On the 2024 campaign trail with NPR’s Ximena Bustillo
Our 2024 election series 'Purple Ballot’ continues with an update from an NPR reporter who’s on the campaign trail. Ximena Bustillo joins us from the road and tells us about why candidates think they deserve your vote.
Ximena Bustillo, reporter with NPR’s Washington Desk

Women’s studies and racial studies intersect in real time with the Harris presidential campaign
If you’re teaching a class about American race relations, gender studies, or political science you’ve got your pick of real-life examples to share this semester. We speak with one woman who teaches all of them and hear about the kind of misogyny and racism one candidate for president is up against.
Nadia Brown, professor of Government, chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program and affiliate in the African American Studies program at Georgetown University

With no public swimming pools within a one-hour drive, Columbus County has become a pool desert.
Columbus County, NC doesn’t have a single public pool, and, says Border Belt Independent reporter Ben Rappaport, the nearest one is at least an hour away. He talks to co-host Leoneda Inge about a story he recently reported in partnership with The Assembly called “The Abandoned Pools of Columbus County.” It’s a story of economics and rural decay, and a story of racism.
Ben Rappaport, reporter at the Border Belt Independent