Wire · Issue 003
Where the settlement money went
Four pieces on public money that was promised to specific people, and the paperwork showing where it actually went. Two of them are about the same opioid settlement architecture Pennsylvania counties are spending against right now, which is why they are here rather than in someone else’s roundup.
The through-line is not outrage. It is that in each case a reporter or a researcher went and read the filings, and the filings said something different from the announcement.
Wisconsin governments have received $160 million in opioid settlement funds. Here's where it's going.
Addie Costello and Hongyu Liu built the database nobody had: what every local government in Wisconsin has actually done with its opioid settlement money, compiled from the spending reports state law requires them to file. Eight governments had spent more than half their money by the end of 2025. Sixteen had spent none. At least seventeen routed money to law enforcement.
EvidenceAn original database assembled from mandatory annual filings, checked against survey responses and state agency data. The reporting is the compilation itself, which is a different thing from reading someone else's summary of it.
New website tracks how Pennsylvania's $2.2B in opioid settlement funds is being spent
A county-level tracker of Pennsylvania's settlement money, built by researchers at three Pennsylvania universities rather than by a newsroom, with the builders writing up how and why. This is the tool our own settlement reporting keeps wanting to exist.
EvidenceResearchers describing an instrument they built. Read the disclosure, which they publish and which travels with the piece: all four authors report funding from the Pennsylvania Opioid Misuse and Addiction Abatement Trust, which is the body distributing the money the tracker tracks.
"A Punch in the Gut": After Years of Waiting, Many Opioid Victims Will Be Shut Out of Purdue Settlement
Craig R. McCoy and Bob Fernandez read roughly a thousand pages of bankruptcy filings and claim-denial letters against what claimants were told to expect. The revised $7.4 billion settlement tightened eligibility to the point that more than half of about 140,000 claimants receive nothing.
EvidenceCourt filings and denial letters, read in volume. Built from the paperwork rather than from the announcement, which is why it reaches a finding the press release does not contain.
More Than 770,000 Children Are No Longer Receiving SNAP Benefits After Trump Changes to Federal Food Aid
Nicole Santa Cruz sets state-by-state participation data against what lawmakers said the changes would do. The gap between the two is the story, and it is a number rather than an inference.
EvidenceOfficial participation data compared with the public record of what was promised. Nothing in the argument rests on an anonymous account or on a photograph.