Last fall, we threw out a simple question after a show about U.S. immigration policies: What do you wish you knew about immigration?

Across the country, listeners responded with hundreds of text messages – from small towns in Iowa, Colorado and Massachusetts to big cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.

We chose four questions and took our team of reporters and producers to task to answer them.

To figure out the answers, we go deep into immigration court, help one listener uncover her grandfather’s secret past about entering the country and break down the path to legal citizenship. On the way, we meet scam artists, attorneys, asylum seekers and do-gooders learning immigration law for kicks.

Far from the World Cup stadium cheers, a prisoner held in Russia is six weeks into a hunger strike.

Reveal host Al Letson talks with Masha Alyokhina, a founding member of the Russian feminist punk rock collective Pussy Riot, about the efforts to free Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker convicted of an armed plot during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He denies any involvement. His supporters fear U.S. President Donald Trump has undermined their cause. Alyokhina knows the topic well: She spent time in prison for challenging Russian President Vladimir Putin, too.

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Victim compensation funds are supposed to help victims of crime cover lost wages or funeral expenses. But Reveal teamed up with The Marshall Project and discovered that in some states, African Americans are disproportionately hurt by rules on how that money is handed out.

Then, Reveal reporters Amy Julia Harris and Shoshana Walter uncover a scheme at a drug rehabilitation facility in the mountains of North Carolina, where clients are being used as a source of free labor.

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Desperate to have a child, a couple puts its trust in a fertility clinic that promises more than it can deliver. They enter a world where some clinics take unnecessary risks to make them look far more successful than they are in reality.

From reporter Jonathan Jones and Reveal’s Bernice Yeung and Emily Harris.

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We meet an immigration judge who rejected nearly every asylum case that came before her, then follow a transgender woman as she tries to claim asylum. Finally, we go to Turkey, where young Afghan women are trying to leave their past behind.

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Delivering donated organs quickly to patients waiting for a transplant is a matter of life and death. Yet transportation errors are leading to delays in surgeries that put patients in danger and make some organs unusable. 

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Quarantines are supposed to contain the new coronavirus, but are the right people going into isolation, and are federal guidelines strong enough? Plus, why California abandoned medical stockpiles that could help doctors treat COVID-19. 

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The 1,4 dioxane plume emanating from the old Gelman Sciences facility on Wagner Road in Scio Township continues to expand through groundwater in the greater Ann Arbor area. At a recent public forum, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said it would take decades to get the contamination designated as a Superfund site and clean-up could take decades beyond that. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair talks to Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners chair Jason Morgan about what is happening now to better address the environmental threat.

PFAS contamination continues to threaten Michigan's environment, as well as the health of its citizens. Over the past month, action at the state level has been taken to fight this problem. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," Rebecca Esselman, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council, discusses progress and challenges with WEMU's David Fair.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer recently released the latest Michigan state budget, and it includes funding for a number of environmental programs. And, it builds on the initiatives launched in her first budget cycle as governor. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair talks over environmental priorities, progress, and challenges with State Senator Jeff Irwin.

Since President Donald Trump took office, 58 environmental protection policies have been rolled back or rescinded. 37 more are in the process of being taken off the books. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair checks in with 12th District Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell about efforts to thwart federal policies that threaten environmental health and sustainability.

Water shutoffs has been a major issue in Detroit, and the next round is expected to come in April. Low-income residents are being dramatically impacted by the inability to meet the rising cost of water. Is access to water a right? Or, is it a privilege? In this month's "1st Friday Focus on the Environment," WEMU's David Fair and Lisa Wozniak of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters explore the answers to those questions. Monica Lewis-Patrick is co-founder, president, and CEO of "We the People of Detroit." She'll explain the organization's efforts to win water justice in the city and around the state and country.

Many aspects of daily life have been dramatically changed due to COVID-19, and public transportation is certainly no exception. Although services like the Ann Arbor Area Transportion Authority (AAATA) promote a cleaner environment, they still have financial obligations and public health matters to consider. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," AAATA CEO Matt Carpenter explains how his organization and other forms of public transit in Michigan are adapting to the pandemic in a conversation with WEMU's David Fair.

Food production has been seriously disrupted to the coronavirus pandemic. It has forced producers, including dairy farmers, to dispose of more of their supplies, which has led to more food waste. Joe Diglio, president/CEO of the Michigan Milk Producers Association, has a conversation with WEMU's David Fair about how the problems are being addressed in this week's "Issues of the Environment."

The New Yorker contributor Jenna Krajeski recently met with a woman who calls herself Esperanza. In her home country, Esperanza was coerced and threatened into prostitution, and later was trafficked into the United States, where she was subjected to appalling conditions. Esperanza eventually obtained legal help, and applied for something called a T visa. The T visa contains unusual provisions that recognize the unique circumstances of human-trafficking victims in seeking legal status. It has also been a crucial tool to obtaining victims’ coöperation in prosecuting traffickers. The Trump Administration claims to want to fight the problem of human trafficking, but Krajeski notes that its policies have done the opposite: T-visa applicants can now be deported if their applications are rejected. This dramatic change in policy sharply reduced the number of applications from victims seeking help. “If what [the Administration] cares about is putting traffickers in prison, which is what they say they care about, their prosecutions are going down and will go down further,” Martina Vandenberg, the president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center, says. “Trafficking victims under the circumstances can’t actually coöperate.”

It’s hard to recall a newly elected freshman representative to Congress who has made a bigger impact than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her primary victory for New York’s Fourteenth District seat—as a young woman of color beating out a long-established white male incumbent—was big news, and Ocasio-Cortez has been generating headlines almost daily ever since. Practically the day she took her seat in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez became the hero of the left wing of the Democrats and a favored villain of Fox News and the right. She battled Nancy Pelosi to make the Green New Deal a priority, and has been involved with a movement to launch primary challenges against centrist or right-leaning Democrats. Like Bernie Sanders, she embraces the label of democratic socialism and supports free college education for all Americans. She has called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She joined David Remnick in the New Yorker Radio Hour studio on July 5th, just after her trip to the border to examine migrant-detention facilities. Remnick and Ocasio-Cortez spoke about why she courted controversy by referring to some facilities as “concentration camps”; why she thinks the Department of Homeland Security is irredeemable; and whether Joe Biden is qualified to be President, given his comments about colleagues who supported forms of segregation. “Issues of race and gender are not extra-credit points in being a good Democrat,” she says. “They are a core part of the ... competencies that a President needs. . . . Where are you on understanding the people that live in this country?”

In June, protests erupted in Hong Kong over a proposed bill that could have allowed the Chinese government to prosecute political dissidents living in Hong Kong. This past Sunday, police in the city fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, and a group of masked men attacked protesters and civilians at a Hong Kong train station. The protests are only the latest expression of increasing tension between Hong Kong, which has been a special administrative region since 1997, and the People’s Republic of China. Jiayang Fan joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss that rancorous relationship, and whether Beijing might order a military crackdown.

Earlier this month, a gunman killed nine people and injured nearly thirty more in Dayton, Ohio. The shooting in Dayton, the 251st mass shooting in the United States this year, took place only hours before an even deadlier mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. As the city reeled, its mayor, Nan Whaley, was suddenly rocketed into prominence as both a spokesperson for Dayton and a figure in the national conversation about gun violence. Paige Williams, who met with Nan Whaley after the shooting, joins Eric Lach to discuss the role of local officials in times of national tragedy.

In 2014, a pair of crimes shocked Israelis and Palestinians. The first was the abduction and murder of three Israeli boys by a Hamas-linked group. Then there was an act of reprisal—the torture, burning, and murder of a Palestinian teen-ager named Mohammed Abu Khdeir—by Israeli right-wing extremists. Even by the standards of this conflict, the killings were shocking. 

“Our Boys,” a co-production of HBO and the Israeli Keshet Studios, examines the forces that led to Abu Khdeir’s killing. It is not for the faint of heart, David Remnick says, but the series is as complex and deep a portrayal of the conflict as he has ever seen. Remnick spoke with two of the creators: Hagai Levi, an Israeli Jew, and Tawfiq Abu Wael, a Palestinian living in Israel. Abu Wael tells Remnick why he resisted pressure from activists not to participate in an Israeli production. 

On September 23rd, Representative Abigail Spanberger joined six other House Democrats—all from swing districts and all veterans of the military, defense, and intelligence communities—in drafting an op-ed in the Washington Post declaring President Trump a threat to the nation. The op-ed signalled a shift in the position of the moderate members of the House Democratic caucus. The day after the Post op-ed ran, the House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Trump. Spanberger joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss divisions within the Party, how Democratic candidates can win in 2020, and the Trump debacles in Ukraine and northern Syria.

Senator Elizabeth Warren has made a "wealth tax" one of the centerpieces of her presidential campaign. The plan was developed with the help of the economists Emmanuael Saez and Gabriel Zucman, part of a new generation of economists whose work focuses on the failures of free markets and advocate what many see as radical social change. John Cassidy joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss how this cohort is affecting policy among the Democratic candidates, and whether the economy might help Donald Trump's 2020 re-election bid.

Lena Waithe is the screenwriter and creator of the Showtime series “The Chi,” about the South Side of Chicago, but she tells Jelani Cobb, “Getting your own TV show is like getting beaten to death by your own dream.” Her first script for a feature film is “Queen & Slim,” directed by Melina Matsoukas. It’s about a man and woman who are on a not-great first date, during which they unintentionally kill a police officer at a traffic stop that escalates. “I just wanted to write something about us. But unfortunately, if I’m writing about us, how can I ignore the fact that we’re being hunted?” The film arrives in the aftermath two notorious police killings of black people—Botham Jean in Dallas and Atatiana Jefferson in Fort Worth—only the latest in a long line of similar tragedies. “I do not want that kind of publicity for my film,” Waithe says. “I am like every other black person. . . . Every time these stories hit our phones, a piece of us dies, because we know that we could be next.”

This week, after two months of questioning seventeen former and current State Department and White House officials, the House Intelligence Committee released its report on the impeachment inquiry into President Trump. What has the country learned with certainty about how the Administration tried to strong-arm the new President of Ukraine, and about the fictional counter-narrative being spun by the Republican Party? Susan B. Glasser joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the strengths and weaknesses in the Democrats’ case for the impeachment of the President.

The New Yorker’s Eric Lach is in Iowa for the month leading up to the Democratic caucuses. Next week’s debate, in Des Moines, was likely going to focus on health care and other domestic issues core to the Democratic platform, but the agenda may instead be dominated by a discussion of the Trump Administration’s killing of the Iranian general Qassem Suleimani and the United States’ fraught history of war in the Middle East. Polls show that Joe Biden is trusted on foreign-policy issues, but Lach suggests that Bernie Sanders’s history of opposing wars—and his quick and confident articulation of his position on Iran—may sway voters seeking a clear message. Nearly a year into the campaign, votes will finally be cast, and in Iowa the deciding factor may involve personal contact more than ideological positions. Iowa voters tend to say, “ ‘I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’ve shaken this person’s hand, and I’m going to make my decision after I’ve shaken this other person’s hand.’ That counts for a lot, I think,” Lach says.

Every year, Townsend Harris High School, in Queens, New York, holds a schoolwide election simulation. Students are assigned roles and begin campaigning in September. Every candidate has a staff, raises money, and makes ads for the school’s radio and television network. This fall, the school simulated the Democratic and Republican primaries. Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden got into a rap battle. The American Family Association joined the fray and released a rap of its own. 

The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman first observed the simulation during the primaries of the 2016 Presidential election. At the time, he saw that Trump’s political arrival was greeted with distaste at a school where many students come from immigrant families. “There was some stuff Donald Trump was saying that, if you heard from any other candidate, it would frankly be disgusting,” Justin, who played Pete Buttigieg this cycle, said. But Togay, who was assigned the role of Trump—he’s a Democrat in real life—was determined to make the President more appealing to his classmates. “In preparation, I watched Alec Baldwin for a couple weeks,” he tells Rothman. For Togay and the Townsend Harris student body, Donald Trump’s unprecedented Presidency is normal. “We’ve seen what’s actually going on in Washington, because it’s been like a reality show to us,” Justin said. “This isn’t really surprising. This isn’t new.”

Donald Trump began his Presidential bid, in 2015, with an infamous speech, at Trump Tower, in which he said of Mexican immigrants, “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” But it was not until a former aide to Jeff Sessions joined Trump’s campaign that the nativist rhetoric coalesced into a policy platform—including the separation of children from their families at the border. Jonathan Blitzer, who writes about immigration for The New Yorker, has been reporting on Stephen Miller’s sway in the Trump Administration and his remarkable success in advancing an extremist agenda. “There has never been an American President who built his campaign around the issue of immigration and later won on that campaign on immigration. Trump was the first and only President really ever to do it,” Blitzer tells David Remnick. Despite this influence, Miller remains largely behind the scenes. Blitzer explains why: “He knows that the kiss of death in this Administration is to be identified as the brains behind the man. He can’t let on that he’s the one who effectively is manipulating Trump on these issues.” 

Donald Trump never really stopped running for President. On the day of his inauguration, in 2017, he filed the paperwork to run for reëlection in 2020. As the Democrats have fought a historically long primary battle, Trump has been gearing up for the general election. In particular, his campaign will take place online—he has tapped his 2016 digital-media director, Brad Parscale, to run his 2020 campaign. Andrew Marantz, who profiled Parscale for The New Yorker, joins Eric Lach to discuss Parscale’s role in the Trump phenomenon and what to expect from an increasingly online reëlection campaign.

In northern Italy, doctors were forced to begin rationing ventilators and other equipment—a nightmare scenario that could become a reality for medical staff in the United States soon; New York has projected ventilator shortages in the thousands per week. David Remnick talks with Philip Rosoff, a professor of Medicine at Duke University and a scholar of bioethics who has studied rationing. Rosoff believes medical institutions must also consider the needs of those who can’t be saved, and suggests that hospitals should stock up on drugs to ease suffering at the end of life. Rosoff notes that the U.S. medical system puts an emphasis on “go for broke” care at all costs, and is poorly prepared for those kinds of decisions, which leave hospital workers with an acute sense of “moral distress.” “If we’re smart, we would have institutional guidelines and plans in place ahead of time,” Rosoff says. “The way not to make [a rationing decision] is to make it arbitrarily, capriciously, unilaterally, and at the bedside in the moment.”

It’s been just over a month since Donald Trump tweeted for the first time about the coronavirus—saying, in essence, that the virus did not pose a substantial threat to the United States. Why did he so dramatically underplay the risks of COVID-19? “With Trump, sometimes the answer is pretty transparent,” The New Yorker’s Washington correspondent, Susan B. Glasser, told David Remnick, “and, in this case, I think the answer is pretty transparent. He didn’t want anything to interrupt his reëlection campaign plan, which entirely hinged on the strength of the U.S. economy.” Even as the virus spreads, Trump has criticized widespread self-isolation orders and made overtures toward reopening businesses to revitalize the economy. Meanwhile, Joe Biden, Trump’s likely Democratic Presidential opponent, has refrained from openly antagoniz ing the President. Glasser weighs this tactic: “Do you attack Trump right now, or do you just sort of stand out of the way and let him shoot himself in the foot?”

Since the coronavirus became a public-health emergency in the United States, coverage of the 2020 Presidential election has been scarce. With little media attention and public events an impossibility, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have taken their campaigns online. Meanwhile, state election officials across the country are struggling to find the best time and means to hold their primaries. Eric Lach joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss electoral reforms, such as voting by mail, and how the Democratic Party is trying to exploit President Trump’s bungling response to the pandemic.

Two weeks ago, Congress passed a two-trillion-dollar stimulus bill aimed at mitigating the damage the coronavirus is doing to the American economy. With the stock market flagging and unemployment reaching historic highs, further government intervention will almost certainly be needed to stave off financial devastation. But even as COVID-19 cases quickly rise around the country, President Trump says that business should return to normal this spring. John Cassidy joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the dangers of Trumponomics, lessons from other nations about how to respond to pandemics, and how to put American back to work without precipitating a rebound of the virus.

'God knows all about us. This is comforting and gives us security and the assurance that we are in His care.'

'The Bible gives us formulas for practices that will keep us grounded in God and are designed to maximize our happiness. What can we do to seek to keep faith alive in our homes and families, even if we have made wrong decisions in the past?'

'Whenever we face a big problem, we also should recognize that our God is great enough to resolve even the most unsolvable challenges.'

What are ways in which our society and culture profane the truth of God’s Word? How can we be careful not to take part in that profanation, even in subtle ways? At what point can we say that we are acquainted with all the truth that we need to know?

'What kind of witness do we present to others in regard to our faithfulness to God and to His law? Would people who know you think that you would stand for your faith, even if it cost you your job, or even your life?'

'What should this study tell us about how precious and important the knowledge of biblical truth really is in contrast to human traditions?'

'Christ’s sacrifice in our behalf is our only hope. How should this help keep us humble and, even more important, make us more loving and forgiving of others?'

'If we approach and interpret the Bible wrongly, we will likely come to false conclusions, not just in the understanding of salvation but in everything else that the Bible teaches.'

Thursday on Political Rewind , the ongoing public health crisis has given doctors, public officials and many Georgians a series of challenging decisions as society grapples with an unprecedented situation. On our show today, we discuss how somber decisions regarding public health such as who gets ventilators or an ICU bed, or how vaccines are tested are made.

Thursday on Political Rewind , the governor says his decision to reopen the state is driven by data. What will be the consequences of Georgians going out and attempting to resume life as normal? We’ll ask two public health experts for their opinions.

Monday on Political Rewind , we discussed the upcoming 2020 elections, and how campaigns are handling the shelter-in-place conditions found across the state and the country. Nearly 830,000 people have applied for absentee ballots for the 2020 combined primary so far. That represents a huge increase in applications over 2016’s primary, and reflects efforts by officials and the public to avoid the spread of coronavirus from in-person voting.

Friday on Political Rewind , Gov. Brian Kemp lifts a shelter-in-place order for many Georgians across the state. His press secretary joins us to discuss the decision. What will the political fallout look like for officials across the country as multiple states begin easing restrictions?

Monday on Political Rewind , the challenges of holding elections amidst a public health crisis. We spoke to the current and former secretaries of state who joined us to talk about managing this year's elections amid the dangers of coronavirus. Panelists : Brad Raffensperger - Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox - Former Georgia Secretary of State, former candidate for governor, current Dean of the Walter F. Georgia School of Law at Mercer University Al Scott - Chatham County Commission Chairman Susan Catron - Savannah Morning News Executive Editor

"I was still shocked by how much had changed, and how quickly." After climbing out of the Grand Canyon, Kim Stanley Robinson reflects on how culture is and may be changing under the impact of COVID-19, from charismatic mega-ideas to societies within societies.

(Previously) (SLNewYorker)

Every week, for a quarter of a century now, WEMU's David Fair has delivered "Issues of the Environment," which has brought information involving our community's environmental health. He has welcomed numerous guests to discuss matters, such as managing food waste, monitoring climate change, and fighting hazardous chemicals like PFAS. This week, David welcomes Washtenaw County water resources commissioner Evan Pratt for a look back at 25 years of "Issues of the Environment."

A number of Americans have difficulty paying their energy bills, which can be very dangerous to a person's health during the winter months. Dr. Tony Reames, an assistant professor at the U-M's School for Environment and Sustainability, is now researching ways to better understand the correlation between environmental health and income. Dr. Reames discusses his work with WEMU's David Fair for this week's "Issues of the Environment."

The 1,4 dioxane plume emanating from the old Gelman Sciences facility on Wagner Road in Scio Township continues to expand through groundwater in the greater Ann Arbor area. At a recent public forum, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said it would take decades to get the contamination designated as a Superfund site and clean-up could take decades beyond that. In this week's "Issues of the Environment," WEMU's David Fair talks to Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners chair Jason Morgan about what is happening now to better address the environmental threat.