The Breach

Throughout Season Four of The Breach, we've explored the racial and political agendas behind the push to treat substance use by pregnant people as a crime rather than a health issue. We broke the news of law 240-D in Fort Peck, Montana, the harshest law of this kind found to date. We met Reneé, a woman jailed under 240-D. We've examined the ongoing challenges facing tribal governments as they grapple with high rates of substance use. And we've delved into the myths and contradictions of the...

Season Four of the The Breach explores one central question: What happens when drug use during pregnancy becomes a felony? In our last episode, we met Reneé, a woman jailed under 240-D, a unique law in Fort Peck, Montana, that criminalizes substance use during pregnancy. As part of her sentence, Reneé was required to participate in a special court in the Fort Peck justice system known as Healing to Wellness Court. This is the tribal system’s version of a drug court, which is often billed...

Part 3 of 3–all 3 parts available now. When Montana county prosecutor Jay Harris announced he was going to seek protective orders for fetuses against pregnant people who use drugs or alcohol, it made international news. So why doesn’t anybody know that more than a dozen Native women have been criminally charged for the same behavior just a few hours away? Join host Lindsay Beyerstein for a completely new investigative season of The Breach exploring one central question: What happens when...

Part 2 of 3–all 3 parts available now. When Montana county prosecutor Jay Harris announced he was going to seek protective orders for fetuses against pregnant people who use drugs or alcohol, it made international news. So why doesn’t anybody know that more than a dozen Native women have been criminally charged for the same behavior just a few hours away? Join host Lindsay Beyerstein for a completely new investigative season of The Breach exploring one central question: What happens when...

Part 1 of 3–all 3 parts available now. When Montana county prosecutor Jay Harris announced he was going to seek protective orders for fetuses against pregnant people who use drugs or alcohol, it made international news. So why doesn’t anybody know that more than a dozen Native women have been criminally charged for the same behavior just a few hours away? Join host Lindsay Beyerstein for a completely new investigative season of The Breach exploring one central question: What happens when...

It’s taken nine months, but The Breach is back with an entirely new format. We found one story that was so compelling that we had to follow it wherever it led. This story is about pregnancy and drug use. It’s about Native people and tribal sovereignty. It’s about the search for justice. It’s a story nobody has told outside of a small community, but one that everybody needs to hear.

Award-winning journalist Suzette Brewer discusses the issues facing Native American communities in the era of President Donald Trump. At reservations all over the country, water is being poisoned as toxins from mines seep into the local water supplies. And now the Trump administration wants to dramatically increase drilling on public lands, putting even more tribes at risk. Learn more at Rewire.news today. Recommended reading: Special election to replace Rep. John Conyers Jr. set for...

Chye-Ching Huang of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to break down exactly how the Senate tax bill will shift massive amounts of wealth from working people to corporations and the rich. Learn more today at Rewire.news. Recommended Reading: Does the GOP Tax Plan Include a Tax Cut for Private Jet Owners? by Alex Kasprak for Snopes, November 2017

Journalist Sarah Kendzior returns to shine a light on the surprisingly coherent, and wholly anti-democratic, philosophy driving many of the choices of President Donald Trump. Kendzior, who speaks Russian and earned her PhD studying politics and propaganda in post-Soviet republics, also discusses the systemic challenges facing the mainstream media and U.S. intelligence agencies in the current political climate. Learn more at Rewire.news. Recommended Reading: Rebuilding Puerto Rico Will Cost...

Rebecca Traister, award-winning journalist and writer at large for New York magazine, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss the righteous anger that has been unleashed by reports of Harvey Weinstein and countless other powerful men perpetrating sexual violence against women. Learn more at Rewire.news. Recommended Reading: Two Dozen African Girls Dead at Sea, by Tariro Mzezewa for The New York Times, November 2017

Andy Wright, a law professor and former associate counsel to President Obama, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss what the indictment of Paul Manafort and guilty plea of George Papadopoulos reveal about the next steps of Robert Mueller's ongoing investigation into President Donald Trump and his campaign associates. Learn more at Rewire.news today! Recommended Reading: Commerce Secretary’s Offshore Ties to Putin ‘Cronies,’ by By Mike McIntire, Sasha Chavkin, and Martha M. Hamilton for...

Journalist Ari Berman joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss his jaw-dropping Mother Jones story about Wisconsin voter suppression in 2016 and how that may be the start of a much larger trend. Recommended Reading: The Hillary Clinton Russia Uranium One Conspiracy Theory Doesn't Make Any Sense, by Zachary Fryer-Biggs for Newsweek, October 2017 Watch MSNBC’s Joy Reid Expertly Debunk Lies Around Uranium-Clinton Story, by Daniel Politi for Slate, October 2017 Learn more at Rewire.news!

The FBI has identified so-called "Black Identity Extremists" as a threat to law enforcement, according to a leaked memo. If you’re wondering what a "Black Identity Extremist" is, you’re not alone. Senior Staff Attorney Nusrat Choudhury of the ACLU’s Racial Equality Program joins Lindsay to explain the FBI’s newest crackpot theory about Black activism and the threat it poses to the people they are targeting. Recommended Reading: How Twitter Killed the First Amendment, by Tim Wu for The New...

President Trump is expected to declare a national state of emergency for opioids this week. Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss the latest news on the overdose epidemic, including a blockbuster Washington Post story that led Trump’s pick to head the DEA to withdraw his name from consideration. The episode also delves into the root causes of opioid abuse, from under-regulation of drug distribution companies to social disintegration, as well...

It has been said – even by Republican lawmakers – that President Donald Trump’s erratic decisions and aggressive rhetoric could put us on the path to World War III. But how possible is such a war, and what exactly could happen to cause it? Host Lindsay Beyerstein and security journalist Ankit Panda discuss North Korea, Trump’s complicated relationship with the Iran deal, and more. Recommended Reading: What if the right-wing media wins? by McKay Coppins for Columbia Journalism Review,...

Medical anthropologist Dr. Adia Benton joins Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss why the government and private donors are treating Puerto Ricans like second-class citizens in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Recommended reading: Here's How Breitbart and Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into The Mainstream, by Joseph Bernstein for Buzzfeed, October 2017

Tina Vasquez, Rewire’s immigration reporter, joins Lindsay to talk about the fate of the 800,000 young people who could face mass deportation now that President Donald Trump has called off the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as DACA. Trump has given Congress six months to fix a legislative problem it has been unable to crack for the last 16 years, and the futures of these young people hang in the balance. Recommended Reading: Trump lawyer Ty Cobb, fooled by...

Author and professor Jared Yates Sexton joins Lindsay to dissect the way President Donald Trump’s brand of cognitive dissonance and unreality is empowering right-wing extremism across the United States, and how he harnessed those dark cultural and political forces to take the White House. Recommended Reading: "A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof," by Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah for GQ, August 2017 Learn more about these issues at Rewire.

In the latest episode of The Breach, host Lindsay Beyerstein is joined by award-winning journalist Brooke Binkowski, the managing editor of Snopes, to discuss the ever-evolving "fake news" landscape. As verifiably false stories loosely based on urban legends continue to gain traction on social media and elsewhere, real journalism is increasingly lost in the noise. Binkowski explains how we arrived at our current crisis, what defenders of legitimate news can do to combat it, and the chilling...

Natasha Merle, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, joins host Lindsay Beyerstein to discuss how false allegations of voter fraud are being used to suppress the votes of communities of color. Merle and her organization are suing Donald Trump’s handpicked electoral commission for intentional discrimination against Black and Latino voters. Merle explains how voter ID laws have become the modern-day equivalent of poll taxes, imposing undue burdens on vulnerable people...