Reveal

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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. 

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.