ProPublica’s Payoff
When Donald Trump unceremoniously fired Kristi Noem as secretary of homeland security last week, many observers noted that the key factor in her ouster was pointed questioning from John Kennedy, the senator from Louisiana, about a 220-million-dollar advertising campaign and Noem’s claim that Trump approved it. “I was stunned when Noem answered categorically that the president approved every single bit of it,” Kennedy said of the exchange on Fox News. “Later that day, I got a call from President Trump. He was mad as a mama wasp.”
What many may not have realized was that the substance of Kennedy’s questions drew heavily from an excellent report from ProPublica by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski. It was a striking example of something that happens more than the public sees: rigorous investigative reporting often arms lawmakers with facts that help them hold officials to account.
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