Reveal

When Valentino Rodriguez started his job at a high-security prison in Sacramento, California, informally known as New Folsom, he thought he was entering a brotherhood of correctional officers who hold each other to a high standard of conduct.Five years later, Rodriguez would be found dead in his home. His unexpected passing  would raise questions from his family and the FBI. Before he died, Rodriguez was promoted to an elite unit investigating crimes in the prison. His parents and his widow say he had been hoping for the position for a long time. But once inside the unit, the job consumed him. From day one, his fellow officers began to undermine and harass him. Stressed and fed up with how he was being treated, Rodriguez reached a breaking point. He left the prison, but his experiences there still haunted him—so he went in for a meeting with the warden. He didn’t know it would be his last.This week on Reveal, we partner with KQED reporters Sukey Lewis and Julie Small and the On Our Watch podcast to explore what this correctional officer’s story shows about how the second-largest prison system in the country is failing to protect the people who live and work inside it.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2024. Listen to the whole On Our Watch series here. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram

Every summer, 50 of the nation’s best and brightest teenage girls gather in Mobile, Alabama, to embark on two of the most intense weeks of their lives. Everybody wants the same thing: to walk away with a $40,000 college scholarship and the title of Distinguished Young Woman of America.Reporter Shima Oliaee competed for Nevada when she was a teenager, and was invited back as a judge more than 20 years later. Oliaee accepted, all while recording it for a six-part audio series called The Competition.In the final days of the competition, there was news from Washington that had big implications for women across the nation: Roe v. Wade had fallen. The girls are faced with a tough decision: Do they speak up for their political beliefs or stay focused on winning the money? And what might this mean for their futures—and their friendships?“This series changed how I view America,” Oliaee said. “I came away from it thinking, damn. American teen girls are the canaries in the coal mine.”This week, Reveal is partnering with The Competition podcast, from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios and hosted by Oliaee, to explore the dreams of young women, America’s promise, and what it takes to survive being a teen girl today. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram

Note: This episode contains descriptions of violence and suicide and may not be appropriate for all listeners. In 1989, Chuck Stuart called 911 on his car phone to report a shooting. He said he and his wife were leaving a birthing class at a Boston hospital when a man forced him to drive into the mixed-race Mission Hill neighborhood and shot them both. Stuart’s wife, Carol, was seven months pregnant. She would die that night, hours after her son was delivered by cesarean section, and days later, her son would die, too.Stuart said he saw the man who did it: a Black man in a tracksuit. Within hours, the killing had the city in a panic, and Boston police were tearing through Mission Hill looking for a suspect.  For a whole generation of Black men in Mission Hill who were subjected to frisks and strip searches, this investigation shaped their relationship with police. And it changed the way Boston viewed itself when the story took a dramatic turn and the true killer was revealed.This week on Reveal, in partnership with columnist Adrian Walker of the Boston Globe and the Murder in Boston podcast, we bring you the untold story of the Stuart murder: one that exposed truths about race and crime that few White people in power wanted to confront.  To hear more of the Boston Globe’s investigation, listen to the 10-part podcast Murder in Boston. The HBO documentary series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage, and Reckoning is available to stream on Max. This is an update of a show that originally aired in May 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram

Chief Red Cloud was a Lakota leader in the late 1800s, when the conflict between the US government and Native Americans was intense, and he was the tribal chief when the Catholic church built a boarding school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Generations of children were traumatized by their experience at the school, whose mission was to strip them of their language and culture.Red Cloud’s descendant Dusty Lee Nelson and other members of the community are seeking reparations from the church. “In my heart, in my soul, I feel like the best thing that they can do is to exit the reservation, return all property, and pay us,” Nelson said.In the second half of Reveal’s two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), members of the Pine Ridge community put pressure on the Catholic church to share information about the boarding school it ran on the reservation.ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, travels to the archives of the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions. She discovers that many records are redacted or off-limits, but then comes across a diary written by nuns. Buried in the diary entries is information about the school’s finances, the massacre at Wounded Knee, and children who died at the school more than a century ago. This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram

In the early 1990s, Justin Pourier was a maintenance man at Red Cloud Indian School, a Catholic school on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. One day, he says he stumbled upon small graves in the school’s basement. For nearly 30 years, Pourier would be haunted by what he saw and told no one except his wife. “Those are Native children down there…hopefully their spirit was able to travel on to whatever is beyond this world,” Pourier says. In 2022, he urged school officials to search the basement for the graves.The hunt for unmarked graves of Native children isn't happening just at Red Cloud, now called Maȟpíya Lúta. It’s one of more than 400 Indian boarding schools across the country that were part of a program designed by the federal government to “kill the Indian and save the man”—those were the actual words of one of the architects of the plan to destroy Native culture. In a historic first this fall, President Joe Biden apologized to Native Americans on behalf of the United States for the country’s past Indian boarding school policies.This week on Reveal, in a two-part collaboration with ICT (formerly Indian Country Today), we expose the painful legacy of boarding schools for Native children with ICT reporter Mary Annette Pember, a citizen of the Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe. She’s been writing about these schools for more than two decades. This is a rebroadcast of an episode that originally aired in October 2022.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. “He said his administration's going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week on Reveal, we look at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here Now; Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. We delve into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram

Nicole Chase was a young mom with a daughter to support when she took a job at a restaurant in Canton, Connecticut. She liked the work and was good at her job. But the place turned out to be more like a frat house than a quaint roadside sandwich spot. And the crude behavior kept escalating—until one day she says her boss went too far. Chase turned to the local police for help, but what happened next further complicated her life. Her quest for justice triggered a legal battle that dragged on for years, eventually reaching the US Supreme Court.“This man has caused me to lose so much money that I had to move out of my place,” Chase says. “I went to a doctor, I had to get put on more medicine for my PTSD and my anxiety attacks and all that. My whole life has been flipped upside down.” Reveal reporter Rachel de Leon spent years taking a close look at cases across the country in which people reported sexual assaults to police, only to find themselves investigated. In this hour, we explore one case and hear how police interrogated an alleged perpetrator, an alleged victim, and each other. De Leon’s investigation is also the subject of the documentary Victim/Suspect, streaming on Netflix, which won the 2024 Emmy Award for outstanding documentary research.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2023.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram This is an update of an episode that originally aired in March 2023.

Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris on Tuesday night to become only the second president in US history to win two nonconsecutive terms. (The last one? Grover Cleveland in 1892.) Trump won the presidency following one of the most tumultuous election years in modern US history—one that included an incumbent president pulling out of his  reelection bid, the vice president becoming the Democratic nominee a few short months before Election Day, and two assassination attempts on Trump.A majority of voters elected Trump to return to the White House following a campaign often filled with violent rhetoric, misinformation, and disparaging comments about women, immigrants, and people of color. Harris was unable to build a coalition to defeat Trump, losing both the Electoral College and the popular vote after a campaign that initially energized Democrats around the country after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.“America has never had a Black woman governor,” says Mother Jones editorial director Jamilah King. “So the fact that America’s never had a Black woman president is not surprising. I don’t think we as a country were quite ready for it.”In this Reveal podcast extra, host Al Letson sits down with King, as well as Mother Jones’ David Corn and Ari Berman, to break down how Trump won, why Harris’ campaign faltered, and where the nation goes from here. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Listen: Red, Black, and Blue (Reveal)Read: America Meets Its Judgment Day (Mother Jones)Read: Republicans Defeat Ohio Anti-Gerrymandering Initiative With Brazen Anti-Democratic Tactics (Mother Jones)Read: Trump Wins the White House in a Political Comeback Rooted in Appeals to Frustrated Voters (Associated Press)

In the late 1800s, Wilmington, North Carolina, was a city where African Americans thrived economically and held elected office. This did not sit well with White supremacists, who during the election of 1898 used violence to intimidate voters and overthrow the elected government. It’s considered the only successful coup d’etat in US history. The leader of the coup, a former Confederate colonel named Alfred Moore Waddell, gave a speech in which he told White people: “If you see the Negro out voting tomorrow, tell him to stop. If he doesn't, shoot him down. Shoot him down in his tracks.”This week on Reveal, we look back at that coup and its consequences. After the overthrow, North Carolina legislators passed laws segregating White and Black people in housing, trains, schools, libraries, and other public spaces. Those laws were copied in states across the South, sowing the seeds of the Jim Crow era and much of the structural racism that continues today.We then go further back in history, to just after the Civil War, when the US government made its famous “40 acres and a mule” promise to formerly enslaved people. Most Americans assume the promise of land was never kept, but over a two-and-a-half-year investigation, journalists at the Center for Public Integrity unearthed records that prove freed people had, and lost, titles to tracts of land that once were part of plantations.  This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram This is an update of episodes that originally aired in October 2020 and June 2024. 

Just a few years ago, Elon Musk seemed to be just another Silicon Valley billionaire with no true political compass. He once described himself as “half-Republican, half-Democrat” and often donated money to candidates from both parties. But all that seemed to change during the Covid-19 pandemic when Musk started taking much more right-wing stances about lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and many other divisive political issues, often spreading misinformation in the process.Today, Musk has donated almost $120 million of his own money to get Donald Trump reelected. He recently campaigned with Trump at New York’s Madison Square Garden, where he said he wasn’t just MAGA, he was “dark, gothic MAGA.” Musk is using both his financial resources as the world’s richest person along with the soft power he wields on X, the social media platform he bought two years ago, where he routinely posts to his 200 million followers why they should vote for Trump.In this Reveal podcast extra, host Al Letson talks about Musk’s political evolution with Mother Jones senior reporter Anna Merlan, who’s been covering the many ways Musk has tried to influence the 2024 election.“There have always been billionaires and titans of industry who get involved in politics,” Merlan says. “But I think the scale of Musk’s involvement is really different because it’s not just that he’s a billionaire. It’s not just that he’s endorsing Trump. It’s also that he controls a powerful and widespread communication medium.” Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram Read: Elon Musk’s Lawyers Quietly Subpoena Public Interest Groups (Mother Jones)Read: How Elon Musk is Tying His Love for Trump to His Fight in Brazil (Mother Jones)

In 2020, as elections officials counted votes in Phoenix, protesters swarmed outside the Maricopa County election center. Many held flags; some had AR-15s. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was there yelling into a bullhorn, “Burn in hell, Joe Biden.” They claimed the election was stolen. Since then, dozens of court cases across the country have all found no evidence of widespread fraud. Despite that, election workers in Arizona’s Maricopa County and across the country continue to be threatened, harassed, and doxxed.“Top election officials throughout the state have been turning over at the rate of a lunch shift at Taco Bell,” said Stephen Richer, the Maricopa County recorder. Richer, a Republican, says he voted for Donald Trump in 2020, but since taking office in 2021, he has spent a lot of his time working to dispel the election lies Trump helped create. And he’s faced ongoing death threats for steadfastly pushing back on those lies.  This week on Reveal: Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy takes listeners inside the recently fortified election center in Maricopa County, where Richer’s staff are on a mission to demonstrate to voters that the election process is free and fair and deserving of their trust. Murphy joins a public tour, one of at least 150 that have occurred since January 2021.Meanwhile in Georgia, new members of the State Election Board try to rewrite the rules to favor Trump. Mother Jones national voting rights correspondent Ari Berman unpacks the battle for control of the election results in the crucial swing state.Also on this show, a Reveal exclusive from the archives: an interview with Kamala Harris that has never before been broadcast. Nina Martin sat down with Harris when she was attorney general of California. Their conversation covers an array of topics, from housing to guns—issues that remain central to the presidential election today. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Earlier this month, former President Barack Obama stopped by a Kamala Harris campaign office in Pennsylvania and made headlines by admonishing Black men for being less enthusiastic about supporting her for president compared with the support he received when he ran in 2008.“Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives and other reasons for that,” Obama said.Within days of Obama’s comments, Harris unveiled an “opportunity agenda for Black men” in part to energize and engage this slice of the electorate. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 70 percent of likely Black male voters said they supported Harris, compared with more than 80 percent of Black men who voted for President Joe Biden in 2020. So should we believe the polls? Reveal host Al Letson and Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes are skeptical. In this podcast extra, Letson and Hayes discuss whether Democrats should be concerned about Black men defecting from the party, former President Donald Trump’s own plans to win them over, and why they think one of the most Democratic-leaning demographics in the US will likely stay that way.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Every four years, the presidential election brings with it a perennial question about an essential voting bloc: Who will Black voters turn out for? Mother Jones video correspondent Garrison Hayes has spent months on the campaign trail talking to Black voters about how they see the goals and limits of their own political power. He paid special attention to Black Republicans and a new crop of Black supporters of former President Donald Trump. This week on Reveal, we hear from voters at the Republican National Convention, a graduate from a historically Black university whose star is rising on the right after appearing in a viral video hugging Trump at a Chick-fil-A, and a Republican organizing other Black voters to turn out for Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Reverend Rob Schenck was once one of America’s most powerful and influential evangelical leaders. He routinely lobbied legislators to adopt a Christian conservative agenda. Members of his anti-abortion activist group barricaded the doors and driveways of abortion clinics. He even trained wealthy couples to befriend Supreme Court justices in an attempt to persuade them to render judgments that would please conservative Christians.But along the way, Schenck began doubting where the movement was taking him—and the country. His fellow activists seemed more interested in gaining power than advancing the tenets of humility and selflessness he remembers learning about when he first converted to Christianity. By the mid-2010s, he realized that he had been forging a dangerous, divisive path, one that was leading to a new Christian nationalism with Donald Trump as its figurehead.“I’m afraid I helped build the ramp that took Trump to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” he says. “And that’s a very painful reality for me.”Schenck has since left the movement and been ostracized by some of his former fellow activists for his opposition to Trump. In this podcast extra, Schenck sits down with host Al Letson to talk about his conversion into and out of Christian conservatism and what he’s doing today to rein in the very movement he helped to build. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

A small church in a small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, has been flexing its political muscle and building an outsized reputation for blurring the line between church and state. Pastor Don Lamb wants his congregants to be engaged in spiritual warfare and not be “head-in-the-sand, Jesus-loves-you kind of Christians,” especially when it comes to the local school board. To Lamb, this is not a Christian takeover. Yet his church is influenced by an elusive, hard-to-pin-down movement whose followers believe that Christians are called to control the government and that former President Donald Trump was chosen by God. It’s called the New Apostolic Reformation, and it’s nothing like the culture war–fueled Moral Majority of yesteryear. There are prophets and apostles, and a spiritual war is underway, not just in Pennsylvania. To win, the church has to do more than just preach the gospel; it has to get political.This week, Reveal’s Najib Aminy and Mother Jones reporter Kiera Butler explain what the New Apostolic Reformation is and what happens when it seeps into small-town churches like Lamb’s.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

As any schoolkid might tell you, US elections are based on a bedrock principle: one person, one vote. Simple as that. Each vote carries the same weight. Yet for much of the country’s history, that hasn't been the case. At various points, whole classes of people were shut out of voting: enslaved Black Americans, Native Americans, and poor White people. The first time women had the right to vote was in 1919. The reality is that one person, one vote is far from how American democracy actually works. In fact, the political institutions created by the Founding Fathers were meant to constrain democracy, and that system is still alive today. Institutions like the Electoral College and US Senate were designed as checks against the power of the majority. What’s more, the Supreme Court is a product of these two skewed institutions. Then there are newer tactics—like voter suppression and gerrymandering—that further erode democracy and often entrench the power of a conservative White minority.These are some of the conclusions from Mother Jones reporter Ari Berman in his latest book, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It.In a deep-dive conversation with Reveal host Al Letson, Berman traces the rise of conservative firebrand Pat Buchanan and how he opened the door for Donald Trump. Buchanan made White Republicans fear becoming a racial minority. And he opposed the Voting Rights Act, which struck down obstacles to voting like poll taxes and literacy tests that had been used to keep people of color from the polls. Buchanan never came close to winning the presidency, but he transformed White anxiety into an organizing principle that has become a centerpiece of much of today’s Republican Party.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in May 2024. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

The right to asylum has been enshrined in US law since the 1950s. It’s meant to provide a safe haven for people fleeing violence and government persecution. Laura Ascencio Bautista and her family have faced both in Mexico, where her brother Benjamin disappeared along with 42 others in 2014 after police stormed a bus from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College.In the years since, violence in her home state of Guerrero left Bautista desperate. She heard asylum was created for people like her. So she traveled north, headed for the perceived safety of the United States.“I was told that if I went to the US border and told my family’s story and how it’s not safe back home, the United States could protect me,” she said.Despite all the political hand-wringing about a crisis at the border, many Americans don’t understand what’s driving so many people from Mexico and other countries to come to the US in the first place. This week, Reveal senior reporter and producer Anayansi Diaz-Cortes takes us to a part of Mexico that many families are leaving behind—a place where fear is a part of daily life—and unwinds US policies that helped trigger the cycle of violence and migration that continues to this day.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

In the summer of 2023, Reveal host Al Letson felt compelled to return home to Jacksonville, Florida. His best friend had recently passed away following a long battle with cancer, and he wanted to be close to the place where they became men together.But when he arrived, he found a city and state he barely recognized. In recent years, the Republican-dominated legislature has passed a slate of laws targeting minority groups. Educators could now face criminal penalties over the material they teach regarding gender and sexuality. Schools across the state have banned books about queer families, transgender youth, and Black history. Many of these legislative changes were part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ so-called “war on woke,” launched ahead of his failed bid for the presidency. This week on Reveal, Letson examines Black life in Florida, following a rare travel advisory by the NAACP stating that “Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ individuals.” This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2024.

Reveal reporter Jonathan Jones was working on a story about a massive coal plant expansion in Montana when he wondered who was bankrolling the project. It turns out a major shareholder of the energy company driving the project was The Vanguard Group, the investment firm where he happens to have his retirement savings. This discovery put Jones on a quest to find out why Vanguard and other asset managers continue to invest in fossil fuels at a time when we need to burn less oil, gas, and coal.This week on Reveal, we look at the unsettling truth that our retirement savings could be fueling the very climate crisis that threatens our planet. From the site of a massive natural gas pipeline cutting through Appalachia to the boardrooms of Vanguard, we explore how our investments might be working against our values—and what can be done to align them with a sustainable future.  Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

Pregnant with her fifth child, Susan Horton had a lot of confidence in her parenting abilities. Then she ate a salad from Costco: an “everything” chopped salad kit with poppy seeds. When she went to the hospital to give birth the next day, she tested positive for opiates. Horton told doctors that it must have been the poppy seeds, but she couldn’t convince them it was true. She was reported to child welfare authorities, and a judge removed Horton’s newborn from her care. “They had a singular piece of evidence,” Horton said, “and it was wrong.”Hospitals across the country routinely drug test people coming in to give birth. But the tests many hospitals use are notoriously imprecise, with false positive rates of up to 50 percent for some drugs. People taking over-the-counter cold medicine or prescribed medications can test positive for methamphetamine or opiates.This week on Reveal, our collaboration with The Marshall Project investigates why parents across the country are being reported to child protective services over inaccurate drug test results. Reporter Shoshana Walter digs into the cases of women who were separated from their babies after a pee-in-a-cup drug test triggered a cascade of events they couldn’t control. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletterConnect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram