September 09, 2025 · View in browser

The U.S. government is trying to deport Ohio children’s hospital chaplain Ayman Soliman, alleging tenuous connections to terrorism. If DHS succeeds, experts say it could hand the Trump administration a “sledgehammer” to use on mass deportations.

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ProPublica reporter Eli Hager spent 15 hours speaking with Leland Dudek, who briefly served as acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration early this year, when DOGE took over the system.

Dudek described the chaos of working with DOGE and how he tried first to collaborate, and then to protect the agency, resulting in turns that were at various times alarming, confounding and tragicomic.

DOGE, Dudek said, began acting like “a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing, with ideas of how government should run — thinking it should work like a McDonald’s or a bank — screaming all the time.”

The White House, presented with extensive questions for the article, sent a one-paragraph statement disparaging ProPublica and Dudek. ProPublica’s story, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said, “is largely based around the comments of a disgruntled former employee who openly admitted to leaking to the media, manipulating his colleagues, and repeatedly telling lies from his official position. ”

The Trump administration has worked in Washington, D.C., to remove people experiencing homelessness from their encampments. But cities, too, are increasingly removing, or “sweeping,” homeless encampments. Some say it’s a way to get people inside, but 135 people told ProPublica that sweeps made it harder to survive, find housing and get or keep jobs. While reporting on the ground in 11 cities, we asked people to tell us what they’d lost in the sweeps. 

We repeatedly heard stories about ashes being taken. Teresa Stratton, 61, said her husband’s ashes were taken when city contractors swept through a park in Portland, Oregon. City officials said that they didn’t see an urn in photos taken by workers, but that the ashes could have been thrown away. 

Many cities only store items that cleanup crews deem valuable and in good condition, meaning things like letters and photos can be discarded. In interview after interview, people said the loss of these belongings stuck with them the most.

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