In this piece for BillMoyers.com I asked four historians to discuss the Birther lie that Trump rode to power. It was first published on January 20, 2017, the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Nell Painter, Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Christopher Lebron, and Phillip Klinkner examine the fertile ground on which the Birther lie was sown, our nation’s history of white supremacy.
The Big Lie Behind the Rise of Trump
In this piece for BillMoyers.com I interviewed four historians about the Birther lie that President Donald Trump rode to power. This essay was first published on the day of Trump’s inauguration.
Nell Painter, Princeton; Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Harvard; Christopher Lebron, Yale; and Phillip Clinker, Hamilton together examine the fertile ground on which the Birther lie was sown—our nation’s history of white supremacy.
January 20, 2017
I produced and wrote this commentary with Bill Moyers in which we questioned President Trump’s choice to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt spent his career fighting the rules and regulations of the agency that he was being nominated to lead and had a track record of putting the business interests of the energy sector before the environmental and health interests of the public.
January 31, 2017
An Unlikely Alliance Fights Big Oil
I profiled Jane Kleeb for a five-part series I developed called Making Change. In the fields of Nebraska, Kleeb has grown a bipartisan coalition of farmers, ranchers, tribes and environmental advocates to fight an international pipeline. I hired Nebraska photographer Mary Anne Andrei to cover Kleeb rallying her forces. With Andrei's help on location in Lincoln, NE, I asked Kleeb what inspired her to take on these powerful oil companies.
September 20, 2017
When federal agents began cracking down on undocumented immigrants in the Chicago area, Gabe Gonzalez launched a rapid-response network of neighbors to block them. I met Gonzalez at a conference in Chicago and conducted an audio interview with him about his efforts. I edited the interview with photos that I commissioned from Chicago-based photojournalist, Alyssa Schukar.
August 10, 2017