Michelle R. Smith is a senior science investigative reporter for The Guardian US.

She is investigating the powerful forces behind attacks on science and public health. She previously was a reporter for the Associated Press.

With her colleagues, Michelle has uncovered how a network of groups tied to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed a wave of legislation in the states aimed at dismantling public health protections built over a century, and how deep cuts by the Trump administration have had real-world impact in communities across the country, eroding the foundations of the U.S. public health system. She and her colleagues revealed how Kennedy’s work has hurt people around the world, and how Kennedy capitalized on the pandemic to turn his anti-vaccine nonprofit group into a juggernaut.

Michelle was correspondent and narrator for a PBS FRONTLINE documentary based on her AP reporting on former national security advisor Michael Flynn and the Christian nationalist movement he is building. “Michael Flynn’s Holy War” was selected in 2023 for a Peabody Award and a Scripps Howard Award. The Peabody judges praised the team’s dogged reporting and “willingness to shine a bright light on religious extremism and its intersection with current politics.”

In collaboration with a team of reporters from KHN, she examined the nation’s public health system in an award-winning series, Underfunded and Under Threat. The work highlighted the many challenges to the nation’s public health system during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the chronic lack of funding, how politics was slowing pandemic aid, and how threats were pushing staff out of the field and jeopardizing the entire system.

Her profiles and investigations of candidates for offices ranging from the U.S. Supreme Court to U.S. president have broken news and informed the public about their backgrounds and records.

Michelle has two decades of experience covering breaking news and writing about topics of national and international significance.

She calls Providence, Rhode Island, home.