Post Reports

A violent showdown between Sudan’s two most powerful leaders has brought a new level of instability to the region. Today on “Post Reports,” a look at how the country went from hopes of democracy just a few years ago to being on the cusp of civil war. 

The conflict between the country’s main military and paramilitary leaders – boiled over on Saturday, rocking the country’s capital and catching civilians, aid workers and international residents in the crossfire.  

“The scale of the violence and how quickly it broke out caught people by surprise,” Katharine Houreld, The Post’s East Africa bureau chief, tells “Post Reports.” “And that’s meant millions of people have been trapped not just in the capital, but in cities all over Sudan.” 

Sudan is the third-largest country in Africa, home to 46 million people. For decades, it has faced an uphill battle in its quest for peace and democracy. 

In 2019, the country’s longtime ruler, Omar al-Bashir, was ousted. An interim joint civilian-military government was formed, with the aim of transitioning to a democracy over time. But in the fall of 2021, the country’s military chief, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, took over the government in another coup, in an uncomfortable alliance with the paramilitary head, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo. 

Now their infighting and escalating violence is raising worries that such volatility could spread throughout the horn of Africa. 

“There's a lot at stake in this conflict,” Houreld says. 

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Generals’ war chests have fueled fighting in Sudan. 

Sudan’s neighbors fear spillover as death toll from clashes nears 200.

Civilian toll rises in Sudan as military, rivals fight for control. 

Veterans of violence, Sudan’s weary doctors brave another crisis.

U.S. convoy, aid workers attacked. 

Today, we look at how vague language in antiabortion laws has disrupted the standard of care for a pregnancy complication called PPROM.

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Anya Cook wants a baby more than anything. She and her husband, Derick, live in Florida. They experienced a long line of miscarriages. Then last fall, they tried IVF, and they got further in their pregnancy than ever before. Cook found herself shopping for baby clothes and maternity swimsuits. But then her water broke at 16 weeks; this was the beginning of a harrowing medical experience for Cook. 

Last week, Florida passed a bill that will enact a stricter abortion ban in the state; abortions are only legal through the first six weeks of a pregnancy. The law does have exceptions for fetal anomalies, rape, incest or if the life of the mother is in danger. But while these exceptions seem clear-cut, in reality, the way they are written into the law is vague. Reporter Caroline Kitchener tells us the story of Anya Cook, a woman whose complicated pregnancy got stuck in the gray area of Florida’s abortion ban. 

When Ron DeSantis first ran for governor in Florida in 2018, a campaign ad boasted that he “dealt with terrorists in Guantánamo Bay.” Today on "Post Reports," our reporter digs in on everything we can learn about that time.

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Florida governor and potential 2024 candidate Ron DeSantis is in the news a lot. But little is known about his time serving as a Navy lawyer at Guantánamo Bay.

Today on “Post Reports,” political investigative reporter Michael Kranish tells us everything he could learn about a pivotal and violent year at the prison, and DeSantis’s role during it.

Ahead of opening arguments Monday, we unpack the Dominion defamation case against Fox News, and what the outcome could mean for the future of the media and democracy.

For the past week, the world has been transfixed by a massive leak of top-secret Pentagon documents. Today, we hear directly from one of the teenagers who was part of the Discord channel where it all started, and get inside the head of the alleged leaker.

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On Thursday, a young member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard was arrested by the FBI in the investigation into leaks of hundreds of pages of classified military documents to a Discord group of friends and acquaintances. 

Today on “Post Reports,” we hear from one of the teenagers who was part of that online group and get insight into why someone with a security clearance and a position in the U.S. military might leak these documents.

As national security and intelligence reporter Shane Harris explained, usually when people leak information it’s because they want to expose wrongdoing by the government, or they think a crime is being committed. But his source said the alleged leaker is not a whistleblower.

“I've never encountered an instance when someone was releasing classified information because he wanted to impress a bunch of teenagers,” Harris said.

The photos of top-secret Pentagon documents first started appearing online on Discord, a chat platform popular with gamers. But where did they come from? And just how many military secrets do they contain? 

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Last week, reports surfaced that a trove of classified documents was leaked on a number of social media platforms. The documents cover worldwide intelligence briefings, assessments of Ukraine’s defense capabilities, and the highly classified methods the United States uses to collect information. 

But were these documents real? U.S. officials who spoke to The Washington Post said that some of the materials did not appear forged. Still, some documents appeared to be manipulated, including data from the Ukraine war that suggested Russian casualties were not as high as reported.

Today on the show, national security reporter Alex Horton walks through the origin of the leaked documents, how the Justice Department is investigating these revelations, and what consequences these could have for the war in Ukraine, and the rest of the world.

Late Friday, two conflicting rulings threw a key abortion medication’s FDA approval into question. Today on Post Reports, we break down the legal confusion and talk about what could happen next.  

At the center of this unprecedented legal clash is mifepristone, a drug that is part of a two-step abortion pill regimen used by millions of people. A federal judge in Texas blocked the FDA’s longtime approval of the drug. Less than an hour later, another federal judge, in Washington state, ordered that the drug remain available in a swath of states. 

The dueling cases are creating confusion and questions about the future of medication abortion in America. 

Today on “Post Reports,” legal affairs reporter Ann Marimow walks through the cases and what they mean. 

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A Texas abortion pill ruling threatens the FDA.

Can I still get a medication abortion?

In a divided nation, dueling decisions on an abortion pill. 

Don’t miss a chance to experience “Post Reports” live! “Post Reports” senior host Martine Powers will be in conversation with author Curtis Sittenfeld at Sixth & I in Washington at 7 p.m. on April 13. Get tickets here.

An especially risky kind of virus hunting aims to identify new viruses in animals that have yet to jump to humans. Imagine trips to distant caves and wrangling bats to pull blood and DNA samples. The hope is to use that knowledge to be a step ahead and develop therapeutics and surveillance that could help prevent a future outbreak or, worse yet, a deadly pandemic from erupting.

But a year-long Post investigation by David Willman and Joby Warrick has found that such research may be putting the world at greater risk for the very thing it’s trying to contain, as a result of potential leaks and accidents in the wild and in the labs. The Post discovered that the world lacks oversight for such high-risk research, yet a main driver of its expansion in recent

years has been the United States. Experts within the administration have been raising red flags.

The covid-19 pandemic, Willman and Warrick continue, is forcing difficult and uncomfortable conversations around doing such research and how to responsibly prepare for and prevent the next big pathogen threat to humans.

“There are thoughtful, well-informed scientific experts who are saying, ‘look, it’s time for a reckoning. We have observable lessons from the pandemic. We need to apply those,’” Willman tells Post Reports.

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How controls on ‘gain of function’ experiments with supercharged pathogens have been undercut despite concerns about lab leaks.

NIH biosecurity advisers urge tighter oversight of pathogen research

Lab-leak fears are putting virologists under scrutiny

What we know about the origin of covid-19 and what remains a mystery. 

Don’t miss a chance to experience Post Reports live! Post Reports senior host Martine Powers will be in conversation with author Curtis Sittenfeld at Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., at 7 p.m. on April 13. Get tickets here.

What is it like to leave a country in crisis - only to return years later to a devastated homeland? Today, a Post photojournalist journeys back to Iraq after 24 years. 

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Salwan Georges, a photojournalist at The Post, left Iraq more than two decades ago. Georges and his family spent five years in Syria as refugees, eventually settling in Detroit, Mich. 

As The Post prepared to cover the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, Georges traveled back to his homeland for the first time since leaving. Through his camera lens, he rediscovered the Baghdad he left behind, and the sites of familial joy and tragedy that had long been left to imagination. Today on the show, Georges talks about his homecoming and what it meant to return to Iraq as a photojournalist. You can view Georges’s photo essay, “The Iraq I Never Knew,” here. 

The Post Reports team has two pieces of exciting news to share. First, we’ve been nominated for four Webby Awards, including best hosts. If you like the show, please consider voting for us! You can learn more about the Webby Awards and vote for our show here.

Second, don’t miss a chance to experience Post Reports live. Post Reports senior host Martine Powers will be in conversation with author Curtis Sittenfeld at Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., at 7 p.m. on April 13th. Get tickets here.

Many American cities are being gentrified — and getting Whiter. Today on “Post Reports,” we go to Denver to see how the city has changed and what longtime residents are doing about it.

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As the United States is getting more diverse, the opposite has been happening in American cities over the past decade. In some cities, local governments have invested more money in public infrastructure such as parks and transportation to attract residents as developers have built new upscale apartment buildings. Based on an analysis of census data by The Post, Marissa Lang and her colleagues took a closer look at four U.S. cities to understand the different ways that gentrification is changing life for residents.

One of these cities was Denver, where Marissa spent time with politicians and residents who are fighting to prevent displacement and heard about what it’s been like to see their city change rapidly in shape and demographics.    

Don’t miss a chance to experience “Post Reports” live! “Post Reports” senior host Martine Powers will be in conversation with author Curtis Sittenfeld at Sixth & I in D.C. at 7 p.m. on April 13. Get tickets here.