Post Reports

Robert Barnes, a Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post, analyzes the monumental overturning of Roe v. Wade. He discusses the immediate emotional impact on patients and providers at a Houston clinic after the ruling. Barnes delves into the decision's implications for decades of conservative efforts to restrict abortion and highlights key justices' philosophies. He raises alarms about potential threats to other civil rights, emphasizing the broader consequences of this ruling on personal autonomy and future legal interpretations.

Today on Post Reports, we follow two union fights at Amazon warehouses with very different outcomes, and what they can tell us about what it takes to go up against a trillion-dollar company.Read more:In early April, the labor movement saw a huge victory: Workers voted to unionize an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. Our reporter Greg Jaffe went up to New York to meet Chris Smalls, the charismatic leader of a new kind of worker-led movement. Greg had one big question: Could this movement spread?There would be another test just a few weeks later, at a second Staten Island facility across the street. Despite high-profile support, the workers would learn that replicating a truly grass-roots organizing effort would be even more challenging than they thought.

Colombia has elected its first leftist president. Unthinkable a decade ago, his victory signals a dramatic shift in the pandemic-wracked region. Plus, the powerful testimony from election workers whose lives were upended by Donald Trump’s false claims. Read more:For the first time in its 200-year history, Colombia will have a leftist president: More than 50 percent of voters chose Gustavo Petro, a former guerilla fighter and mayor of Bogatá, to lead the country. Petro is one of several new left-wing leaders in Latin America, as voters kick out leaders who they feel failed them during the pandemic when inequality in the region soared. Now, Petro says he aims to work with a coalition of left-wing presidents to tackle climate change and issues affecting women and Indigenous people. We checked in with the Post’s Bogatá bureau chief, Samantha Schmidt, to talk about what this moment could mean for Latin America, and whether the United States could be taking a back seat in the region. And, yesterday’s hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol included powerful testimony from former election workers in Georgia who described how their lives were derailed after Trump targeted them.

Nitasha Tiku, a tech culture reporter for The Washington Post, dives into the intriguing world of AI sentience as she discusses the Google engineer's shocking claim that their AI, LaMDA, has come to life. The conversation explores the implications of AI that can mimic human-like interactions and the philosophical questions surrounding AI consciousness. Tiku addresses the ideological divide in the tech community over AI's future, the dangers posed by biased training data, and the ethical dilemmas that arise from human-AI relationships.

As the Supreme Court seems poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, we explore some of the fissures in the antiabortion movement.Read more:What does it mean to identify as “pro-life” in 2022?When Karen Swallow Prior, a longtime antiabortion activist, first heard about the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion suggesting that Roe v. Wade would be overturned, she was thrilled. But she quickly realized her feelings on the “pro-life” movement had become a lot more complicated over the decades.Religion reporter Michelle Boorstein and Post Reports producer Rennie Svirnovskiy visited with Prior as she grappled with what it means to be “pro-life.”

Fifty years ago today, five men broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, located in the posh Watergate building in D.C. Nobody knew it at the time, but the break-in was the first in a series of events that spiraled into the Watergate scandal, and eventually, the downfall of President Richard M. Nixon. For many people, their memories of this event have become encapsulated in a movie: the iconic 1976 film “All the President’s Men.” Based on the book by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the film follows the pair as they dig into the break-in and crack open the scandal, tracing the source of the burglary back to the White House. Ann Hornaday, The Post’s film critic, calls the movie a metonym for Watergate — a stand-in for this entire period in history — “that from the moment it opened seemed to fuse seamlessly with private memory and collective myth.”Today, guest host and media reporter Elahe Izadi talks with Ann about what it means for a film to function in this way. And, we hear a dramatization of a deleted scene from an early draft of the screenplay, as Ann reveals that the classic we know almost didn’t exist. Read more:Film critic Ann Hornaday explains how “All the President’s Men” went from buddy flick to masterpiece in her Washington Post Magazine story.

Anita Patel, a critical care pediatrician at Children’s National Hospital in D.C., breaks down the recent announcement of COVID-19 vaccines for children under 5. She explains why the approval took so long compared to adults and addresses common parental worries regarding safety and side effects. Patel emphasizes the importance of vaccination to protect children, discusses the efficacy of new vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer, and debunks myths about children's vulnerability to the virus. Parents finally have good news to celebrate!

Ten Republicans. Ten Democrats. One bipartisan gun-control deal. Could this be the last chance for any meaningful action on federal gun reform?Read More: Over the weekend, Republicans and Democrats announced a monumental agreement on addressing gun violence. They had a nine-point plan that included provisions that would prevent gun sales to a broader group of domestic violence offenders (closing what is called the “boyfriend loophole”), and criminal background checks for gun buyers under 21 would require checks of juvenile justice and mental health records. A federal grant program would also encourage states to implement red-flag laws.Leigh Ann Caldwell, who covers Congress and also writes The Post’s Early 202 newsletter on politics, explains the policy proposals in the Senate framework. She shares the political calculations that led to this rare bipartisan moment and what the future could hold for more legislation on guns.

Today on Post Reports, the GOP candidates spreading the so-called “big lie,” and how the Jan. 6 committee hopes to educate Americans about what really happened. Plus, the United States has sent weapons to Ukraine — but now the troops need tech support. Read more:J.R. Majewski marched to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and tweeted a photo with the caption: “It’s going down on 1/6.” Last month, he won the Republican nomination in an Ohio congressional district along Lake Erie.A Washington Post analysis found that across the country, more than 100 GOP primary winners back Trump’s false election claims. As many Americans are tuning in to watch the Jan. 6 committee hearings on Capitol Hill this week, where even the people closest to Trump are testifying that they tried to warn him his election fraud claims were false, The Post’s Amy Gardner reports that it’s almost become a prerequisite in GOP primaries to embrace Trump’s election denialism.Also on the show: The U.S. has sent powerful antitank weapons, called Javelins, to Ukrainian troops on the front lines. But, as Alex Horton reports, the customer service on these weapons leaves something to be desired. 

Is the U.S. economy hurtling toward a recession? Dean Baker, an economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in D.C., thinks it all boils down to just how aggressive the Federal Reserve will be. The Fed is expected to raise interest rates again later this week. On today’s “Post Reports,” we examine the factors that could lead to a recession — and we ask what Americans can do to prepare if it happens.