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It’s the kind of captivating, complex story that’s hard to forget once you hear it. In 2012, star Notre Dame linebacker Manti T’eo’s grandmother died. Just hours later, his girlfriend died of leukemia. Rising above the tragedy he seemed unstoppable on the field as Notre Dame went on to a winning season.

But the girlfriend was a hoax. Te’o was the victim of catfishing. He had fallen in love with a fake Facebook profile. In the media frenzy that followed, he went from the golden boy of Notre Dame football to the target of ridicule and attack. In a new documentary on Netflix, Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, Manti Te’o gets the opportunity to tell his full story for the first time in nearly ten years.

Host Michel Martin speaks with Te’o about the scandal and how he overcame it.

President Biden had the narrowest possible Democratic Majority in the Senate when he took office. Yet the Biden administration’s legislative successes continue to pile up.

He signed the American Rescue Plan just a couple months after taking office, followed by a major infrastructure bill last fall. Most recently, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. These three legislative packages total up to around $4 trillion.

NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks with journalist Michael Grunwald, author of the book, “The New New Deal”, about what it all means for the country.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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75 years ago this week, British colonial rule ended in India. Two new nations emerged – Muslim-majority Pakistan and Hindu-majority India.

But that freedom was followed by chaos and bloodshed. Partition triggered a mass migration across a shared border, as millions of Muslims fled to Pakistan and millions of Hindus and Sikhs fled to India.

Violent attacks happened on both sides of the border. An estimated one million people were killed.

Pakistan and India still grapple with the repercussions of Partition and the effects are still felt today.

NPR’s Lauren Frayer tells us about an effort to heal some of those old wounds by reconnecting elderly survivors of Partition with the homes and villages they haven’t seen in decades.

Additional reporting in this episode from NPR’s Diaa Hadid.

You can read more about Diaa and Lauren’s reporting on this story here.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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A key primary this week in Wyoming re-affirmed Donald Trump’s hold on the Republican party.

As expected, Republican Representative Liz Cheney lost her race in a landslide, defeated by attorney Harriet Hageman, a Trump-endorsed political newcomer.

Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, came to office five years ago as a Republican darling. But everything shifted when she voted to impeach Trump after the January 6th insurrection. She then took center stage in the January 6th hearings, speaking out against Republicans that continued to defend Trump’s stolen election lie.

With Cheney’s time in Congress coming to an end, Political journalist Jodi Edna has been thinking about what Cheney might do next — and what it means for the future of the GOP.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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In 2018, more than 5,500 children of immigrants were separated from their parents at the border.

The Trump administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy, better known as family separation, was short-lived, ending in June of 2018 after facing condemnation from the public and members of Congress.

For some families, it took years to reunite, and hundreds of families still have not been brought back together.

Caitlin Dickerson’s latest cover story for The Atlantic, titled, “We Need To Take Away Children: The Secret History Of The U.S. Government’s Family Separation Policy”, is an exhaustive investigation into how the policy came about.

One year ago, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban swept into power in Kabul.

It’s a day that many remember, as videos and images showed a chaotic scene at the Kabul airport, with thousands of Afghans desperately trying to flee the country.

Lt. Col. Chris Richardella was one of the officers leading the U.S. Marine Corps at the airport when the Taliban took over. In a conversation with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly, he recounts what followed.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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At one point, over 90% of African Americans with a college degree obtained it from an HBCU. But in the decades following the legal dismantling of segregation, enrollment declined at HBCUs.

Recently, some HBCUs have seen a significant rise in applications. The boost could be due to more funding, celebrity students, or famous HBCU grads like Vice President Kamala Harris.

But informal conversations with Black students and their families point to something even more powerful: HBCUs are a safe and nurturing space to learn in a time of increasing anti-Black racism.

Host Michel Martin speaks with Walter Kimbrough, the past president of two historically Black institutions – Philander Smith College and Dillard University – and the interim executive director of the Black Men’s Research Institute at Morehouse College.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Former President Donald Trump is dominating headlines yet again.

Earlier this week, the FBI took several boxes of secret and top secret documents from Mar-a-Lago during a search of Trump’s home. And on Friday, a federal judge unsealed the warrant for the search – plus a list of what was taken from the property.

NPR’s Carrie Johnson explains what the unsealed warrant reveals, and what comes next.

But the news from Mar-a-Lago is just the latest in a litany of legal battles entangling the former president. From the civil and criminal cases in New York, to the Georgia election interference case and the Jan 6th DOJ investigation – it can be hard to keep track of it all.

Barbara McQuade is a professor at University of Michigan Law School and a former U.S. attorney, she helps us understand where these cases stand.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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Up until a few weeks ago, meaningful climate legislation was sidelined in the U.S. Senate. But after months of wrangling votes — and adding concessions to oil and gas companies — Democrats in the Senate have finally passed the Inflation Reduction Act.

The bill includes more than $300 billion in climate investments — the highest amount ever allocated by the federal government to tackle climate change. This episode lays out what the bill does, what it doesn’t, and tracks the ups and downs of the legislation as it wound its way through Congress.

This episode also features reporting by NPR’s Laura Benshoff looking at the ways the legislation incentivizes individuals to fight climate change in their everyday life.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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In Republican politics, one of the biggest issues in the 2022 election is the 2020 election. In at least 8 states so far, Republicans have picked candidates for Secretary of State who deny the results of the last presidential election. This is despite the fact that not a shred of evidence calls President Biden’s victory into question. If elected, they would become the chief elections officer in their states.

In some of the same swing states where election deniers will be on the statewide ballot in November, there’s another effort underway, backed by key figures in former President Trump’s orbit. Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who worked on Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, is working to mobilize an “army” of poll watchers.

NPR’s Tom Dreisbach reports on what he learned from leaked audio of one of her summits.

This episode also features reporting from NPR’s Miles Parks, who covers voting and election security.

In participating regions, you’ll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what’s going on in your community.

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