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Ryan E. Little

Ryan Little is an award-winning data journalist and the Roy W. Howard Investigative Fellow at Mother Jones. He also contracts work with ProPublica and the Associated Press' election web scraping team.

He previously worked at the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, the Capital News Service and The Ledger in Lakeland, Fla. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Associated Press and elsewhere.

Little has a master’s degree from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland. There, he focused his studies on computational and data journalism. His undergraduate degree is from the Nicholson School of Communication and Media at the University of Central Florida, where he studied journalism and public administration.

Mother Jones • January 28, 2022

We uncovered the impact of GOP voting restrictions in one key state. It's staggering.

“States are not engaging in trying to suppress voters whatsoever,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared last year. Facts on the ground in Georgia tell a different story. A new data analysis by Mother Jones shows that the number of voters disenfranchised by rejected mail ballot applications skyrocketed after the GOP-controlled legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on mail voting last year. The law enacted in March 2021 shortened the time people have to request and retur

How Purdue Pharma paid out to politicians and pill-pushers

Before it was dissolved this fall, Purdue Pharma made billions selling the painkillers behind the overdose crisis while giving millions to patient advocacy groups, doctors’ organizations, and academia—spending that effectively served as an OxyContin marketing blitz. Yet the details of this largesse have long been murky. Congressional and media investigations have named only a handful of recipients, and a more comprehensive view of Purdue’s payouts didn’t exist—until now. Buried among thousands

NEW EVIDENCE: Trump extremists brought numerous guns to the Capitol on January 6

For more than eight months, Republican lawmakers have sought to rewrite the harrowing events of January 6. They have continually whitewashed the assault on the US Capitol despite copious footage showing mobs of Trump supporters ransacking Congress, threatening to kill Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and viciously attacking scores of police officers with chemical spray, fire extinguishers, hockey sticks, and flagpoles. The attack led to several deaths and was followed by

Trump administration proposes reversal of homeless policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new federal plan to end homelessness released last week by the Trump administration calls for a reversal of Obama-era “housing first” policies. The plan, released Oct. 19, is the first from the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness since President Donald Trump fired its executive director last year and replaced him with Robert G. Marbut Jr., a former government consultant who has recommended homeless support systems that rely on the threat of jail to push homeles

Cities try to arrest their way out of homeless problems

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) — In the nine years he has been homeless, Kenneth Shultz has spent one of every three nights in jail. The 71-year-old retiree has been charged with trespassing 96 times, including after he fell asleep behind gas stations, outside office buildings and in a city park. His 1,034 days in jail have come with a crushing debt of $41,311 in court costs, fines and fees and an estimated taxpayer tab of nearly $50,000.