What They Said: The letter was spearheaded by Rep. Judy Chu, who is a psychologist and represents a district in Southern California. “Caring for our nation’s Veterans is a fundamental responsibility,” the letter says. “That includes ensuring access to high-quality mental health care.”
The lawmakers demanded that the VA disclose details about its shortage of mental health providers and the impact on veterans. It also pushed the agency to lay out how long veterans have to wait for care.
As ProPublica has detailed, while the VA has long had a shortfall of mental health providers, the situation has gotten far worse under the current Trump administration. Hundreds of mental health staffers have left the VA and not been replaced.
Background: ProPublica’s investigation recounted the troubling experiences of both mental health providers and of veterans seeking care.
With so many staffers leaving and not being replaced, the remaining providers have often been stretched remarkably thin.
A psychologist who worked for a VA in Arizona recounted how some of her one-on-one sessions were replaced with online group sessions that included as many as 35 veterans. The therapist said their remaining individual sessions were sometimes limited to as little as 16 minutes.
“It was always bad,” said the psychologist. “And now it’s at a breaking point.”
In VA exit surveys that ProPublica obtained, mental health staffers who quit often wrote that they were no longer able to provide high-quality care.
“Mental Health is understaffed, burned out,” wrote one New York-based staffer who was leaving. “There is not enough mental health care for the Veterans who need the services.”
Veterans, meanwhile, have started to fall through the cracks.
Jason Beaman, a Navy and Army vet, was shuffled among therapists who later left until he finally had enough. “I just quit. I don’t want to mess with the therapist anymore,” Beaman told us this spring.
Why It Matters: After Trump returned to office last year, his administration promised to deliver veterans “the highest quality care.”
The VA is the country’s largest healthcare system, serving 9 million veterans. Those men and women face many mental health issues at a higher rate than the general population. They die by suicide at roughly twice the rate.
VA mental health staff have developed deep expertise in addressing the particular needs of vets. Indeed, studies have shown that vets get better care at the VA than through private providers.
“VA psychologists are best in class,” said Russell Lemle, former chief psychologist for the San Francisco VA Health Care System and now a senior policy analyst at the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. “When you lose them, the veterans are the ones who pay the price.”
ProPublica reported that in January, the department had around 500 fewer psychologists and psychiatrists than it had at the same time last year. Recent VA data shows those head counts continue to decline.
Response: In response to questions from ProPublica, VA spokesperson Quinn Slaven defended the agency. “The Trump Administration is solely focused on measuring VA’s success by how well it serves Veterans,” Slaven wrote in an email. “This commonsense approach has led to dramatic improvements for Veterans, families, caregivers, and survivors across the country.”
Slaven said that the VA completed a record number of mental healthcare appointments in the past fiscal year while also lowering veterans’ wait times.
The VA previously declined our request for an interview. Instead, spokesperson Peter Kasperowicz accused ProPublica of attempting to mislead the public by “cherry picking issues that are limited to a handful of sites and in many cases were worse under the Biden Administration.”
After ProPublica shared the findings of its investigation and the names of veterans who would appear in it, the agency reached out to several to inquire about their care and offer help.
The congressional letter gives the VA until Aug. 14 to respond.
Since he returned to office, President Donald Trump’s administration has upended foreign aid. It’s labeled well-established, long-running programs as “not aligned with American interests” and slashed their budgets.
Still, the billions of taxpayer dollars Congress has allocated for foreign aid programs must be spent; lawmakers have insisted the government continue to fund humanitarian aid, global health and pro-democracy causes around the world. With most of the old programs now gone, however, we wanted to know: What is the Trump administration doing with that money now?
Recently, we published our investigation that found one answer to that question in a little-known bureau of the State Department that has dramatically transformed under Trump. For decades, the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, known as DRL, has supported human rights in some of the most oppressive countries in the world. Now, our reporting found, it’s planning to direct funds to controversial groups supporting right-wing causes in Europe and elsewhere.
Our full story lays out some of the groups the government has considered funding, which include a British free-speech organization that has fought against bans on “gay conversion therapy” and a British American think tank created this year to focus on “existential threats to Britain, to America, and to our shared Judeo-Christian civilisation.” (Administration officials dropped that grant after significant pushback from Congress.)
One proposed grant particularly caught our attention: Trump administration officials suggested funding research on crime against minority populations in South Africa.
It’s clear from sources we spoke with that the key targeted minority population in question is the white ethnic group known as Afrikaners. Afrikaners were responsible for creating the nation’s infamous and brutal racially segregated apartheid system. Previously, DRL staff had been told to begin the process of awarding funds to a group called Lex Libertas, which was founded by a controversial figure who has called for Afrikaner self-governance. The group is currently fundraising to place 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall in remembrance of attacks on South African farmers.
The proposed grant was later opened up to allow a broader set of invited groups to apply for $1 million of funding, though it is still intended for the same purpose, according to people with knowledge of the process. The State Department declined to say whether Lex Libertas will be among those invited to compete, citing ongoing deliberations, but said the Trump administration has serious concerns about the human rights situation in South Africa that need to be addressed. Lex Libertas did not respond to questions about the organization or the proposed grant.
Former diplomats who have worked extensively on human rights told us they were shocked that the victimization of white South Africans would be prioritized over the serious issues elsewhere in the region.
“It’s laughable to suggest that on the African continent, the prime issue of human rights concern is whites in South Africa,” one former agency official said when we asked him about the grant. South Africa is plagued by violence, but extensiveresearch has found that white South African farmers are not victims of crime at higher rates than other groups.
Experts also described the proposed grant to fund research into violence against Afrikaners as keeping with the Trump administration’s overall stance toward South Africa.
For decades, the U.S. relationship with the country has been symbolized by our massive support for HIV care, Mattie Webb, a professor at the Virginia Military Institute who studies South Africa and U.S. foreign policy, told us.
Since Trump returned to office, there’s been a stark shift as the administration has strengthened ties with borderline white nationalist groups that are considered fringe in South Africa.
“The U.S. is very clearly shifting its priorities away from aid that would benefit far more people in South Africa to this narrow focus on the white minority,” Webb said.
There have long been tensions between South Africa and the U.S., former diplomats told us, but the aid the U.S. provided saved lives and helped sustain a working relationship that is vital to U.S. national security and economic interests. Now, by seeking to fund a movement antagonistic to the South African government, the U.S. risks driving a wedge between the two nations.
Other grants also raised red flags for experts and lawmakers. Political appointees at the State Department are considering funding a British free-speech organization that has fought bans on discredited therapy practices that attempt to convert gay people to heterosexuality. That proposed $5 million grant would provide support for people facing “deplatforming” and advocate against “restrictive online safety and hate speech laws,” according to a document we reviewed. (The organization’s founder said it had “neither applied for nor been awarded a grant from the US State Department or any other branch of the US Government” but did not respond to our other questions.) And a call for proposals recently released by the bureau would fund research, conferences and cultural engagements in wealthy democracies to develop “civilizational self-confidence in Europe.”
Not all the proposed funding is directed to controversial groups, our reporting found. But even some of the grants slated to fund more traditional human rights projects skirt federal requirements for competitive bidding that are meant to deter waste, fraud and abuse. Instead, officials are trying to direct millions to handpicked organizations, according to sources and documents.
In response to questions about our reporting, the State Department stressed that the process of awarding grants is ongoing and that multiple offices provide input, writing that “programs are still in active deliberation and receipt of a grant is not guaranteed to any organization that does not meet all requirement and standards for federal grants.”
We are continuing to report on foreign aid and the Trump administration’s policies in South Africa. If you have tips or information we should know about either of these issues, please feel free to get in touch with us! Reach out via phone or Signal to Anna Maria Barry-Jester at 408-504-8131 or Sharon Lerner at 718-877-5236.
In a private ceremony on Sept. 17, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stood at a podium inside the National Archives building in Washington, D.C., and praised a Florida nonprofit for what he called a singular achievement in American education. The attendees were celebrating the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, which announced that it had reached 2 million children with civics education since its founding in 2016.
“I hope you understand how important this is,” Hegseth told the room. “What we pour into the next generation will determine whether we keep our republic or not.”
FLAG’s founder, Nick Adams, had spent nearly a decade building toward this moment. An Australian-born conservative commentator and MAGA influencer, Adams had created the nonprofit, raised $7.7 million for it over 10 years, and garnered repeated praise from President Donald Trump. In March, Trump appointed Adams as the special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism and values — a position created for him after his nomination as ambassador to Malaysia stalled the previous year.
But a review of FLAG’s finances, donor operations and online donation network reveals a less celebratory picture. There is little evidence that the nonprofit has provided the civics education it claims. And Adams and his nonprofit have engaged in a pattern of questionable financial arrangements, including paying Adams and his mother more than half its recent annual revenue, while raising much of its money through a sweepstakes operation that has promised donors a chance to win $1,000,000 — a prize FLAG’s records show no evidence of ever paying.
Adams moved to the United States from Australia in 2012 and has since become an outspoken champion of the American political and economic system. Now 41, he has built a following as a conservative commentator and self-described “alpha male” influencer, making frequent media appearances and amassing roughly 2.1 million followers on Facebook and 640,000 followers on X on his personal pages. Adams authored books including “Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness” and “Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization.”
In 2016, Adams founded FLAG, registering it as a nonprofit with the mission to bring high-quality civics education to K-12 students across America. FLAG has produced civics materials like the Student’s Constitution, the Student’s Declaration of Independence and the Student’s Federalist Papers — kid-friendly editions of the country’s founding documents. By 2023, FLAG was reporting annual revenue of nearly $1.5 million, consisting of donations and merchandise sales. “Thanks to the support of 40,000+ grassroots patriots,” the organization’s website states, “over 1 million FLAG resources have been distributed in classrooms all across America.”
To give FLAG credibility in conservative circles, Adams assembled an advisory council of movement leaders including Hegseth, then a Fox News host; the late Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA; the late Edwin J. Feulner, founder of the Heritage Foundation; and Dennis Prager, the conservative radio host and co-founder of PragerU, a nonprofit that produces conservative educational materials. (The council has since been replaced with a board of directors.)
Adams did not respond to a detailed list of questions about FLAG’s financial practices, sweepstakes operation and educational programming. A Pentagon spokesperson declined to respond to questions but reiterated Hegseth’s support for FLAG.
Civics education has become a rallying cause across the Make America Great Again movement, whose slogan invokes a return to a specific vision of the country’s founding principles. PragerU is an approved curriculum provider in at least eight states. Turning Point USA pursued a similar goal through Turning Point Academy, a network of private schools. Along with those organizations, FLAG is now part of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition, a partnership of the U.S. Department of Education formed with over 40 conservative groups.
Trump’s return to office has been a boon for Adams. The president has called Adams one of his favorite authors, and a foreword in Adams’ 2024 book, “Alpha Kings,” credited to Trump calls Adams someone whose “work ethic equals his moral responsibility and faith in God.” Although Trump wasn’t able to attend FLAG’s 2023 annual gala, he sent a video praising the nonprofit and Adams, telling attendees that “tens of thousands of teachers are being trained and hundreds of thousands of parents and grandparents are now standing up for our kids.”
“It takes Nick from Australia to come and teach us about American greatness and to help us fight for our country,” Trump added. “He’s an American now, and we’re very lucky to have him.”
The White House press office declined to comment.
FLAG’s website invites teachers to request free classroom presentations, delivered by “certified FLAG Ambassadors,” including Adams himself, alongside guest speakers described as entrepreneurs, business leaders and immigrants. In 2016 and early 2017, FLAG regularly posted photos documenting visits to schools. After that period, however, ProPublica could not find similar documentation of FLAG representatives visiting schools.
Since 2016, as FLAG’s annual revenues grew from $68,000 to $1.1 million in 2024, there is almost no indication in the organization’s annual federal tax filings that it was spending money on its stated mission. No line item in FLAG’s federal tax filing identifies a payment to a school, a teacher or an educational distributor. Only two lines, in a 2017 federal filing, indicate $26,925 for “Student’s Constitutions, Printing” and $5,670 for “Book Donations, Shipping & Supplies.” In the last six years, while FLAG operated under Adams, the only documented instance of FLAG activity that appears to fit the definition of “educational” is a 2020 video showing Adams speaking at what is described as a teachers’ conference.
But the nonprofit has been lucrative for the Adams family. In 2024, Adams, who was born Nicholas Adamopoulos, and his mother, Angelika Adamopoulos, collected a combined $587,279 in compensation and benefits from FLAG — 53% of the organization’s revenue that year, according to the nonprofit’s federal filing.
Adamopoulos was paid $201,861, including benefits, as FLAG’s secretary. In the same filing, FLAG answered no when asked by the IRS whether any officer or director shared a family relationship with another director or officer. Adamopoulos did not respond to requests for comment.
Experts were troubled that the organization spent so much on Adams and his mother. “The amount being paid, both in absolute dollar terms and as a percentage of the organization’s revenues and expenses, is very high,” said Lloyd Mayer, a nonprofit law professor at Notre Dame Law School and a leading authority on tax-exempt organizations.
Mayer said Adams’ salary increases since FLAG’s founding are more of “a yellow flag,” than a clear violation. For FLAG’s first three years, Adams received no salary. He first took compensation in 2019 of just $20,400. Then his annual pay rose steadily to reach $411,209, or about 30% of the group’s total revenue, in 2023. Adamopoulos was the first employee outside of Adams to be paid a significant salary, in 2024. No other employee was paid more than $5,000 from 2016 to 2024, according to FLAG’s federal filings, obtained through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer.
The legal test, Mayer said, is whether the board was clear that it was making up for early years of low or no pay: “Were they explicit in saying, ‘We’re not just paying you for this year; we’re paying you for your past service, which you were not fairly compensated for’?”
The IRS asks nonprofits whether their executive compensation was reviewed by independent people and if they used comparisons to other similar organizations — a standard safeguard against self-dealing. In all filings from 2017 to 2024, FLAG answered no to both questions.
Philip Hackney, a nonprofit law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and former IRS official, said the absence of an independent review creates its own legal exposure. “Technically, that can be an excess benefit transaction on its own,” Hackney said, referring to the IRS category that triggers taxes on compensation paid to nonprofit insiders above fair market value.
FLAG claims that 66% of revenue goes toward program service expenses, according to a separate financial report filed with the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services in Florida, where the organization is now based. But the salaries of Adams and his mother, social media spending and travel expenses account for $755,541, or 86%, of the $878,208 allocated to program services.
Mayer said the classification is not automatically improper under federal law. “Education as a charitable purpose is a very broad category,” he said. “Spending money on staff, online communications and even fundraising appeals that have informational content can all be considered programmatic.”
“What [the IRS is] looking for is not inflated spending,” Mayer said. “They’re looking for disguised personal spending.”
In Australia, Adams was accused of spending taxpayer dollars on personal expenses. In 2006, when Adams was 22 years old, he served as a councillor in Ashfield, Australia. He was formally condemned by fellow councillors for running up thousands of dollars in phone calls and taxi charges for personal use while claiming them as council expenses. He repaid the charges after a formal investigation, according to a 2006 article in the Inner-West Weekly, an Australian newspaper.
FLAG’s online store sells Adams’ personal books — including “Alpha Kings” and “From Mar-a-Lago to Mars,” several marketed as signed copies for as much as $40 — alongside its own educational materials. One of Adams’ personal books, “Trump and Churchill,” is on the front page of FLAG’s online store, accompanied with language that says, “Proceeds from all sales go directly to promoting our mission and providing students and teachers with high-quality educational resources.” It is the only book with language that distinguishes which purchases fund FLAG’s mission or pay Adams directly.
In September, FLAG posted a photo from a conservative women’s convention showing Adams standing behind a table stacked with copies of his personal books displayed alongside FLAG-branded resources with the organization’s banner behind him. Adams’ books have also been advertised for sale on FLAG’s Facebook page, with links going directly to Adams’ personal website for the books rather than FLAG’s shopify page.
“He’s free to market his books,” Mayer said, “but if he has a charity do it, that means it’s not really a charity anymore, in that respect. It’s not about public benefit — the private benefit to him overrides the public benefit.”
In addition to the disclosure discrepancies, FLAG appears to have violated rules for conducting sweepstakes. Nearly all of FLAG’s revenue originates from individual donors, and most of that money is raised through a direct-mail sweepstakes operation that offers the chance to win prizes, in one case $1,000,000.
For years, FLAG has run a direct-mail sweepstakes campaign under names like “Payout Decision” and “Winner Search Swps.” Sweepstakes are regulated primarily at the state level, and organizations that run them are often required to register and report to state officials. Not every state requires this, but Florida, where FLAG is registered as a charity, does. FLAG does not disclose a sweepstakes program in its federal filings, and ProPublica could not locate any official sweepstakes registration for the organization in any state.
Nine years of FLAG’s federal filings contain no transaction consistent with a $1,000,000 payment. Hackney said any such payout would be expected to appear on the organization’s tax filings. “It should be an amount paid out at some point, and that would show up in a 990,” he said, referencing the name of the tax return filed by nonprofits, which is public. At its financial peak in 2023, FLAG held roughly $512,000 in total assets — about half the value of the prize it has offered to donors.
Mayer said the absence of a documented prize payment raises further legal questions. “If the promise is that someone will win $1,000,000 and no one ever does, that’s fraud,” he said. “That’s lying to induce people to support you.”
Internal records from a mailing list exchange database, which details how often and for what purpose organizations use mailing lists of potential donors, shows a shift in FLAG’s emphasis. Notes in FLAG’s record state that as of July 2020, FLAG was “not mailing much” through conventional fundraising channels and was “focusing on the sweeps side.”
In April 2024, someone filed a Better Business Bureau complaint against FLAG, alleging that its sweepstakes drawing deadlines had been repeatedly postponed — along with those of more than a dozen other charities the complainant said used the same practice. In a follow-up filing, the complainant cited FLAG’s timeline: a drawing originally set to run from January 2022 through December 2024 that had, by then, been pushed to run from December 2023 through January 2025.
“I just want them to pay me back my hard earned money,” the complainant wrote, “since I am a retired senior citizen who happened to love this country.”
FLAG told the BBB on May 6, 2024, that it had responded to the complainant.
FLAG marks its 10th anniversary on Wednesday, and is throwing itself a gala with tickets for the occasion priced at $1,000; $5,000; and $10,000. Adams is still listed on the website as FLAG’s founder but ceded the role of CEO in March to Cooper Rodenburg, a recent graduate of Stetson University, around the time he accepted his State Department role to promote tourism to the United States.
Reached by phone, Rodenburg requested that questions be sent by email but did not respond to them.
Rodenburg has since increased FLAG’s public activity, launching a TikTok account and a Substack newsletter, meeting with educational representatives and speaking to groups like the Shelby County Republican Women’s Club in Tennessee. A Substack post in April described FLAG, represented by Rodenburg and Adamopoulos, delivering founding documents to schools in Mississippi. This was one of the only specific program activities the organization has documented in recent years.
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