More To The Story: Heather Cox Richardson is one of today’s unlikeliest social media stars. The Boston College historian has been teaching and writing about 19th-century America, Reconstruction, and the Civil War for decades. But it was only in 2019 that her work took off when she began writing her daily newsletter, Letters from an American, a no-nonsense analysis of the news through the lens of US history. The newsletter became one of the most popular on Substack. And today, Richardson has millions of loyal fans who rely on her to make sense of American politics and provide a little sanity and democratic reassurance even as she herself is concerned about the direction of the country today. On this week’s More To The Story, Richardson talks about the decades-long failure to hold corrupt American leaders accountable, the still-resonant death of Reconstruction, and what she sees as the tragic hypocrisy of Thomas Jefferson.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Daniel King | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al LetsonRead: Trump’s War on History (Mother Jones)Listen: As the Trump Administration Erases History, These Writers Are Keeping It Alive (Reveal)Read: Letters from an American (Substack)Read: Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America (Penguin Books) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Every week, a group of men in their late 60s meets at the Corner Cafe in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. One important reason for these meetups is to discuss what’s going on in their community. Local news has virtually dried up in their rural county, as well as neighboring counties, and some residents say they’re being left in the dark and don’t feel equipped to make informed decisions.“I’m not gonna vote if I can’t get the information,” says Penny Abernathy.Like in much of the country, roughly two-thirds of North Carolina’s counties are considered news deserts. And the lack of local journalism isn’t just making it harder for people to stay informed; it’s exacerbating a crisis of trust in the news media. This week on Reveal, we partner with the podcast Scene on Radio and its hosts John Biewen and Chenjerai Kumanyika to understand how American journalism got here and what can be done to repair the cracked foundation of the Fourth Estate. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

More To The Story: It’s impossible to overstate rapper Tupac Shakur’s influence on music and culture in the 1990s. One of the era’s bestselling musical artists, Tupac helped define West Coast hip-hop through vulnerable, introspective lyrics and Black power politics. By his own admission, sports writer Jeff Pearlman is not the rapper’s likeliest biographer. But as he waited for what he called “the big, fat biography” of Tupac, his impatience and long-standing fascination with the rapper got the best of him. So he set out to write it himself. On this week’s episode, Pearlman talks about his book Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur; discusses how Tupac’s Black Panther mother, Afeni Shakur, shaped her son; and examines the nuance and mystery surrounding Tupac’s life and death almost 30 years later.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Intern: Joni Binder | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al LetsonRead: The 24 Best Books We Read in 2025 (Mother Jones)Listen: Baltimore Mayor to Trump: Don’t Send Your Troops (More To The Story)Read: Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books)Note: If you buy a book using our Bookshop link, a small share of the proceeds supports our journalism. Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and repression were trying to reach safe havens in Europe. From his home in Norway, Tommy Olsen decided to travel to Greece, a major gateway for migrants and refugees. He joined hundreds of volunteers helping the new arrivals and later created an NGO, the Aegean Boat Report, which monitors the plight of asylum seekers in Europe.Today, Olsen is a wanted man in Greece, caught up in a crackdown on refugees and people trying to defend their right to asylum.“I didn’t know what I walked into,” Olsen says.Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, has condemned Greece’s harsh migration policies and the way its government is targeting activists like Olsen. But she says Europe as a whole is also to blame.“The whole notion of migration is a dirty word now,” she says. “The whole notion of refugees is a dirty word now.”This week on Reveal, reporters Dinah Rothenberg and Viola Funk from the Berlin podcast studio Slowly Media take us to Greece, where refugees and human rights defenders face legal and sometimes physical attacks from authorities trying to seal the country’s borders.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in January 2025. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

More To The Story: The Voting Rights Act is widely considered one of the most effective laws in prohibiting racial discrimination in voting. One of its key provisions has long allowed states to take race into account when drawing voting maps to ensure that nonwhite voters have electoral power. But earlier this year, the Supreme Court narrowed that provision. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan described the court’s decision as the “now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.” “The notion that everyone deserves equal access to the ballot, that everyone deserves equal access to elections, that one person ought to mean one vote, and that there ought to be some measure of political equality has never really sat well with the political right in this country,” says Jamelle Bouie, a political columnist for the New York Times. On this week’s More To The Story, Bouie and host Al Letson talk about how the Voting Rights Act has been defanged by the Supreme Court, why the Democratic Party is made up of “a bunch of weenies,” and why he believes the country is experiencing a constitutional emergency.This is an update of an episode that originally aired in August 2025.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al LetsonListen: How Trump Exploits Working-Class Pain (More To The Story)Read: Republican Gerrymandering Schemes Target Minority Voters and Their Representatives (Mother Jones)Listen: Not All Votes Are Created Equal (Reveal)Read: The Nation’s Landmark Voting Rights Law Just Turned 60. It May Not Survive Trump. (Mother Jones)Watch: Blame John Roberts for Destroying the Voting Rights Act (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The 911 system functions as a sort of promise: Call for help and someone will be there to respond quickly. But in many American cities, it’s a broken promise.Thanks in part to a widespread understaffing crisis across 911 dispatch centers, hundreds of thousands of callers are left waiting on hold during their most harrowing moments every year.Reporter Byard Duncan has spent more than a year reporting on America’s flailing 911 system and what it might take to fix it. This week on Reveal, in partnership with Type Investigations, he traces the issue from California to Wisconsin and a final stop on Capitol Hill. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

More To The Story: When Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, went looking for government agencies to axe last year, one of its first targets was the US Agency for International Development. Established during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence, USAID spent billions of dollars on food aid, public health, and emergency relief for some of the world’s most vulnerable populations. In return, the US hoped to gain allies and goodwill. Call it a decades-long exercise in soft power. But since President Donald Trump returned to office, soft power is out. And so is USAID, which has been slashed and reorganized. The Trump administration is trying to close the agency altogether by September. This has led to some horrific consequences for the people who relied on USAID to survive. On this week’s More To The Story, ProPublica’s Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy join host Al Letson to talk about their on-the-ground reporting from Africa and how the Trump administration’s aid cuts are leading to devastating, even deadly, consequences.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al LetsonRead: Russell Vought Raided USAID Budgets He Helped Gut to Pay for His Own Security (Mother Jones)Listen: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping Our Country (More To The Story)Read: Trump Officials Celebrated With Cake After Slashing Aid. Then People Died of Cholera. (ProPublica)Listen: Paper Trail (ProPublica) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Virginia might be for lovers, but more recently, it’s for data centers. The state has more data centers than anywhere in the world, and companies are pushing to build more of them, including around some of the most hallowed ground in the country: the Manassas National Battlefield Park. “The amount of surface land that is being displaced by data centers and everything that goes with that, I don’t think people understand what’s really happening,” says Elena Schlossberg, a leading activist against data center development in Northern Virginia. “There’s NIMBY and there’s NOTE, and NOTE is ‘not over there, either.’”This week on Reveal, we look into our AI future and the local machinations that are pitting neighbor against neighbor. And we listen in as our “tech lords” talk about the future they are planning for us, whether we want it or not. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

More To The Story: Voters are heading to the polls for this year’s midterms, but the electoral maps are shifting under their feet in real time. Last month, the Supreme Court narrowed a provision in the Voting Rights Act that allowed states to consider race when redrawing maps. That decision set off a mad scramble by GOP state legislatures to alter their maps ahead of November’s elections, a move that could disenfranchise Black voters. Meanwhile, Democrats were dealt a major blow last week when their own redistricting efforts in Virginia were struck down by the state Supreme Court. On this week’s More To The Story, Mother Jones national correspondent Tim Murphy and host Al Letson try to make sense of this unprecedented midterm season, gauge the Democrats’ chances of taking back Congress, and examine how President Donald Trump’s threats to the electoral system could play out in November.Producer: Josh Sanburn | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Copy editor: Nikki Frick | Digital producer: Artis Curiskis | Deputy executive producer: Taki Telonidis | Executive producer: Brett Myers | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al LetsonListen: Stop the Steal Never Stopped (Reveal)Read: The Future in Texas Is Bright and Terrifying (Mother Jones)Read: Can James Talarico Convince Democrats He’s the Fighter They Need? (Mother Jones) Donate today at Revealnews.org/more Subscribe to our weekly newsletter at Revealnews.org/weekly Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When the FBI showed up at a warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia, to seize hundreds of boxes of 2020 election records this past January, County Commissioner Dana Barrett thought it looked less like a criminal investigation and more like political theater. It’s been more than five years since the election, the results already had been investigated multiple times, and the ballots had been counted, recounted, and recounted again.The lie that the 2020 election was stolen has persisted. And the “Stop the Steal” movement’s most ardent believers now hold unprecedented positions of power, including on the once-sleepy State Election Board in the important swing state of Georgia. A lawyer known for his willingness to take on long-shot election cases has gone from a little-known private practice attorney to a role in the White House, overseeing the country’s election integrity effort—despite being sanctioned by a court for making “unequivocally false” assertions around voting. And everyday members of the movement are trying to change what they fervently believe is a broken system—at the risk of actually breaking it in the process.This week on Reveal, Mother Jones reporter Abby Vesoulis and Reveal’s Najib Aminy examine how the long shadow of doubt over the 2020 elections is being weaponized and what it means ahead of the 2026 midterms. Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/weekly Connect with us on Bluesky, Facebook and Instagram Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices