This month, some of the nation’s best and brightest teenage girls will gather in Mobile, Alabama, to embark on two of the most intense weeks of their lives. Everybody wants the same thing: to walk away with a $40,000 college scholarship and the title of Distinguished Young Woman of America.

Reporter Shima Oliaee competed for Nevada when she was a teenager and was invited back as a judge 20 years later. Oliaee accepted, all while recording it for a six-part audio series called The Competition.

In the final days of the 2022 competition, there was news from Washington that had big implications for women across the nation: Roe v. Wade had fallen.

The girls faced a tough decision: Do they speak up about their political beliefs or stay focused on winning the money? And what might this mean for their futures—and their friendships?

“This series changed how I view America,” Oliaee said. “I came away from it thinking, damn. American teen girls are the canaries in the coal mine.”

This week, Reveal is partnering with The Competition podcast, from Wondery, Pineapple Street Studios, and Shirazad Productions, to explore the dreams of young women, America’s promise, and what it takes to survive being a teen girl today.

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

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David Hogg is disrupting the Democratic National Committee. He’s well known for his gun control advocacy work after surviving the horrific mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, seven years ago. Today, he’s taken on a new role as a DNC vice chair, the first member of Gen Z to hold the position. But his political action committee is spending $20 million to replace Democratic incumbents with younger candidates, which he says could get him kicked out of the DNC.

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

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Listen: Lessons From a Mass Shooter’s Mother (Reveal)
Read: DC’s Sole Congressional Rep Is Too Old to Drive. Can She Defend the City From a Hostile GOP? (Mother Jones)
Read: How Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Manager Would Rebuild the DNC (Mother Jones)

Dylan Bringuel remembers the exact moment they got hired by the Holiday Inn Express in Jamestown, New York. It was late August 2022, and Bringuel—who uses they/them pronouns—had recently moved across the country and was struggling to find work.

Bringuel is transgender and was upfront about their gender identity during the job interview. “ I was like, ‘Just so you're aware, I am transitioning from female to male,’” they remember saying. “And they said, ‘Okay, we respect that. We’ll do our best to make sure you fit and you're comfortable here.’”

That wasn’t the case. Bringuel said that the first day on the job, the housekeeping manager called them an “it” and a “transformer” and said people like Bringuel are “what is wrong with society.”

Bringuel reported the harassment to hotel management. Within a day, they were fired. In 2024, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission stepped in to help Bringuel sue the hotel for workplace discrimination.

But earlier this year, something unusual happened. The EEOC dropped Bringuel’s case, not because their allegations lacked merit, but because of President Donald Trump’s executive order on “radical gender ideology.”

This week on Reveal, Mother Jones national politics reporter Abby Vesoulis walks through how the anti-DEI movement evolved from a niche legal fight to an all-out culture war—and what that means for the EEOC and the marginalized people it has historically protected.

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A record 45 million Americans were expected to travel this Memorial Day weekend, long considered the unofficial kickoff to summer. And most of them were hitting the road. Sarah Kendzior is no stranger to the family road trip. Her family, in fact, has visited 38 states—and counting. These trips were born out of a love and curiosity for America and a desire to explore small towns, vast National Parks, and the unexpected oddities along the way. And when money was tight, the best way for her family to see the country was simply to jump in the car and go.

In her new book, The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir, Sarah chronicles those family trips while grappling with a country she believes is failing to uphold its own ideals. Sarah says she feels an urgency to share the country she loves with her children but often wonders if these travels—and the version of America she knows—might be coming to an end.“Every trip I describe in that book,” Sarah says, “I set off wondering: Is this the last time the four of us will get to be together exploring America with the freedom that we have now?”

On this week’s More To The Story, Sarah chats with host Al Letson about trying to show her children the America she adores while holding a light to its flaws, her concerns for the nation’s future, and why hitting the road is often the best way to understand yourself—and your country.

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

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Listen: Black in the Sunshine State (Reveal)

Read: Republicans Aim to Generate Support for Selling Off America’s Public Lands (Mother Jones)

Read: How to Travel Abroad as the World’s Most Toxic Brand: American (Mother Jones)

Read: The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir, by Sarah Kendzior

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When Dr. Mimi Syed returned from her first volunteer trip to Gaza in the summer of 2024, she started flipping through her notes and came to a shocking conclusion: In one month, the ER physician had treated at least 18 children with gunshots to the head or chest. And that’s only the patients she had time to make a note of.

“They were children under the age of 12,” she says. “That's something I saw every single day, multiple times a day, for the whole four weeks that I was there.”

Syed’s not the only one. Other physicians who’ve worked in Gaza report seeing similar cases on a regular basis, suggesting a disturbing pattern. The doctors allege that members of the Israeli military may be deliberately targeting children.

This week on Reveal, in partnership with Al Jazeera’s Fault Lines, we follow Syed from Gaza to the halls of Congress and the United Nations, as she joins a movement of doctors appealing to US and international policymakers to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

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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)

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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.

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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)