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What Happened When Trump Officials Destroyed USAID (From Reveal)
00:33:41
When the administration and DOGE cut off funding to USAID, officials claimed that no one had died as a result. Reporters found that wasn’t true.
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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody. We are hard at work on our next episode of Paper Trail, which will be out in two weeks. This week we're sharing something from another excellent show that we think you'll love from the OG investigative podcast Reveal. On Wednesdays, host Al Letson releases conversations with reporters behind some of the biggest stories of the day. It's called More to the Story. On this one, he chatted with ProPublica reporters Anna Barry Jester and Brett Murphy about their Pulitzer Prize finalist reporting on the destruction of USAID by the Trump administration and specifically what they saw on their trips to South Sudan and Kenya to witness the impact on cholera patients and refugees and mothers and babies. One detail of these cuts that Brett and Anna discovered in their series that I can't get out of my head is that after Doge officials canceled 90% of USAID's programming and aid work, they celebrated with a sheet cake. I think you'll hear in the conversation with Reveal why that's so shocking. This episode was recorded a couple of months ago, but Anna is still reporting on foreign aid. After the episode, I'll share a few updates from Anna. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode of Paper Trail.
- [01:26]
B
Foreign. This is more to the story. I'm Al Letson. Last year, when Elon Musk's DOGE went looking for government agencies to ax, one of its first targets was the United States Agency for International Development, or usaid. Established during the Cold War to counter Soviet influence, USAID spent billions of dollars on food aid, public public health and emergency relief for some of the world's most vulnerable populations. In return, the US Hoped to gain allies and goodwill. Call it a decades long exercise in soft power. But since President Trump returned to office, soft power is out. And with it usaid, which has been slashed and reorganized. The Trump administration is trying to close down the agency altogether by September. This has led to some horrific consequences for the people who relied on USAID to get by. Recently, ProPublica journalists Brett Murphy and Anna Maria Barry Jester spent weeks in South Sudan and Kenya to see firsthand how aid cuts are threatening the very survival of the people who live there. Earlier this month, their reporting was recognized as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Guys, thank you so much for coming on today.
- [02:51]
C
Thank you for having us.
- [02:52]
D
Yeah, thank you.
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B
So I was reading one of the articles that came out recently and I was just blown away and felt like I really needed to have you on the show, mostly because I think it's underreported the effects of what Doge did in cutting usaid and how many people are affected by this? Was there a burning desire in certain parts of conservative politics to get rid of this agency? I mean, was it like on a checklist somewhere? Because when the Trump administration 2.0 came in, it felt like they were checking off things that they wanted to get rid of. I just wasn't aware that USAID was a part of that.
- [03:35]
D
Right. Getting rid of USAID was not something that had been talked about. It was a controversial agency in the sense that every time a new administration came in, they would make kind of dramatic shifts to what it was doing. Different administrations had very different views on how we should be spending aid and development money, but this idea of completely getting rid of it had not been proposed. Even in the Project 2025 document, which was sort of ended up being a bit of an outline for the Trump administration, they talked about reforming the agency, but not dismantling it altogether.
- [04:08]
C
There were some quarters of the right who had long questioned the agency, what it was doing. There was previously a fringe thought which had become more mainstream this year, that USAID was engaged in fraud in way that the programs where U.S. taxpayer money was going were not completing worthwhile missions. They were not doing what they were saying they were doing. So this belief, like I was saying, was previously fringe, but had moved to the mainstream, and it started to underpin, I think, a lot of what was happening earlier last year.
- [04:48]
B
So the Trump administration comes into power, Elon Musk forms doge, and President Trump kind of gave him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. And it feels like USAID was the first target, if not the very first at the top of the list. Can you describe what happened after he went after it? What was his method to take it down?
- [05:09]
D
It was pretty chaotic in those first days. So on day one of the presidency, Trump signed an executive order that paused all new foreign aid. And no one quite knew what that meant. In the days that followed, they basically made clear that that applied to existing foreign aid programs and basically just stopped all foreign aid. They stopped all payments. They sent out letters to NGOs and people working all over the world saying, stop the work you're doing. I mean, in many cases, this was work where clinics that were feeding malnourished children that were getting emergency care, and they received letters that said they needed to stop their work. The administration at the time was saying that they were keeping life saving aid, but one of the things we found early on was that that was not true.
- [05:56]
C
Yeah. And at the same time, they were doing that. DOGE had been kind of deployed to many government agencies, including usaid. Originally, it was sort of as a IT infrastructure modernization. So when they went to usaid, the first, one of the first things they needed was access to the internal IT systems at aid so they could do exactly what Anna was just describing, which was send out these communique en masse around, around the world to aid organizations, telling them to stop working. They could start laying people off en masse and they were able to cut off payments, kind of halt the systems entirely because DOGE had acquired access to those IT systems.
- [06:44]
B
So what does that mean in real world terms as far as the AID that was given out? Like, how did it affect people on
- [06:51]
C
the ground, as Anna was just describing? We quickly learned that the AID organizations on the ground were not allowed to continue working. Their stop work orders were not reversed, Their money was not coming in. And this was started for days and then weeks, and for some of them, months and still today. And what we saw originally happening right in the beginning of February, end of January, beginning of February is there are some groups, there was one we wrote about where they were, they were providing medical care to malnourished children in Sudan. And this was a situation like if they don't come to work, if their doors don't open, those kids die. Right? So if they're not allowed to continue working, then it's catastrophic. And this is just one example. There were dozens or hundreds happening at the same time. So they had to make a decision. Do we ignore this legally binding order we just received from the US Government to stop working to save the kids, or do we stay in legal compliance and let the kids die? So they were faced with that sort of decisions. They chose the kids. And that's why we started writing about organizations like that.
- [07:58]
B
Just, just to be clear, when you say they chose the kids, what does that mean?
- [08:03]
D
They kept operating, they kept the clinics open. They used funds that they had, you know, from either other sources or that they had had as an organization. They kind of did everything they could to keep the clinics up and running. Well, the thing that's so tricky about this is so, you know, the Secretary Rubio was saying a couple of things publicly, but they were getting no communication from usaid. So, you know, there was a person assigned to each programs responsible for running it. And all of those people were told they could not communicate with the NGOs, that they could not communicate with these organizations. So they're trying to figure out what to do in a total vacuum of Information. So many of these really emergency aid programs, they kept running, especially in those first weeks, but it was very confusing what they were supposed to do.
- [08:53]
C
And then others weren't. Others couldn't continue. And this is the reporting we followed in the weeks and months after that kind of first wave. We started identifying the ones who were not in a position to continue operating, didn't have their own money, couldn't find other funding, and were forced to kind of close their doors.
- [09:12]
B
You wrote about a July 2025 dinner in Africa that was attended by Trump's foreign aid advisors. It strikes me as really poignant. What was the purpose of the meeting in Kenya? Who was there and what were the results?
- [09:27]
C
This is at a critical time. This is when there was supposed to be this big changeover of programs from the almost dead on life support, USAID over to the State Department. And people were in this mode. The last remaining officials of usaid, like the ones who were literally closing, shutting off the lights, they had these meetings, a series of meetings. Some senior officials, including this guy named Marcus Thornton, Ken Jackson at usaid, who were kind of instrumental in the dismantling of the agency, went on this world tour. I forget how many countries, maybe like eight different countries over about a month or so where they were meeting with officials at the embassies in those countries, including the outgoing USAID folks. In Nairobi, though, the. The embassy officials put on like a day of, of of scheduled events where they showed them the formerly funded programs by usaid, kind of the impacts the local impacts was having around Nairobi. They wanted to get them up to Kakuma, but they couldn't. Up to the refugee camp we were at, they didn't do that. So they had a dinner. They had a dinner at the Tribe Hotel, kind of this fancy hotel in the diplomatic quarter. And at the dinner was a senior official from the World Food Program. Senior official brought with her these props. It was like Tupperware containers full of rice and lentils. And each Tupperware had like a smaller amount of rations in it until eventually there was like an empty container. This was supposed to signify to the group, this is what the ration system currently looks like. In around large swaths of Africa. We are dropping it so severely that some people are getting nothing at all. This is true of hundreds of thousands of people in Kakama who were receiving no rations throughout the summer. Zero food she was trying to impart on them. Like, this is how serious and severe the situation is right now. This is why funding is so important. Hoping to make like this, you know, this impassioned case with, with visual demonstrations. In response, though, she was kind of met with, with, you know, all shoulders, just either a polite, okay, thank you for the presentation. Or in the case of Thornton, you know, sources told us that he was just looking at his phone, the whole thing. So this is, this was kind of indicative, I think, to a lot of people about how they were met repeatedly throughout the year, how their pleas were met, and what the response typically was when they were trying to make impassioned cases for, for funding.
- [12:04]
B
Just so we can kind of give reference to the numbers for the audience, how much of the United States budget was USAID taking up?
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D
Foreign aid is less than 1% of the budget, and that foreign aid is spent across multiple agencies.
- [12:19]
B
So I've seen a lot of numbers floating out there about how many people died because USAID shut down. You guys have done such extensive reporting on this. I don't want to ask you to give me the number, but do you feel comfortable in saying that? Absolutely. People died because this agency was shut down.
- [12:41]
D
Absolutely. I mean, we met many people who lost family members as a direct result of a clinic shutting down or a program closing.
- [12:48]
C
Let me give you an example. To answer that, there was a man, his name was Tor Taub. He lived in this kind of isolated, remote part of South Sudan, surrounded by floodwaters. In his community, I think something like, I don't know, 30, 50ft away from his house was a health clinic. Very bare bones health clinic. But it has something really important. It had IV bags. IV bags are critical in South Sudan when we were there because there was a historic cholera outbreak kind of rampaging through the country. Cholera requires hydration. That's how you survive. If you get an IV bag, you live. If you don't, you die. It's kind of that simple. When we stopped funding, when the US Stopped funding the health clinic that was in his community, it was World Relief. That was the name of the aid organization. They had to close that clinic. They literally padlocked the doors. The next closest one was hours away by canoe. Tortob's mom contracted cholera. He put her into a canoe. They were on, I think it was like an eight hour journey to the hospital nearby. She died at hour three on the canoe ride. He turned around and buried her at home. If that's not someone dying as a result of the aid cuts, I don't know what it is.
- [14:07]
B
When we come back, Brett talks about the long term ripple effects of freezing humanitarian aid.
- [14:13]
C
If we take away USAID's ability to provide emergency support and health services in those communities. The big concern, of course, is that in the vacuum, the extremist groups will return and it becomes then a national security threat to the US More with
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B
journalists Brett Murphy and Anna Barry Jester in just a moment.
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A
Hi, I'm Megan. I work in membership at ProPublica. I want to tell you a bit about the newsroom that makes this podcast. The first thing you should know is that we're a nonprofit, which means we have no owner, no corporate interests or government funding, and we have no paywall. So everything we publish, including this podcast, is free. Our business model protects our independence. We're not beholden to benefactors. Funders have no say in what we cover. Our reporters have the freedom to investigate the most powerful people and institutions in this country and follow the facts wherever they lead. Right now, a lot of the news industry is being reshaped by political influence, profit motive and financial pressure. But ProPublica is different. It's investigative journalism for the people, not for profit. Find out more@proPublica.org info. For almost two months, a group of anarchists camped out in a tiny park in New York City and turned it into an anti capitalist village. You might know it as Occupy Wall street, But that was 15 years ago. And today we return to that park, to what happens when ordinary people harness collective power and try to change the world. From future hindsight, this is an unfinished uprising. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts,
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C
This
- [16:22]
B
is more to the story. I'm Al Letson and I'm back with ProPublica journalist Brett Murphy and Anna Barry Jester. You went to Kenya and South Sudan. Who was on your team and how did you gain access to the locals at the refugee camps?
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D
Yeah, in Kenya we, before we went, we were able to work with an NGO who is running the only hospital in what is. It's one of the largest refugee camps in the world. There's over 300,000 people who live there. And there's one place that you would call a hospital that could do surgeries. Had a doctor there and they agreed to let us come and meet patients at this hospital. We worked with a local journalist who is a refugee himself, just an incredible guy and he helped us both meet people in the community and talk to community leaders and, and find families of people who'd lost kids to. To malnutrition. Right. Their kids had starved to death.
- [17:24]
C
Yeah, his name, his name is Yale Awat. He's this great local reporter who. He's a refugee himself. That is in the camp. We also worked with a photographer from Nairobi named Brian Otieno who is phenomenal. He grew up in the slums outside Nairobi and he was kind of this brilliant photographer who was with us every day in the scorching heat in South Sudan. We, we worked with our photojournalist colleague Peter DeCampo. He traveled with us and we again embedded with that aid organization irc and we worked with a local translator and a couple other folks as we were moving around. But basically the sitch, it's very open there. It's like you, you can, you walk up to whoever you want. People know exactly what's going on. The refugees are very attuned to when their life saving support is cut off and they have just as many questions for us as we have for them. So it was open dialogue in both countries.
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B
I'm sure as the thorough and good reporters you, you guys are that you read a lot and talked to a lot of people before you got to the refugee camps. I guess I'm curious if you were prepared for what you actually saw. Like, it's one thing to read about it and to research it. It's a whole different thing to be in the middle of it.
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D
Yeah, I mean, no, I don't think we were prepared. We had done a ton of, like you said, we talked to everyone we could who'd worked in the camps or who was there at the time, anyone we could get on the phone. We tried to understand the situation. So we knew that things were pretty desperate. But there were just surprises everywhere. I mean, when the first day we arrived at the hospital in Kakuma, we're talking to the only doctor who was there on duty. I mean, they'd, the doctors also had had their. They'd had to work more days and longer hours. There were fewer of them there. So, you know, they were suffering honestly as well. And they're showing us around the hospital and talking to us about everything. And we knew we were going to go to this malnutrition ward. But the first day they were like, you know, the other group that's really struggling here is pregnant women. Like we have all these women who do not have anywhere near enough to eat and they are giving birth to babies early. They're having really tiny babies. They're very sick. And they opened the door into this little room where there were several women who'd had very, very tiny premature babies that they were trying to help gain weight so that they could leave the hospital and go home. And I think it was that when a community doesn't have enough to eat, there are consequences. Just kind of across the board. So there was, you know, this. With these women who were suffering. And then there was also. This is like a very peaceful place. It's a refugee camp that's been there since the 1990s. It's a very peaceful community. But there had been some violent uprisings. The police had shot at people. Some of the young men had burned down the tent where the World Food Program kept, you know, food historically, because they were so upset. I mean, when people are hungry, they get really desperate. And so you could see the effects of this kind of across the camp.
- [20:27]
C
There's just little moments, I mean, that you just can't understand, really, when you're on the phone. Like, it. You don't know what it. Right. Until you go there, you don't know what it feels like to hold, like, a malnourished toddler or baby. Right. Likewise. In South Sudan, we went to this one camp. It's a little difficult to describe because I think it's unlike any place on earth. It's. It's completely surrounded by floodwaters, and there's UN pumps that keep the water out of the camp. It's. It's a huge square.
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B
Where's this. Where's this camp at?
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C
This is in Bentu in South Sudan. It's a. It's a very remote part of the country, completely flooded, surrounded by floodwaters. And if not for these pumps, the place would be underwater itself. It has this sort of elaborate drainage system where all the. All rainwater pulls into and then they pump it out. And one of the aid. There was actually several USAID contracts that were specifically devoted to keeping these places habitable and sanitary, clearing those drainage culverts, cleaning the latrines. But we canceled that work, too. And the place just became this open sewer. And the smell alone, I mean, these people are living. And layers of human feces surrounded by them in the middle of a cholera outbreak. So Anna and I were. I mean, we were ankle deep, knee deep in this stuff, walking between these people's houses and the smell alone. And the people live, living like this. And it's completely inhumane in a way that I don't think I could have possibly appreciated before I had been there.
- [22:15]
B
I want to go back a little bit and ask you about you reporting on the maternity ward. Can you give me a description of, like, what it was like to be in Kakama?
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D
Yeah, Kakama is a really interesting place. It's in the desert in the north of Kenya. It's, you know, really kind of in the middle of nowhere. You take a main road and then you pull off of it through dirt and go several miles to kind of get to the camp. We spent a lot of time at this one, at this hospital there run by this organization called irc. They had a maternity ward that was very busy. There are, you know, like I said, There are over 300,000 people who live in this camp. And so there's babies born all the time. Every day, dozens and dozens of women would line up to have their prenatal care, prenatal checks done. They had these little books. Everyone was kind of keeping track of their pregnancies. And the doctors told us that there had just been this crazy uptick in premature births and low birth weight babies and, you know, babies just born really small and really struggling. It was very clear to them that it was because the moms had not had enough to eat during their pregnancy pregnancies, which unfortunately just coincided by chance with this cut, these cuts that the US had made. So spent a lot of time in this, what they call the kangaroo room. There's this kind of care where you put skin to skin contact, right? Like moms and babies have their naked skin together. And there's a lot of science that shows this helps babies grow. And so they were in this room and really needed to kind of get their weight, the baby's weight up before they could leave. But the moms were struggling to produce milk. I mean, the hospital also did not have great food supplies. The babies were really struggling to gain weight. They kept getting sick. Mom's, one of the moms got malaria while I was there. You know, these are people with real hopes and dreams. They, they really, they'd all been in the queue for a long time to try and become, you know, move to the United States. They were mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was a place they couldn't go back to. And their, their hope for the future was, it was like the next step was, was the US So they were devastated about what was happening to their kids, but also this idea that they didn't have anywhere to go from here, like that this might be where they were stuck now. They were doing weigh ins every couple days to try and see how much the babies weighed. And the women were all just like so funny. You know, they got together, they got to know each other, they were telling each other jokes, keeping their spirits up and stuff. But you could see with these weigh ins, they'd get super anxious beforehand and then after they would happen, pretty much always disappointed, like, they were not. The babies were not gaining weight. It was really sad for the. For these women. I mean, they're new moms, you know, just trying to bring their kid into the world.
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C
Some were so desperate for calories, they were eating mud to try to gain weight. I mean, the. The anemia, kind of like epidemic at the camp when we were there was. Was just really bad. These were very unhealthy, expectant mothers.
- [25:12]
B
Listening to you, I am feeling the pain for the people that were there or who are still there living with it. But also, as a journalist, I just know that those type of sounds and sights and smells, they don't leave you. They stick with you long after you've left the assignment.
- [25:36]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think that's true. But. But it's also important to remember we are like tourists in other people's nights.
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B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Abs. Absolutely.
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C
We get to go home and like, our. We got to go to, you know, back to a UN camp, and we ate. And it was. It was one of the. One of the harder things was, like, actually leaving and knowing that they.
- [25:59]
B
You know, leaving and knowing that there's not a whole lot you can do about it except report the story.
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D
I mean, the people there, it was really interesting. They. First of all, everyone, especially in South Sudan, wanted to know if the US really had cut off aid. It was easier for them to believe that, like, the aid organizations were lying to them than to think that the United States would do this. And people just kept saying to us repeatedly, like, the US doesn't have to take care of us. They know that their government should do it, but their government wasn't doing it. And, yeah, as Brett said, I mean, I think it felt like a real privilege to be able to go there and do this. I mean, there was not a lot of coverage. Our media ecosystem in the US Is really diminished and struggling. And so making a big trip like this is not easy for most news organizations. And I think that was the whole time I just felt really lucky that we could meet people, talk to them, and tell this story.
- [26:53]
B
One of the things that I think about when it comes to USAID is that it's not just about helping people. You know, during the Cold War, we were in investing in these places to kind of get a foothold, so to speak, in those places. I remember going to Africa about a decade ago. I was in Malawi, and when I was in Malawi, almost all the infrastructure projects that I saw happening in the country were being funded by the Chinese government. And I remember thinking to myself that they were definitely putting a footprint here so that, you know, in the future they were going to be more likely to ally themselves with the Chinese versus allying themselves with the United States. So it seems to me that it's not just a question about helping people, but it also seems like a national security issue.
- [27:49]
D
Yeah, I think that that has been a long time argument of USAID at soft power. I mean, you'll hear colonels and military people say every dollar spent on aid is a bullet I don't have to buy. So there's those arguments around, you know, war and conflict. And then as you said, there's also this argument that, you know, these are, this is the way we help countries become trading partners. They prioritize the United States because we've helped them along the way. That is the ideology that underlies this, that there's a soft power and is very much a part of everything that was happening with usaid.
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C
We saw a lot of internal State Department cables, communications, other records discussing this exact point. And the point here is that in countries where there are extremist groups who are providing the only sort of support and assistance for a lot of communities, the way the Pentagon and State have historically operated, is that the military will help those countries or do it themselves, drive extremist groups out of certain areas. Right. It's how we kind of get rid of ISIS right behind them. After that happens, those communities where ISIS had previously been providing the bread and the water and the electricity, then it's incumbent on the coalition forces to provide that sort of help and support. Right. If we take away USAID's ability to provide emergency support and health services in those communities, the big concern, of course, is that in the vacuum, the extremist groups will return and it becomes then a national security threat to the U.S. people.
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B
Domestically, USAID brought about $2 billion in crops annually from U.S. farmers. What does the shuttering of USAID mean to those farmers and domestically?
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D
Yeah, so for most of last year, we just didn't make purchases of food from US farmers. And they were, we talked with, you know, many agricultural groups and they were getting a bit antsy because they rely on that for purchases, especially of certain kinds of crops. That whole program was transferred to the USDA and they purchased some food. But this is also just like a politically kind of controversial thing. I mean, people, especially Republicans in the middle of the country, deeply supportive of this program. There are aid experts who think we should spend cash not send us grown food around the world, but there was a big hit to the agricultural sector by not having these purchases. It's like specific crops that they tend to buy, like wheat and sorghum and these other things. And so there was a collective effort from a lot of these agricultural groups to put pressure on Congress to return to making those purchases, which they have to some extent, but nowhere near what they were purchasing before some of the
- [30:42]
B
funds were released to keep at least some rations going. Through this past March. Have you followed up on that like what's happened since then?
- [30:50]
D
Yes, they have continued to provide some aid. Everything has been completely reorganized. So instead of we are funding the World Food Program, which was the primary mechanism through which we gave away, you know, did food aid before. There is still some funding for the World Food Program, but they've also just completely transformed how they're doing things. So I think there's a lot of questions about what money is going where at this point there is aid money flowing, but it is not clear what these programs look like and what their future is.
- [31:25]
B
What do you think recovery looks like in places like Kenya?
- [31:29]
C
I mean, they've been talking a lot about what the future of foreign aid is, and they will point to what they call bilateral agreements. We'll give money to countries that are willing to invest money themselves. So we went to the State Department with all this reporting and we said, like we asked them that very question, what happens now for refugees in places like Kakuma? And they said, well, look, don't, you know, look at this other thing. This other thing being we just gave a bunch of money to Nairobi's health sector because they invested in it themselves. And this is what I think they are imagining as the future of foreign aid where it's more transactional. There, there has to be investment from a home government if they are willing to. To invest U S Taxpayer dollars. Problem is there are countries that are simply unable or unwilling to do that. So like Anna was saying before South Sudan, the government there does not invest in its people. The government there has been plagued by corruption since the country existed, which is not very long. Right. So places like that, they don't have much to offer. There's no transaction that can benefit the US in some way.
- [32:38]
D
Yeah. And this transactional nature, I mean they've been very open, very clear that if they're going to give the money, they also expect to get something in exchange. And that can look like a lot of things. It's data critical, minerals access, investment in American companies. There's a range of things that they're asking for from governments. But they've been very clear that in order to get global health money that countries are going to have to give something in exchange.
- [33:03]
B
Brett Murphy and Anna Barry Jesser, thank you for your reporting. I encourage everybody to go read it and I just thought it was amazing and heartbreaking. Thank you so much for your work and coming onto the show.
- [33:16]
C
Thanks, y'.
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A
All.
- [33:17]
D
Thank you.
- [33:21]
A
Hey, it's Jessica again. One more thing before we go. Anna Barry Jester continues to report on the Trump administration and foreign aid spending. Brett Murphy is reporting on foreign affairs. If you've got tips for them, please reach out. In her most recent story, Anna details how Congress denied the administration's request to permanently shutter USAID and instead passed a law that mandated that billions of dollars be allocated and spent on global health and emergency humanitarian aid. President Trump signed it into law. Since then, according to Anna's reporting, very little of that allocated aid money is being spent and the administration refuses to answer Congress questions about what programs are being funded. In response to questions about Anna's reporting, the State Department said they were not withholding appropriated funds and and that they were working with and briefing Congress on global health spending. In response to Brett and Anna's reporting in Kenya and South Sudan, the State Department said that fast, drastic changes were necessary to reform a, quote, calcified system and that US Interests will be better for it in the long run, despite, quote, some disruptions in the short term. Thanks to Reveal for hosting this amazing conversation. We'll be back in two weeks with a brand new episode of Paper Trail. This episode was produced for more to the story by Josh sanburn and Kara McGurk. Allison Brett Meyers edited the show. Theme music and engineering help by Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs. Erica Wong also mixed this episode. Investigative journalism can make powerful people uncomfortable, but that doesn't stop ProPublica reporters. Our newsroom was built so that investigative journalists can follow the facts wherever they lead, even when the truth is damaging, embarrassing or hard to hear. In our newsroom, no owner tells us to drop a story, no advertiser gets a veto, and no political pressure determines what we publish. That editorial independence depends on people like you. We are a donor funded nonprofit newsroom and we investigate abuses of power so that the facts can inspire real change, help keep our journalism fearless. Give now@proPublica.org donate.