The Pulitzer Prize Board is unveiling the list of winners of the coveted award in journalism, complete with its usual list of finalists for reporting on police misconduct and other left-wing topics. 

The award for national reporting went to the Wall Street Journal for coverage of Elon Musk and his use of drugs, as well as an article about his reported private conversations with President Putin. The Journal reported in October 2024 that Mr. Musk had been in “regular contact” with the Russian president. Finalists for that award were articles about the rising death tolls related to police pursuits and the human and environmental toll of Hurricane Helene. 

The Washington Post received the award for breaking news reporting for its coverage of the first assassination attempt against President Trump. 

The award for breaking news photography went to the New York Times’s Doug Mills for a “sequence of photos of the attempted assassination of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, including one image that captures a bullet whizzing through the air as he speaks.”

The award for explanatory reporting went to the Times for an article about how America “sowed the seeds of its own failure in Afghanistan.” A finalist for that prize was reporting from ProPublica about how “insurance companies quietly, and with little public scrutiny, deny mental health services to those in need.”

For local reporting, the Baltimore Banner and the Times won the award for a “compassionate investigative series that captured the breathtaking dimensions of Baltimore’s fentanyl crisis and its disproportionate impact on older black men.”

A finalist for that award was the San Francisco Chronicle for its reporting on a “secret system of legal settlements that concealed California police misconduct for decades.”

The award for feature writing went to a contributor to Esquire who wrote a “sensitive portrait of a Baptist pastor and small-town mayor who died by suicide after his secret digital life was exposed by a right-wing news site.”

The winner of the public service reporting award was ProPublica for its “urgent reporting about pregnant women who died after doctors delayed urgently needed care for fear of violating vague ‘life of the mother’ exceptions in states with strict abortion law.”

The awards for fictional books and “drama” both went to Black men. Author Percival Everett won for “James,” which the board described as an “accomplished reconsideration of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ that gives agency to Jim to illustrate the absurdity of racial supremacy and provide a new take on the search for family and freedom.” The award for drama went to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins for “Purpose,” a “play about the complex dynamics and legacy of an upper middle-class African-American family whose patriarch was a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement.”

The awards come as President Trump is suing the Pulitzer Prize Board for its decision to defend awarding the 2018 national reporting prize to the Times and the Post for their coverage of allegations that members of the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russian operatives. Mr. Trump has repeatedly called for the Pulitzer Board to rescind the prizes.

However, the board had stood by its decision. In a statement released in 2022, the board said that there were two independent reviews of the reporting, and at their conclusion, it was determined that there were no “passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”

The 2022 statement may have been a mistake for the board, as it restarted the clock on the statute of limitations, which would otherwise have expired. 

As Mr. Trump has pursued the case, the board has faced a series of setbacks. In March, a circuit court judge, Robert Pegg, rejected the board’s request to delay the lawsuit until after Mr. Trump’s second term is complete. The Pulitzer Board said that the case would distract the 47th president from his duties. However, Judge Pegg said, “Should the duties of the President interfere with his ability to perform his obligations in this action, he is certainly entitled to seek the appropriate relief.” He also said that if the president does not comply with the court’s orders, the board can seek “appropriate sanction,” including fines.

The Pulitzer Board criticized Mr. Trump for pursuing the case while “simultaneously claiming that private citizens cannot pursue civil claims against him in the same exact court,” which it said should “raise concerns for all Americans.”

A spokesman for the board said it is considering its next steps. 

However, without settling the suit outside of court, it appears the case will be headed to trial in a venue likely to be unfriendly to media outlets. Multiple attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed or to change the venue have failed. 

In January, a jury in Florida found CNN liable for defaming a Navy veteran, Zachary Young, by claiming he preyed on desperate Afghans by charging them “exorbitant fees” to get out of the country. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but it has been speculated that it was a seven-figure settlement.