With cruelty as the message and violence as the medium, aggressive immigration and deportation policies have made masked, often armed immigration agents a common sight in communities across the country. Early in the year, our reporting identified those being targeted for removal and challenged the administration’s rationale, laying bare the brutal human cost of the crackdown.

Reporters Noah Lanard and Isabela Dias dug into the stories of several of the more than 200 Venezuelan men deported by the Trump administration in March 2025. Labeling them “heinous monsters,” the administration sent these men to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison on the basis of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, claiming that they had ties to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. However, Lanard and Dias found something very different: Many of the men appear to have been picked up only because they had tattoos of roses, crosses, soccer balls, and names of loved ones. One detainee sported an autism awareness tattoo in honor of his little brother. One man Lanard and Dias spoke with said an ICE agent told him, “We’re finding and questioning everyone who has tattoos.” The reporting was cited widely, including in The Ink, The Bulwark, Al Jazeera, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone. In conjunction with Lanard’s appearance on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes, Hayes proclaimed it “a fantastic piece of rigorous, in-depth reporting. It will make you want to pass out with rage.” The ACLU included Lanard and Dias’ reporting as one of the exhibits in its petition to the Supreme Court seeking to keep the injunction against deportation flights in place.

The administration’s immigration crackdown has impacted industries large and small, hitting hardest in communities that rely on immigrant labor. In collaboration with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, Ted Genoways chronicled the story of a group of Haitian residents in Greeley, Colorado, toiling at a local meatpacking plant while living in fear of deportation amid physically demanding labor. Genoways’ reporting in Mother Jones and on Reveal led to appearances on WBUR’s Here and Now, Food with Mark Bittman, and Marketplace’s Make Me Smart to discuss how people in communities like Greeley are navigating the new normal, and what it means for civic life when whole groups are targeted and living in fear.

In December, the meatpacking workers Genoways profiled filed suit against their employer, JBS. Their suit repeatedly cites Genoways’ reporting, along with 2001 Mother Jones reporting from Eric Schlosser.

Of course, some involved in the administration’s immigration push stood to gain. Dan Friedman and Nick Schwellenbach investigated Salus Worldwide Solutions, a small company with no experience handling “self-deportation” flights that nevertheless landed a nearly $1 billion federal aviation contract to do so. Their reporting traced close ties between the company’s CEO and a senior Department of Homeland Security official with whom he had previously worked. Following their reporting, a group of 11 US senators sent a letter in late October to DHS and ICE, seeking clarification on the contract’s scope, the services to be provided, and whether normal procurement procedures were bypassed.

Friedman and Schwellenbach, along with reporter Russ Choma, also investigated President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and the circle of former clients who are cashing in on the administration’s immigration crackdown—reporting that was cited by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Jamie Raskin, and other elected officials in a letter sent to the DHS inspector general in December.

The first year of this Trump administration brought with it a historic consolidation of power—both within government and by institutions and figures coalescing around the president. Aided by a Supreme Court that has repeatedly paved the way for a dramatic expansion of executive authority, the administration has leveraged that power to extract unprecedented personal gain, bestow access on friends and favored interests, and undermine the public’s faith in free and fair elections.

Dan Friedman’s work in collaboration with Amanda Moore on Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for US attorney for the District of Columbia, revealed Martin’s troubling past, including attending a fundraiser with January 6 rioters and his attempt to distance himself from past praise of a Nazi sympathizer. Their reporting, cited by The Forward, Washingtonian, Semafor, and NPR, was included in written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman ahead of Martin’s confirmation hearing, as well as in letters submitted by two advocacy groups to US senators and the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. As a result, Martin’s nomination was ultimately pulled by the president.

In his yearslong quest to erode the public’s confidence in the electoral system, Trump has set his sights on the 2026 midterms, with Ari Berman’s reporting outlining the myriad ways the president and his allies can bend elections in their favor. Berman’s analysis was featured in appearances on The Majority Report, the Al Franken Podcast, Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show, and it was cited in Salon, Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter, and on Fresh Air. Despite Elon Musk infusing $25 million into the April election that determined the balance of power in the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Trump signing a far-reaching executive order expanding voter suppression efforts, Berman highlighted some bright spots for democracy, noting that in Justice Susan Crawford’s Wisconsin victory, “oligarchy lost and democracy won.” Berman appeared on The Weekend, Democracy Now, and numerous podcasts, including MeidasTouch, The Left Hook, and Cleanup on Aisle 45.

With the 1965 Voting Rights Act on the line, Pema Levy previewed the stakes for one of the most consequential cases before the Supreme Court in the year ahead, work that was cited by SCOTUSblog and in an Instagram series by NowThis. Continuing with the theme of disenfranchisement, Levy’s appearance on WNYC’s On the Media highlighted her reporting on the dual state theory that was first used to describe the separate tracks of justice available in Nazi Germany to those who were afforded legal protections, vs. those who lived without them, and its echoes today.

Trillions in savings. An efficient government working on behalf of the people. Cheap eggs and cheaper gas. These were the promises of the incoming administration and its anointed czar of “cost cutting,” Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency took the tech mantra of “break things and move fast” to its extreme in slashing government programs and gutting the social safety net. From the destruction of USAID to the impact of tariffs, the One Big Beautiful Bill, the government shutdown, and the disappearance of health care subsidies, our reporting gave voice to those on the wrong end of Trump’s America.

As the administration began dismantling programs deemed wasteful, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed cuts to a number of groups supporting victims of violent crime, including the Victim Advocacy Corps, a pilot program of the National Organization for Victim Advocacy that trained victim advocates to staff domestic violence shelters, hotlines, and rape crisis centers. The day after reporter Julianne McShane highlighted the loss of federal support, the Department of Justice restored some of the grant funding. McShane also noted the administration’s push to eliminate the Women’s Bureau, an agency of the Department of Labor that champions women’s rights in the workforce. Citing McShane’s reporting, 34 members of the congressional Democratic Women’s Caucus sent the labor secretary a letter in June urging the agency to restore full funding to the program.

The fight over subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, and the ensuing government shutdown, threw the burden of unmanageable health insurance costs into stark relief for many families. Julia Métraux, who focuses on disability issues, noted how a loss of subsidies would put many contractors, including those with chronic illnesses, in peril. Her reporting was amplified by the American Association on Health and Disability and by Sen. Andy Kim, who noted that the vote to remove this critical support would “pull the rug out from under millions of Americans.”

The loss of federal programs that served as a safety net is all the more troubling in light of the private equity takeover of health care systems nationally. Hannah Levintova’s reporting documented the personal toll suffered by those who relied on Steward Health Care, a for-profit firm that declared bankruptcy in 2024 after hollowing out care standards while enriching its executives. Through her reporting, the victims’ stories were brought to life in a short documentary produced in partnership with Al Jazeera, with Levintova appearing on WWNO (NPR New Orleans), WRKF (NPR Baton Rouge), WKSU (NPR Cleveland), KJZZ (NPR Phoenix), and KUAR (NPR Little Rock) to discuss her reporting. 
Steward Health Care’s practice of selling its hospital buildings to a related holding company and then renting them back provided a short-term windfall of $800 million to the company. However, the exorbitant rents drained resources from core services, leaving patient care to suffer. In October, US Sens. Bernie Sanders, Edward Markey, and Richard Blumenthal introduced legislation to protect health systems from similar predatory real estate investment trust deals.

A coalition of factions ranging from Christian nationalists and Christian Zionists to libertarian tech oligarchs, Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) adherents, and manosphere-pilled young men helped propel Trump’s return to office. Our reporting documented the extremist views espoused by the New Right and, in the aftermath of the killing of Charlie Kirk, showed how violent rhetoric has fueled the Trump administration’s campaign of political retribution.

Reporter Anna Merlan dug into the history of bigoted and xenophobic social media posts by the newly installed Pentagon deputy press secretary, views emblematic of the extremism ensconced in the new administration and represented in the cruel trolling of official government communication channels. Her reporting was echoed in The New York Times, CNN’s Reliable Sources, Salon, Politico, The Independent, and MSNBC’s MaddowBlog and All In with Chris Hayes. Merlan’s related reporting on the “new state media,” tracking the friendly outlets and far-right influencers granted access to the administration’s inner circle, was cited by CNN and landed her on WNYC’s On the Media.

As the standard bearer for the MAHA movement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brought to the Department of Health and Human Services a yearslong campaign to replace widely accepted public health norms with vaccine skepticism and disinformation. During Kennedy’s contentious confirmation hearings, David Corn broke the story of Kennedy’s settlement with his second wife over accusations of misconduct. This reporting was amplified by the likes of The Daily Beast, The New York Post, Newsweek, Page Six, Mediaite, KFF Health News, and MaddowBlog. 

No figure better represented the coalescing of factions on the New Right than commentator and provocateur Charlie Kirk. National affairs editor Mark Follman joined host Al Letson on More To The Story, noting that “the very top of our political leadership is stoking a political and cultural war.” Our side-by-side video comparing Trump and Biden’s responses to political violence became our most-viewed video of the year, surpassing 8.8 million views.

Throughout the year, extreme voices on the right zeroed in on gender, frequently demonizing the transgender community. Madison Pauly’s reporting on Riley Gaines, a former college athlete and now a leading voice on the right stoking anti-trans fears around transgender women in sports, was in media outlets including The Bulwark, The Houston Chronicle, Deseret News, The Lever, Outsports, and Young Turks TV, among others. Most significantly, it was the subject of an episode of former ESPN sportscaster Pablo Torre’s widely popular podcast Pablo Torre Finds Out, reaching an audience that would not typically be exposed to Mother Jones’ or Reveal’s reporting.

In the midst of noisy, 24-hour news cycles, one of our hallmarks has been following the longer arc of a story over time and stitching together the throughlines that other newsrooms miss.

The American Civil Liberties Union cited reporter Madison Pauly’s 2023 investigation in a brief to the Supreme Court in US v. Skrmetti, which upheld a Tennessee law banning transgender children from accessing puberty blockers and hormone therapy. The brief, co-authored with Emma Rindlisbacher, focused on the influence of a small, extremist anti-trans medical group that Pauly investigated.

In October 2025, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation requiring law enforcement agents to tell families of people seriously injured or killed by police what occurred to their loved one before questioning them. In a George Polk Award–winning 2023 episode of Reveal, reporter Brian Howey uncovered at least 20 instances of California law enforcement agencies questioning family members and survivors to gather unflattering information about the deceased before notifying them of the death.

The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in favor of CIR in the long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case against the Department of Labor seeking access to corporate diversity data that the government claimed was proprietary and not subject to greater transparency. 

Reporter Julia Lurie’s spotlight on Utah adoption agencies that rush birth mothers into adoptions was cited in a bill introduced in the Utah legislature in November. The proposed legislation included several amendments to its adoption law that would create safeguards for birth parents, including allowing the birth parent to revoke the adoption within 72 hours, requiring the adoption agency to pay for independent counsel for the birth parent, requiring agencies to be nonprofits, clarifying the types of fees that can and can’t be paid by agencies, and requiring transportation back home if the birth parent changes their mind.

Katie Herchenroeder’s reporting on how some people who experienced domestic violence also found themselves buried in debt by their abusers was promoted by the Urban Resource Institute to members of the New York Assembly. In December, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill aiming to assist people to leave abusive relationships without being burdened by debt they often didn’t even know they were accruing.