Sign in

Brandon Roberts

@bxroberts.org
9.3K followers 439 following 157 posts

Investigative journalist. News Apps Developer at @ProPublica.org. Occasional AI/ML researcher. Using data+code to hold power to account. Web: bxroberts.org Signal: brandonrobertz.01

PostsRepliesMedia
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 21/09/2026
Great scoop! I'm bummed and a little surprised that WSJ didn't publish the disclosure this reporting is based on. www.wsj.com/politics/rfk...
wsj.com
Exclusive | RFK Jr. Got Free Flights to Fiji and Greece From a Top Donor
The health secretary disclosed over $250,000 in gifts from security specialist Gavin de Becker.
041
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 18/09/2026
The CLEAR LABELS Act originally mandated that facility IDs appear on drug labels -- making it easy to know if the drug in your cabinet was made by a problem facility. They have significantly watered down the bill by removing this critical requirement. 😭 www.propublica.org/article/clea...
propublica.org
“A Clear Watering Down”: Drug Transparency Bill Stripped of Critical Provisions Ahead of Senate Vote
The bill was designed to alert consumers about where their drugs came from. After two major changes to the proposed law, experts worry it won’t be as effective.
032
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 12/09/2026
Some great reporting here based, in part, on our 527 nonprofit data
0176
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 26/08/2026
The monthly 527 Explorer updates continue! I just published the Aug update, adding ~12k new contributions and expenditures. This brings the data current as of the end of July 2026. projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/
A table with a title of '527 Explorer Update Summary' and two columns: Report Type and Rows Added. The table body contains the count of new rows added per type of record available on the site:Contributions with 8,868, Expenditures with 4,163, Initial Filings with 449, Periodic Reports with 133, Directors/Officers with 910, EAIN Numbers with 105, Related Entities with 63, and New Records Total with 14,691. The table ends by showing the most recent record date of: 2026-07-31.
061
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 13/08/2026
Assigning intent to an AI system is just dumb I'm sorry www.wired.com/story/rogue-...
wired.com
Rogue AI Agents Aren’t Evil. They’re Just Eager to Please
AI agents that break free and hack into other systems are only trying to make us happy.
030
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 11/08/2026
If you're a journalist in this administration you have probably realized that FOIA is broken. @shaw.al lays it all here www.propublica.org/article/foia...
propublica.org
Is There Anyone Who Can Respond to My FOIA Requests? Anyone?
Asking the federal government for public records didn’t always feel like a shell game. But bounced emails and broken portals seem like the new normal.
070
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 03/08/2026
This is absolutely wild. There's so little enforcement of laws that these guys are just openly sharing all their AI slop product sales techniques (and turning THAT into a business too‼️). Great reporting www.404media.co/inside-an-ai...
404media.co
Inside an AI TikTok Shop Slop Factory That Shills Supplements Recalled By the FDA
How a company called Rosabella used AI content to market its supplements: "If you’re trying to sell health products to a 50-year-old, well, make your avatar 50 years old."
02412
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 31/07/2026
This whole thing has me really curious what the "range of useful purposes" are that Google had in mind for this tool.
091
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 31/07/2026
We have a deal with ProPublica mgmt! So thankful for all the public support we received and for the effort of all the workers who make up ProPublica. If you were withholding your donation due to the fight, it's time to help us out so we can continue doing what we do best: holding power to account
16119
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 31/07/2026
I just published an update to our 527 Explorer of political nonprofits. We added over 500k new records since our last update in June. It's an election year, meaning I will be updating this every month until the election. Happy Friday! projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/
A table with a title of '527 Explorer Update Summary' and two columns: Report Type and Rows Added. The table body contains the count of new rows added per type of record available on the site:Contributions with 231,624, Expenditures with 295,487, Initial Filings with 335, Periodic Reports with 590, Directors/Officers with 955, EAIN Numbers with 94, Related Entities with 133, and New Records Total with 529,218. The table ends by showing the most recent record date of: 2026-07-01.
0308
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 30/07/2026
So proud to have been awarded the 2026 @ire.org Freedom of Information Award for work on the Rx Roulette series and Rx Inspector. I wasn't able to attend IRE so this was my first time seeing it 🥰
A photo of the 2026 Investigative Reports and Editors Freedom of Information Award. It reads "Rx Roulette: The FDA's Dangerous Gamble on America's Drugs - ProPublica, Debbie Cenziper, Megan Rose and Brandon Roberts"
070
Reposted by Brandon Roberts
ProPublica @propublica.org · 18/07/2026
Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromises FCC commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. The agency’s chair, Brendan Carr, has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of tickets by CBS or its parent company.
propublica.org
FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount as the Company Needed Approval for Billion-Dollar Deals
Accepting tickets to the Kennedy Center honors gala compromised the commissioners’ impartiality, ethics experts told ProPublica. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been gifted at least $63,000 worth of ticket...
661563706
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 17/07/2026
Well if anything ever made me sure that humans are better than AI it's going state by state looking at statues and pulling out regulatory information. AI overviews are almost always wrong. They also frequently cite other (incorrect) AI sources that all refer back to completely made up sources. 🤦
041
Reposted by Brandon Roberts
ProPublica Guild @propublicaguild.org · 02/07/2026
“I’m deeply concerned about wage disparities across the newsroom,” says Jeremy Kohler, a reporter based in St. Louis. We need @propublica.org management to agree to fair wages in our contract.
04012
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 28/06/2026
Yeah people can file duplicate/amended reports. So we try and only show the info from the most recent filings!
020
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 24/06/2026
Zoom drives me crazy with all this new opt-in by default stuff. Nobody on my calls ever wants the AI stuff on, they always complain when they see it
050
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 24/06/2026
Nobody should be living paycheck to paycheck. Help us get a good contract at ProPublica!
03810
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 23/06/2026
UPDATE: New data has arrived on ProPublica's 527 explorer! See the latest filings made by political nonprofits, up to the end of May. projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/
A table with a title of '527 Explorer Update Summary' and two columns: Report Type and Rows Added. The table body contains the count of new rows added per type of record available on the site:Contributions with 29,097, Expenditures with 4,551, Initial Filings with 653, Periodic Reports with 213, Directors/Officers with 1,357, EAIN Numbers with 174, Related Entities with 163, and New Records Total with 36,208. The table ends by showing the most recent record date of: 2026-05-31.
1166
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 18/06/2026
Hey all! The Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference is back in Manhattan Aug 14-16. I'll be speaking about practical technical challenges facing journalists and how you all can help solve them. www.hope.net If you're going to be there, reach out.
hope.net
Hackers On Planet Earth - HOPE
HOPE (Hackers On Planet Earth) is an annual conference for hackers, makers, and tech enthusiasts based in New York City.
000
Reposted by Brandon Roberts
Will James @willjames.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
If you listened to @npr.org's Up First this weekend, you heard a local Seattle story that's haunted me and my reporting partners for years. Grateful that Up First aired the first episode of We Keep Us Safe, our podcast series investigating the unsolved killing of Antonio Mays Jr.
npr.org
How an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death : Up First from NPR
In the summer of 2020, sixteen-year-old Antonio Mays Jr. traveled a thousand miles to be part of the racial justice movement. He arrived in Seattle during the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest, known as C...
093
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 16/06/2026
🤦 www.404media.co/it-is-trivia...
404media.co
It Is Trivially Easy to Use Reddit to Manipulate AI Search, Research Suggests
"We show that a tiny snippet—just 13 words—of retrieved text on a UGC website like Reddit, Wikipedia, Quora, or Facebook can change AI agents to output spam / scam content pretty consistently."
011
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 10/06/2026
Such a good read about raw milk under Trump's FDA 👇
020
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 02/06/2026
4/ Copilot cited AI-generated sources 27.8% of the time! ngl that's a little shocking. There's a lot of other interesting data points buried in the paper. Love the investigative spirit of this work. Read it here: arxiv.org/pdf/2605.23684
A quote from the paper. The highlighted section reads: "We find Copilot to cite AI-generated
sources in 27.8% (N=1,614) of its citations, which translates
to nearly 3 out of every 10 cited sources being AI-generated.
Similarly, 14.7% (N=782) of Gemini’s cited sources were
found to be AI-generated, followed by Perplexity (N=472;
9.4%), and ChatGPT (N=765; 7.3%)."
031
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 02/06/2026
3/ AI search engines are more likely to cite AI-generated sources for queries about health and environmental issues like climate change.
A table from the paper: Number of unique AI-generated sources by topic and AI provider. The table shows that AI providers (copilot, chatgpt, gemini and perplexity) mostly used AI generated sources for queries related to health, politics and environment.
130
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 02/06/2026
3/ They found search summaries citing blatant AI-generated content like this
A screenshot from a website called "factually" which has, in its about page, text explicitly noting it is written by AI. A section from the site is highlighted: "Is it perfect? No. Accuracy is hard. Consistency is hard. We're working on it."
210
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 02/06/2026
2/ The methodology is great. You could re-create it like so: 1. source a bunch of queries that people made to search engines on a number of topics 2. collect the responses that major search engines give to each 3. analyze the cited sources and attempt to identify those which were AI generated
110
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 02/06/2026
I wanted to highlight this interesting paper by @ndiakopoulos.bsky.social and Mowafak Allaham about how often AI search engines cite AI-generated content Thread 1/
A screenshot of the header of the paper. It reads: "Synthetic Sources?: Auditing Generative Search Engine Citations for Evidence of
AI-Generated Sources
Mowafak Allaham, Nicholas Diakopoulos
Northwestern University"
130
Reposted by Brandon Roberts
Rob Davis @robwdavis.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Beyond excited for the debut of ProPublica's podcast. Subscribe! propub.li/42ULaRa
propub.li
Paper Trail
Investigative reporters at ProPublica chase down evidence of wrongdoing and bring it to light. Each episode, you’ll ride along as we talk to reporters and their sources, uncover hidden facts and show ...
09620
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 06/05/2026
🥰 So proud to be a Pulitzer finalist in investigative reporting
A screenshot from the 2026 Pulitzer Prizes for investigative reporting page showing the Staff of The New York Times won, with Debbie Cenziper, Megan Rose and Brandon Roberts (me!) of ProPublica as finalists alongside Cynthia Dizikes and Joaquin Palomino of the SF Chronicle.
1300
Reposted by Brandon Roberts
Kevin Uhrmacher @kevinuhrm.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
A special shoutout to the team behind @propublica.org's Rx Inspector, a part of this year's Pulitzer finalist entry for investigative reporting. Well done @bxroberts.org Ruth Talbot @nmcmillan.bsky.social @jdf.bsky.social and so many others projects.propublica.org/rx-inspector/
projects.propublica.org
Where Was My Generic Prescription Drug Made? - Rx Inspector - ProPublica
The FDA won’t tell Americans where their generic drugs are made, so ProPublica did it instead. Use information on your prescription label to locate the factory and see inspection reports.
214339
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 22/04/2026
People have been reaching out and letting me know how they're using this information which is always helpful to hear! You can always reach out on Signal if you find anything interesting: brandonrobertz.01
010
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 22/04/2026
New entries include things like the American Technology Excellence Project, a pro-artificial intelligence PAC with a single funder: Meta projects.propublica.org/527-explorer...
projects.propublica.org
American Technology Excellence Project — 527 Explorer — ProPublica
Every year, hundreds of millions of dollars flow through little-known political organizations called 527s. Use our database to explore who funds these organizations and how they’re spending their mone...
100
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 22/04/2026
I just updated 527 Explorer, which includes filings through the end of Q1 2026. 1.2M total new records detailing contributions, expenditures and other organizational information. projects.propublica.org/527-explorer/
A table with a title of '527 Explorer Update Summary' and two columns: Report Type and Rows Added. The table body contains the count of new rows added per type of record available on the site:Contributions with 667,541, Expenditures with 614,822, Initial Filings with 1,724, Periodic Reports with 1,267, Directors/Officers with 3,793, EAIN Numbers with 376, Related Entities with 362, and New Records Total with 1,289,885. The table ends by showing the most recent record date of: 2026-03-31.
11511
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 21/04/2026
Trump Admin financial disclosures update! We added Witkoff, Mullin, and a page to see who was recently added. (We're still awaiting Jared Kushner's disclosures) 👇👇
010
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 08/04/2026
We are on strike today y'all. See this note about our event 👇
080
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 13/03/2026
In case you don't know what a "transaction" is – officials must report any purchase, sale, or exchange of real property or securities (e.g., stocks) worth over $1k. These often come out in separate forms (278T) and are required to be filed within 45 days after a transaction occurs.
A screenshot from the ProPublica Team Trump Financials search tool, showing a section of President Trump's page with a title of "Transactions" at the top, followed by the text "officials are required to disclose the purchase, sale or exchange of property or securities in excess of $1,000." Beneath this is a table of financial transactions with description, value, transaction, endnote and lone no. headers. The first row has a description of "SPDR SERIES TRUST STATE STREET SPDR PORTFOLIO HIGH YIELD BOND ETF DISCRETIONARY ORDER J.P. MORGAN SECURITIES LLC MAKES A MARKET IN THIS SECURITY ROME: WHIPA" with a value of $500K - $1M and purchase date of 2026-01-21. The table continues with more transactions.
092
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 13/03/2026
UPDATE: We just added more info to the Trump Team Financials app! Now including President Trump's most recent financial transactions, which were filed late + released the same day we published our app. You can now see his transactions up until late Jan 2026. projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...
projects.propublica.org
Donald J. Trump - Explore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,500 of His Appointees - ProPublica
Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their de...
2261103
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
It's free! 😂
010
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
11/ We're going to continue digging into the people, entities and possible conflicts uncovered in this data. If you have information you'd like to share, reach out! Secure drop and encrypted tips form: www.propublica.org/tips/ And follow my fellow reporters: @shaw.al @coreygjohnson.bsky.social
propublica.org
How to Contact ProPublica or Send a Tip Securely — ProPublica
Our job is to hold people and institutions accountable. To do that, we need evidence.
27820
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
10/ Our new searchable database is the most comprehensive public source of financial disclosures across the executive branch. Let us know what you find! 👇👇 projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...
projects.propublica.org
Explore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,500 of His Appointees - ProPublica
Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their de...
4271105
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
9/ Pro tip: You can directly share disclosures you find with the line number link. Here's Pam Bondi's sale of $1-5M of Trump Media stock, which occurred on "Liberation Day" last spring: projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f... (She hasn’t answered our questions.) Share/tag any interesting rows!
A screenshot from a story about Pam Bondi's trades reads: "Attorney General Pam Bondi sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of shares of Trump Media the same day that President Donald Trump unveiled bruising new tariffs that caused the stock market to plummet, according to records obtained Wednesday by ProPublica.

Trump Media, which runs the social media platform Truth Social, fell 13% in the following days, before rebounding."
17822
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
8/ You can also see President Trump's debts. These include mortgages on properties like Trump Tower and Trump Villa. Also tens of millions of liabilities related to civil lawsuits by the New York Attorney General and E. Jean Carroll:
A screenshot of President Trump's page on ProPublica’s Trump Team Financials tool, showing the liabilities section. The table shows two rows detailing $1-5M in liabilities related to the E. Jean Carroll suit. The next row is highlighted and shows a litigation related liability, creditor: New York Attorney General, amount: "Over $50,000,000"
212332
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
7/ Trump's financial disclosure was more difficult to get. It came in a different format with a tiny, difficult to read font. We parsed the thousands of records, adding up to at least $1.4B in value, so you don't have to.
A screenshot from President Donald J Trump's form 278-T document. The screenshot shows a portion of the form containing "Filer's Name: Donald J Trump" and a red Note: "This is a public form. Do not include…" The text displayed is blurry and some letters appear to be corrupted. The lower case "a" in "Donald" is a pixelated blob with no definition.”
18815
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
6/ Caveat: The data we have isn't standardized, so companies can be spelled in many different ways. To help search for common things, we've prepared queries you can use, like this one for people with ties to SpaceX 👇 projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...
A webpage for ProPublica’s Trump Team Financials tool, displaying 10 results for the prepared search query “SpaceX OR ‘Space Exploration Technologies.’”
26815
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
5/ On each appointee's page, we also make their ethics agreements docs available. Here, NASA Administrator Jared Taylor Isaacman details the steps he will take to avoid conflicts with SpaceX, which NASA has significant deals with.
Section 10 of an ethics agreement document signed by NASA Administrator Jared Taylor Isaacman, which states: “I am the Managing Member of RookX, LLC, which has contracts with Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) for space flight services. Upon confirmation, I will terminate all agreements that RookX, LLC has with SpaceX, and all monies that have been paid to SpaceX for services not completed will be refunded to RookX, LLC.”
17116
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
4/ With our tool, you can find other appointees who hold crypto, like Kenneth Howery, ambassador to Denmark, who holds a variety of bitcoin forks and other cryptocurrencies.
Screenshot of a table showing multiple crypto holdings of Kenneth Howery, Trump’s ambassador to Denmark. These include employee assets of $4M-$25M in Bitcoin, $25M-$50M in Ethereum and more.
18118
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
3/ In Dec, my colleagues @shaw.al and @coreygjohnson.bsky.social used this data to find that deputy AG Todd Blanche owned at least $159K in crypto when he shut down investigations into crypto companies. (The DOJ claimed his orders were "cleared in advance.") www.propublica.org/article/todd...
propublica.org
Top DOJ Official Todd Blanche Shut Down Crypto Enforcement While Holding Crypto Assets
The second-highest official at the DOJ, Todd Blanche rose to prominence as Trump’s personal defense attorney. His actions violated the federal conflicts of interest law and his ethics agreement, exper...
210037
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
2/ Political appointees are required to file disclosures detailing their finances and efforts to eliminate conflicts of interest. We've gathered over 3,000 of these forms and made them searchable.
Screenshot of a section of ProPublica's Trump Team Financials tool titled "Wealthiest Officials: Based on minimum reported asset values." The rows are the wealthiest officials in the tool, ordered by lower bound net worth, as reported by the officials in their documents. The table reads: "Stephen Andrew Feinberg, Deputy Secretary, Department of Defense, $2B; Donald J. Trump, President of the United States, White House, $1.4B; Warren Stephens, Ambassador to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Department of State, $1.1B; John Phelan, Secretary of the Navy, Department of Defense, $791M; Howard Lutnick, Secretary, Department of Commerce, $723M; West Cuthbert, Associate Deputy Secretary, Department of Health & Human Services, $605M; Melinda Hildebrand, Ambassador to the Republic of Costa Rica, Department of State, $603M"
112947
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 05/03/2026
THREAD: We just released a tool that allows you to search billions of dollars in wealth, ties to the most powerful companies in the country, and details of the personal finances of President Trump and over 1,500 of his appointees. Here’s how it works 1/
Screenshot of ProPublica webpage titled “Explore Financial Disclosures From President Trump and 1,500 of His Appointees,” accompanied by this blurb: “Use this database to explore potential conflicts of interest for President Donald Trump and his team. The documents disclose positions officials have held outside government, their assets and their debts, among other things.” A search bar prompts the user to search for a person or financial holding.
12676357
Brandon Roberts @bxroberts.org · 04/03/2026
Yes! I still remember my first email reply rejection, so many years ago.
010