Brett Murphy
I’m a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter on ProPublica’s national desk, where I write about the government, companies and power.
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What I Cover
I currently cover the federal agencies at the center of Trump’s foreign affairs agenda and the corporations that help carry it out. Most recently, I wrote about the Biden administration’s State Department and how top officials there repeatedly disregarded government experts and appeared to flout U.S. law in order to continue supplying weapons of war to Israel.
My Background
I’ve been a reporter on ProPublica’s national desk since 2022. That year, I published a series of articles uncovering a new junk science in the justice system known as 911 call analysis. The reporting won a George Polk Award, among other honors.
In 2023, a team and I revealed how a set of politically connected billionaires provided lavish gifts and travel to Supreme Court justices over many years. Those stories won the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for public service.
I joined ProPublica after working as an investigative reporter at USA Today, where I covered labor, criminal justice and the federal government. There, I won several journalism awards, including the international Livingston Award for our investigation into a U.S. military attack on its own security forces in Afghanistan, which killed dozens of civilians, including as many as 60 children.
My series on widespread labor abuses in California’s port trucking industry was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize and spurred a raft of reforms. Before USA Today, I covered courts and hurricanes for the Naples Daily News and other Gannett newspapers. I also co-founded the “Local Matters” newsletter, a weekly roundup of the best investigative and watchdog reporting from local newsrooms around the country.
I live in Brooklyn.
Death, Sexual Violence and Human Trafficking: Fallout From U.S. Aid Withdrawal Hits the World’s Most Fragile Locations
Exclusive State Department records show: As the Trump administration abandons its humanitarian commitments, diplomats are reporting that the cuts have led to violence and instability while undermining anti-terrorism initiatives.
The Trump Administration Leaned on African Countries. The Goal: Get Business for Elon Musk.
The State Department has intervened on behalf of Musk’s satellite internet company in five developing nations. In Gambia, U.S. diplomats have lobbied and browbeat at least seven government ministers as part of a “maximum pressure” campaign.
Tổng thống Trump đã dừng hoạt động xử lý chất độc da cam. Việc làm này khiến cho hàng trăm nghìn người gặp nguy cơ bị nhiễm độc.
Các nhà ngoại giao ở Việt Nam đã cảnh báo Washington rằng việc ngừng lại các nỗ lực của USAID để khử độc một lượng lớn thuốc trừ sâu sau chiến tranh sẽ là một thảm họa cho sức khỏe cộng đồng và mối quan hệ với một đối tác chiến lược quan trọng ở châu Á.
Trump Halted an Agent Orange Cleanup. That Puts Hundreds of Thousands at Risk for Poisoning.
Diplomats in Vietnam warned Washington that halting USAID’s efforts to clean up the massive deposit of postwar pesticides would be a catastrophe for public health and relations with a key strategic partner in Asia.
Internal Memos: Senior USAID Leaders Warned Trump Appointees of Hundreds of Thousands of Deaths From Closing Agency
One million children will go untreated for severe malnutrition, up to 166,000 people will die from malaria and 200,000 more children will be paralyzed by polio over the next decade, the memos estimated. The programs were cut anyway.
The Trump Administration Said These Aid Programs Saved Lives. It Canceled Them Anyway.
The axing of some 10,000 programs has consigned untold numbers of children and refugees to death, officials say. Documents and interviews reveal that the State Department appears to have made the cuts without the careful review it described in court.
DOGE’s Millions: As Musk and Trump Gut Government, Their Ax-Cutting Agency Gets Cash Infusion
The Department of Government Efficiency is funded — and acts — like a federal agency. But the White House has shielded DOGE from the rules that govern such agencies, ProPublica found as it examines the group and expands a list of DOGE workers.
Trump Official Destroying USAID Secretly Met With Christian Nationalists Abroad in Defiance of U.S. Policy
Now one of the most powerful people in the U.S. government, Peter Marocco’s turbulent tenure during the first Trump administration sheds light on his current efforts to dismantle the American foreign aid system from the inside out.
In Breaking USAID, the Trump Administration May Have Broken the Law
ProPublica’s reporting provides new details about what legal risk officials were prepared to take and what laws they may have violated on their way to creating a “constitutional crisis.”
Elon Musk’s Demolition Crew
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has been unleashed on federal agencies. ProPublica is attempting to document who is working with him and what they are doing.
“People Will Die”: The Trump Administration Said It Lifted Its Ban on Lifesaving Humanitarian Aid. That’s Not True.
Organizations that provide vital care for desperate and vulnerable people around the world have been forced to halt operations, turn away patients and lay off staff. “I’ve never seen anything that scares me as much as this,” one doctor said.