THE WEEKLY REVEAL
Saturday, Sept. 10, 2022
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Hello! In this issue:
- New initiative this fall: A reader’s guide to the threats to U.S. democracy.
- Two stories of fights over the right to vote.
- How killing a journalist never kills a story.
- Our new documentary, “The Grab,” reviewed by Variety and chosen for the Toronto International Film Festival.
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Revealers,
This is Andrew Donohue, executive editor for projects for Reveal. I am interrupting our regular newsletter formatting to announce a new initiative we’ll be launching today in this newsletter and on our social platforms around the defining story of our time: the coordinated effort to destroy American democracy.
It’s the overarching storyline under which all our most pressing issues will be addressed or exacerbated: climate change, economic and wealth inequality, racism, reproductive rights, education, health care and, well, everything else.
But it’s a story that can be hard to follow. Our election system is so decentralized that the story is playing out in different ways in different counties across the country, from the purging of the County Board of Electors in Wayne County, Michigan to the mass rejection of mail-in ballots in the Texas primary.
It’s also playing out very slowly. Sure, Jan. 6 was a very public spectacle. But the insurrection started before then – and it never ended. There have been thousands of small moves that have slowly happened over the last decade. Call it a slow motion coup. Laws are being changed to make it harder to vote. Lies are being spread. Candidates who espouse those lies are being elevated to key electoral positions.
So we want to help you follow along and make sense of this very terrifying reality. Here’s how we’ll do it:
- Each week in this newsletter and across our Twitter and Facebook feeds, we’re going to curate the best investigative and accountability reporting on the threats to democracy in the United States.
- We’ll bring you either the best stories of the week or a collection of stories that drill deep into a big issue or reader question.
To get us started this week, our team of reporters, producers and editors on the democracy beat have curated a list that gets you up to speed on where we’re at so far, especially as we near the Nov. 8 midterm elections.
The 2020 election was just a trial run. The insurrectionists didn’t win. But they learned where the weaknesses lie, and now are enacting a plan to ensure that they can obliterate the things that stood in their way last time. This story from Barton Gellman in The Atlantic is the best first read about this new movement.
Look at the GOP purge in battleground states to see how the groundwork is being laid for 2024. The lifelong Republicans who didn’t go along with the plan, or just happened to get in the way, are being purged, pilloried or simply losing their primaries. The party has replaced them with Big Lie proponents and its leaders aren’t pretending to embrace democracy, setting up the likelihood that they will control key election positions in states across the country. Listen to our show to see how Michigan has become the test lab for the anti-democratic movement.
That purge is working, and election deniers could take control of the election apparatus in key battleground states. “Across the battleground states that decided the 2020 vote, candidates who deny the legitimacy of that election have claimed nearly two-thirds of GOP nominations for state and federal offices with authority over elections, according to a Washington Post analysis.” Read the full story from Amy Gardner.
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Credit: Adrián Blanco/The Washington Post
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(If static charts aren’t your thing, check out FiveThirtyEight’s interactive showing 60 percent of all Americans will have an election denier on their ballot in November.)
There’s big money behind the Big Lie. There’s one common force behind the GOP movement’s shift to going all-in on the false claims that the election was stolen: A relatively unknown family foundation in Milwaukee. Read Jane Mayer’s deep dive into the dark money fueling the movement in The New Yorker.
How the Big Lie became the big grift. With all the money thrown at pushing the voter fraud myth, it’s gone from a cottage industry to a lucrative economy. Read Cassandra Jaramillo’s Reveal investigation into how one leading conservative nonprofit managed to never prove its claims – all while making a lot of money for its founder and her friends. And listen to the Reveal show about it, which dropped today.
You are at the core of this new initiative.
➡️ Is there a specific issue you want us to curate reporting around? Do you have a question about a certain state and its election? Let us know by replying to this email every week or you can always reach us directly at [email protected].
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THIS WEEK'S PODCAST
The Big Grift Behind the Big Lie
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Former President Donald Trump continues to perpetuate the lie that he lost the 2020 election due to widespread voter fraud. It’s a lie that Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of Texas-based nonprofit True the Vote, helped create.
She claims to have overwhelming evidence of voter fraud. And Trump loudly echoes those claims. There’s just one problem: Every time she promises to show proof, she fails to deliver. But that hasn’t stopped her from raising millions of donations along the way, turning the claim into a lucrative business.
This week on Reveal, hear reporter Cassandra Jaramillo’s investigation into how Engelbrecht and True the Vote turned the Big Lie into the big grift.
We’ll also tell the story of a long-forgotten election lie that spurred a white supremacist coup in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. The violent mob tried to challenge election results and terrorized the Black community, killing 60 Black men and forcing over 2,000 residents to flee the town. The event created a blueprint for taking voting rights away from people of color, forever changing the course of American history.
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🎧 Other places to listen: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts.
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🎨 Illustration by Molly Mendoza for Reveal
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“Killing a journalist never kills a story”
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Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German stands on the Las Vegas Strip on June 2, 2021. Credit: K.M. Cannon/Las Vegas Review-Journal
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On Saturday, Sept. 3, Jeff German, an investigative reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was found dead with stab wounds outside of his home. Clark County Public Administrator Robert Telles was arrested on suspicion of murder on Wednesday, and prosecutors said the killing was directly linked to German’s reporting on Telles.
German had “recently written a series of stories about Telles’ mismanagement of the public administrator’s office, including allegations of a hostile workplace, bullying and favoritism. Employees also said that Telles had an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate,” NPR writes.
When Chauncey Wendell Bailey Jr., editor of the Oakland Post newspaper, was gunned down in 2007, in retaliation for his investigative reporting, journalists throughout the region vowed to join together to continue his work and investigate his murder. The result was The Chauncey Bailey Project, a team of reporters led by Reveal’s current acting CEO Robert “Rosey” Rosenthal, and housed and supported by The Center for Investigative Reporting. Altogether, the project produced more than 140 stories, investigating the group behind the killing and the police handling of the case, and ultimately leading to the conviction of those responsible for Bailey’s murder. See some of that work here.
In response to Telles’ arrest, the project issued the following statement:
“The murder of Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German and the arrest of the county official suspected of killing him is shocking but not surprising.
Investigative reporters take risks every day as they go after stories that those who abuse their power do not want disclosed. … We live at a time when threats to our democracy are real. The murders of Jeff German and Chauncey Bailey are reminders of the risks investigative journalists take as well as terrible reminders of the crucial role they play in protecting our democracy.”
An earlier statement reminded us: “It must be remembered that killing a journalist never kills a story.”
And that’s already evident in how German’s colleagues have continued their reporting, leading them to stake out Telles’ house before his arrest.
➡️ For the latest on the case, follow the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
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🎥 Our newest documentary feature film, “The Grab,” was reviewed by Variety, who called it a “thriller in one sense and a dystopian science fiction movie in another.”
In “The Grab,” Reveal journalist Nathan Halverson uncovers a stunning phenomenon: Food and water are quickly becoming the most precious, conflict-ridden commodities of the 21st century, and powerful governments and corporations are taking drastic measures to control these increasingly scarce resources.
The film was chosen out of more than 700 documentary submissions at the Toronto International Film Festival. If you're in the area, we hope you snag a ticket before they sell out. Stay tuned for other opportunities to watch this powerful film – you won’t want to miss it.
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This issue of The Weekly Reveal was written and edited by Kassie Navarro, Andrew Donohue, Will Evans and Kim Freda. 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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