THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, March 29, 2025
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Hello! In this issue:
- After spending years locked in solitary confinement, a group of California men united to launch the largest prison hunger strike in US history.
- Trump fired a top government watchdog. Now he’s speaking out on More To The Story.
- How a “Goon Squad” of deputies got away with years of brutality.
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Support the next 10 years of thoughtful, fearless journalism on Reveal, the first weekly investigative podcast and radio show. Become a monthly member today.
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THIS WEEK’S PODCAST
The Strike That Broke a Supermax Prison
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Inmates rights advocates gather at the Capitol in Sacramento, California, to protest the state’s use of isolation units in prisons in 2013. Credit: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
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Jack Morris was convicted of murdering a man in South Los Angeles and sent to prison for life. It was 1979, Morris was 18, and America was entering the era of mass incarceration. Tough sentencing laws were flooding people into the criminal justice system, and as California’s prison population surged, so did the violence.
“You learn that in order to survive, you yourself then have to become predatorial,” Morris says. “And then, you then expose somebody else to that, and it's a vicious cycle.”
When California started aggressively targeting prison gangs, Morris was accused of associating with one of the groups. The punishment was severe: He was sent to a special supermax unit at the state’s highest-security prison, Pelican Bay.
The facility was designed to isolate men deemed the “worst of the worst.” Morris was locked in a windowless concrete cell for 22 to 23 hours each day, with no phone calls and no meaningful contact with another human.
Decades later, the prisoners at Pelican Bay used coded messages and other covert communication channels to launch a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement. It would become the largest in US history and helped push California to implement reforms.
This week on Reveal, we’re teaming up with the team from the PBS film The Strike to tell the inside story of a group of men who overcame bitter divisions and harsh conditions to build an improbable prison resistance movement.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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MORE TO THE STORY
Exclusive: Trump Fired This Top Watchdog. Now He’s Speaking Out.
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Larry Turner, the former inspector general for the US Department of Labor, testifies before Congress. Credit: Jose Luis Magana/AP
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In his first week in office, President Donald Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general tasked with investigating fraud, waste, and abuse throughout the federal government.
On this week’s episode of More To The Story, we meet one of those fired IGs: Larry Turner of the US Department of Labor gives host Al Letson his first extended interview since losing his job.
“It was a power purge to get rid of the people, the watchdogs, that actually provide oversight,” he says of Trump’s mass firings. “We are really the eyes and the ears for the American public.”
Trump has authorized Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to root out the same kind of fraud, waste, and abuse that congressionally authorized IGs are typically responsible for investigating. But Turner says the kind of fraud DOGE says it has found within days isn’t actually possible to uncover as quickly as Musk claims.
Turner is now one of eight IGs suing the Trump administration in an effort to be reinstated. He describes Trump’s effort to oust inspectors general like himself as a threat to democracy itself.
Find this episode wherever you listen to Reveal, and don’t forget to subscribe:
Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Pandora
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“When you’re in Rankin County, I don’t care what you’re doing…just abide by the law. And everybody knows that, and you know that because everybody gets beaten.”
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When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes.
But she learned the hard way in 2018, when a group of sheriff’s deputies raided her friend’s home and beat him relentlessly while she watched. Years later, it happened again.
She reached out to reporters at Mississippi Today, and she helped them expose a “Goon Squad” that had been operating under the public radar for years—even as they were beating and torturing people.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written by Kate Howard and edited by Nikki Frick. If you enjoyed this issue, forward it to a friend. Have some thoughts? Drop us a line with feedback or ideas!
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