Reveal

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...

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.   Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our...

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, grapplin...

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 some...

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 governm...

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 .  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 Bluesky , Facebook...

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 ont...

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 h...

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 Co...

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 th...

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...

It was their first day in battle and the two best friends had just switched places. Bob Fordyce rested while Frank Hartzell crawled down into the shallow foxhole, taking his turn chipping away at the frozen ground. Just then, German artillery fire began falling all around them. With his body plastered to the ground, Hartzell could feel shrapnel dent his helmet. When the explosions finished, he pic...

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, Rodr...

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 y...

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 preg...

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...

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...

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 sai...

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 n...

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 nomi...

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 nam...

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 d...

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 tha...

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...

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...