Reveal

Greg Smith spent 35 years in the Army National Guard. But he’s never witnessed the military used the way it’s being deployed in Los Angeles in response to protests opposing the Trump administration’s immigration raids. On this week’s More To The Story, Smith discusses how the military appears increasingly tasked with enforcing a political agenda rather than defending the Constitution.

Producer: Josh Sanburn, with help from ...

For the first time in two decades, the Democratic Party has found itself without a clear party leader or even an obvious frontrunner. Angry and adrift, politicians and voters are clashing over how to fight back. 

They’re also grappling with an uncomfortable new reality: The places that shifted hardest away from Democrats last fall were the kinds of communities that formed the backbone of the Democratic coalition for years—w...

Bryant Kagay is a farmer in Missouri feeling the uncertainty of President Donald Trump’s tariffs up close. He voted for Trump last year but now questions whether the trade war with China is part of a long-term strategy that could help US businesses or merely a short-term negotiating tactic. In this episode of More To The Story, he says the on-again, off-again nature of the trade war could restrict his ability to sell agric...

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, ...

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 co...

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 rem...

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 oddi...

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...

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 Gibs...

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 m...

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.

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,” M...

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 histo...

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 Battali...

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 ...

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 ...

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 be...

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 ...

Justin Wolfers teaches economics 101 at the University of Michigan. It’s an introductory course about supply, demand, and trade. The basics. He wishes President Donald Trump attended.

Wolfers, an Australian known for his research on how happiness relates to income, is one of the more prominent economists speaking up about Trump’s sweeping tariff policies. He says that they not only betray the most basic laws of economics, b...