When Liz Oyer was appointed US pardon attorney in 2022 by President Joe Biden, she’d landed her dream job. As a longtime public defender, Oyer was now in a position to advise the president on the backlog of thousands of individuals seeking presidential clemency. But earlier this year, her dream job ended abruptly.

In March, Oyer was asked to make a recommendation to Attorney General Pam Bondi to reinstate actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, which were rescinded after a domestic violence conviction in 2011. Oyer reviewed the case and refused. Within hours, she says she was terminated.

 
Last month, Oyer testified about her firing in front of Congress. She not only accused the Department of Justice of “ongoing corruption” and abuses of power, but she also said the administration tried to send armed US marshals to her home carrying a letter warning her against testifying. Oyer says it felt like “an attempt to display the power of the Department of Justice” and “make me afraid of telling the truth about the circumstances leading up to my termination.”

 
In a statement, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche called Oyer’s allegations about her firing erroneous and said her decision to voice those accusations is “in direct violation of her ethical duties as an attorney and is a shameful distraction from our critical mission to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation’s immigration laws, and make America safe again.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, Oyer sits down with host Al Letson to discuss the details of her firing, the role of the US pardon attorney, and how an advocate and defender of January 6 insurrectionists took her place inside the Justice Department.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Read: A Whistleblower Says Trump Sent the US Marshals to Try to “Intimidate” Her (Mother Jones)
Listen: All the President’s Pardons (Reveal)
Listen: How Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History (More To The Story)
Watch: Congressional Democrats Hold Meeting on the Trump Administration Agenda (C-SPAN)

In 2014, in the college town of Isla Vista, California, a 22-year-old man killed six people and injured 14 others before killing himself. He didn’t suddenly “snap” one day out of the blue; he planned the attack and spiraled into crisis in the years leading up to it. The horrific incident left violence prevention experts wondering: What were the missed warning signs?

One person who held some of the answers was the killer’s mother, Chin Rodger. She has long avoided the media, fearing that speaking publicly would only hurt the victims’ families more. But more than a decade later, she’s come to see a greater purpose—that sharing what she knows about her son’s behavior before the attack could help others identify similar warning signs and prevent further violence. 

“I hope that my hindsight will be your foresight,” she says.

This week on Reveal, Rodger talks publicly for the first time with Mother Jones reporter Mark Follman. By confronting and sharing the painful memories and evidence her son, Elliot, left behind, Rodger has contributed to the field of threat assessment—teams of people who specialize in collecting information on possible threats, connecting the dots, and intervening before tragedy strikes. 

This is an update of an episode that originally aired in May 2024. 

Lindsay Aime remembers the moment his Haitian immigrant community came under a national spotlight. It was September 2024 when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump accused Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating people’s pets. To Aime, who is originally from Haiti but has lived in Springfield since 2019, the accusation was not just absurd. It felt like Trump was portraying his entire community as criminal.

Today, the estimated 10,000 Haitian immigrants in Springfield are under a different sort of spotlight. The Trump administration is trying to revoke the legal status that allows hundreds of thousands of Haitians and other immigrants to live in the US. Those moves are being challenged in court, but many are feeling panicked and confused. Aime is the co-founder of the Haitian Community Help and Support Center in Springfield, a resource for immigrants looking for legal advice, especially now. “We don’t have any good news,” he says. “We keep telling all our people who come in our office: Stay safe, stay safe, stay safe. Stay out of trouble.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Aime about what it was like when all eyes were on his community during the election, why returning to his home country is not an option, and the challenges of trying to reunite with a son still living in Haiti.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Taki Telonidis and Brett Myers | Host: Al Letson

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Listen: Trump’s Deportation Black Hole (Reveal)
Read: Bomb Threat Prompts Evacuation of Springfield, Ohio, City Hall (Mother Jones)
Read: After Jailing of Newark Mayor, DHS Official Warns of “More Arrests Coming” (Mother Jones)

In August 2022, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall made a guest appearance on a local conservative talk radio show. It was two months after the US Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade, and abortion was now illegal in Alabama. And Marshall addressed rumors that he planned to prosecute anyone helping people get abortions out of state.  

“If someone was promoting themselves out as a funder of abortion out of state,” Marshall explained to the host, “then that is potentially criminally actionable for us.” 

This particular threat launched an epic legal battle with implications for some of the most basic American rights: the right to travel, the right to free speech, the right to give and receive help. 

This week on Reveal, reporter Nina Martin spends time with abortion rights groups in Alabama, following how they’ve adapted to one of the nation’s strictest anti-abortion policies—and evolved their definition of help.

President Donald Trump’s second term has swung a wrecking ball at diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs throughout the country. Few writers seem better suited to explain this unique moment in America than Nikole Hannah-Jones.

A New York Times journalist and Howard University professor, Hannah-Jones has spent years studying and shaping compelling—and at times controversial—narratives about American history. In 2019, she created The 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of stories and essays that placed the first slave ship that arrived in Virginia at the center of the US’ origin story. Today, the Trump administration is pushing against that kind of historical reframing while dismantling federal policies designed to address structural racism. Hannah-Jones says she’s been stunned by the speed of Trump’s first few months.

“We haven’t seen the federal government weaponized against civil rights in this way” since the turn of the century, Hannah-Jones says. “We’ve not lived in this America before. And we are experiencing something that, if you study history, it’s not unpredictable, yet it’s still shocking that we’re here.”

On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks to Hannah-Jones about the rollback of DEI and civil rights programs across the country, the ongoing battle to reframe American history, and whether this will lead to another moment of rebirth for Black Americans.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson

Read: Trump Shuts Down Diversity Programs Across Government (Mother Jones)
Listen: 40 Acres and a Lie (Reveal)
Read: The 1619 Project (The New York Times Magazine)

It’s been just over 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 Company, 1st Battalion. “And it was also, for myself, the most alive I've ever felt.”

This week on Reveal, we’re partnering with the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse to join Ergo’s unit as they reunite and try to make sense of what they did and what was done to them. Together, they remember Bradley Faircloth, the 20-year-old lance corporal from their unit who lost his life, and unpack the mental and emotional battles that continue for them today.

This episode originally aired in January 2025.

Mike Hixenbaugh first knew things had changed when someone on a four-wheeler started ripping up his lawn after his wife placed a Black Lives Matter sign outside their home on the suburban outskirts of Houston.

Hixenbaugh is an award-winning investigative reporter for NBC News. He’s covered wrongdoing within the child welfare system, safety lapses inside hospitals, and deadly failures in the US Navy. But when his front yard was torn apart in the summer of 2020 in the wake of the George Floyd protests, he saw a story about race and politics collide at his own front door. So like any investigative journalist, he started investigating, and his reporting about the growing divides in his neighborhood soon led him to the public schools.

As more than a dozen states sue the Trump administration over its policies aimed at ending public schools’ diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, More To The Story host Al Letson talks with Hixenbaugh about how America’s public schools have become “a microcosm” for the country’s political and cultural fights—“a way of zooming in deep into one community to try to tell the story of America.”

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson

Listen: The Culture War Goes to College (Reveal)

Read: At the Heritage Foundation, the Anti-DEI Crusade Is Part of a Bigger War (Mother Jones)

Read: They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms, by Mike Hixenbaugh

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Listen: Southlake/Grapevine podcasts (NBC News)

The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual—in fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40 percent of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well. 

According to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, Steubenville has routinely scored in the top 10 percent or better of schools nationwide for third grade reading, sometimes scoring as high as the top 1 percent.

In study after study for decades, researchers have found that districts serving low-income families almost always have lower test scores than districts in more affluent places. Yet Steubenville bucks that trend.

“It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” said Karin Chenoweth, who wrote about Steubenville in her book How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons From Unexpected Schools.

This week on Reveal, reporter Emily Hanford shares the latest from the hit APM Reports podcast Sold a Story. We’ll learn how Steubenville became a model of reading success—and how a new law in Ohio put it all at risk. 

Sociologist Arlie Hochschild has spent years talking with people living in rural parts of the country who have been hit hard by the loss of manufacturing jobs and shuttered coal mines. They’re the very people President Donald Trump argues will benefit most from his sweeping wave of tariffs and recent executive orders aimed at reviving coal mining in the US. But Hochschild is skeptical that Trump’s policies will actually benefit those in rural America. But Hochschild argues that Trump’s policies will only fill an emotional need for those in rural America.

In her latest book, Stolen Pride, Hochschild visited Pikeville, Kentucky, a small city in Appalachia where coal jobs were leaving, opioids were arriving, and a white supremacist march was being planned. The more she talked to people, the more she saw how Trump played on their shame and pride about their downward mobility and ultimately used that to his political advantage.
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, host Al Letson talks with Hochschild about the long slide of downward mobility in rural America and why she thinks Trump’s policies ultimately won’t benefit his most core supporters.

Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Host: Al Letson
Donate today at Revealnews.org/more

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly

Follow us on Instagram @revealnews

Read: Farmers in Trump Country Banked on Clean Energy Grants. Then Things Changed. (Mother Jones)

Read: Trump’s Trade War Is Here and Promises to Get Ugly (Mother Jones)

Listen: The Many Contradictions of a Trump Victory (Reveal)

When the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department in California wanted to purchase new firearms, it sold its used ones to help cover the cost. The old guns went to a distributor, which then turned around and sold them to the public. One of those guns—a Glock pistol—found its way to Indianapolis. 

That Glock was involved in the killing of Maria Leslie’s grandson, and the fact that it once belonged to law enforcement makes her loss sting even more. 

“My grandson was in his own apartment complex. He lived there,” Leslie said. “He should not have been murdered there, especially with a gun that traces back all the way to the California police department’s coffers.”

This week on Reveal, in a collaboration with The Trace and CBS News, reporter Alain Stephens examines a common practice for police departments—trading in their old weapons rather than destroying them—and how it’s led to tens of thousands of old cop guns ending up in the hands of criminals.  

This is an update of an episode first aired in July 2024. Since then, more than a dozen law enforcement agencies have stopped reselling their used firearms or are reviewing their policies.