Thanks to those that supported and placed their trust in me over this past decade. Onto the next adventure.

I still believe this work is vital for our democracy though the number of people doing it is shrinking and they face more challenges today than arguably ever before. Become a ProPublica donor if you can, support the Post, support the Times, the Journal, whatever you want.

The people I worked with closely over the last year are among the best I have seen in journalism – folks like @AASchapiro @WilliamTurton @HannahAllam @AndyKroll @mtredden and others. If you’ve gotten this far, my one request is support them and other investigative reporting efforts where you can.

I have other thoughts on my time in journalism and what it’s meant to me, which maybe I’ll write about sometime in the future. Some of my final/recent reporting will hopefully assist with upcoming stories in 2026 by my impressive colleagues.

Like with many jobs, the vast majority of the work we do isn’t visible. I tried to break a bunch of different stories and I failed to deliver on most of them because I didn’t reach my own high bar for the necessary sourcing or clarity of information needed to publish.

And to close the year, for the last several months, I was deeply focused on how the FBI was being reshaped under its new and unconventional director, Kash Patel. That’s where we found that Patel was writing waivers for his top staff to not have to pass polygraphs. www.propublica.org/article/fbi-...

After that, we explored how civilian agencies were breaking norms and sharing their own data on taxpayers with DHS to empower deportation raids. For example, we discovered how the IRS was building a system in secret to automate the mass sharing of records: www.propublica.org/article/trum...

Then we dug into the story of one under-covered office: USIP. We discovered how DOGE had blown up a sensitive mission in Afghanistan – not realizing the initiative was meant to be kept secret – resulting in the family of a US ally being kidnapped by the Taliban
www.propublica.org/article/doge...

For the first part of last year, I covered closely how this confusing entity reshaped the federal workforce often through a misunderstanding of what it was or how it functioned. www.propublica.org/topics/depar...

So, with the support of colleagues, I tried to dig into what seemed important. I wish I could have done more, but I am proud of the work we did together. From early in 2025, several of us recognized the importance of DOGE and its consequences.

This was a decision I made for myself that felt like the right call. The idea of covering the latest scattered spider intrusion in February or a new Russian APT’s breach of the state department during the summer just didn’t seem like the best use of my time.

I came here from Reuters, having spent the last 7 years focused on cybersecurity, intelligence and foreign affairs. But from the start of 2025, with a new administration taking power and wielding government influence in an unprecedented manner, I became more of a generalist.

That individual was fired if I recall correctly. Although you’re right that the article is vague on it.

We’re still reporting on Kristi Noem, contracts at DHS, and the ad deal. If you have any information we should know, my email is [email protected] and I’m on the encrypted messaging app Signal (you can message me at js_kaplan.85)