Reveal

During an NCAA women’s swimming championship in March 2022, two seniors tied for fifth place. The race was unremarkable except for one fact: One of the swimmers, Lia Thomas, was a transgender woman. The swimmer she tied with, Riley Gaines, believed the NCAA never should have allowed her to participate.
The matchup, and Gaines’ subsequent transformation into a leading anti-trans activist, has fueled a growing movement to “save women’s sports” from trans women—and a conservative crusade against trans rights more broadly. 
This week on Reveal, we examine Gaines’ rise and radicalization, as her rhetoric shifts from calling out NCAA policy to calling trans women  sexual predators.
Over the last year, the anti-trans movement has reached a tipping point. Trans girls are banned from girls’ school sports in the majority of states. The NCAA and US Olympic and Paralympic committees have banned trans women from women’s competitions. The Supreme Court is currently considering the issue, too.
Then we dive into the science to understand how gender-affirming hormone therapy affects trans women’s performance—and what questions science still has not answered around fairness in women’s sports.
Finally, we return to the swimming pool, as reporter Imogen Sayers speaks with Meghan Cortez-Fields, one of the last transgender swimmers to compete as a woman in the NCAA.

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More To The Story: Over the last few weeks, Minneapolis has looked like a city under siege. The Trump administration has sent roughly 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what Todd Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has called the “largest immigration operation ever.” This all comes as protests have spread around Minneapolis and across the country demanding that ICE leave Minnesota and other states following the death of Renée Good, a 37-year-old Minneapolis resident and US citizen who was killed by an ICE officer as she observed federal agents. ICE and other immigration agents are operating in ways we’ve never seen before in this country. But their tactics and weapons are not entirely new. 
Investigative journalist Radley Balko is the author of Rise of the Warrior Cop and host of Collateral Damage, a podcast about America’s war on drugs. He’s been tracking police militarization for decades and how it's tied to America's long-running drug war. On this week’s More To The Story, Balko tells host Al Letson that how law enforcement is operating today is beyond anything he ever imagined.
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 Letson
Listen: Lessons From Trump’s “War” on Chicago (Reveal)
Read: How Trump Is Using Violent Tragedies to Divide America (Mother Jones)
Listen: A Dictator Deposed—What Now for Venezuela? (Reveal)
Read: Rise of the Warrior Cop (PublicAffairs)
Listen: Collateral Damage (The Intercept)
Read: The Watch

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Journalist Mariana Zúñiga woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of explosions and military planes in Caracas, Venezuela. Her WhatsApp chats flashed the news: The ruling dictator, Nicholás Maduro, had just been captured by the US military. She was surprised and felt uneasy about what was to come.
In the days that followed, Zúñiga would go into the field, despite the dangers journalists face, to report on what the country feels like at this tumultuous moment. 
This week on Reveal, we speak with Venezuelans about witnessing this moment of history from up close and afar. For Freddy Guevara, an exiled Venezuelan opposition leader living in the US, there is little confidence in the country’s new leadership. 
“They are not moderate at all,” Guevara says. “They are super radical, and they believe they are smarter than everyone.” 
And historian Alejandro Velasco explains the role Venezuela’s most valuable resource—oil—has played in the country’s history and relations with the US.

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More To The Story: A year ago this month, President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people responsible for the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. University of Chicago political science professor Robert Pape argues that Trump’s decision to pardon and set free the insurrectionists, including hundreds who had been found guilty of assaulting police, could be the most consequential decision of his term. 
On this week’s More To The Story, Pape talks with host Al Letson about how America’s transformation to a white minority is fueling the nation’s growing political violence, the remarkable political geography of the insurrectionists, and the glimmers of hope he’s found in his research that democracy can survive this pivotal moment in history.
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 Letson
Listen: How Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History (More To The Story)
Read: Both the Left and the Right Are Targeted by Political Violence. Who Perpetrates It? (Mother Jones)
Read: Understanding Support for Political Violence in America (Chicago Project on Security and Threats)

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Kansas City police Officer Matt Masters first used a Taser in the early 2000s. He said it worked well for taking people down; it was safe and effective. 
“At the end of the day, if you have to put your hands on somebody, you got to scuffle with somebody, why risk that?” he said. “You can just shoot them with a Taser.”
Masters believed in that until his son Bryce was pulled over by an officer and shocked for more than 20 seconds. The 17-year-old went into cardiac arrest, which doctors later attributed to the Taser. Masters’ training had led him to believe something like that could never happen. 
This week on Reveal, we partner with Lava for Good’s podcast Absolute: Taser Incorporated and its host, Nick Berardini, to learn what the company that makes the Taser knew about the dangers of its weapon and didn’t say.

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