that climate-warming emissions must be sharply cut.

To meet the goals set in Paris last year, aimed at avoiding the worst consequences of climate change, “no new investment in fossil electricity infrastructure (without carbon capture) is feasible from 2017 at the latest,” University of Oxford academics concluded in a study last year.

For the Pennsylvania towns considering plants — tiny municipalities outmatched by the well-resourced companies approaching them — there are other considerations that can seem daunting as well, from zoning to wastewater.

“Decisions made today cast long shadows,” said Gerald Cross with the Pennsylvania Economy League, a think tank.

Jessup is a cautionary tale for elected officials and citizens alike. Those who mobilized against the plant — which will begin operation next year — couldn’t stop it, couldn’t get it decreased in size, couldn’t convince their borough to bring in an expert to negotiate the project’s financial terms. They don’t regret the time and money they’ve spent — they’ve had some wins, the primary election among them. But those amount to a muted triumph after all the losses.

The power plant and the citizens' group

Chicago-based Invenergy is a major developer of renewables, particularly wind power. Pennsylvania is a state with a lot of untapped wind potential. When Invenergy went scouting for locations in northeastern Pennsylvania, though, it was a different resource that appealed. Gas flows fast from Pennsylvania’s share of the Marcellus shale play, unlocked by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

The company, which holds about a third of its portfolio in gas, wanted a big plant that would be so efficient it could win out in the competition to provide electricity. Invenergy sees gas as a key part of a “clean energy” future, said Dan Ewan, the company’s vice president of thermal development.

In Jessup, less than 10 miles northeast of Scranton, the company had easy access to what it needed: Not just gas, but also workers, transmission lines, even train tracks to move equipment in.

“The project provided us with a lot of the things that make a power plant a good investment,” Ewan said.

In 2015, as the public heard about Invenergy’s plans, the company said the plant would be good for the community, too. Some in Jessup, and unions in the broader region, emphatically agreed. They pointed to the jobs for hundreds of construction workers — many of whom were struggling after a long building drought triggered by the housing bust — and the money for local businesses that could benefit from the activity.

But once construction ended and the 30-employee plant fired up, it would pump out pollution for the four or more decades of its expected life. The prospect that it could displace more-toxic coal plants didn’t seem a fair trade to some residents, with the nearest coal-fired sites more than 40 miles distant and tiny. And they were upset to learn that their local officials OK’d waiving taxes on the Moosic Mountain property through 2023 to encourage development — after Invenergy had already decided to build on it.

These people banded together, a few, then dozens — a retired accountant, a nurse practitioner, a winery owner, a business manager and a former Jessup councilman, among others.

Calling themselves Citizens for a Healthy Jessup, they first tried to convince their borough council not to amend zoning to allow the development on the proposed site, which sits half a mile from homes. Invenergy told the council that Jessup was in violation of state law because a power plant could not feasibly be built anywhere in the community, even in the part of Jessup with zoning that permitted it. The residents presented a case that the company could in fact construct a plant elsewhere in Jessup — a smaller one.

They hired a lawyer, pored over arcane regulations, went to each council meeting and sent a mailer to everyone in the borough. Jessup’s planning commission agreed that the zoning should remain unchanged, but the council had the final say.

And the council voted in Invenergy’s favor in 2015 — first to alter the zoning, later to allow the plant at full size. That followed a “build the plant” public-relations campaign by Invenergy and its supporters that included an opinion piece from former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who’d received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the politically connected developer selling the land to Invenergy.

Council members said the plant’s economic benefits, in their estimation, outweighed any disadvantages.

“I just personally felt that it was a boon for this area,” said Maggie Alunni, a Jessup councilwoman now finishing the last of her 16 years on that body after being voted out in the primary. “I honestly believe this is going to bring more industry and more prosperity to our area than if we had turned it away.”

Most people in a one-sided fight probably would have given up at that point. But “it was such a large, life-changing impact,” said Thomas J. Fiorelli III, a Citizens for a Healthy Jessup leader who served as a councilman from 2001 to 2006. So, as the focus shifted from whether the plant should be built to how much money the community would receive from it, the residents regrouped. They wanted Jessup to get as much as it could.

This time, they thought, they and their council surely would see eye-to-eye.

The deal on the table

Unlike most states, Pennsylvania doesn’t allow local governments to tax most of the overall value of power plants, according to Mark Pomykacz of Federal Appraisal, a consulting firm in New Jersey. That means less of a budget boost for communities absorbing projects, even when officials don’t temporarily waive the taxes, as Jessup did.

Amid mounting opposition, Invenergy said it would make extra, non-tax payments to the community until the power plant closed. The company offered $500,000 a year as a "host agreement," then upped it to $1 million a year with additional upfront money.

A law firm for the citizens’ group recommended that the borough ask for much more, pointing to communities outside Pennsylvania that struck deals with higher payments per megawatt. Instead, the council's negotiator and another borough staffer spent nearly an hour at a public meeting in 2016 arguing that Invenergy’s offer was excellent and the citizens’ lawyers didn't know what they were talking about.

Jason Petrochko, president of Citizens for a Healthy Jessup, watched the meeting unfold, stunned.

“That was when I really began to feel like something wasn’t right,” he said. “When they argued against trying to get more money, they were doing the job Invenergy should have done.”

When it was Petrochko’s turn to speak, he reminded the council that no one in the room had expertise in host-agreement negotiations except Invenergy’s lawyer — not even Jessup's negotiator, a lawyer who serves as the borough’s solicitor. Petrochko, touching on school funding woes and other local needs, said Jessup needed to hire an expert to make sure it got the best deal.

Four days later, the council voted 5-1 to accept the agreement as it was.

Richard A. Fanucci, Jessup’s solicitor, stands by the deal he negotiated. Like Invenergy, he said it’s by far the best of the few power-plant host agreements in Pennsylvania, which does not require them. He saw no need for an outside lawyer to handle the negotiations because he has long experience with municipal, zoning and contract law in the region.

“We lost a lot of sleep over this, making sure we did the right thing,” he said. He pointed to other power-plant communities in Pennsylvania that “got zero, they have nothing. In fact, we received calls from representatives in those municipalities, saying, ‘How the heck did you guys do that?’”

But as substantial as the payments will be for a borough with a $2.2 million annual budget, the organized citizens weren’t the only ones who thought more was possible. The council, the Scranton Times-Tribune’s columnist wrote after the decision, “squandered a rare opportunity for a small community to negotiate with a big corporation from a position of strength.”

Jessup at least got more money than Invenergy originally said it was willing to pay. The tri-borough Valley View school district, which has had to shutter its aging pool at least temporarily and raise taxes to cover budget gaps, actually ended up with less after Jessup finished negotiating.

The schools will receive a guaranteed $500,000, spread over five years. But they would have had about $2 million over the life of the plant under Invenergy’s original proposal, which earmarked 10 percent for the district. Had the final deal included such an earmark, the district would be getting roughly $5 million.

That was sobering news to Nielsen, the school board president. She'd thought the matter had worked out in the schools' benefit.

“I guess I should have been aware of it, but I wasn’t, because the plant was built in Jessup and I wasn’t that much involved,” said Nielsen, a resident of neighboring Archbald.

Fanucci said the results were fair because the school district wasn’t a party to the zoning matter. It had no right to money beyond what Jessup chose to set aside for it, he said.

The school district’s lawyer might have argued otherwise — if that lawyer weren’t Fanucci himself. He’s represented both the schools and the borough for years.

Nielsen now thinks that the school board, “knowing what happened with Jessup," might want to get a negotiator for a host agreement involving Archbald’s smaller proposed power plant. Archbald Councilwoman Erin Owen, whose husband is a school board member, strongly recommends that.

Owen already convinced her council to hire its own specialist for the negotiations. The Jessup host agreement was a raw deal, in her opinion, and the process left a sour taste in people's mouths.

“A lot of long-time friendships were lost,” she said.

Figuring out a way forward

Shattered relationships are no small matter in a community that resembles an extended family. Many here have lived in Jessup their whole lives, or close to it, and they're suffering through what amounts to a bloodless civil war.

People with concerns about the Lackawanna Energy Center speak with emotion about how their faith in people they grew up with was ruined. Some who strongly supported the project — such as Ginger Adams, whose Jessup café has seen sales rise since construction began — discovered that friends had come down passionately on the other side of the argument. The plant was a key reason Petrochko’s family moved out of Jessup to a nearby town this year, while Fanucci, whose family has lived in the Jessup area for generations, isn’t sure he wants to continue as the borough’s solicitor. And the president of the council recently tendered his resignation.

“I just want Jessup to heal,” said Alunni, the outgoing Jessup councilwoman. “I want it to go back to the way it was.”

That’s not to say she wishes the plant hadn’t been built. She still thinks going forward was the right decision. There’s the money the borough will get, which she believes was well-negotiated. And more than 1,000 construction jobs — a “godsend” that has pushed a high jobless rate among the region’s construction workers to basically zero, said Pat Dolan, president of the Scranton Building Trades Council.

Depending on how the general election goes, candidates affiliated with Citizens for a Healthy Jessup could gain a majority on the seven-seat council. It’s too late to stop the plant or get a vote on the host agreement, of course. But Roberta Galati, whose successful run in the Democratic primary was her first bid for public office, said there’s still important work to be done.

“We want transparency,” said Galati, a retired bank manager who would earn about $2,000 a year if elected. “I can’t believe … how blindly I let them do whatever they wanted to do. Years ago, I should have been going to these meetings. But better late than never, I guess.”

The residents think they’ve had an effect on the plant, despite the disappointments.  If no one had organized against the project, they wonder, would there be a host agreement at all? If they hadn’t tested the stream into which Invenergy planned to discharge wastewater so there would be a record of pre-plant conditions, would the company still have decided to ask to use the sewer system instead?

In September, as a band played classic rock and people ate kielbasa sandwiches the citizens’ group was selling to raise money for air testing, Joanne Kilgour with the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club considered the bigger picture beyond the power plant. Residents’ suggestions and requests were dismissed, she said, but they kept coming to meetings and asking questions. She sees in it a reminder for all Americans: “Our democracy is something that isn’t just handed to us, but that we have to be an active participant in.”

The late afternoon sun shone on the fundraiser in the valley and the power plant up on the mountain, and the music played on.

Marie Cusick of StateImpact Pennsylvania contributed to this story.

Nov. 6, 2017: This story has been corrected.

The most women candidates in at least a decade are on Tuesday’s ballot in Virginia and New Jersey — what may be the first glimpse of new political activism in the Trump era. 

The two states are the only ones to hold major off-year elections in 2017, but they could provide a forecast of 2018, when thousands of seats nationwide are up for election in both federal and state races. The Virginia results, especially, could be a harbinger of what’s to come because the state’s electorate closely resembles the demographics of the country.

In the Old Dominion, 53 women are running for state office from lieutenant governor to delegate compared with 45 in the last election and 31 in 2013, according to a Center for Public Integrity analysis of data from Rutgers’ Center for American Women and Politics.

New Jersey has 79 women on the ballot for state office, up from 72 in 2013, the last time both the General Assembly and state Senate were up for election.

In both states, 2017 represents the highest number of women candidates running for state office since at least 2007, according to the analysis.

But the ceiling for higher level office may still be hard to crack. While New Jersey has a woman on the ballot for governor, and both states have female candidates for lieutenant governor, New Jersey has had just one female governor in its past and Virginia has had none. This year may not change the history books much: New Jersey’s Republican gubernatorial candidate Republican Kim Guadagno lags in the polls.

Nationwide, preliminary numbers for the 2018 elections show 66 women have announced their candidacy or shown interest in running for governor, CAWP data show. This is more than the number of women who ran during the 2010 and 2014 elections combined.   

Despite the increased numbers, though, some experts say surges of women running for office have occurred previously and it will take more to fill the gender gap in U.S. politics. 

“Of course having more women candidates is going to help, but we need to look at the structures within that make it more viable for these candidates to actually make it into office,” said CAWP spokeswoman Chelsea Hill.

She said her organization has had an increase this year in registrations for its Ready to Run trainings for female candidates of all parties, so she’s “very intrigued” to see how the 2018 elections shape up.

A new awakening

There is little question that President Donald Trump has spurred a new activism among many women.  Hundreds of thousands of them were so disturbed by his comments towards women, immigrants and other minorities during his campaign that they marched in cities around the world the day after his inauguration.

Many wore pink cat-eared, knit “pussy hats” as a symbol of political defiance, alluding to Trump’s boast in a 2005 video that surfaced weeks before the election about grabbing women’s genitals.

“It was a waking moment for many women,” said Hala Ayala, a Democrat who’s running for Virginia’s 51st District House seat in Prince William County. “I saw a lot of women put on their sneakers and say, ‘Enough is enough,’ and now we are going to do something about it.”

The 43-year-old single mother of two is running against Republican Del. Rich Anderson, who is seeking his fifth term. In 2015, Anderson did not face a challenger and in 2013 he beat his opponent by 7 percentage points.

But Ayala, a former cyber-security analyst with the Department of Homeland Security, said Hillary Clinton’s win in the district in the 2016 presidential election gives her hope. And the number of women on the ballot are proof that she’s not alone.

Record Numbers

In Virginia, where 17 percent of the House of Delegates’ members are female, women make up 30 percent of the candidates in Tuesday’s general election, according to the Center for Public Integrity analysis of CAWP data. (The state Senate does not have races in 2017.)

The surge in candidates has meant that more House of Delegates races are being contested there by both major parties than in at least two decades, as the Center for Public Integrity reported earlier this fall.

In New Jersey’s Legislature, where women currently hold about 30 percent of the seats, women make up 29 percent of the candidates this election.

Nationwide, about 24 percent of state lawmakers are women, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Overall, the majority of the female candidates in both states are Democrats: 48 out of 79 in New Jersey and 43 out of 53 in Virginia. This increase in Democratic women showing interest in running for office has been happening nationwide. But the number of Republican women candidates for New Jersey’s Legislature actually dropped from 34 in 2013 to 30 this year, CAWP data show.    

Harrison Neely, executive director of the Senate Republican Majority in New Jersey, said despite the drop in women candidates running for Senate this year, the GOP has strong candidates in battleground districts. In three out of five of New Jersey’s most contested Senate districts, Republicans have women challenging Democratic incumbents, Neely said.

“As someone who has gone out there to recruit female candidates, you do see that women can be more hesitant to run for public office,” Neely said. “But there are just as many women as there are men, so we need to get more women on the ballot.”

He said the state Republican Party has stepped up efforts to recruit women and he remains hopeful that Guadagno, New Jersey’s first female lieutenant governor, becomes the state’s second female governor. 

Last month, Republicans announced plans to launch Winning for Women to help women seek office. According to POLITICO, the group has nearly 30,000 people who have provided their names and email addresses online and it hopes to grow its ranks to 400,000 by the November 2018 elections.

On the other side, EMILY’s List, a 32-year-old political action committee that supports Democratic, pro-abortion rights women candidates, has reported more than 20,000 women interested in running for office have reached out to them since Trump’s victory, up from 920 women in the last two years combined.

An EMILY’s List partner, Emerge America is also training and encouraging Democratic women to run for political office. The organization launched in 2005 and now operates in 23 states, including New Jersey and Virginia.

A few weeks ago, it held a boot camp in Washington, D.C., for women running or thinking of running for office in the 2018 elections. This was the last of the three-day crash courses the organization had put together after seeing a more than 87 percent increase in women signing up since the 2016 election, according to Communications Director Allison Abney.  

“The number of women that want to run is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. It’s amazing,” Abney said. “Some of these women are teachers, parents, lawyers, and many have no idea how to go about this. So we help to prepare them.”

Abney said one of the biggest challenges newcomers face is the fear of asking for money. So part of the boot camp training involves helping women confront their fears and actually start fundraising, even if they haven’t officially announced their candidacy.

Gearing up for 2018

At the boot camp, women from 12 states stood outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters, calling their friends and family members and asking them to contribute to their campaign. Some paced back and forth on a sidewalk across the street, while others sat on a small brick wall in front of the building kicking their feet and making the “hard ask.”

Monica Chinchilla, a city commissioner from San Francisco who plans to run for her local school board, made her first phone call to her “abuelita” in Fresno. “Hello, Grandma, how are you? How’s Grandpa? How are your chickens?” she asked in a soft voice and with a big smile on her face. “Can you contribute $100 a month through the entirety of my campaign?”

“This is fun for me. It’s almost like haggling,” she said. “So it’s not something new for me.”

In less than 25 minutes, she raised $1,350 for her 2018 run for school board.     

Together the 41 women who attended the boot camp in D.C. raised more than $14,000 in the half-hour exercise. Jamie Maniscalco, finance director with Emerge America, applauded the women’s efforts and addressed their initial fears, “You see? It wasn’t that bad.”

Maniscalco, whose energy matched her bright floral print blazer, ended the first part of her fundraising crash course with a message that made all the women in the room erupt in cheers and applause.

“We are here. We are emerging,” Maniscalco said. “We are not waiting our turn anymore.”                 

Too early to call

Despite the new investments and attention to women in politics, Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University, sounded a note of caution in regard to the barriers that still may exist for women.

“It’s going to be difficult for this to be a watershed moment,” Lawless said. “Democrats have to win a record number of seats and make up for the number of female retirements.”

Lawless, along with POLITICO and Loyola Marymount University, surveyed more than 2,000 potential candidates to determine whether Donald Trump has sparked their political activism and ambition.

The June study, titled “The Trump Effect,” found that while many women expressed interest in running for office, only a few were certain of throwing their hats in the ring for the 2018 or 2020 elections.

Lawless said this hesitation is the main factor that keeps women from filling the gender gap in politics. She said numerous studies have shown that once women take the initial steps to run they have the same chances of winning and raise the same amount of money as their male counterparts.

But those findings apply mostly to open seats. Lawless said the slow ascension of women into the electoral office also has a lot to do with advantages held by incumbents. 

“Even though these statewide positions typically have term limits, there is a lot of moving up from one executive state position to the other,” Lawless said. “Given that men occupy 75 percent of those offices, it makes it difficult for any traditionally marginalized group to break in.”

This Tuesday, in Virginia’s House of Delegates races, nearly two out of every three Democratic women candidates and about one-third of Republican women candidates are running against current delegates.

For Sheila Bynum-Coleman, this will be her second time trying to unseat 12-term incumbent GOP Del. Riley E. Ingram in Hopewell, Virginia. Bynum-Coleman, a 43-year-old small-business owner and mother of five, said she has had to grow “thicker skin” since she first decided to run for public office.

Bynum-Coleman is the first African American to run for Virginia’s 62^nd District House seat and would be the first woman to win if she beats Ingram. Last Monday, eight days before the election, the Democrat sounded optimistic despite having raised less money than her opponent.

As of Oct. 26, Bynum-Coleman had raised $113,667 compared with Ingram’s $226,700, according to the most recent filings available from the Virginia Public Access Project, which gathers state election reports. 

“People think that it’s impossible for me to win this seat,” Bynum-Coleman said. “But I have so many people that are supporting me from outside the party, or outside the caucus, so they came out to help me.”

She said it’s especially important for her to try because so many decisions that affect women, including the Affordable Care Act, are made mostly by men.

“We are constantly being attacked and not being able to have the freedom to make decisions for our own bodies and our own health,” she said. “So we need women at the table fighting for the rights of women.”

This story was co-published with Salon. 

Correction, Nov. 6, 2017, 2:32 p.m.: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Emerge America as an EMILY’s List affiliate. The group partners with EMILY’s List but the organizations are independent of each other.

Update, 11:07 a.m., Nov. 7, 2017: Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke announced late Monday, Nov. 6, that more than 5,300 Nicaraguan immigrants living and working legally in the United States since 1999 will lose their Temporary Protected Status and work permits on January 5, 2019. Duke said conditions caused by a devastating hurricane that hit Central America in late 1998 no longer justify TPS, which protects immigrants from deportation. Duke said Homeland Security hasn’t yet decided whether to end TPS for more than 86,000 Honduran immigrants also protected from deportation since 1999. Absent a decision, Hondurans were automatically given a six-month extension Monday that lasts through July 5, 2018. But Duke warned that the Hondurans’ TPS could also ultimately be terminated “with an appropriate delay.” Because of the difficulty immigrants here for two decades now face, Duke called on Congress “to enact a permanent solution for this inherently permanent program.” CASA, a national immigrant rights group, denounced the decisions, warning that “families with children who are U.S. citizens will be destroyed” as TPS holders are “discarded.” The UNITE HERE labor union called Homeland Security’s actions “astounding cruelty” and “a stain on American history” that will “forcibly tear” people from their U.S.-born children, jobs, businesses and homes.

Juan Cortez of Maryland owns his own trucking business — he’s almost paid off the $50,000 loan he took to start it — and he holds county contracts to plow snow every winter just outside Washington, D.C. After nearly a quarter of a century here, the Salvadoran immigrant is also the proud owner of a home, and he pays tens of thousands of dollars in annual taxes. He has a daughter in college and a son in high school who’s in the ROTC, the Reserve Officer Training Corps.

“My son wants to serve this country,” said Cortez, 47, who lives just miles from the nation’s capital.  “But what If I can’t be here anymore?"

Cortez has plenty of reason to worry.  In a matter of months, the Trump Administration could turn this entrepreneur and dad and hundreds of thousands of others into instant undocumented immigrants, no longer allowed to live and work here legally. With the stroke of a pen, the Department of Homeland Security could either end — or extend — a quasi-legal state known as Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, that Cortez and 263,280 other Salvadorans already in the United States were granted way back in 2001. But no one knows quite what’s going to happen next. Earthquakes that devastated El Salvador in 2001 were the rationale for the U.S. to initially provide such status to Salvadoran immigrants who were already here, and who mostly arrived illegally. They had to pass background checks and other vetting to receive TPS status, and they must repeat that vetting every 18 months, and pay for it themselves.

The majority of the Salvadorans who were in the United States in 2001 had fled Central America to escape poverty and the violence of a brutal Cold War-era armed conflict in the 1980s and 1990s in which the U.S. was heavily involved.

The TPS designation that brought these Salvadorans out of the shadows was also provided to others as the result of natural disasters; about 5,350 Nicaraguans and 86,180 Hondurans have had TPS since 1999 because of a massive hurricane that caused widespread destruction. More than 58,700 Haitians have had TPS since 2010 because of unprecedented earthquake damage. Many of those who enjoy TPS have been in the U.S. for years, and have built businesses and had children, just like Juan Cortez. Their stays have been extended again and again by both Republican and Democratic administrations.

But the day of reckoning may have arrived. The Trump Administration has already issued a warning that Haitians could lose TPS for good in January after a six-month extension that began in June. Later today, Hondurans and Nicaraguans will learn if they could also face a deadline in the near future (see update). Salvadorans are anxious about an announcement about their fate that could come in March. If TPS is terminated, more than 300,000 people will lose protection from deportation and also forfeit the work permits they’ve been paying to obtain every 18 months for many years.

They will face desperate choices, as a result. Juan Cortez and thousands like him will have to choose between returning to countries that remain dysfunctional and dangerous, or slipping into the shadows in cities like Washington, Miami, Los Angeles, New York and Houston and trying to evade deportation. And they’ll have to decide what to do with hundreds of thousands of their children who are U.S. citizens because they were born here.

“I don’t think Trump really understands what’s at stake. These folks have been here so long, you just can’t be so heartless,” said Bill Hing, a law professor at the University of San Francisco who has written about America’s love-hate history with immigrants. “It would be a bombshell overnight for all those people to be declared undocumented,” Hing said.

Unwinding TPS

TPS has historically protected foreign nationals from deportation because U.S. officials have determined that a country reeling from war, a health emergency or a natural disaster would be unable to absorb returnees safely and without chaos. U.S. national interests in not contributing to instability in foreign countries is also a factor.

Officials can renew TPS status for immigrants, or they can end it if they determine that conditions in a particular country have sufficiently improved. Since the TPS framework was created by Congress in 1990, some foreign nationals have seen their TPS status end. Bipartisan support from Republican and Democratic administrations has helped nationals from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti retain TPS.

But the message seemed to change last May, when then-Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly announced that Haitians granted TPS in 2010 would benefit from only a limited extension of six months, from July into January. Although Kelly didn’t say TPS would definitively end in January for Haitians, he urged the immigrants to use the six months to obtain travel documents and arrange for their “ultimate departure from the United States.”

Now Hondurans and Nicaraguans who’ve been living here under TPS since 1999 are anxiously waiting a decision on their fate, and Salvadorans know they’re next (see update).

Tyler Houlton, acting press secretary for Homeland Security, said late last week that “we are not able to comment because no decision has been made regarding TPS status for Nicaragua and Honduras.” Staff at the Department of State, which makes TPS recommendations to Homeland Security, also declined to comment. The Washington Post reported Friday, however, that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently wrote to Homeland Security, opining that conditions in Central America and Haiti that originally triggered TPS no longer supported providing protected status. 

Those with Temporary Protected Status have no official path to apply to transition to legal permanent residency — a green card — no matter how long they have been here, or what they have accomplished.

Some powerful voices are dissatisfied with the duration of TPS designations. Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, argued in a letter to Homeland Security last week that TPS has been extended so often that TPS immigrants are filling jobs that could be opened to Americans.

“I hope you will explore and pursue these long overdue opportunities to return populations of otherwise unauthorized immigrants to their homes, where they can be of most use,” Grassley wrote. He asked if data used to request TPS designation could later be used to locate people for removal once TPS has ended.

But a rare coalition of strange bedfellows have united in opposing the end of TPS designation. Members of Congress in regions with large numbers of TPS immigrants — including Florida Republicans — are urging the administration to consider the consequences of subjecting so many employed, taxpaying immigrants to deportation. Churches and labor unions have chimed in as well.

On Oct. 30, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to Homeland Security acknowledging that TPS is intended to be temporary, but also imploring the administration to seek a realistic solution. 

“The reality is these individuals have now lived and worked in communities across this nation for in some cases nearly two decades now. We urge you to extend the current TPS designations and to work with Congress on a more permanent resolution to the status of these TPS beneficiaries,” the Chamber wrote.

“The loss of employment authorization for these populations would adversely impact several key industries where TPS recipients make up a significant amount of the workforce. These industries include construction, food processing, hospitality, and home healthcare services.”

Labor unions and the Chamber, often at odds, both argue that there would be labor shortages if TPS holders were stripped of work permits, costing businesses cash and eliminating contributions immigrant workers make to Social Security and Medicare.

'Clocks ticking away'

Maria Elena Durazo, general vice president of the UNITE HERE labor union, said, “Our immigrant workers who keep the hospitality industry highly profitable and are key to the economic health of cities like Orlando, Miami, New York City and L.A.”

Recently, at All Souls Church in Washington, D.C., Dina Paredes, a union housekeeper at a luxury hotel who has lived in Los Angeles for 20 years, 16 of them under TPS, wept as she described the anxiety she and other TPS recipients are suffering.

“We feel like clocks ticking away, yes or no, yes or no,” the Salvadoran mother of two U.S. citizen kids, 13 and 16, said.  “My children ask me, ‘Mommy are they going to deport you? Mommy, we don’t want to go to El Salvador.’ If I return to El Salvador with my children, they won’t know what to do. I fear they’d be killed, raped.”

The 50-year-old was in Washington to visit congressional staff members as part of a national effort by labor unions, churches and businesses to try to preserve TPS or persuade Congress to find a solution.

Activists with UNITE HERE said they were dismayed that many congressional staff seemed unaware of the predicament that TPS holders face. Hill staff were more familiar with Deferred Action for Childhood immigrants, a separate temporary status that a limited group of people brought here illegally as children were given under President Obama. Trump ended DACA and urged Congress to find a legislative solution so DACA holders could stay.

Paredes also complained that immigrants are up against hostility stemming from a widespread impression that they don’t pay taxes or contribute enough to local economies. TPS holders who work on the books, as many do, pay into Social Security, among other regular requirements, but are not eligible to receive Social Security benefits.

“We are not a burden to the government,” Paredes said, tears spilling down her cheeks. “We pay our taxes We pay our own medical insurance. We are honorable people. We are not criminals.”

Bill Hing, the immigration lawyer in San Francisco, said the presence of Central Americans here is a legacy of controversial American involvement in a variety of Central American conflicts.  

Honduras and El Salvador are struggling today with some of the highest homicide rates in the world. Justice systems are weak. Good-paying jobs are scarce. And gangs that were born in Los Angeles — and exported back to Central America — engage in forced recruitment and extortion affecting businesses and vulnerable targets that include families who receive money from U.S. relatives. About one in every five Salvadorans now lives in the United States.  

In Pennsylvania, TPS recipient Karla Alvarado, who arrived from El Salvador when she was 9 with her parents, is a 29-year-old home health-care nurse who supervises care for 55 clients, from babies to disabled and the elderly. “It’s definitely stressing me out,” she said in perfect English. The United States is her home, she said. “Where do I go from here?’

“My co-workers ask me all the time why I can’t just get citizenship.” Alvarado is married to a U.S. citizen, but she could face a 10-year bar, minimum, preventing her from living in the United States, if her spouse tries to sponsor her for a green card.

Homeland Security officials said they don’t have data readily available breaking down where TPS recipients live in the United States. But the left-leaning Center for American Progress analyzed U.S. Census data and estimated that the region with highest concentration of Salvadoran TPS holders is the Washington, D.C. metro area, with about 32, 360 recipients, followed by Los Angeles with 30,415.

“I’m so nervous I can’t even think about what I would do if I lose TPS,” said a 60-year-old Honduran who cleans buildings — including a U.S. government office — and who asked not to be identified.  For 13 years, the Virginia resident has cleaned the federal building, a job requiring a special ID, from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. She then cleans a private building from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.  She’s been here for 20 years — sending money to a son back in Honduras — and spent thousands of dollars on lawyers who failed to get her permanent residency, despite her marriage to a man with a green card.

For Carlo Sanchez, who represents Maryland’s 47B district in the state House of Delegates, these stories sound painfully familiar. He knows lots of people who own homes and businesses — like trucker Juan Cortez — and whose kids are thriving in school. “My parents came here illegally to get away from that civil war,” Sanchez said. But they were able to legalize when Congress approved and President Reagan signed an amnesty in 1986 as part of an immigration reform package.

Those with TPS don’t have the same opportunity. But they don’t want to leave. And ultimately, many won’t.

“The cold hard truth,” Sanchez said, “is if they end TPS you’re not going to have a bunch of people crowding into the airport to leave. Lots of people will figure out a way to disappear into the shadows.”

The Center for Public Integrity is pleased to offer paid summer internships in Washington, D.C., to train the next generation of investigative journalists.

Sometimes the application process can be daunting. That’s why we’re making it as clear as we can so you know our expectations for what makes a stellar candidate.

What do interns at The Center do?

The Center for Public Integrity is one of the country's oldest and largest nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organizations. The Center is also the winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting.

Interns do largely the same work as our staffers. They analyze data, report and write stories that follow our mission statement: serve democracy by revealing abuses of power, corruption and betrayal of public trust by powerful public and private institutions.

Does that sound like something you’d be interested in doing? Then please apply. If selected, you’ll work hard, learn a ton and have a lot of fun.

Here is some of the work our recent interns have produced:

• Oil, gas and coal interests filling Donald Trump’s ‘swamp’ with cash (federal politics team)
• Residents of Ohio town see 'environmental justice' as empty promise (environment/labor team)
• Republican Governors Association outguns its Democratic counterpart as it gears up for next races (states team)

Am I eligible for an internship?

The Center for Public Integrity welcomes applications from undergraduate students entering their junior or senior years, recent graduates, graduate students and professionals looking to change careers. You must be authorized to work in the United States.

The Center for Public Integrity is committed to hiring employees from diverse backgrounds. People of color, women, LGBTQ and differently abled people are strongly encouraged to apply.

What is the application deadline?

Dec. 1, 2017 for summer internships.

How long do these internships last?

Internships typically last 12 to 14 weeks. Internships will start in late May or June, depending on the intern's schedule.

What are the hours?

Summer internships are full-time (40 hours a week). Internships at other times of year may be full-time if the intern's schedule allows but must be a minimum of 20 hours a week. The Center follows a 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday schedule.

You guys pay, right? RIGHT?!

That's right! Interns are paid $16 per hour. Interns will also be paid a $500 signing bonus to help them get settled while waiting for their first paycheck.

Cool. How do I apply?

Candidates should email their applications to intern coordinator Joe Yerardi at internships@publicintegrity.org.

All candidates must submit the following:

• A cover letter
• A resume
• Contact information for two professional references
• Three examples of your work

Your cover letter should be a statement of purpose. We’re interested in what you’re passionate about and why you’re passionate about it.

• Tell us what you care about and what you like to work on.
• Tell us why this opportunity will help you reach your potential.
• Tell us how you will contribute to our news organization.
• Tell us why you’re a terrific candidate.
• Tell us if you have a particular interest in one of our core coverage areas: business, data journalism, the environment, immigration, national security, politics, technology or workers’ rights.

Your resume should list all relevant work experience, including previous internships, freelance reporting jobs and positions at student news outlets. It should also list any relevant skills like speaking a language other than English or experience working with particular software or programming languages (Excel, SQL, Python, etc.).

Your two professional references should be able to speak knowledgably about your qualifications to work at the Center. Reporters and editors at previous internships, advisers to student publications and professors tend to be good references.

Examples of your work should include stories that have been published in professional or student outlets. Please include hyperlinks to these stories if they are available online. If they're not available online, please include them as PDF files. Applicants with GitHub accounts are encouraged to include links to relevant repositories showing the data and programming work they did to report their stories.

What's the selection process?

After you email us a resume, cover letter, contact information for two references and three examples of your work, you'll receive an email thanking you for your application. Our selection committee will then read through all the applications. We’ll reduce the list to several finalists.

If you’re one of the finalists, you'll get an email from us a week or two after the relevant application deadline. Over email, we'll figure out a good time for a few folks from the Center to conduct a Skype interview with you. Be prepared to talk about how you can help the Center for Public Integrity. Shortly after that, we’ll make our decisions. We’ll follow up with all our finalists.

I’m still not sure whether I’m good enough to apply. Should I?

There’s no such thing as a “perfect applicant.” If you’ve read this far, you’re obviously interested. And if you’re interested, then you should definitely apply. We can’t promise that we’ll hire you but we can promise this: If you follow the instructions outlined on this page, we will give your application serious consideration. So if you’re on the fence about applying, please go ahead and send that application in. We want to see it. And good luck!

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has divested his interest in Diamond S Shipping Group Inc., one of the world’s largest owners and operators of medium-range tanker vessels and the subject of a Center for Public Integrity investigation.

Ross “has fully divested of his interest in Diamond S. Shipping,” Commerce Department spokesman James Rockas said today, in response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity. Ross is currently in Beijing, traveling with President Donald Trump.

Critics have raised questions about whether overseas shipping investments are appropriate for Ross, who is among the Trump administration’s most influential trade policy players. Most of Diamond S Shipping’s fleet sails under Chinese flags, and the company has ties to a major Chinese investment fund.

Its ships have also visited ports in Russia and Iran— two nations that have for years found themselves in conflict with U.S. interests, and particularly so during Donald Trump’s nascent presidency.

Ross, who this week has also come under scrutiny for a separate shipping investment with ties to Russia, was not immediately available for comment. Rockas could not immediately say exactly when Ross shed his stake in Diamond S Shipping.

Diamond S Shipping did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Update, 6:07 p.m., Nov. 7: Randi Strudler of Jones Day, a lawyer representing Diamond S Shipping, said the company is owned by investment funds and does not have any independent way to verify the identities of those owning a stake in the investment funds at any given time.)  

Ross had been non-executive chairman of Diamond S Shipping’s board, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and agreed to step down from his position with the company when he took the Commerce Department job, according to his public ethics agreement.

But during his confirmation hearing for the commerce secretary position, Ross confirmed he had no plans to divest his stake in Diamond S Shipping, and maintained that his investment didn’t pose a conflict.

“The research we've done suggests that there has never been a shipping case come before the Department of Commerce,” he said according to a hearing transcript, adding, “I intend to be quite scrupulous about recusal and any topic where's there the slightest scintilla of doubt.”

A Center for Public Integrity examination of Diamond S Shipping’s operations, however, found the company’s operations raised complex conflict-of-interest concerns.

Diamond S Shipping’s vessels call at ports all over the world. One of its main customers, commodities giant Glencore PLC, last year acquired a stake in Russian national oil company Rosneft, a deal that drew scrutiny from American and European regulators.

The Glencore-Rosneft deal marked the biggest foreign investment in Russia since the United States and the European Union imposed sanctions in 2014 because of the country’s military occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

Rosneft is under U.S. sanctions. Glencore said the deal complied with the sanctions. Asked if the deal violated the spirit of the sanctions, Amos Hochstein, then U.S. special envoy for international energy affairs, said, "Clearly this is not what we were hoping for when we implemented sanctions."

Diamond S Shipping said it has — and may continue to — “call on ports located in countries subject to sanctions and embargoes imposed by the U.S. government and countries identified … as state sponsors of terrorism, such as Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria,” according to its 2014 filing with the SEC.

Diamond S Shipping is based in Greenwich, Connecticut, but is incorporated offshore in the Marshall Islands.

Ross’s use of offshore holding companies and his stake in another shipping company, Navigator Holdings, also drew attention  this week.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the New York Timesreported as part of the Paradise Papers investigation that Navigator’s biggest customer was a Russian company with ties to both a Russian oligarch under U.S. sanctions and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Ross said he would probably sell his Navigator stake.

“I’ve been actually selling it anyway, but that isn’t because of this,” he said.

Meanwhile, Ross has also this week faced questions from Forbes about the true value of his assets, and whether he properly reported them in federal financial disclosures.

This article was co-published by TIME and Public Radio International.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt doesn’t hide his contempt for how the agency has been run, but does profess to care about one of its key programs: Superfund, which oversees the cleanup of the nation’s worst toxic-waste sites. In April, he toured a site in East Chicago, Indiana, contaminated with lead and arsenic, and told residents, “We are going to get this right.”

The following month, Pruitt — Oklahoma’s attorney general before he joined the EPA — tapped one of his former donors, banker Albert “Kell” Kelly, to find ways to accelerate and improve Superfund cleanups. Kelly started by consulting career staff members — often-knowledgeable officials who work at the agency regardless of who holds the White House. But then Kelly closed off the process, conferring with Pruitt to produce a final plan that altered or excluded many of the staffers’ suggestions. Gone, for example, was the idea that EPA officials be identified early on to lead discussions with communities on how contaminated land should be used after cleanup.

“We’re missing a huge opportunity to do something new and different with Superfund,” said one of two EPA employees who described the process to the Center for Public Integrity on the condition of anonymity.

What happened with Superfund is hardly an anomaly. Today’s EPA is wracked with internal conflict and industry influence, and is struggling to fulfill its mission, according to more than two dozen current and former agency employees. A few dozen political appointees brought in under the Trump administration are driving policy. At least 16 of the 45 appointees worked for industries such as oil, coal and chemicals. Four of these people — and another 21 — worked for, or donated to, politicians who have questioned established climate science, such as Pruitt and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla.

Career staff members — lawyers, scientists, analysts — are largely being frozen out of decision-making, current and former agency employees say. These staffers rarely get face time with Pruitt and frequently receive top-down orders from political appointees with little room for debate. They must sometimes force their way into conversations about subjects in which they have expertise.

And that is a big mistake, said one of Pruitt’s predecessors.

Career employees are “very dedicated to protecting human health and the environment, and they will change their ways of how they do that if they’re convinced you really want to accomplish that aim,” said Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator under President George W. Bush.

One such employee agreed. “I think it’s the fact that we’re not following regular procedures, we’re not sure of what the legal justification is for some of the things they’re asking us to do. We’re just kind of being told ‘Do the opposite thing you did 18 months ago.’ That’s hard to swallow.”

The EPA staffers who spoke to the Center say the isolation of Pruitt’s top staff from the rest of the agency limits the perspectives the administrator is exposed to before making decisions. Two appointment calendars, covering a six-month period beginning in March, show that Pruitt hears overwhelmingly from industry. He was scheduled to meet 154 times during the period with officials from companies such as ExxonMobil and trade associations such as the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest lobby group. API was among at least 17 donors to Pruitt when he ran for state or federal office or led the Republican Attorneys General Association that have met with him as EPA administrator. Those same calendars indicate he saw only three groups representing environmental or public-health interests, though an EPA press release says he met with two others.

EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman disputed claims that the roughly 15,000-person agency is riven with discord. Career employees are “vital” to the EPA’s work and meet regularly with political appointees and the administrator, she said, citing ongoing deliberations on a water-pollution rule as an example. (Two career employees who spoke to the Center at Bowman’s request confirmed that they routinely work with political appointees and did so on the water rule.)

“We talk to people throughout the regions, the states, the career staff and a variety of different perspectives prior to making decisions,” Bowman said, adding in an email that “we follow the Administrative Procedure Act in our regulatory process, meaning taking into consideration comments submitted by ALL commenters, including environmental NGOs, the public, and other commenters.”

For the public, much is at stake. Under Pruitt, who sued the EPA 14 times as Oklahoma’s attorney general, the agency already has declined to ban a pesticide linked to neurological damage in children; frozen requirements to reduce water pollution from coal-fired power plants and opened the door to loosening limits on toxic coal waste. The EPA most recently proposed eliminating the Clean Power Plan, an Obama administration rule aimed at reducing carbon emissions in the power sector.

“These rules [being rolled back] aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination. There are ways to improve things,” said Gordon Binder, who served as chief of staff for then-EPA Administrator William Reilly under President George H.W. Bush. "But Pruitt’s come in with a flyswatter and is slapping them down instead of laying out the problems with a rule and saying, ‘How can we fix it?’”

Who’s running the EPA?

There’s a striking absence of high-level leadership at the EPA. Only one of 13 positions requiring Senate confirmation — Pruitt’s — is filled. These positions — higher-ranking than those held by the 45 political appointees — include leaders of key agency offices that oversee air, water and other programs. Six people have been nominated for the 12 open slots and are awaiting confirmation (although two of them have joined the EPA in the meantime as senior advisers).

Most major decisions are made on the third floor of the William Jefferson Clinton South Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, where Pruitt and his handful of confidants have their offices. Among those who most prominently have Pruitt’s ear: EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, who previously held the same position with Inhofe, and Samantha Dravis, who worked with Pruitt at the Republican Attorneys General Association and now leads the EPA’s Office of Policy.

Dravis, widely seen as Pruitt’s closest adviser, came to the agency with a background in law and politics but little environmental experience. That’s a departure from her two immediate predecessors, who were already at the EPA when they were tapped to lead the policy office.

Jackson helped Inhofe negotiate major bipartisan deals in the Senate, such as the passage of federal chemical-policy reform. Still, emails released under the Freedom of Information Act to TheNew York Times show that Jackson directed career staff to deny a petition seeking to ban chlorpyrifos, a pesticide suspected of harming children’s brains, directly contradicting the recommendations of EPA scientists.

Bowman said in an email that career staff were “instrumental” in drafting the denial.  The former acting head of the EPA’s chemicals office, a career employee who left the agency last month, told the Times she opposed the decision, even as she followed Jackson’s instructions.

Other influential political appointees include Sarah Greenwalt, senior adviser to the Office of the Administrator, who worked for Pruitt when he was Oklahoma’s attorney general; Bowman, head of public affairs, who came from the American Chemistry Council, a chemical-industry trade group; and Mandy Gunasekara, a senior policy adviser who worked on the Republican staff of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Nine career staff members told the Center their opinions seem to hold little weight. They are excluded from meetings, they say, and their advice on agency operations is often disregarded. Some believe this is because of the flurry of leaks that have come from inside the agency since Pruitt took office. Political appointees have lashed out at suspected leakers and relieved them of work assignments, even in the absence of proof, career employees said.

“They are terrified of career staff leaking,” one said. “And once they get an idea in their head [about] someone, they won’t change it.”

Bowman said, “Those concerns have not been brought to our attention. And if they are we will do everything we can to address them.”

Pruitt has broken with tradition by foregoing many introductory briefings with career staff designed to help new administrators set priorities, several current and former employees said. Instead, he’s worked to roll back EPA rules, an effort that also diverges from common practice.

Political appointees are taking more of a hands-on role in tasks career employees previously would have handled. Take, for example, a recent notice announcing EPA plans to reconsider whether certain vehicle-emission standards for greenhouse gases were too strict. Career staff had drafted a concise version of the notice, but appointees expanded the number of vehicles affected by the review and made the Department of Transportation the lead agency on the decision, despite the EPA’s legal obligations to control planet-warming emissions under the Clean Air Act.

“This was a much more major re-write” than would have happened under previous administrations, said an EPA employee familiar with the matter. “At least one plausible outcome of this process,” the employee said, “is that the EPA would unilaterally abdicate its [legal] responsibility.”

‘Checking the box’

On the rare occasions when career employees are asked to brief Pruitt, he seems unwilling to change his anti-regulatory posture on major industry priorities, according to some career employees. Betsy Southerland, who headed an office within the EPA’s water program until August, said her team met with Pruitt twice about a rule designed to limit wastewater discharges from power plants as he considered weakening parts of it.

The team told Pruitt that industry arguments against the rule already had been considered and found to be inaccurate. They offered more nuanced actions the administrator could take to address concerns expressed by the Small Business Administration, a separate federal agency; and the Utility Water Act Group, a lobbying organization. Pruitt was unmoved, she said. In August, the EPA announced it would reconsider key parts of the rule.

“You get the feeling that his mind was made up before we started the briefing process,” Southerland said. “It looked like he was kind of checking the box to meet with us.” The Times found similar behavior by Pruitt when the EPA declined to ban chlorpyrifos. Pruitt didn’t follow agency scientists’ advice, having “promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide that it is ‘a new day and a new future,’” the Timesreported.

These episodes could simply reflect inexperience — appointees struggling to figure out the agency they lead. They also could reflect pressure placed on the EPA by executive orders and presidential memoranda to act quickly on big-ticket issues like the Clean Power Plan.

But Pruitt’s pro-industry bent has convinced some current and former employees that he and his like-minded advisers are aiming to destroy the EPA from the inside.

“Look, I think he does not support what the agency has been trying to do for 40 years,” said William Ruckelshaus, EPA administrator under Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. “He wants to dismantle — not improve or reform — the regulatory system for protecting public health and the environment.”

The head of the federal agency that produces U.S. nuclear weapons has privately proposed to end public access to key safety reports from a federal watchdog group that monitors ten sites involved in weapons production.

Frank Klotz, administrator of the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, made the proposal to members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board in an October 13 meeting in his office overlooking the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, multiple U.S. officials said.

Klotz contended that recent media stories about safety lapses that relied partially on the board’s weekly disclosures were potentially counterproductive to the NNSA’s mission, the officials said. His solution was presented as the Trump administration considers an acceleration and expansion of nuclear warhead production at the federally-owned sites inspected by the board in eight states, including California, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Tennessee

Four of the safety board’s five members heard Klotz’s appeal, and one of them — Bruce Hamilton, a Republican — responded by drafting and briefly circulating a proposal among the members to stop releasing the board’s weekly and monthly accounts of safety concerns at nuclear weapons factories and laboratories.

Under Hamilton’s proposal, these accounts of accidents and problematic incidents — prepared by board staff that routinely visit or are stationed at these federally-owned sites — would be replaced by oral reports by those staff members to their superiors in Washington, which would not be divulged to the public, according to multiple federal officials, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the topic under discussion.

The proposal represented the second effort by federal officials in recent months to curtail public access to information about persistent safety problems in the nuclear production complex, which the Center for Public Integrity documented in articles published between June and August.

In June, the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board’s chairman, Sean Sullivan — Hamilton’s fellow Republican on the board — secretly urged the Trump administration to eliminate the safety board altogether. The White House has said it will address the idea early next year, but some lawmakers have already expressed opposition.

The Center’s articles detailed a series of alarming safety problems, including the mishandling of plutonium, a radioactive explosive, at Los Alamos and a federal laboratory in Idaho; the mis-shipment of hazardous materials, including nuclear explosive materials; and the repeated contamination of work areas and scientists by radioactive particles. The articles were based in part on the board’s reports.

The federal facilities where nuclear weapons are produced are run by corporations that have collectively earned more than $2 billion in profit from the work over the past decade. Many of the firms' officials have expressed chagrin at occasional publicity about their mishaps and accidents.

Hamilton withdrew his proposal on Oct. 19 — the same date that CPI disclosed in an article co-published with USA Today Sullivan’s plan to eliminate the safety board. Reached by telephone, Hamilton declined comment on the proposal or its withdrawal.

Klotz’s proposal drew criticism from several independent observers of the board’s work. Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, a nonprofit organization that closely monitors the government’s activities at nuclear sites in New Mexico, said the reports at issue “provide almost the only window into the safety status of defense nuclear facilities.” Without them, he said, the public might never know if an accident occurs.

“It’s not [Klotz’s] job to tell the safety board how to do their work,” Mello said. “Shame on him.”

Bob Alvarez, a former senior policy adviser and deputy assistant secretary at the Energy Department, said “this is regressive behavior, rolling back to the old days of the Cold War. The logic behind this is that what the public doesn’t know can’t hurt us, and there’s nothing to be gained by the public knowing what we’re doing. The site reports make sure that the DOE [Department of Energy, which includes the NNSA] does not…[rely only on] blind, undocumented faith in its contractors.”

Klotz, 67, is a retired Air Force lieutenant general and former commander of the Air Force’s Global Strike Command — which is responsible for nuclear bombers and missiles — who was appointed as NNSA administrator and Energy undersecretary for nuclear security by President Obama in April 2014. He was retained in the role by President Trump. The NNSA finances and manages the production and maintenance of all U.S. nuclear warheads, a $10.8 billion-a-year effort that Trump has said he wants to fund more richly.  

Asked about Klotz’s proposal, his spokesman Gregory Wolf declined any direct comment but wrote in an email that, “to ensure an open line of communication, NNSA and DNFSB leadership meet periodically…The conversations traditionally have been casual and informal in nature and are not intended nor designed to arrive at any conclusions or decisions.”

During his meeting with safety board members, according to the officials, Klotz pointed in particular to a Sept. 22 article published in The Santa Fe New Mexican that described persistent safety shortcomings at the government’s laboratory in Los Alamos, the birthplace of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The article was based on a Sept. 1 public report by the safety board that faulted workers for positioning plutonium so closely that it risked an uncontrolled nuclear reaction, which could be deadly to anyone nearby — a persistent lapse the lab has struggled to overcome. The report also disclosed that several workers at the lab’s Plutonium Facility had been accidentally contaminated by radiation.

The officials said Klotz told the safety board members that if safety lapses like those depicted in the article continued to attract public attention, nuclear workers will grow reluctant to expose their corporate employers to public embarrassment by telling the board about unsafe conditions.

His argument, in short, was that only secrecy could encourage accountability for the corporate managers of the nuclear weapons complex.

The Santa Fe newspaper report that irritated Klotz built on CPI's recent reporting about unsafe handling of plutonium that has plagued Los Alamos for more than a decade, placing workers in danger and causing setbacks to the lab’s national security mission. Soon after those accounts were published, Los Alamos National Laboratory Director Charles McMillan and Kim Davis Lebak, the top NNSA official assigned to oversee work at Los Alamos, announced plans to retire.

The safety board was created by Congress in 1988 to foster public trust in nuclear weapons work by providing independent oversight into its workplace practices. It is authorized to recommend safety improvements to the Energy secretary, based on its inspections; the secretary, in turn, is not obligated to accept the ideas, but must respond publicly. The public reports that form the basis of these recommendations do not divulge the names of workers that bring safety lapses to the board's attention. 

Government officials familiar with the on-site inspectors’ weekly reports say they are one of the most effective ways of inspiring better behavior at the weapons facilities, because the contractors intensely dislike public criticism. But the contractors have complained bitterly that the public nature of the discussion goads the NNSA into imposing more costly safety precautions than their managers feel are warranted.

Could the United States launch a nuclear attack on North Korea, even before it is attacked? And could President Donald Trump order such an attack on his own?

These once improbable questions have been vigorously discussed in the capital since Trump this summer raised the prospect of raining “fire and fury” on North Korea in response to the isolated country’s military threats, and then weeks later claimed that North Korea faced “total destruction” if the United States felt it had to defend itself against an attack.

His defense secretary, James Mattis, affirmed in testimony before the Sen. Foreign Relations Committee on Oct. 30 that a first strike on North Korea using U.S. nuclear arms is possible “if we saw they were preparing” an imminent, direct attack on the United States. Mattis quickly added, however, that nonnuclear weapons were available for use if needed, and said a nuclear strike was not being discussed by senior officials “in any kind of actionable way.”

But the prospect of nuclear combat on the orders of a president whom the committee’s chairman, Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., has dismissed as an “adult day care” resident, has stirred controversy and helped galvanize proposals by a few lawmakers to lengthen the “chain of command” that would lead to a nuclear weapons launch — either against North Korea or another nation.

Under a bill introduced by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., Congress would be inserted explicitly into that chain, given a chance to say yea or nay to any first use of nuclear weapons.

The measure’s political prospects are dim. Congress as a whole has long tread lightly in this area, and a Nov. 3 report by the Congressional Research Service concluded “there is no clear answer on whether legislation limiting the President’s power to employ those nuclear weapons that are already in the military arsenal would violate separation of powers principles.”

The issue of “who gets to decide” nonetheless took center stage at a Tuesday hearing called by Corker to explore “the realities of this system” by which the president can singly order a nuclear detonation – a chain of command last examined by that committee 41 years ago. At the hearing Tuesday, three experts — none of whom is currently in the government — testified that Trump’s ability to decide the issue on his own is limited but also said that additional limits may not be sensible.

A president, they said, does not have authority to launch nuclear weapons without congressional approval unless the United States is already under attack or quite certainly about to be. “To be sure, the President possesses the constitutional authority to defend the country against sudden attack, or to pre-empt an imminent attack,” said Brian McKeon, an acting undersecretary of defense for policy during the Obama administration. “But Article II does not give him carte blanche to take the country to war.”

If the United States is not under attack, the Constitution gives Congress a role as the branch of government with authority to declare war, McKeon said. The hearing’s other witnesses, retired Air Force Gen. Robert Kehler, who commanded the U.S. Strategic Command from 2011 to 2013, and Peter Feaver, who served on the National Security Council staff under President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 1994, said they shared McKeon’s view that absent a foreign act of aggression, unleashing a nuclear attack would require congressional approval.

This is clearly the case, McKeon said, when the armed conflict at issue would be of considerable scope or duration. Because the Vice Director of the Joint Staff, Rear Admiral Michael J. Dumont, told a California lawmaker last month that the only way to locate and destroy “with complete certainty” all components of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs would be to undertake a ground invasion, such a conflict would certainly appear to require congressional authorization.

Trump cannot, as a result, legally just haul off and smack North Korea with nuclear weapons on his own impulse, even if his administration’s motive is to prevent that country from acquiring the capability to threaten America with a nuclear strike at some point in the future. Kehler even noted in his prepared statement that under the military code of justice, soldiers and officers alike are “bound to question (and ultimately refuse) illegal orders or those that do not come from appropriate authority” — although how this might play out under time pressure and with a real presidential launch order remains uncertain.

Still, the trio of witnesses cautioned against legislative action that would handcuff the president’s ability to respond quickly and with nuclear might to a future attack on the United States. “The authority to use nuclear weapons … remains with the President,” McKeon wrote in his statement. “That is as it should be in a republic, given the gravity of the decision and the consequences of any nuclear use.”

A legal war has been waged since the campaign finance reforms that followed the Watergate scandals, when Congress passed the bedrock for our modern money-in-politics regulatory regime. And while reformers have notched significant victories, deep-pocketed deregulators have slowly chipped away at major provisions by challenging them all the way to the Supreme Court. Here’s a look at how we got here, to a system where unlimited and often undisclosed cash is used to directly influence modern elections.

Laws have shaped how money affects politics in the modern era, but it is the courts that have really had the final say. Compiled below are some of the most important organizations and people who have sued to weaken campaign finance laws, or intervened in the courts to keep them from being undermined. Certain groups pop up in one form or another in multiple cases. Read on to see exactly where these figures’ and organizations’ fingerprints have been, what they’re trying to accomplish and who’s funding their efforts.

In May, on the eve of Greg Gianforte’s special congressional election, the Montana politician “body-slammed” inquiring news reporter Ben Jacobs and began “punching” him, according to Jacobs and other witnesses.

Medics treated the battered journalist, and the county sheriff cited Gianforte for misdemeanor assault. Gianforte’s unprovoked flash of World Wrestling Entertainment-style violence — which also prompted keynewspapers to rescind their endorsements — appeared to torpedo the GOP’s bid to retain a Republican-red seat during a contentious special election.

Except it didn’t.

Gianforte won— and took his seat in Congress the week after he pleaded guilty to his crime, bolstered by about $2.4 million in all-but-unrestricted “super PAC” cash that overwhelmed his erstwhile opponent, Democrat Rob Quist.

Gianforte himself had helped seed the laissez-faire political money system that made his victory possible earlier in the decade, having contributed significant funds through his nonprofit Gianforte Family Charitable Trust to several conservative organizations leading legal efforts to dismantle federal campaign finance regulations, a Center for Public Integrity investigation reveals.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which over the years has fought campaign finance limits in cases such as Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, is a prime example. Gianforte’s nonprofit has given the group, which does not publicly disclose its donors, $133,500 from 2008 through 2015, a Center for Public Integrity analysis of federal tax filings indicates.

The Citizens United decision gave rise to super PACs — political committees that may raise unlimited amounts of corporate cash and spend it on elections like his.

Gianforte, a tech entrepreneur and one of Montana’s wealthiest residents, is among a small but wealthy group of political kingmakers, including Charles and David Koch and Richard Uihlein, who’ve quietly bankrolled a long legal assault on the nation's campaign finance laws.

Related article: "Kochs key among small group quietly funding legal assault on campaign finance regulation"

Gianforte, whose office declined multiple requests from the Center for Public Integrity for comment, is among Republican members of Congress actively campaigning for another term in November 2018. His re-election campaign in fact began in June, even before he took his seat in Congress to replace Ryan Zinke, whom President Donald Trump tapped as secretary of the interior.

During Montana’s special congressional election, Gianforte’s campaign raised about $3.5 million, not counting $1.5 million Gianforte loaned his own campaign. Quist’s campaign raised even more.

But on a parallel track, the House Speaker Paul Ryan-backed Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC single-handedly invested another $2.4 million into Gianforte’s special election campaign, with the vast majority of that money going toward advertisements attacking Quist, who had but a fraction of such super PAC aid.

Expect the Congressional Leadership Fund, which did not return requests for comment, to be back in 2018, if it sees fit. Other super PACs could certainly rush to Gianforte’s aid, too.

Bopp picked as counsel

In an appropriate twist, Gianforte's campaign has enlisted the services of the Bopp Law Firm, paying nearly $5,000 for legal services this year. Jim Bopp, the firm’s namesake, was a driving legal force behind several key campaign finance rulings this century, including Citizens United.

In an interview, Bopp said one of his associates who lives in Bozeman, Montana, is aiding Gianforte’s campaign. In addition, Gianforte’s campaign has so far also spent almost $47,000 for legal services from Foley & Lardner, the law firm where campaign finance deregulation champion Cleta Mitchell practices.

Gianforte’s potential congressional opponents are hardly thrilled by these developments.

John Heenan, a lawyer from Billings, Montana, who’s seeking the Democratic nomination to face Gianforte, says the congressman’s approach to campaign money runs counter to his constituents’ wishes.

In 2011, Montana’s Supreme Court upheld the state’s 99-year-old Corrupt Practices Act, which banned corporations from using money to influence state elections — a decision that stems from wealthy “copper kings” buying their way into state office during the 1910s.

But in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Montana court’s ruling, much to the chagrin of many Montanans. In response, about three-fourths of Montana voters, as part of a nonbinding, statewide referendum, voiced their disapproval of the Citizens United decision.

Gianforte “has taken zero action to fulfill the direction of Montana voters to overturn Citizens United and get ‘dark money’ out of politics. … People are sick and tired of all this ‘dark money,’” Heenan said.

“Dark money” is shorthand for money used for political purposes that can’t be traced to a root source. Some politically active 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits routinely trade in it, but super PACs may use it, too, when accepting contributions from entities that don’t disclose their donors.

The pro-Gianforte Congressional Leadership Fund super PAC, for example, has this year raised more than $6 million from the American Action Network, a conservative nonprofit that doesn’t volunteer information about its own funders.

The Congressional Leadership Fund has this year also accepted six-figure corporate contributions from Hillwood Development Company, private prison firm GEO Corrections Holdings, tobacco company Reynolds American and oil giants Chevron, Valero and Occidental Petroleum, according to FEC data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Montana state Rep. Tom Woods of Bozeman, who’s also seeking the Democratic nod, argues Gianforte’s money-in-politics philosophy is wholly self-serving.

“Gianforte and Trump want to maintain this system because it benefits them. It's a government that’s not for regular people,” Woods said.

Johnson Amendment

Election aside, the Gianforte Family Charitable Trust has consistently given money to a pair of religious organizations that want the government to loosen restrictions on tax-exempt churches’ ability to wade into electoral politics.

This debate is now squarely in Congress’ domain: Some Republican lawmakers are angling to kill the Johnson Amendment— the part of the federal tax code that prevents houses of worship from supporting or opposing political candidates — as part of the GOP’s current tax reform efforts.

Supporters of the Johnson Amendment fear its demise would prompt some churches to function like super PACs.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., has been fighting against an appropriations rider that would make it harder for the IRS to investigate organizations accused of breaking the rules of the amendment.

“It’s a real concern that these nefarious dark money groups, super PACs and the like could essentially launder money through houses of worship and religious organizations,” she told the Center for Public Integrity.

But that’s not how Alliance Defending Freedom sees the matter.

Erik Stanley, the group’s senior counsel, said the Johnson Amendment was unconstitutional from the time it was passed and still is. The issue of “dark money” in churches wouldn’t apply under the Free Speech Fairness Act, which has been introduced in the House and Senate.

“That bill allows for non-profits to speak freely if the speech is at no added cost to the organization and is in the ordinary and normal course of the organization’s activities,” he said.

Alliance Defending Freedom’s “Pulpit Freedom Sundays” initiative has for years encouraged religious leaders “to exercise their constitutionally protected freedom to speak truth into every area of life from the pulpit.”

Gianforte’s family trust gave $50,000 to the Alliance Defending Freedom, and $20,000 to Family Research Council, in 2015, according to tax reports. The Family Research Council argues that the Johnson Amendment’s effect is “to suppress pulpit speech” and that it “is almost certainly an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.”

Versions of this story were co-published by Public Radio International, Salon, the Billings Gazette, the Montana Standard, the Missoulian, the (Helena) Independent Record and the Ravalli Republic.

Billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are well-known for pumping tens of millions of dollars into so-called “dark money” nonprofits — groups that actively promote or criticize candidates for office but are not required to reveal their donors.

Not so well known is the duo’s role in underwriting and sculpting the legal landscape that led to the court decisions that made possible these and other groups such as super PACs.

The Center for Public Integrity investigated an array of organizations that have participated in legal challenges dating back 40 years that have resulted in a system allowing unlimited sums to be pumped into modern elections. It’s a system that both Republicans and Democrats now fully rely upon ahead of 2018 midterm elections that could reaffirm — or torpedo — President Donald Trump’s congressional majority.

Throughout that history, Koch-backed groups have stood out as reliable, stalwart opponents of regulation of money in politics. While far from the only players in the legal battle, the Kochs are certainly among the most recognizable — and significant.

“They’re not the only group in the game,” Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said of the Kochs. “But I think what you’ll see, it’s a deep well with a long-term commitment.”

The Center for Public Integrity identified the sources of $293 million received by groups that lodged formal arguments in key campaign finance deregulation cases. It also identified $64 million in funding for groups that defended campaign finance regulations, including significant cash from liberal billionaire and Koch foil George Soros.

Related article: “How slamming campaign finance laws helped Greg Gianforte get elected”

Funds underwriting the legal campaigns to shape how money influences politics come from individuals, corporations, unions, foundations and family trusts of all sizes. Some have come from surprising sources, according to tax records, internal documents and other records reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity.

Not all the money identified went toward campaign finance fights, and much of the funding is simply untraceable, since most of these groups keep their donors secret.

But the funding that is known offers key clues about the players behind the greatest unraveling of campaign finance regulation in U.S. history.

‘Buckley’ and Cato

One must travel back in time more than 40 years to understand how today’s motley collection of campaign money laws came to be — and how limits on political fundraising and spending have unraveled along the way.

It began with the Supreme Court’s Buckley v. Valeodecision of 1976, a reaction to Watergate reforms passed by Congress. The court upheld limits on contributions to political campaigns, but in a critical part of the ruling which would play a major role years later, allowed for unlimited spending on campaigns.

The Buckley v. Valeo fight also helped inspire Ed Crane, former national chairman of the Libertarian Party, which was one of the case’s plaintiffs, to create a libertarian equivalent to the predominant think tanks of the day — the liberal Brookings Institution and the conservative American Enterprise Institute.

With $500,000 from Charles Koch, Crane became the leader in 1977 of the Cato Institute, previously named the Charles Koch Foundation. In 1981, it moved from San Francisco to the heart of American political power — Washington, D.C.

Ever since, the Cato Institute has tirelessly fought against campaign finance laws it considered antithetical to its philosophy of small government and largely unencumbered speech.

“We stand against campaign finance laws in general,” Cato Institute research fellow Trevor Burrus said. “We believe that most campaign finance laws are unconstitutional. They are clear impediments of political speech.”

For the Kochs, was Cato an ideological enterprise or vehicle for self-interest? Both, to some degree. Avowed libertarians, the Kochs control a vast empire of heavily regulated companies that would undoubtedly benefit from less government intrusion. Coloring the political system red instead of blue has practical, financial implications for the Kochs, who overwhelmingly support Republican candidates and causes.

The nation’s campaign money system largely stood unchanged until 2002, when Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act — commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act, named for its two Senate sponsors. The law curtailed a variety of political activities and included a ban on unlimited “soft money” contributions — corporate and union cash — given to political parties.

It also attracted an immediate backlash by foes of campaign finance legislation. Twelve suits brought by more than 80 plaintiffs— were consolidated as McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, named for Mitch McConnell, a U.S. senator from Kentucky and current majority leader, who has long been in favor of liberalizing restrictions on campaign contributions.

‘McConnell’ et. al.

Those joined together under McConnell included the National Rifle Association, the Republican National Committee, the National Right to Life Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union, the AFL-CIO, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others.

Generally, the backers of these campaign finance case litigants are well-known, but not always.

And some are surprising.

Take the ACLU. Despite its reputation as an unabashedly liberal organization, the ACLU has routinely aligned itself with libertarians and conservatives in recent legal fights against campaign finance regulations. Who are the top donors to the ACLU?

Tops is the left-leaning Sandler Foundation, having given more than $24 million to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation since 2001, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax records.

Other known funders of the ACLU’s 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofit arms include the ACLU Foundation; Equal Justice Works; Proteus Action League; GLBTQ Legal Advocates; and the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, The Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Together, they’ve given more than $856,000 since 2010, tax filings show.

Proteus Action League is an affiliate of Proteus Fund, a left-leaning philanthropic organization. It also creates and oversees grants aimed at limiting money and politics, according to its website. Between 2013 and 2015, the Proteus Fund and the Proteus Action League have together given $306,000 to the ACLU and the ACLU Foundation.

Publishers Clearing House money has infused the LuEsther T. Mertz Charitable Trust, which in turn has contributed more than $6.6 million to the ACLU Foundation for various initiatives, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of available tax documents from 2005 to 2015.

The National Rifle Association is prominent for its passionate support of firearms rights, and more recently, the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. But it, too, began supporting campaign finance deregulation in earnest at the time of the McConnell case.

One of the NRA nonprofit’s more notable funders is the Cabela’s Outdoor Fund, a social welfare organization connected to the famous outdoor outfitter Cabela’s, which is also a major firearms retailer.

From 2012 to 2015, the fund gave the NRA $1.3 million. Richard Cabela, the now deceased founder of Cabela’s, was a passionate supporter of the NRA. The company, which Bass Pro Shops acquired earlier this year, had about $4.1 billion in revenue last year, according to its annual report.

Koch-connected organizations have also been quite active.

Cato intervened by filing an “amicus brief” in McConnell, as did the Institute for Justice, a group that got its start thanks to the Kochs.

The Supreme Court, for the most part, upheld the “soft money” and political advertising restrictions of the McCain-Feingold law but struck down the age restrictions on minors’ ability to contribute money to politicians as a violation of free speech rights.

The mixed ruling gave pro-political speech advocates fuel to continue challenging campaign laws, and the chipping away of the reforms began in earnest.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC in 2007 further eroded the McCain-Feingold law by allowing certain nonprofit groups to air political issue ads within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election. Wisconsin Right to Life Inc., a nonprofit advocacy group, wanted to run ads that would ask voters to call their senators urging them to oppose filibusters of judicial nominees.

Emerging as a national figure in this case after working for years in lower courts was James Bopp, who was counsel for Wisconsin Right to Life. A bevy of organizations intervened in the case, many arguing for religious freedom of speech. The American Civil Liberties Union, a regular stalwart opponent of limits on free speech, had its say, as did a number of Koch-connected organizations.

Among them, the Center for Competitive Politics (now the Institute for Free Speech), the Cato Institute, the Goldwater Institute and the Institute for Justice.

The Goldwater Institute is a public interest legal organization based in Phoenix, Arizona, named after former U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz. Timothy Sandefur, vice president for litigation for Goldwater, said its primary mission is “to defend constitutional principles, through direct litigation and amicus participation.” Donors Capital Fund, the Mercer Family Foundation and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation are among its most generous funders with a combined total of $4.2 million.

‘Citizens United’

In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations, unions and certain nonprofits could raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for or against politicians. The enormity of the impact of the decision would not be realized for months, even years.

But those who argued the case and participated in it were well aware of its importance. The usual liberal reform groups chimed in, as well as a cadre of Koch-backed crew members, including: the Cato Institute, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice.

A few months later, a federal court ruling in SpeechNow.org v. FEC allowed for the creation of “independent expenditure-only committees” — political groups soon nicknamed “super PACs.” These super PACs could themselves accept unlimited money from corporations, labor unions and even 501(c)(4) “social welfare” nonprofits and business trade associations that themselves could keep their donors secret.  

Four years later in McCutcheon v. FEC, the Supreme Court axed limits on how much money a person could give, in aggregate, to political parties, candidate committees and PACs. The practical effect: people are now allowed to directly pump hundreds of thousands of dollars more into party and candidate coffers.

Among the organizations involving themselves in the case? The Cato Institute, the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice.

Institute for Justice

The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit, libertarian public interest law firm headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, with satellite offices in states including Florida, Minnesota and Arizona.

It was co-founded in 1991 by former Department of Energy Deputy General Counsel Chip Mellor and Clint Bolick, a former assistant at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Billionaire industrialist Charles Koch provided $350,000 in seed money for the organization.

The Center for Public Integrity combed through tax information for the Institute for Justice and found some of its top donors include the Claws Foundation, Dunn’s Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking, Searle Freedom Trust and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, totaling about $19.8 million since 1998. But the largest donor identified for the Institute for Justice was the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, giving more than $15.5 million since 2003, according to tax records.

Wilson was a notable hedge funder and philanthropist who jumped to his death from his New York apartment in 2013.

Donors Trust, a Virginia-based free-market charity and “donor advised” fund that distributes money to charities across states has been the Institute for Justice’s most consistent supporter.

Tax records show that Donors Trust has contributed to the Institute for Justice every year since 2004, giving it more than $1.6 million. Charles Koch’s foundation is one of the heavyweights that holds an account with Donors Trust. Koch’s organization also directly gave the Institute for Justice $9,600, according to 2014 and 2015 tax records. The David H. Koch Foundation gave $250,000 in 2001, according to records.

The Jewish Communal Fund, another donor advised fund, has given $317,050 to the Institute for Justice since 2010, according to tax records. The John Templeton Foundation, an avid promoter of free market ideas, gave $900,000 between 2013 and 2014, according to a review of tax records.

One of its other generous donors, however, is the National Christian Charitable Foundation, which gave almost $2.8 million since 2007.

This donor advised fund typically gives to Christian churches and ministries with a mission of “mobilizing resources by inspiring biblical generosity.”

The political leanings of organizations such as the Institute for Justice are not a basis of scrutiny for the National Christian Charitable Foundation, and they’re mostly unknown to the foundation, Chief Creative Officer Steve Chapman said.

“NCF doesn't have any stance on campaign finance issues,” he said in a statement. “We don't hold positions on such political topics, and we don't hold stances on whether charities to which we make grants should or should not be active on that issue.”

Richard Uihlein, a wealthy conservative donor who increased his political giving after the Citizens United decision, gave the Institute for Justice $17,500 between 2014 and 2015. But, he wasn’t the only well-known donor to contribute. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which usually contributes to global health and economic development causes, donated $600.

The Institute for Justice has more than 8,000 donors, said Paul Sherman, a senior attorney for the Institute for Justice who specializes in First Amendment litigation. No one donor provides more than 8 percent of its budget. In its most recent fiscal year, donations comprised more than 96 percent of its income, while the rest came from court-ordered awards of attorneys’ fees.

But that doesn’t mean those donors shape the Institute for Justice’s work, Sherman said.

“IJ’s donors give to us because they support our mission,” he said, noting that the organization has litigated in the same areas for more than over 25 years. “We have never taken a case or passed on a case because of pressure from a donor.”

Other notable contributions to the Institute for Justice include $90,000 from the Dick and Betsy DeVos Family Foundation, which was started by U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her husband in 1989. The foundation has given yearly since 2004, except for 2012 and 2014.

‘SpeechNow.org’ victory

The Institute for Justice notched a win in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, a critical lower-court case.

In the case, the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics represented David Keating, who now serves as president of the newly renamed Center for Competitive Politics.

Together, the groups questioned whether the federal government had the legal right to make Keating’s SpeechNow.org group register as a political committee — forcing it to adhere to contribution limits for political committees.

The court ruled in SpeechNow.org’s favor, thereby allowing it to raise unlimited amounts of money to independently advocate for or against political candidates. Limits on how much it could receive were found to be in violation of the First Amendment. It was the first time the Citizens United decision was applied in federal courts.

And it gave birth to a kind of political committee that would soon be dubbed a “super PAC.”

Although the Center for Competitive Politics and the Institute for Justice have no formal affiliation, they are “allies in the fight to defend political speech from government regulation,” Sherman said.

Sherman said both organizations have supported each other’s work with amicus briefs, and SpeechNow.org v. FEC was a great match of their strengths.

“CCP’s people had extensive experience with practice before the FEC, and IJ’s people had extensive experience litigating in federal court,” he said. “And we all knew one another. The world of libertarian public-interest lawyers is not huge.”

But the Institute for Justice isn’t always taking up the long, arduous process of going to court. Like other groups that want to provide suggestions and expertise to courts on matters, it has done so through amicus briefs in McConnell, Wisconsin Right to Life, McCutcheon and Citizens United.

The positions that the Institute for Justice has taken on campaign finance issues are made clearer when looking at who funds their endeavors, which include many donor advised funds and conservative-leaning family foundations and charitable groups.

While the Institute for Justice has some history with big money and politics because of its founding relationship with the Kochs, the Center for Competitive Politics can also be counted among the names of Koch beneficiaries.

Center for Competitive Politics

Former FEC Chairman Bradley Smith founded the Center for Competitive Politics in 2005, lamenting the extent of federal regulation on political activity.

The Center for Competitive Politics has waged war against the FEC as litigators, and it has represented others when political free speech is under attack.

David Keating, president of the Center for Competitive Politics, said the organization is simply honoring the guarantees of the First Amendment more so than political ideology or deregulation.

The Center for Competitive Politics prides itself on being part of changing the scope of campaign finance laws since its founding, while noting that there is still more freedom to be sought, especially when it comes to contribution and disclosure rules.

“Our country didn’t have campaign contribution limits until the 1970s,” he said. “I don’t see there’s any evidence that it’s made people we’re electing better than they were before the 1970s.”

Keating said government should make it easier for average citizens to become politically involved and, therefore, it should rethink contribution laws.

While the Center for Competitive Politics has not objected to disclosure by candidates and PACs, it is not in favor of pushing for more disclosure. Doing so, said Keating, would result in more difficult fundraising for groups and misleading disclosure information.

“Disclosure is where a lot of the action is right now,” he said. “That’s going to be in the courts and we may well be the ones representing the plaintiffs.”

Because the Center for Competitive Politics’ mission is the protection of free political speech, its legal argument in Wisconsin Right to Life, McCutcheon and Citizens United cases are just part of that mission.

The terrain of money and politics has the Center for Competitive Politics’ opponents questioning whether its ideals are truly its own — or if it’s just the mouthpiece for its wealthy benefactors.

Although the Center for Competitive Politics does not disclose the identity of its donors, the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax and other financial records indicates the group is funded by a bevy of right-leaning organizations.

Since 2006, the Center for Competitive Politics has received more than $5.3 million from Donors Capital Fund, $1.3 million from the Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust and $511,000 from the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation — itself funded in full by Republican megadonor Richard Uihlein — and $440,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

As far as its Koch alliances? The Charles Koch Institute gave $20,700 from 2014 to 2015, and the Charles Koch Foundation donated over $57,000 from 2012 to 2015, the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax and other records shows.

A Koch spokeswoman declined to answer specific questions about the brothers’ giving. In a statement, spokeswoman Tonya Mullins said the Charles Koch Foundation “gives to non-profit organizations and more than 300 colleges and universities around the country that are exploring diverse ideas to meet the challenges of our day.”

The majority of the Charles Koch Institute money goes toward a fellowship program between the Center for Competitive Politics and the Charles Koch Institute, in which both organizations split the cost to pay for the fellow’s compensation, Keating said. The fellowship seeks to groom future free enterprise workers. The Charles Koch Institute provides support for internships and job placement for free-market professional hopefuls.

Keating said the Center for Competitive Politics’ donors give because they’re genuinely concerned with protecting free speech and they have a right to maintain their privacy.

If the Institute for Justice and the Center for Competitive Politics are just mere soldiers in an overall battle plan to charge against reform, their success makes them among the most decorated and skilled in the field.

War on disclosure?

Polls show most Americans agree that the names of political donors should be public information. But Dave Trabert, president of the right-leaning Kansas Policy Institute, does not agree. He has had his own issues with intimidation because of his stances on school choice and tax policy.

“I’ve had to file two police reports over threats of violence,” he said.

Trabert and Cato’s Burrus, like many with right or libertarian views, believe that mandatory disclosure of politically related contributions or contributions to politically active nonprofits is just another form of intimidation.

To support that belief, Kansas Policy Institute filed a collaborative brief with other State Policy Network-affiliated groups, such as the James Madison Institute, FreedomWorks and others, in SpeechNow.org v. FEC.

The Kansas Policy Institute has benefited from Donors Capital Fund and the Charles Koch Institute, receiving $576,000 from the former and $10,000 from the latter.

The State Policy Network is a web of right-leaning think tanks whose benefactors also include the Charles Koch Foundation, the Charles Koch Institute and the DeVos family. It is also affiliated with the American Legislative Exchange Council, another conservative nonprofit that writes model policies for state lawmakers to use.

Carrie Conko, a spokeswoman for the State Policy Network, said affiliate organizations such as the Kansas Policy Institute make their own decisions when determining which issues to pursue.

People within the State Policy Network web will send out emails inviting others to sign on to various issues, said Don Racheter, president of the Public Interest Institute in Michigan and co-signee of the brief with the Kansas Policy Institute.

Racheter said Public Interest Institute signed on because it was something it could do at low cost and in a short amount of time. The group hasn’t done much work on money and politics since, as its focuses on budget, tax and education matters in Michigan.

But others such as the James Madison Institute, another conservative think tank and Koch Institute partner, saw free, anonymous speech under assault and felt compelled to express its views to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

While it also has moved on from campaign finance laws being at the top of its agenda, it still weighs in on the issue of disclosure as it did in a commentary on the matter last year, where it called donor disclosure laws “reckless” and a threat to free and anonymous speech.

The James Madison Institute has received more than $404,000 from the Koch-affiliated State Policy Network during the past 15 years and more than $188,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation from 2007 to 2014, according to tax documents.

Logan Pike, spokeswoman for the organization, said the James Madison Institute will continue to push against disclosure laws, which it sees as an “assault on the Bill of Rights.”

“JMI is committed to defending the rights of all organizations to operate free of government intrusion,” she said.

But intrusion might be what the public wants. A 2015 Associated Press and National Opinion Research Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 60 percent of Americans say that disclosing donors to all groups would be effective in reducing money’s influence on politics.

That same poll found that 75 percent favor laws requiring organizations that raise and spend unlimited money to publicly disclose their donors.

There are other players who have offered strong campaign finance arguments for the courts to consider — including a few most often associated with liberal causes.

Activists on the left

Left-leaning organizations frequently tout the merits of political disclosure and often fight in court for it.

But they don’t always follow their own advice.

The American Association of Retired Persons fought alongside Common Cause in McConnell v. FEC in support of the McCain-Feingold law. AARP and Common Cause argued that the McCain-Feingold law was a needed tool to combat post-Watergate political scandals and to close various campaign finance loopholes.

Ahead of the McCutcheon case, it teamed up again with Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and a host of others, warning of the significance that joint fundraising committees could have and contending that federal campaign finance limits should be upheld for the sake of staving off corruption or the appearance of corruption.

AARP operates a 501(c)(3) charitable branch and a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” branch, the latter which may engage directly in political campaigns.

Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for reform, does disclose its donors upon request. Like many of its right and left counterparts, Issue One’s donor base largely consists of family foundations with a few donor advised funds intermingled.

William Gray, Issue One’s deputy communications director, said donors aren’t listed on its website because some donors don’t want to be solicited for donations by other organizations. (Gray previously worked as media relations specialist for the Center for Public Integrity.)

Two donor advised funds, Impact Assets and National Christian Foundation, gave Issue One $372,500 and $1,000, respectively. The original sources of these funds are not publicly known. 

Hewlett-Packard co-founder William Hewlett’s William & Flora Hewlett Foundation has given at least $400,000, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. has given $40,000.

Jonathan Soros is the son of Democratic mega-donor George Soros and a prominent Democratic funder in his own right, contributing to dozens of different liberal candidates and political committees, according to FEC records analyzed by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

According to the Center for Public Integrity’s review of tax documents of organizations that filed pro-reform briefs to the courts, the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation has donated $508,000 to other allied groups, such as the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause Education Fund and the Brennan Center for Justice.

But that’s just a fraction of what Jonathan’s father, billionaire tycoon George Soros, has given to some of the same institutions. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, formerly called the Open Society Institute, has shelled out more than $9.4 million to these groups, including the Brennan Center for Justice, Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, Public Citizen, the League of Women Voters and Democracy 21.

George Soros’ foundation has also given to groups that stood on the opposite side of campaign money reform, such as the ACLU Foundation and Alliance for Justice. Open Society Institute has given $19.8 million since 2001 to the ACLU Foundation. It’s given $1.1 million since 2002 for Alliance for Justice.

The money went toward a variety of issues on which the groups work, such as judicial nominations and public education reform. Millions of dollars went toward general support.

These groups vary on what they disclose about their donors.

The Campaign Legal Center lists all its donors— past and present — on its website, but does not provide specific donation amounts. Based on available tax data, the Ford Foundation has given $2 million to the Campaign Legal Center for its pro-reform work. The Stuart Family Foundation has also shelled out almost $1.9 million, beginning in 2004. Other notable donors include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. ($254,700) and Brennan Center for Justice ($140,000). 

Most of the Brennan Center for Justice’s donors can be found in their annual publication, Democracy & Justice: Collected Writings. The 2016 edition of the publication lists the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, The JPB Foundation and Open Society Foundations as donors that have given $1 million or more. Open Society has given nearly $6 million to Brennan since 2002. It can also count the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. and the Jennifer and Jonathan Allan Soros Foundation among its funders, totaling $880,000. The Craigslist Charitable Fund has also given the Brennan Center for Justice $375,900 since 2010.

(The Center for Public Integrity has received funding from the Open Society Foundations as well as the Ford Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc. and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. A complete list of Center for Public Integrity funders can be found on our website.)

Daniel Weiner, senior counsel for the Brennan Center, said he thinks electoral politics and issue advocacy don’t carry the same weight when it comes to election influence.

“I do think a lot of us in the [nonprofit] community need to wrestle with that,” Weiner said. “If you're trying to get people elected, you should disclose.”

Common Cause and the League of Women Voters, both 501(c)(4)s, aren’t required to disclose their donors, but they both have 501(c)(3) branches, Common Cause Education Fund and League of Women Voters Education Fund.

Lloyd Leonard, senior director of advocacy for the League of Women Voters, said the league would be happy to disclose its donors if every other organization like it were required to also. The League currently doesn’t disclose donors to its 501(c)(4).

“You have no way of really verifying what I’m saying to you because of the dark money system,” he added.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and Craigslist Charitable Fund were the largest donors the Center for Public Integrity identified for the League of Women Voters Education Fund.

The Sunlight Foundation is perhaps the most transparent, naming donors and listing amounts given.

Keating of the Center for Competitive Politics scoffs at pro-campaign disclosure reform organizations that don’t disclose their own donors.

“If it’s such a good idea, why aren’t they doing that already?” he said.

Has the campaign finance battle already been won?

So how much sand is left in the campaign finance sandlot since the Citizens United, SpeechNow.org and McCutcheon cases have been fought and won by the campaign finance deregulation advocates, including the Kochs?

Disclosure is a fight that continues to rage, but there are few prospects — in Congress or federal courts — for major campaign money reforms that would tighten regulation.

Richard Briffault, professor of legislation at Columbia Law School, sees reformers on the defense for the foreseeable future, given that Republicans are in control of all branches of government until at least 2019 and the White House until at least 2021. Meanwhile, Republicans may further roll back campaign finance restrictions.

“It wouldn't surprise me if some of the limits on the donations are eliminated or raised and some of the restrictions on collaboration can be weakened,” he said.

But Bopp, the conservative lawyer central to several key campaign finance deregulation fights, isn’t so sure.

“The courts have upheld contribution limits under certain circumstances, so that's what makes that litigation more difficult,” he said.

Bopp added that the fight for free political speech has otherwise largely been won.

Briffault’s concerns are parallel with liberal-leaning organizations that have now switched their focus from campaign finance reform to other issues of the day, such as gerrymandering, immigration and voting rights.

Refocusing attention is a matter of recognizing when you have the potential for change, which seems unlikely for campaign finance reform, said Michael Macleod-Ball, former manager of the ACLU’s federal advocacy office who now works in a consulting capacity for it.

Macleod-Ball said there are a number of factors that determine an organization’s priorities, such as considering what debates the public is having and what policies are directly affecting people’s lives.

“As a result, I think campaign finance reform or anything having to deal with campaign finance reform or disclosure is a relatively small priority compared to other things that are definitely occupying ACLU resources,” he said.

Ashley Balcerzak, John Dunbar and Dave Levinthal contributed to this report.

A version of this article was co-published by NBC News, Public Radio International and Salon.

The Center for Public Integrity will be hosting a Facebook Live chat on Friday, November 17 at 12 p.m. EST/9 a.m. PST with reporters Dave Levinthal and Lateshia Beachum to discuss their latest stories on the players and history behind America’s complicated system of campaign laws.  

Check out the stories here:

• A modern history of campaign finance: from Watergate to 'Citizens United'
• The players who have shaped campaign finance over the decades
• How slamming campaign finance laws helped Greg Gianforte get elected
• Kochs key among small group quietly funding legal assault campaign finance

If you want to know more about Citizens United, dark money, or have general questions about investigative reporting, then you don't want to miss this Reporters Roundtable!

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A private consultant shepherding President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security secretary nominee Kirstjen Nielsen through her U.S. Senate confirmation process has also lobbied the homeland security agency on behalf of the Panamanian government.

Thad Bingel, who is guiding Nielsen through the confirmation process, worked as a registered foreign agent representing Panama’s interests to the Department of Homeland Security from February 2012 to the end of 2013, according to federal records reviewed by the Center for Public Integrity.

Lobbying on behalf of foreign governments is perfectly legal, but Trump has been especially critical of such advocacy in vowing to “drain the swamp” and limit the influence of special interests. Upon taking office, Trump signed new ethics rules banning administration officials from ever lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, although those rules wouldn’t apply to volunteers such as Bingel.

In a written response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity, Andrew Hansen, a spokesman for Bingel, pointed out that the filings on Command Consulting Group’s work for Panama were publicly available, and the work “was fully disclosed.”

Asked whether Bingel had agreed to limit future lobbying of the Department of Homeland Security, Hansen said he had. Bingel “has agreed to forego/limit his lobbying of DHS as a condition of his volunteer work for Ms. Nielsen’s nomination,” Hansen said, though he said additional details about the conditions Bingel agreed to would have to be released by the White House Counsel’s Office.

Bingel’s volunteer work with Nielsen during the confirmation process has already spurred one ethics complaint against Nielsen from a nonprofit watchdog group. The complaint, filed by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, accuses Nielsen of potentially violating the Antideficiency Act, a law that says federal employees “may not accept voluntary services for the government” except as provided by law, or executive branch gift rules. 

The Campaign Legal Center also alleged in its complaint that Bingel’s company, Command Consulting Group, represents companies that seek lucrative contracts from the Department of Homeland Security — a potential conflict of interest.

Having unpaid volunteers serve as so-called “sherpas” for Cabinet nominees is more typical during a transition between administrations, current and former Department of Homeland Security officials told the Washington Post. Bingel’s current role, first reported by CyberScoop, is described as unusual by former government officials.

“Placing somebody in the role of leading or appearing to lead the confirmation preparation process when that person has business in front of the department is just an extraordinarily problematic approach,” said John Cohen, a former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security and current Rutgers University professor.

The White House disagreed.

“There is nothing inappropriate, or new about an individual volunteering their time to help prepare a nominee for his or her Senate confirmation process,” White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said in an email.

Nielsen is expected to receive a confirmation vote in the Senate this week.

Bingel’s work on behalf of the Republic of Panama was disclosed in required filings with the Department of Justice at the time.

In federal disclosure filings triggered by the firm’s work on behalf of Panama, Command Consulting Group said bluntly that Panamanian officials asked the firm to help with “arranging appropriate meetings” with Department of Homeland Security officials “once they learned of our close connections” with the department.

In the federal filings, Command Consulting Group said it was already a consultant for Panama, and agreed to help set up the Department of Homeland Security meetings without charging additional fees. The disclosure filings show the Panamanian government paid Command Consulting Group more than $1.9 million between February 2012 and October 2013.

Bingel was one of the people helping Panama, according to filings with the Department of Justice.

Command Consulting Group said in one filing that it “arranged meetings with government agencies” on behalf of Panama in 2012, but didn’t give details about who the Panamanian officials met with or who the firm contacted on Panama’s behalf.

In another filing, the firm said it “coordinated and participated in meetings between senior [Panamanian] Ministry of Public Security officials and representatives from the Department of Homeland security regarding issues of mutual national security interest.”

Command Consulting Group’s final filing with the Department of Justice came in September 2014, when the firm said it was no longer providing “reportable” services to Panama.

The firm’s website says Command Consulting Group helps “government and private sector clients on six continents reduce risk and accomplish organization objectives.”

The Panama disclosures show “you have a foreign government lobbying DHS through this guy,” said Larry Noble, senior director and general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center, referring to Bingel. “That’s a problem. It does put a definite coloring on it.”

Ties to top Trump aide

Bingel is also a close associate of one of Trump’s advisers —  White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin, who co-founded Command Consulting Group, where Bingel is a partner. Hagin resigned from Command Consulting Group in December 2016, according to his federal financial disclosure form.

Hagin disclosed his former employment with Command Consulting Group on his federal financial disclosure form, the data from which was included in the Center for Public Integrity’s #CitizenSleuth database. Journalists from the Center for Public Integrity and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting noted Hagin’s connection to Command Consulting Group when reviewing #CitizenSleuth data.

Both Hansen and the White House said Hagin was not involved in asking or recruiting Bingel to assist Nielsen.

“The White House takes seriously the obligation of its employees to divest and recuse where required by law,” Walters said in an emailed response to questions from the Center for Public Integrity. “Furthermore, Joe Hagin had absolutely no involvement in this arrangement.”

The White House press office did not immediately respond to a follow-up message Monday night requesting details on the limitations on future lobbying Bingel’s spokesman said he has agreed to. Hansen said Bingel has not been registered to lobby on behalf of a domestic client since 1999.

During Trump’s presidential transition period, Nielsen and Bingel worked together as “sherpas” for John Kelly, Trump’s first secretary of homeland security. Kelly is now White House chief of staff, and Nielsen is his deputy.

Hansen said Bingel “is a close personal friend of Ms. Nielsen” and because he worked on Kelly’s nomination, he was asked by the White House “if he would help out again on this one.”

Cyberscoopreported that in her answers to post-hearing questions, Nielsen said that “Proper legal advice was sought through White House Counsel’s Office to ensure that any voluntary assistance related to my nomination, as is done for all volunteers who work with the federal government, complies with all applicable legal authorities.”

She declined to provide a copy of the White House Counsel’s advice, according to Cyberscoop.

In addition to Hagin, another White House official — Director of White House Information Technology Charles Herndon — reported ties to Command Consulting Group, receiving $39,040 in income from the firm for consulting work performed during 2015 and 2016.

Big-time consulting clients

In a White House full of colorful characters, Hagin, who grew up in Ohio and is an experienced former aide to both presidents Bush, has earned few headlines.

As deputy chief of staff for operations, a role he also played for President George W. Bush, Hagin reportedly controls the president’s schedule. He helped establish the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and in 2004, was rumored to be on the president’s short list to lead it.

In 2009, after leaving government, he helped found Command Consulting Group. Bingel, a former chief of staff for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, was also a founding partner. The firm lists several companies that make up Command Consulting Group, including CT Strategies, which, federal records show, has secured government contracts, including one this year for $6 million.

The firm has also been registered to lobby the federal government on behalf of clients in the past, although Hagin himself has not.

Command Policy Group, one of the companies listed on Command Consulting Group’s website, filed paperwork in January terminating its lobbying work for its most recent federal lobbying client, a manufacturer of high performance imaging devices called Perceptics LLC, as of the end of 2016.

Hagin’s stake in Command Consulting Group was worth between $500,001 and $1 million, according to his federal personal financial disclosure form, and as a result of his resignation, he would be paid “the value of my capital account in the firm.” It isn’t clear from the form exactly how much that is.

Hagin also disclosed earning $5,000 or more from a variety of business consulting clients, though Hagin doesn’t specify whether those companies were clients of Command Consulting Group or of Hagin himself.

The client list included the Dallas County Community College District, which last year hired Command Consulting Group to help find an executive of public safety, according to a press release on the consulting firm’s website.

The list also included private equity company Elliott Management, run by Republican megadonor Paul Singer; Emaar Projects, a development company partly owned by the government of Dubai; McMahon Ventures LLC, a company owned by Trump’s Small Business Administration Administrator Linda McMahon; and other government contractors and corporate household names, including Google Inc.

This article was co-published by TIME, Salon, Reveal, Public Radio International and Philly.com.

The stories you’re reading today are the result of months of dogged reporting. At their heart lie thousands of personal financial disclosure statements filed by state legislators.

Getting all of these disclosures was no easy task.

The project began more than a year ago when the Center for Public Integrity requested the personal financial disclosure reports of state legislators from around the country. Nearly every state, except Idaho, Michigan and Vermont, required lawmakers to file these documents. (Vermont passed a law this year to require them starting in 2018.)

In total, reporters gathered annual financial disclosures for 6,933 of the 7,383 state legislators nationwide sitting in office in 2015. The disclosures cover the 2015 calendar year, except for a small number of cases in which they were unavailable. For those, the Center collected the most recent prior report available for that lawmaker.

The disclosures arrived in various formats, making it impossible to analyze them in bulk. So Center reporters entered available employment information for the lawmakers into spreadsheets. (Download the data.)

To categorize legislators' business interests, the Center used industry codes developed by the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a nonpartisan organization that tracks money’s influence on politics. Reporters also used other data collected by the Institute to identify lawmakers’ districts, party affiliations and committee assignments.

Journalists from the Center and The Associated Press researched the conflict of interest laws in every state and searched for cases in which lawmakers’ jobs overlapped with their legislative duties. To produce this package of stories, reporters: examined legislation; interviewed scores of lawmakers, activists and lobbyists; and reviewed lobbying reports and other state records.

Dozens of journalists worked on this project, including:

The Center for Public Integrity: Iuliia Alieva, Liz Essley Whyte, David Jordan, Michael J. Mishak, Kytja Weir, Ben Wieder, Joe Yerardi and Chris Zubak-Skees.

The Associated Press: State Government Team reporter Ryan J. Foley; data editor Meghan Hoyer; and AP statehouse reporters across the country.

READ MORE: 

Conflicted Interests: State lawmakers often blur the line between public's business and their own

Find your state legislators' financial interests

Q&A: What we learned from digging into state legislators' disclosure forms