THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• On the latest Reveal, the story of the teenager who turned in his dad as a Jan. 6 insurrectionist.

• Amazon’s workplace safety practices continue to be scrutinized. This time by Washington safety officials and its own shareholders.

• Reveal’s legal team notches a big win to make corporate diversity stats public.

THIS WEEK’S EPISODE

‘Traitors Get Shot’

On Jan. 6, 2021, Jackson Reffitt watched the Capitol riot play out on TV from his family home in Texas. His father, Guy, had a much closer view. He was in Washington, storming the building.

When Guy Reffitt returned home, there were news stories about people being turned in to authorities. Jackson says his dad warned him that if he turned him in, he’d be a traitor, and “traitors get shot.”

Jackson turned his dad in to the FBI anyway. Guy was the first person to stand trial for his role in the riot.

This week on Reveal, Jackson tells his story.

This episode is part of the podcast Will Be Wild from Pineapple Street Studios, Wondery and Amazon Music. Hosted by Andrea Bernstein and Ilya Marritz, Will Be Wild’s eight-part series investigates the forces that led to the Jan. 6 insurrection and what comes next.

🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.

UPDATE

Amazon’s Warehouse Quotas Have Been Injuring Workers for Years. Now, Officials Are Taking Action.
By Will Evans

Amazon warehouse workers have long borne the brunt of the company’s obsession with speed. Each year, the company’s warehouse workers rack up thousands of serious injuries, as a series of Reveal investigations has exposed. There’s a building pressure for the company to change its workplace practices – beyond the recent union win.

Here are a few recent developments:

• In March, safety officials in Washington fined Amazon again – this time for $60,000 for “knowingly putting workers at risk of injury,” citing the “unsafe pace” of work. Washington’s Department of Labor & Industries has now fined Amazon a total of $81,000 for this problem. Amazon is appealing the citations.

• Amazon’s May 25 shareholder meeting will include a vote on a resolution for an independent audit of warehouse working conditions, including how workers are affected by performance metrics. Amazon unsuccessfully tried to keep the proposal, which quotes Reveal’s reporting, off the ballot and is urging shareholders to vote it down. 

• With a bill introduced in April, New York became the latest state to consider legislation aimed at Amazon work quotas. The bill is similar to a California law that prohibits warehouse companies from enforcing quotas that prevent workers from doing their jobs safely.

In the News

What’s happening in the news – with a Reveal context

🔹 Oklahoma Legislature passes the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban, mirrors Texas-style enforcement. The bill, approved Thursday, prohibits nearly all abortions starting at fertilization and has few exceptions. Like Texas’ six-week abortion ban, which gives private citizens the right to sue anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion, Oklahoma’s bill also relies on civilian enforcement, making it difficult to challenge through the usual legal processes.

A Reveal investigation that aired in February showed what happened as a result of Texas’ ban: Patients were forced to travel to more than a dozen other states, including Oklahoma, with some unable to get abortions at all. Policy experts note that 45% of “Texans who traveled out of state between September and December 2021 obtained abortion care in Oklahoma.”

🔹 U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo warns threats of violence could “persist and may increase” leading up to and following the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade. The May 13 memo, first obtained by Axios, notes that the court’s draft majority opinion that leaked May 2 brought threats that targeted “Supreme Court Justices, lawmakers and other public officials, as well as clergy and health care providers.” The department’s memo also warned that the threats of violence could come from both anti-abortion and abortion rights extremists. 

A recent Reveal investigation found police calls for harassment and violence at abortion clinics in Florida have doubled since 2016. The state could be providing a glimpse of the future for places that keep abortion legal in a post-Roe world.

From the Archives

Ending on a Good Note

Reveal’s legal team wins in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. Five years ago, senior reporter Will Evans began requesting government records showing the diversity numbers of federal contractors, as part of a multipart project examining diversity in Silicon Valley. Many companies objected, with one company even saying it must hide the number of women and people of color it employs so competitors won’t “steal” them. For years, the U.S. Department of Labor sided with the companies, blocking Freedom of Information Act requests for the diversity reports.

So we sued. And we won. A federal judge ruled that the records are not confidential business information because they aren’t commercial in the first place. The ruling also had far-reaching significance, as it signaled that the diversity reports for all large federal contractors should be accessible through FOIA requests.

But Silicon Valley tech company Synopsys appealed the decision to the 9th Circuit to stop the disclosure. Our general counsel, Vickie Baranetsky, argued the case, and last week, we learned that Synopsys’ appeal was dismissed by the 9th Circuit on procedural grounds, leaving our win intact.

What does this mean in the big picture of things? It’s a win for transparency, as the Department of Labor must comply with our FOIA requests and disclose the diversity numbers of federal contractors. The next step is for Jenny R. Yang, director of the department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, to release the records. Will she? We’ll be watching.

As for Synopsys, Evans asks, why did it want to keep the diversity reports secret? Follow him on Twitter for more.