THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• Love Reveal? Tell us why and you might hear yourself on an upcoming episode.
• With Joe Biden's surprise pardon of his son and Donald Trump’s pledge to free January 6ers, we look at this controversial presidential power. 
• Amid a refugee crisis, Greece took drastic steps to prevent more arrivals.

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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

All the President's Pardons

President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son and President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to set free people who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, bring back memories of what’s considered the most controversial pardon ever: Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon. Ford’s pardon of the former president in 1974 sparked outrage among politicians and the American people. 

“I had a visceral feeling that the public animosity to Mr. Nixon was so great that there would be a lack of understanding, and the truth is that's the way it turned out,” Ford said in an interview broadcast for the first time on Reveal. “The public and many leaders, including dear friends, didn’t understand it at the time.”

This week on Reveal, we look at the politics of pardons and discover that beyond those that make headlines, there is a backlog of thousands of people who’ve waited years—even decades—for presidents to make a decision about their petitions for clemency. 

One Number to Know

More than 28,000 people have died or gone missing trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea since 2015. The danger was not only in the waters for refugees trying to seek asylum in Greece.

Mary Lawlor, UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, has condemned Greece’s harsh migration policies and the way its government is targeting activists. 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.”

Reporters Dinah Rothenberg and Viola Funk from the Berlin podcast studio ACB Stories 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.

Listen: Fortress Europe: The Fight for Refugees in Greece

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