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Vera Bergengruen
Vera Bergengruen is a political correspondent in the Washington, D.C. bureau.
Recent Articles
The NRA's Power is Waning. Opposition to New Gun Laws Isn't.
For years, proponents of tougher gun restrictions have placed much of the blame for America's crisis of gun death on the National Rifle Association. So it was no surprise that in the aftermath of the...
By Charlotte Alter and Vera Bergengruen
May 25, 2022
Buffalo Exposes Limits Of Biden's Domestic Terror Strategy
“This is not 2001, where we’re wondering why radicalization happens."
By W.J. Hennigan and Vera Bergengruen
May 20, 2022
'There's No Such Thing As a Lone Wolf.' The Online Movement That Spawned the Buffalo Shooting
The gunman accused of murdering 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket seemed to fit a familiar pattern. Isolated and bored during the pandemic, he had become increasingly radicalized by consuming white-supremacist content online. He had...
By Vera Bergengruen
May 16, 2022
Families of American Hostages Demand Biden Do More
Alexandra Forseth has made eight pilgrimages to Washington during the past four years. The 30-year-old once again made the trip this week from her home in San Diego to push the White House to secure...
By Vera Bergengruen
May 5, 2022
'We're Back.' Far-Right Groups Celebrate Elon Musk's Twitter Takeover
While much of the online world reacted with surprise and skepticism when news broke of Elon Musk's stunning $44 billion acquisition of Twitter on Monday, some corners of the Internet broke out in jubilation. "Today...
By Vera Bergengruen
April 27, 2022
How Ukraine Is Crowdsourcing Digital Evidence of War Crimes
It all looks like a game at first. Verified users of Ukraine's government mobile app are greeted with options illustrated by icons of military helmets and targets. An automated prompt helps you report Russian troop...
By Vera Bergengruen
April 18, 2022
How Kyiv Adapted the City's Tech to Save Lives
When Oleg Polovynko thinks of the first days of the Russian invasion of his country, he looks down at his fitness watch. In normal times, the 38-year-old IT director in Kyiv’s city council used his...
By Vera Bergengruen
April 4, 2022
Telegram Becomes a Digital Battlefield in Russia-Ukraine War
Before the Russian military invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Nataliia Nezhynska had never used Telegram. Now she can’t go a day without the messaging app. It feeds her an endless stream of updates from her...
By Vera Bergengruen
March 21, 2022
The Man On Ukraine's Digital Frontline
Ukraine's youngest minister is inventing a whole new way to fight a war online
By Vera Bergengruen
March 15, 2022
Putin May Escalate War, U.S. Spy Chiefs Warn
'Putin is angry and frustrated right now,' CIA head William Burns said
By Vera Bergengruen
March 8, 2022
Crowdfunding Site for Right-Wing Causes Generates Windfall
The trucker-led protests that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and galvanized supporters across the world ended Feb. 20 without achieving their goal of ending Canada's COVID-19 restrictions. But there was one clear winner from the demonstrations: GiveSendGo,...
By Vera Bergengruen and Chris Wilson
March 4, 2022
Ukrainian Officials Appeal Directly to Russian Soldiers and Their Families
As representatives gathered for the United Nation’s first emergency session in decades on Monday, the most pointed moment came when Ukraine’s Ambassador highlighted not the plight of his countrymen, but of the young Russian soldiers...
By Vera Bergengruen
March 1, 2022
The Battle for Hearts and Minds in Ukraine
As Russian troops closed in on Kyiv and battered the Ukrainian capital with missile strikes on Friday, rumors spread by Russian state media said that President Volodymyr Zelensky had fled the country. That evening, as...
By Vera Bergengruen
February 25, 2022
Trump DHS Chief's Election Trips Cost $223,652, Records Show
Five days before the 2020 presidential election, acting Homeland Security chief Chad Wolf flew to Texas to celebrate the construction of the 400th mile of the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. The milestone hadn’t actually...
By Vera Bergengruen
February 9, 2022
Haitian-Americans Say Biden Is Turning His Back
It takes a lot to faze Marleine Bastien. After growing up under the brutal dictatorship of François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, she left Port-au-Prince for Miami in 1981. The 62-year-old thought she had seen it all...
By Vera Bergengruen / MIAMI
February 1, 2022
How the Anti-Vax Movement Is Taking Over the Right
Lee Haywood got the COVID-19 vaccine. He's seen friends lose their lives to the virus, and watched others struggle to recover. A smoker for 37 years, he believes the medical evidence showing that the vaccine...
By Vera Bergengruen
January 26, 2022
Justice Department Launches Unit to Fight Domestic Terrorism
A year after thousands of pro-Trump rioters invaded the U.S. Capitol by brute force, the Biden Administration has a new tool to battle the growing problem of violent extremism inside America. A new unit is...
By Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan
January 24, 2022
For the Jan. 6 Rioters, Justice Is Still Coming
The FBI's massive investigation of Jan. 6 rioters is delivering convictions—and resistance
By Vera Bergengruen
January 5, 2022
Frances Haugen Warns of Congress 'Inaction' on Facebook
Deep partisan divisions are hampering any legislative or regulatory reforms to hold tech platforms accountable
By Vera Bergengruen
December 1, 2021
‘Give Us a Break!’ Cuban Activists Say U.S. Sanctions Are Blocking Them from Online Services
On Nov. 9, Cuban journalist Elaine Diaz was trying to send out a newsletter to the subscribers of Periodismo de Barrio, her watchdog news site covering human rights issues on the island, when she got...
By Vera Bergengruen
November 19, 2021
Congress Investigates Ivermectin Sales After TIME Story
Spreading misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines has never been more lucrative. The past year has created a thriving online marketplace for unproven COVID-19 “wonder drugs,” fraudulent vaccination cards, fake religious or medical exemptions, and other products...
By Vera Bergengruen
November 17, 2021
Why Political Disinformation in Honduras Is Spreading
At 10:16pm on October 7, a cluster of nineteen Twitter accounts shared identical opinions about the upcoming presidential election in Honduras at the exact same second. Claiming to be supporters of opposition candidate Xiomara Castro,...
By Vera Bergengruen
November 15, 2021
Why Facebook Employees 'Deprioritized' a Misinformation Fix
In May 2019, a video purporting to show House Speaker Nancy Pelosi inebriated, slurring her words as she gave a speech at a public event, went viral on Facebook. In reality, somebody had slowed the...
By Billy Perrigo and Vera Bergengruen
November 10, 2021
Why Families of U.S. Hostages Overseas Are Growing Frustrated with Biden
On Oct. 16, Cristina and Veronica Vadell found themselves frantically following the dotted line of a plane’s path on a flight-tracking website from their homes in coastal Louisiana. The aircraft, which belonged to the U.S....
By Vera Bergengruen
October 27, 2021
How Ravkoo Pharmacy Sold Millions Worth of Ivermectin
A TIME investigation reveals how a company with a history of criminal behavior secured taxpayer funds to prop up a business distributing dubious drugs to misinformed patients
By Vera Bergengruen
October 13, 2021
Inside the U.S. Base Where Afghans Wait
On the last morning of September, dozens of Afghan children cheered on their older brothers as they played a lively game of soccer with U.S. Army soldiers on a military base in rural Wisconsin. As...
By Vera Bergengruen/Fort McCoy, Wis.
October 4, 2021
With All Eyes on Washington, the Real Far-Right Threat Has Moved On
A much-hyped “Justice for J6” rally on Saturday to support individuals being prosecuted for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was over in little more than an hour. Inside a crowd...
By Vera Bergengruen
September 18, 2021
U.S. Vows to Continue Fight From Afar
The Biden Administration has vowed to keep terrorist threats in Afghanistan at bay from “over the horizon,” by monitoring the situation and deploying drones
By Vera Bergengruen
August 31, 2021
Inside the Group Peddling a Bogus COVID Treatment
Mike says he was struggling with COVID-19 when he felt his breathing getting worse. He did not want to go to the Veterans Affairs hospital near his home, where he believed doctors might put him...
By Vera Bergengruen
August 26, 2021
Afghan Americans Scramble to Help Family Back Home
While their neighbors argued about political blame and long-term consequences, for Afghan Americans the tragic scenes overseas are personal.
By Vera Bergengruen
August 17, 2021
Joe Biden's Fight With Facebook Is Just Beginning
One post links to a video of a purported doctor alleging 62% of his patients have developed microscopic blood clots after being vaccinated. Another cites an alleged physician claiming humans already have built-in immunity to...
By Alana Abramson and Vera Bergengruen
July 20, 2021
The Driving Forces Behind the Cuba Protests
In a video posted to YouTube in February, a teenager named Alita panned her camera in a Havana grocery store to show aisle after aisle of neatly stacked, identical yellow bottles of cooking oil—and not...
By Vera Bergengruen
July 12, 2021
A Veteran's Journey From Army to Storming the Capitol
The crackle of handheld radios broke the morning stillness. Sound carries in the country, and on the rural outskirts of Arab, Ala., curious neighbors stepped onto their porches, craning their necks to see what was...
By Vera Bergengruen/Arab, Ala. and W.J. Hennigan/Washington
July 9, 2021
Surfside Collapse Renews Focus on Climate Risks
Though it’s not yet clear what factors caused the 13-story condo tower to crumble, experts say the disaster could have ripple effects that shake years of breakneck growth in Miami real estate.
By Vera Bergengruen and Justin Worland
July 1, 2021
Why the Surfside Collapse Is a Different Kind of Disaster
Questions are mounting after a 13-story condo tower collapsed. Was this a cruel freak accident, or a preventable tragedy? And if so, could others be next?
By Vera Bergengruen / Surfside, Florida
June 29, 2021
Exclusive: Trump Created an Office That Highlighted Immigrant Crime. Biden's DHS Plans to Keep It
In January 2017, one of Donald Trump's first moves as President was to create a new office that highlighted crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. For four years, the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement office, known...
By Vera Bergengruen
May 14, 2021
The 'America First' Tour Holds a Trump Rally Without Trump
For an hour and a half on Friday evening, it was as if the 2020 election had never ended. "Tell me, who’s your president?" asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. “Donald Trump!” the crowd shouted. Did...
By Vera Bergengruen/The Villages, Fla.
May 8, 2021
QAnon Candidates Are Winning Local Elections. Can They Be Stopped?
Conspiracy theorists are winning local elections. Communities are struggling to fight back
By Vera Bergengruen
April 16, 2021
China Eclipses Terrorist Groups as Top U.S. Security Threat, Intelligence Chiefs Say
The national security threats that top intelligence officials laid out for lawmakers on Wednesday were dominated by China’s efforts to expand its global influence and the “cascading crises” and “looming disequilibrium” facing the Biden Administration...
By Vera Bergengruen
April 14, 2021
The Capitol Attack Was Well Documented. Will That Ensure Justice?
As evidence mounts, so does the challenge of making the case and deterring future violence.
By Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan
April 9, 2021
Facebook Acted Too Late to Tackle 2020 Election Misinformation: Report
Facebook tweaked its algorithms in October, but advocacy group Avaaz finds the platform had already amplified false and toxic content by then
By Vera Bergengruen and Billy Perrigo
March 23, 2021
Isn't the Atlanta Shooting a Hate Crime?
The 21-year-old white man who police say went on a shooting spree at three Atlanta-area massage parlors on Tuesday was charged with eight counts of murder in the attacks, intensifying widespread fears and sorrow over...
By Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan
March 18, 2021
2020 Saw a Surge in White Supremacist Propaganda
An Anti-Defamation League (ADL) study recorded 5,125 incidents of white supremacist propaganda last year, nearly double the number of cases in 2019
By W.J. Hennigan and Vera Bergengruen
March 17, 2021
"Ya Basta." A New Coalition Calls on Facebook to Tackle the Spanish Misinformation Crisis
“It’s bad enough in English, but when it comes to Spanish they're doing almost nothing."
By Vera Bergengruen
March 16, 2021
Inside the Biden Administration's Battle Against Far-Right Extremism
The Biden Administration has vowed to defeat far-right extremism. It just needs to figure out how
By Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan
March 4, 2021
Merrick Garland Vows to Prioritize Domestic Terrorism
Merrick Garland said investigating the Capitol insurrection was his “first priority” and promised to “do everything in the power of the Justice Department” to stop domestic terrorism.
By W.J. Hennigan and Vera Bergengruen
February 23, 2021
'A Real Nightmare.' State Capitols Are Racing to Catch Up to the Far-Right Threat
As a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters besieged the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, a few dozen protestors chanting similar slogans were breaching the gate of the governor’s mansion in Olympia, Wash.,...
By Vera Bergengruen
January 13, 2021
How Ashli Babbitt Is Being Turned Into a Far-Right Recruiting Tool
This was Ashli Babbitt’s crowd. “We are walking to the Capitol in a mob. There’s an estimated over three million people here today,” the 35-year-old Californian announced to the viewers watching her video stream, narrating...
By Vera Bergengruen
January 10, 2021
Why Were Capitol Police Easily Overrun?
Within minutes, a pro-Trump mob destroyed police lines and invaded the Capitol, raising questions about what went wrong
By W.J. Hennigan and Vera Bergengruen
January 7, 2021
Photographs Inside the Chaos at the Capitol
A mob whipped up by the President stormed police lines, smashed windows and broke into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in an attempt to block lawmakers from certifying President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. The violent...
By Vera Bergengruen and TIME Photo Department
January 6, 2021
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