Five Reveal stories that made a big impact this year
 California passed a law to stop corporate landlords from gobbling up California real estate during the pandemic. The last time the economy went into deep recession, after the 2008 housing bust, nearly 8 million families lost their homes to foreclosure. But a bill signed into law in California in September seeks to prevent a repeat of history by overhauling the way foreclosures are sold in the state. It bans bulk auctions of homes, giving tenants and other community stakeholders exclusive windows to match bids made by speculators, with the idea of keeping property in the community’s hands. The bill was prompted in part by Reveal reporter Aaron Glantz’s reporting on “Homewreckers."
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An immigrant girl in U.S. custody for nearly seven years learned her family didn’t abandon her. Doña Amalia didn’t know what had happened to her granddaughter. When the girl was 10, she arrived at the U.S. border with her brother, aunt, and cousin, seeking asylum. She was taken into the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and held for the next seven years. All these years, the family didn’t know what had happened to their girl and the girl didn’t know what had happened to her family. Reveal reporter Aura Bogado was finally able to tell the family where the girl was as she reported the heartbreaking story The Disappeared.
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 Congress is asking questions about Amazon’s working conditions. After we reported on sky-high injury rates in Amazon warehouses, 13 members of Congress, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), pressed the Department of Labor to investigate Amazon’s labor practice and the House Education and Labor Committee held hearings on the issue. We’ve now documented injury rates at 150 Amazon warehouses around the country.
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 New York passed a ban on a toxic chemical linked to fetal heart defects. Reporter Elizabeth Shogren illuminated how EPA scientists found that TCE, a chemical used in industrial processes, damages fetal heart development. But the Trump Administration rewrote their assessment. The EPA’s Science Advisory Committee on Chemicals cited Reveal’s reporting when it demanded that “the EPA must investigate allegations that it downplayed research showing a cancer-causing solvent could damage the hearts of babies exposed in the womb.” Also spurred by our investigation, the New York Senate and Assembly passed a bill that bans TCE.
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 Comics helped people around the world understand the impacts of COVID-19. Our In/Vulnerable comics series about inequity amid the pandemic was named one of 2020’s best works of graphic medicine by the Journal of the American Medical Association. We made the 15 nonfiction comics free to download, and librarians, educators, and teachers have put them to use all over the world. A doctor at a hospital in Nepal says, “We are facing the COVID-19 in a resource-reduced situation… This comic will be useful in teaching our staff and community.” A reader in Brazil says they are sharing the comic “in public health community forums for stimulating consciousness about the pandemic, its relation with capitalism and its increase in social and economic disparities.”
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Emma Schwartz is an associate producer at Reveal. She’s part of what she calls a “wonderful team” at Reveal producing an investigative feature documentary.
