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Category: Al Letson NPR

  • Alabama’s Threats to Prosecute Abortion Helpers

    In August 2022, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made a guest appearance on a local conservative talk radio show. It was two months after the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, and abortion was now illegal in Alabama. And Marshall addressed rumors that he planned to prosecute anyone helping people get abortions out of state.  

    “If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state,” Marshall explained to the host, “then that is potentially criminally actionable for us.” 

    This particular threat launched an epic legal battle with implications for some of the most basic American rights: the right to travel, the right to free speech, the right to give and receive help. 

    This week on Reveal, reporter Nina Martin spends time with abortion rights groups in Alabama, following how they’ve adapted to one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion policies—and evolved their definition of help.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Nikole Hannah-Jones: Trump Is Erasing Black History

    President Donald Trump’s second term has swung a wrecking ball at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs throughout the country. Few writers seem better suited to explain this unique moment in America than Nikole Hannah-Jones.


    A New York Times journalist and Howard University professor, Hannah-Jones has spent years studying and shaping compelling—and at times controversial—narratives about American history. In 2019, she created The 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories and essays that placed the first slave ship that arrived in Virginia at the center of the US’ origin story. Today, the Trump administration is pushing against that kind of historical reframing while dismantling federal policies designed to address structural racism. Hannah-Jones says she’s been stunned by the speed of Trump’s first few months.


    “We haven’t seen the federal government weaponized against civil rights in this way” since the turn of the century, Hannah-Jones says. “We’ve not lived in this America before. And we are experiencing something that, if you study history, it’s not unpredictable, yet it’s still shocking that we’re here.”


    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks to Hannah-Jones about the rollback of DEI and civil rights programs across the country, the ongoing battle to reframe American history, and whether this will lead to another moment of rebirth for Black Americans.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson

    Read: Trump Shuts Down Diversity Programs Across Government (Mother Jones)
    Listen: 40 Acres and a Lie (Reveal)
    Read: The 1619 Project (The New York Times Magazine)

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves

    It’s been just over 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. 

    But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. 

    “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

    This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

    This episode originally aired in January 2025.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • How Public Schools Became Ground Zero for America’s Culture Wars

    Mike Hixenbaugh first knew things had changed when someone on a four-wheeler started ripping up his lawn after his wife placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their home on the suburban outskirts of Houston.

    Hixenbaugh is an award-winning investigative reporter for NBC News. He’s covered wrongdoing within the child welfare system, safety lapses inside hospitals, and deadly failures in the US Navy. But when his front yard was torn apart in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he saw a story about race and politics collide at his own front door. So like any investigative journalist, he started investigating, and his reporting about the growing divides in his neighborhood soon led him to the public schools.

    As more than a dozen states sue the Trump administration over its policies aimed at ending public schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, More To The Story host Al Letson talks with Hixenbaugh about how America’s public schools have become “a microcosm” for the country’s political and cultural fights—“a way of zooming in deep into one community to try to tell the story of America.”

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: The Culture War Goes to College (Reveal)

    Read: At the Heritage Foundation, the Anti-DEI Crusade Is Part of a Bigger War (Mother Jones)

    Read: They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms, by Mike Hixenbaugh

    Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism.

    Listen: Southlake/Grapevine podcasts (NBC News)

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  • Teaching Kids to Read: How One School District Gets It Right

    The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well. 

    According to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, Steubenville has routinely scored in the top 10 percent or better of schools nationwide for third grade reading, sometimes scoring as high as the top 1 percent.

    In study after study for decades, researchers have found that districts serving low-income families almost always have lower test scores than districts in more affluent places. Yet Steubenville bucks that trend.

    “It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” said Karin Chenoweth, who wrote about Steubenville in her book How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons From Unexpected Schools.

    This week on Reveal, reporter Emily Hanford shares the latest from the hit APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. We’ll learn how Steubenville became a model of reading success—and how a new law in Ohio put it all at risk. 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • How Trump Exploits Working Class Pain

    Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild is skeptical that Trump’s policies will actually benefit those in rural America. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America.

    In her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild visited Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage.
    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson
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    Read: Farmers in Trump Country Banked on Clean Energy Grants. Then Things Changed. (Mother Jones)

    Read: Trump’s Trade War Is Here and Promises to Get Ugly (Mother Jones)

    Listen: The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory (Reveal)

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • How Police Guns End Up in the Hands of Criminals

    When the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department in California wanted to purchase new firearms, it sold its used ones to help cover the cost. The old guns went to a distributor, which then turned around and sold them to the public. One of those guns—a Glock pistol—found its way to Indianapolis. 

    That Glock was involved in the killing of Maria Leslie’s grandson, and the fact that it once belonged to law enforcement makes her loss sting even more. 

    “My grandson was in his own apartment complex. He lived there,” Leslie said. “He should not have been murdered there, especially with a gun that traces back all the way to the California police department’s coffers.”

    This week on Reveal, in a collaboration with The Trace and CBS News, reporter Alain Stephens examines a common practice for police departments—trading in their old weapons rather than destroying them—and how it’s led to tens of thousands of old cop guns ending up in the hands of criminals.  

    This is an update of an episode first aired in July 2024. Since then, more than a dozen law enforcement agencies have stopped reselling their used firearms or are reviewing their policies.  

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • What Trump’s Tariff Shock Will Cost You

    Justin Wolfers teaches economics 101 at the University of Michigan. It’s an introductory course about supply, demand, and trade. The basics. He wishes President Donald Trump attended.

    Wolfers, an Australian known for his research on how happiness relates to income, is one of the more prominent economists speaking up about Trump’s sweeping tariff policies. He says that they not only betray the most basic laws of economics, but could very well tip the US into a recession unnecessarily.

    On this episode of More To The Story, Wolfers sits down with host Al Letson to discuss why today’s tariffs are markedly different from the ones Trump imposed in 2018 and why tariffs almost never produce the intended effects that are often promised.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Fact checker: Serena Lin | Digital producers: Nikki Frick and Artis Curiskis | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson 

    Read: Democrats Grill Officials on Insider Profits From Trump’s Tariff Reversal (Mother Jones)

    Read: Trump’s Trade War Is Here and Promises to Get Ugly (Mother Jones)

    Listen: Trump’s Deportation Black Hole (Reveal)

    Listen: Think Like an Economist

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Trump’s Deportation Black Hole

    On March 15th, federal agents rounded up more than 230 Venezuelan nationals who were then deported to El Salvador and locked up in the country’s notorious mega-prison. The Trump administration said the men belonged to a violent Venezuelan gang, but presented no evidence, and there were no court hearings in which the men could contest the allegations. 

    Nearly a month later, families of the Venezuelan men say they have heard nothing about their fate. It’s as if they disappeared. 

    “We’re living in a world where you can just be rounded up with no hearing, not even an administrative hearing, nothing,” says immigration attorney Joseph Giardina. “Why couldn’t you have let their cases be adjudicated? There’s no logical answer other than a publicity stunt.” 

    This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporters Isabela Dias and Noah Lanard speak to the families and lawyers of 10 men now imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT. They vehemently deny allegations that the men are members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, and several provided evidence to support that. 

    To learn more about the Trump administration’s arrangement with the government of El Salvador, host Al Letson speaks with Carlos Dada, co-founder and director of El Faro, the Salvadaron investigative news outlet. Dada says that in addition to foreign nationals, the agreement also allows for American citizens convicted of crimes to be imprisoned in El Salvador. 

    As the Trump administration also targets international students who have spoken out about Israel’s war in Gaza, Reveal’s Najib Aminy reports on pro-Israel groups that are claiming to have shared lists of student protestors with the White House, and then taking credit when some of those young people are targeted for deportation.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Trump’s “Pincer Attack” on Journalism Is Working. But There’s Hope.

    David Folkenflik occupies a unique role at NPR: He’s a journalist who writes about journalism. And that includes the very organization where he works, which is once again being threatened by conservatives in Washington.

    The second Trump administration has aggressively gone after the media in its first few months. It’s kicked news organizations out of the Pentagon. It’s barred other newsrooms from access to the White House. And Trump supporters in Congress are targeting federal funding for public media.

    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Folkenflik talks to host Al Letson about this unprecedented moment for journalists, why more media outlets seem to be bending the knee to the Trump administration, and how journalism can begin to win back public trust.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: Trump’s FCC chief opens investigation into NPR and PBS (NPR)

    Read: Meet the New State Media (Mother Jones)

    Read: The Media and Trump: Not Resistance, But Not Acceptance (Mother Jones)

    Watch: PBS and NPR leaders testify on federal support for public broadcasting in House hearing (PBS NewsHour)

    Follow us on Instagram @revealnews

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  • The Churn

    Adam Aurand spent nearly a decade of his life stuck in a loop: emergency rooms, psychiatric hospitals, jails, prison, and the streets in and around Seattle. 

    During that time, he picked up diagnoses of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. He also used opioids and methamphetamine.

    Aurand’s life is an example of what happens to many people who experience psychosis in the US: a perpetual shuffle from one place to the next for visits lasting hours or days or weeks, none of them leading to longer-lasting support.

    This week on Reveal, reporters who made the podcast Lost Patients, by KUOW and the Seattle Times, try to answer a question: Why do America’s systems for treating serious mental illness break down in this way? 

    The answer took them from the present-day streets of Seattle to decades into America’s past.

    You can find Lost Patients wherever you get your podcasts:

    NPR: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510377/lost-patients

    Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-patients/id1733735613 

    Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1avleoc5U4DA7U37GFPzIH 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2024. 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • She Launched “The Daily Show.” Now She’s Fighting Red State Abortion Bans.

    The Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead’s path to advocacy was a curvy one. She started out as a comedian, first as a stand-up and then working on The Daily Show. In the early 2000s, she co-founded Air America Radio, which was designed to be a counterweight to the popularity of radio personalities on the right.

    Today, as producer of the Feminist Buzzkills podcast and founder of Abortion Access Front, she’s weaving together politics and comedy to educate people about abortion laws and give them the tools to fight. 

    Thank you to Abortion Access Front for the use of its video “I’m Just a Pill” at the beginning of our episode. 

    Credits | Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: The Post-Roe Health Care Crisis (Reveal)

    Read: Planning for the Worst in Trump’s Next Term: Prepare, Don’t Panic, and Don’t Comply in Advance (Mother Jones)

    Read: The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill (Mother Jones)

    Watch: I’m Just a Pill (Abortion Access Front via YouTube)

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Strike That Broke a Supermax Prison

    At 18, Jack Morris was convicted of murdering a man in South Los Angeles and sent to prison for life. It was 1979, and America was entering the era of mass incarceration, with tough sentencing laws ballooning the criminal justice system. As California’s prison population surged, so did prison violence. 

    “You learn that in order to survive, you yourself then have to become predatorial,” Morris says.  “And then, you then expose somebody else to that, and it’s a vicious cycle.”

    When California started aggressively targeting prison gangs, Morris was accused of associating with one of the groups. The punishment was severe: He was sent to a special supermax unit at the state’s highest-security prison, Pelican Bay. 

    The facility was designed to isolate men deemed the “worst of the worst.” Like Morris, most lived in near-total isolation. No phone calls, no meaningful physical contact with another human, no educational classes, no glimpses of the outside world. The only regular time out of a cell was for a shower and solo exercise in another concrete room.

    Decades later, prisoners at Pelican Bay, including Morris, started a dialogue through coded messages and other covert communication. They decided to protest long-term solitary confinement by organizing a hunger strike. It would become the largest in US history and helped push California to implement reforms.

    This week on Reveal, we team up with the PBS film The Strike to tell the inside story of a group of men who overcame bitter divisions and harsh conditions to build an improbable prison resistance movement.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Exclusive: Trump Fired This Top Watchdog. Now He’s Speaking Out.

    Fraud, waste, and abuse: That’s what inspectors general are tasked with investigating throughout the federal government. But in his first week in office, President Donald Trump did something unprecedented. He fired at least 17 IGs—more than any president in history—without notifying Congress or providing a substantive rationale for doing so, both of which are required by federal statute.


    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with one of those fired IGs, Larry Turner of the US Department of Labor, in his first full interview since being let go. Turner says the kind of fraud that Elon Musk’s DOGE says it has found within days isn’t actually possible to uncover as quickly as Musk claims. And he describes Trump’s effort to oust inspectors general like himself as a threat to democracy itself.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Production manager: Zulema Cobb | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson


    Read: Trump Ousts Multiple Government Watchdogs in a Late-Night Purge (Mother Jones)

    Donate today at Revealnews.org/more

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Deputies Who Tortured a Mississippi County

    When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes. 

    But in 2018, she learned the hard way that the rumors were true when a group of sheriff’s deputies raided the home of her friend Rick Loveday and beat him relentlessly while she watched. 

    A few years later, Dettore-Murphy says deputies put her through another haunting incident with her friend Robert Grozier. Dettore-Murphy was just the latest in a long line of people who said they witnessed or experienced torture by a small group of deputies, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad.” 

    For nearly two decades, the deputies roamed Rankin County at night, beating, tasing, and choking suspects in drug crimes until they admitted to buying or selling illegal substances. Their reign of terror continued unabated until 2023, when the deputies were finally exposed.

    “Rankin County has always been notorious,” says Garry Curro, one the Goon Squad’s many alleged victims. “They don’t follow the laws of the land. They make their own laws.”

    This week on Reveal, reporters Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield with Mississippi Today and the New York Times investigate the Goon Squad, whose members have allegedly tortured at least 22 people since the early 2000s. 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Bird Flu, Measles, and Trump’s Ticking Time Bomb

    This month marks the five-year anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed 1.2 million people in the US alone. While life has returned to normal for most Americans, the threats to our health haven’t disappeared.
    On this week’s episode of More To The Story, infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malaty Rivera talks with host Al Letson about the collision course between the Trump administration’s health priorities and our developing public health emergencies, including the spread of bird flu and the ongoing measles outbreaks. We’ve not only failed to learn our lessons from the pandemic, she argues, but we also might be stumbling into the next one.

    Donate today at Revealnews.org/moreSubscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weeklyFollow us on Instagram @revealnews

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producers: Nikki Frick and Artis Curiskis | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson

    Listen: The Covid Tracking Project (Reveal)


    Read: Avian Flu Could Define Trump’s Second Presidency (Mother Jones)

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • The Plague in the Shadows

    Decades before Covid-19, the AIDS epidemic tore through communities in the US and around the world. It has killed some 40 million people and continues to take lives today. 

    But early on, research and public policy focused on AIDS as a gay men’s disease, overlooking other vulnerable groups—including communities of color and women. 

    “We literally had to convince the federal government that there were women getting HIV,” says activist Maxine Wolfe. “We actually had to develop treatment and research agendas that were about women.”

    This week on Reveal, reporters Kai Wright and Lizzy Ratner from the podcast Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows take us back to the first years of the HIV epidemic in New York City. 

    One of the most influential activists for women with AIDS was Katrina Haslip, a prisoner at a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. In the 1980s, Haslip and other incarcerated women started a support group to educate each other about HIV and AIDS.

    Haslip took her activism beyond prison walls after her release in 1990, even meeting with leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of the main goals was to change the definition of AIDS, which at the time excluded many symptoms that appeared in HIV-positive women. This meant that women with AIDS often did not qualify for government benefits such as Medicaid and disability insurance. 

    The podcast series Blindspot: The Plague in the Shadows is a co-production of The History Channel and WNYC Studios. 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in February 2024.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Trump’s Mass Deportations Are Decades in the Making

    This past weekend marked a major escalation in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, with the dramatic detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who played a prominent role in the protests against Israel on Columbia University’s campus last year. Khalil, a Columbia graduate student, is a permanent legal resident in the US. The Trump administration says it detained Khalil for what it described, without evidence, as his support for Hamas, and President Donald Trump promised “this is the first arrest of many to come” in a Truth Social post. In the meantime, a federal court in New York prevented the federal government from deporting Khalil while it hears his case. He’s currently being held at an immigration detention facility in Louisiana.


    Khalil’s arrest—and the Trump administration’s reimagining of immigration writ large—are in many ways a product of decades of dysfunction within the US immigration system itself. On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Reveal’s new weekly interview show, host Al Letson talks with The New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer about the 50-year history of the country’s inability to deal with migrants at the southern border and why the Trump administration’s approach to immigration is much more targeted—and extreme—than it was eight years ago.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson


    Dig Deeper/Related Stories:


    Did the US Cause Its Own Border Crisis? (Reveal)

    https://revealnews.org/podcast/did-the-us-cause-its-own-border-crisis/


    Immigrants on the Line (Reveal)

    https://revealnews.org/podcast/immigrants-on-the-line/


    The Forgotten Origins of a Migration Crisis (Mother Jones)

    https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/02/jonathan-blitzer-migration-crisis-everyone-who-is-gone-is-here-interview/


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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • An Atrocity of War Goes Unpunished

    In November 2005, a group of US Marines killed 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq. The case against them became one of the most high-profile war crimes prosecutions in US history—but then it fell apart. Only one Marine went to trial for the killings, and all he received was a slap on the wrist. Even his own defense attorney found the outcome shocking. 

    “It’s meaningless,” said attorney Haytham Faraj. “The government decided not to hold anybody accountable. I mean, I don’t know, I don’t know how else to put it.”

    The Haditha massacre, as it came to be known, is the subject of the current season of The New Yorker’s In the Dark podcast and this week’s episode of Reveal. Reporter Madeleine Baran and her team spent four years looking into what happened at Haditha and why no one was held accountable. They also uncovered a previously unreported killing that happened that same day, a 25th victim whose story had never before been told. 

    Photos from this story, as well as a searchable database of military war crimes, can be found at newyorker.com/season-3.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • How Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History

    One of President Donald Trump’s first actions as president was simple and sweeping: pardoning 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. That single executive action undid years of work and investigation by the FBI, US prosecutors, and one person in particular: Tim Heaphy.Heaphy was the lead investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and he’s arguably done more than anyone to piece together what happened that day. His work helped inform related cases that were brought against rioters, Trump administration officials, and even Trump himself.In the first episode of More To The Story, Heaphy talks to host Al Letson about how Trump swept aside those consequences; the overlap between the January 6 attack and the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and what Trump’s pardons mean for the country going forward.

    Check out the Reveal episode Viral Lies, in which we dig into the origins of “Stop the Steal.”
    Support our journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
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    More To The Story team:

    Kara McGuirk-Allison, Josh Sanburn, Al Letson 

    Taki Telonidis, Brett Myers, Fernando Arruda, Jim Briggs, Nikki Frick, Kate Howard, Artis Curiskis


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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • A Decade of Reveal

    This week on Reveal, we celebrate our 10-year anniversary with a look back at some of our favorite stories, from investigations into water shortages in drought-prone California to labor abuses in the Dominican Republic. And we interview the journalists behind the reporting to explain what happened after the stories aired.  

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • More To The Story with Al Letson

    From the unflinching investigative team behind Reveal comes a new weekly podcast that delivers More To The Story. Every Wednesday, Peabody Award-winning journalist Al Letson sits down with the people at the heart of our changing world for candid—sometimes uncomfortable—conversations that make you rethink your entire newsfeed. Whether he’s sounding the alarm about the future of democracy, grappling with the shifting dynamics of political power, or debating big cultural moments, Al always brings his unfiltered curiosity to topics and perspectives that go too often ignored. Because, as Al reminds us every week on Reveal, when you take the time to listen, there’s always More To The Story. Find it in your Reveal feed beginning March 5, 2025.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • 40 Acres and a Lie Part 3

    The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades. 


    Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation. 


    “They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land (to) take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain…There’s all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.”


    It’s an examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how?


    This week on Reveal, in honor of Black History Month, we explore the long-delayed fight for reparations.


    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • 40 Acres and a Lie Part 2

    Skidaway Island, Georgia, is home today to a luxurious community that the mostly White residents consider paradise: waterfront views, live oaks and marsh grass alongside golf courses, swimming pools, and other amenities. 

    In 1865, the island was a thriving Black community, started by freedmen who were given land by the government under the 40 acres program. They farmed, created a system of government, and turned former cotton plantations into a Black American success story.

    But it wouldn’t last. Within two years, the government took that land back from the freedmen and returned it to the former enslavers. 

    Today, 40 acres in The Landings development are worth at least $20 million. The history of that land is largely absent from day-to-day life. But over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove that dozens of freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts at what’s now The Landings. 

    “You could feel chills to know that they had it and then they just pulled the rug from under them, so to speak,” said Linda Brown, one of the few Black residents at The Landings.

    This week on Reveal, with the Center for Public Integrity and in honor of Black History Month, we also show a descendant her ancestor’s title for a plot of land that is now becoming another exclusive gated community. And we look at how buried documents like these Reconstruction-era land titles are part of the long game toward reparations.  

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • 40 Acres and a Lie Part 1

    Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land—only to see it returned to their enslavers.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024. 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Immigrants on the Line

    Mackenson Remy didn’t plan to bypass security when he drove into the parking lot of a factory in Greeley, Colorado. He’d never been there before. All he knew was this place had jobs…lots of jobs. 


    Remy is originally from Haiti, and in 2023, he’d been making TikTok videos about job openings in the area for his few followers, mostly other Haitians.


    What Remy didn’t know was that he had stumbled onto a meatpacking plant owned by the largest meat producer in the world, JBS. The video he made outside the facility went viral, and hundreds of Haitians moved for jobs at the plant. 


    But less than a year later, Remy—and JBS—were accused of human trafficking and exploitation by the union representing workers at the plant. 


    “This is America. I was hoping America to be better than back home,” says Tchelly Moise, a Haitian immigrant and union rep. “Someone needs to be held accountable for this, because this is not okay anywhere.” 


    This week on Reveal, reporter Ted Genoways with the Food & Environment Reporting Network looks into JBS’ long reliance on immigrant labor for this work—and its track record of not treating those workers well. The difference this time is those same workers are now targets of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • After the Crash

    A police officer chased a Native teen to his death. Days later, the police force shut down without explanation.

    In 2020, Blossom Old Bull was raising three teenagers on the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana. Her youngest son, Braven Glenn, was 17, a good student, dedicated to his basketball team.

    That November, Old Bull got a call saying Glenn was killed in a police car chase that resulted in a head-on collision with a train. Desperate for details about the accident, she went to the police station, only to find it had shut down without any notice.  

    “The doors were locked. It looked like it wasn’t in operation anymore—like they just upped and left,” Old Bull said. “It’s, like, there was a life taken, and you guys just closed everything down without giving the family any answers?”

    This kicks off a yearslong search to find out what happened to Glenn and how a police force could disappear overnight without explanation. This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Samantha Michaels’ investigation into the crash is at once an examination of a mother’s journey to uncover the details of her son’s final moments and a sweeping look at a broken system of tribal policing.

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in April 2024. 

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    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves

    It’s been 20 years since the Battle of Fallujah, a bloody campaign in a destructive Iraq War that we now know was based on a lie. 

    But back then, in the wake of 9/11, the battlefield was filled with troops who believed in serving and defending the country against terrorism. 

    “Going to Fallujah was the most horrific experience of our lives,” said Mike Ergo, a team leader for the US Marines Alpha Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I’ve ever felt.”

    This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

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  • All the President’s Pardons

    President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son and President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to set free people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, bring back memories of what’s considered the most controversial pardon ever: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford’s pardon of the former president in 1974 sparked outrage among politicians and the American people. 

    “I had a visceral feeling that the public animosity to Mr. Nixon was so great that there would be a lack of understanding, and the truth is that’s the way it turned out,” Ford said in an interview broadcast for the first time on Reveal. “The public and many leaders, including dear friends, didn’t understand it at the time.”

    This week on Reveal, we look at the politics of pardons and discover that beyond those that make headlines, there is a backlog of thousands of people who’ve waited years—even decades—for presidents to make a decision about their petitions for clemency. 

    This is an update of an episode that originally aired in July 2019. 

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • Fortress Europe: The Fight for Refugees in Greece

    In 2015, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and repression were trying to reach safe havens in Europe. From his home in Norway, Tommy Olsen decided to travel to Greece, a major gateway for migrants and refugees. He joined hundreds of volunteers  helping the new arrivals and later created an NGO, the Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the plight of asylum seekers in Europe.


    Today, Olsen is a wanted man in Greece, caught up in a crackdown on refugees and people trying to defend their right to asylum.


    “I didn’t know what I walked into,” Olsen says.


    Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, has condemned Greece’s harsh migration policies and the way its government is targeting activists like Olsen. But she says Europe as a whole is also to blame.


    “The whole notion of migration is a dirty word now,” she says. “The whole notion of refugees is a dirty word now.”


    This week on Reveal, reporters Dinah Rothenberg and Viola Funk from the Berlin podcast studio ACB Stories take us to Greece, where refugees and human rights defenders face legal and sometimes physical attacks from authorities trying to seal the country’s borders.

    This post was originally published on Reveal.