Post Reports

Today a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse on all counts in last summer’s shootings in Kenosha, Wis. We talk about the verdict, what it means and why this trial captivated the nation. 

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After three and a half days of deliberation, jurors in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse have found the 18 year-old not guilty on all charges — including homicide and reckless endangerment. 

Rittenhouse fatally shot two people and shot and wounded a third during a protest against police conduct in Kenosha, Wis., in August 2020. Rittenhouse, who is White and was 17 at the time of the shootings, said he was acting in self defense. 

National reporter Mark Berman says the prosecution and defense presented dramatically different narratives of the shootings. 

And Kim Bellware reports from outside the Kenosha courthouse, where a crowd is gathering in support of the family members of the people shot by Rittenhouse.Gun control groups and racial justice activists are calling the verdict a dangerous decision. 

The parents of Anthony Huber, one of the people fatally shot by Rittenhouse, said in a statement they are “heartbroken and angry” over the verdict. 

“We watched the trial closely, hoping it would bring us closure,” they said. “That did not happen.”

Follow The Washington Post’s live coverage of the Rittenhouse trial here. 

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How Belarus’s president is weaponizing a refugee crisis to get back at the European Union. And, what it means to “pass” as White. 

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Thousands of refugees are currently stuck in limbo on the border between Poland and Belarus, invited by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko when he announced that his state would no longer secure Belarus’s border with the European Union. 

The invitation was his way of retaliating against sanctions that the E.U. has enacted against Belarus for a number of reasons. But the power play has created a refugee crisis at the border — one that threatens to grow deadlier as temperatures drop in the forests between Belarus and Poland, Loveday Morris reports. 

Later in the show, we continue our Teens in America series with a story from 17-year-old Ichtaca Lira. Ichtaca has always been certain of their identity as a person of color. But when people on social media told them that they looked White, it sent them down a path of self-exploration: What does it mean to “pass” as White?  

“Language has simply not evolved fast enough with the rate that these complex discussions about race are happening,” Ichtaca says. “We don't have enough words to describe people of color who also just don't feel like they fit into anything that's out there right now.”

This series is produced in collaboration with YR Media, a nonprofit media, music and technology incubator. For more stories in this series, visit wapo.st/teens. 

Sen. Joe Manchin gets all the attention. But Sen. Kyrsten Sinema could be an even bigger obstacle for Democrats’ spending plans. Today on “Post Reports,” we ask what she wants and how she got here.

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Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D) has been throwing a wrench in the plans of her own party. The Arizona lawmaker has stalled her votes on major legislative plans including raising the minimum wage and increasing drug prices. But her agenda isn’t explicitly clear, and she’s doing deals behind closed doors, angering her colleagues and her constituents.

Congressional reporter Mike DeBonis reports on Sinema’s political trajectory and what we can glean from it about what her motivations are.

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Correction: In this episode, we misstated the senator who Sen. Kyrsten Sinema replaced in Arizona. She took over Jeff Flake's senate seat in Arizona, not John McCain's. The audio has been updated to reflect the correction.

Why America’s digital divide could soon get worse. And, what happens when extremist beliefs move from the fringe to the mainstream. 

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When they were rolled out nearly two decades ago, 3G wireless networks served as the bedrock of an explosion in cell phones and connected devices. Now, they’re being phased out by telecommunications companies that want to focus their money on their 4G and 5G networks. Cat Zakrzewski reports on the vulnerable Americans that could be left behind if the transition away from 3G networks isn’t done carefully. And if you use a 3G device, here’s what you need to know about the end of the 3G service. 

On Monday, Stephen K. Bannon – one of President Donald Trump’s former advisers – walked into the FBI’s field office in Washington and turned himself in. He’d been charged with two counts of contempt of Congress the week before, having refused to comply with a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. 

Hannah Allam reports on some of the other actors facing legal consequences for their involvement in the Capitol riot – and on how the ideologies that fueled the insurrection are finding new homes at school board and city council meetings.

The introduction to this episode has been updated for clarity.

The intertwined legacies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former President Donald Trump. And, what happens to a country when its borders are eroded by climate change. 

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Mitch McConnell is the most powerful elected Republican in the country. But the most influential member of the GOP is arguably still former president Donald Trump. That dynamic has become the basis for a tense, awkward, sometimes pugilistic alliance between the two men -- one that could define the future of the Republican Party. In recorded telephone interviews with the politicians, reporter Michael Kranish examines a relationship fraying at the seams. 

As COP26 concludes, the sinking island nation of Tuvalu prompts the question: Are you still a country if you’re underwater? William Booth reported from the U.N. climate summit. 

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During the pandemic, online shopping has become more popular than ever. That’s especially true as we head into the holidays. Today, we look at one community that says it’s seeing the costs of that growth in its air quality. 

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To meet the increased online shopping demand, companies like Target, Walmart and Amazon use big distribution centers — warehouses that store products and ship things to customers as fast as possible. (We should say here that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

These warehouses can take a toll, though — on Amazon workers, as The Post has reported, and on the community around them. 

Today on Post Reports, Kori Suzuki brings us to Fontana, Calif., where a fight over warehouses has consumed the city.  

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The Americans who are retiring — but delaying claiming Social Security benefits. Plus, the next installment in our Teens in America series: a story about students taking on the job of educating their peers about race.

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For better-off Americans, the pandemic economy created some of the strongest incentives to retire in modern history, with generous federal stimulus, incredible market gains, skyrocketing home values and health concerns drawing many Americans into early retirement.

The surprising twist? Many of these retirees also opted to put off claiming Social Security benefits, an exclusive Washington Post analysis shows. By delaying their benefits, these retirees can expect to collect higher monthly checks in the future, as economics reporter Andrew Van Dam explains.

Later in the show, we continue our Teens in America series by hearing from 18-year-old Zoë Jenkins. Though she was a high-achieving student, her experience at school in Kentucky was clouded by racist incidents — plus, she wasn’t really getting an education on race in her classrooms. So she decided to take matters into her own hands, and created a diversity, equity and inclusion curriculum for Gen Z, by Gen Z.

“There are issues in the world that I feel like I can address,” Zoë said. “I feel like I should be doing that. And I think more teenagers feel like we have to do something. So many things are coming to a kind of a tipping point.”

If you value the journalism you hear in this podcast, please subscribe to The Washington Post. We have a deal for our listeners: one year of unlimited access to everything The Post publishes for just $29. To sign up, go to washingtonpost.com/subscribe. 

Today, we’re taking a closer look at the state of Donald Trump post-presidency — his businesses, his finances, the ongoing criminal investigations into his actions and how all of those things could affect a potential political comeback.

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The Post’s David Fahrenthold has spent half a decade reporting on former president Donald Trump’s family and its business interests — first when Trump was a candidate, then when he was president and now that he’s a private citizen again.

There was a narrative popular among liberals during Trump’s presidency that he would face legal and financial ruin as soon as he was out of office. For a number of reasons, the reality is a little bit more complicated. David fills us in on the latest on Trump’s businesses, his legal battles and what it means that the Trump White House’s records could be turned over to the House Jan. 6 committee.

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The homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse pits claims of self-defense against accusations of vigilantism. Plus, in the next installment in our series on teens in America: Why it can be especially hard for Black immigrant families to talk about racism.  

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The homicide trial of Kyle Rittenhouse – the teenager who killed two people and injured a third during a protest over the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wis. – continues this week. Kim Bellware reports on the evidence brought by both sides, and why the trial likely won’t end with a high-profile conviction. 

“We have a small set of facts that everybody agrees on,” Bellware says. But while the prosecution is arguing this was first-degree intentional homicide, “The other side is saying, ‘Yes, he did kill these people. He did shoot. But he was doing it to protect himself.’ ”

And later in the show, we hear from 16-year-old Obse Abebe, a teen reporter with YR Media for the latest installment of our series on Teens in America. 

Obse was born in Ethiopia but moved to the United States when she was three. Being Ethiopian and living in America meant that Obse had to come to terms with being Black in America. 

“Not to say that the topic of race is hush-hush in our family,” Obse said. “But it is difficult to approach when your parents are very passionate about you feeling connected to both their culture from their mother country and the culture that you are currently in.”

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that nearly three-quarters of teens in America say they’ve talked to a parent about race in the past year. More than half say they’ve had a similar conversation with a close friend. As part of The Post’s Teens in America series, we’re listening in on what those conversations sound like. 

For more in this series, visit wapo.st/teens.

If you value the journalism you hear in this podcast, please subscribe to The Washington Post. We have a deal for our listeners — one year of unlimited access to everything the Post publishes online for just $29. To sign up, go to washingtonpost.com/subscribe.

After eight people were killed at a Travis Scott concert in Houston late Friday, many of us were left wondering: How did this happen? An expert on crowds explains how too many people packed closely together can become deadly.

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An estimated 50,000 people attended the sold-out 2021 Astroworld Festival at NRG Park to see Travis Scott, whose concerts have a reputation for being raucous.

The Washington Post reviewed dozens of videos from the night to understand how the concert became a mass casualty event, synchronizing video from the audience with a live stream of Scott’s performance published by Apple Music. The videos show a chaotic scene, with concertgoers crying out for help as the show continued, the loud music drowning them out.

The crowd surge victims include a 14-year-old who loved baseball, two friends celebrating a 21st birthday and a 27-year-old attending the concert with his fiancee. Here’s what we know about the victims.

We reached out to Keith Still, a professor of crowd science at the University of Suffolk in Britain, to talk about how these tragedies happen and how they could be prevented.

If you value the journalism you hear in this podcast, please subscribe to The Washington Post. We have a deal for our listeners: one year of unlimited access to everything The Post publishes for just $29. To sign up, go to washingtonpost.com/subscribe.