RadCasts

President Trump said on Monday that he would take control of the Washington, D.C., police department and send hundreds of National Guard troops to the city.

Devlin Barrett, who covers the F.B.I. for The New York Times, explains why the president says this is necessary and how it fits into his broader strategy for dealing with cities run by Democrats.

Guest: Devlin Barrett, a New York Times reporter covering the Justice Department and the F.B.I.

Background reading: 

• Trump ordered the National Guard to Washington and a takeover of the capital’s police.
• But crime is down in Washington.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Photo: Kent Nishimura for The New York Times

Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Years before the levees failed, New Orleans’ public schools were already in crisis. The corruption was so entrenched that the FBI even set up shop inside the district. The first episode of Where the Schools Went uncovers how decades of mismanagement and neglect turned New Orleans into a cautionary tale long before Hurricane Katrina ever made landfall, and how it set the stage for what would come after. We also follow a group of educators who fled to Houston in the aftermath of the storm and built a school for displaced students. And then we follow them – and their students – back to a city and school system struggling to rebuild.

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Where the Schools Went is an original podcast from The Branch in partnership with ⁠The 74⁠ and ⁠MeidasTouch⁠. For future episodes, make sure to follow the series on Apple ⁠here⁠ and on Spotify ⁠here⁠.

Let us know what you think of the show! Email us at ⁠wheretheschoolswent@thebranchmedia.org⁠ or follow us on ⁠X⁠ and ⁠Instagram⁠ at @thebranchmedia.

On November 1, 2007, a man named Rudy Guede broke into a random home in Perugia, Italy, then raped and killed Meredith Kercher—a 21-year-old exchange student from the University of Leeds.

You might not even remember the names Rudy Guede and Meredith Kercher. But one name you will remember is Meredith’s roommate, Amanda Knox, a 20-year-old exchange student from Seattle.

In the weeks and years after Kercher’s murder, the media and the prosecution concocted a narrative that Amanda, her boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, and Guede had played a violent sex game leading to Kercher’s murder.

Amanda was portrayed as a deviant sex fiend, a slut, a killer, and a psychopath. The problem is that none of it was true. Amanda had only been dating Sollecito a week. She had never met Guede. And most importantly, she was not playing a sex game that led to Kercher’s death.

Amanda would end up spending a total of eight years on trial and four years in prison for a murder she did not commit.

And Kercher’s real murderer—Guede—would never be charged with killing Kercher alone. He’d spend only 13 years behind bars for this crime. And after his release in 2021, he would be accused of committing a similar crime again.

Here’s the part of the story most people don’t know: On the morning of November 5, 2007, Amanda Knox was taken into custody in Italy. She wasn’t given a lawyer or a translator. She wasn’t told that she was a suspect. She was questioned for 53 hours. She was struck by a police officer, gaslit, and pressured into signing a confession.

Now, 18 years since she was taken into custody, she has released a memoir called Free: My Search for Meaning to tell the full story of what happened in Perugia, how she fought for vindication, how the tabloids and credible news organizations villainized her, and what her life has been like since she was exonerated in 2015.

Today on Honestly, Bari asks Amanda Knox how she survived in prison, how she reintegrated into society, why she returned to Italy to confront the judge who put her behind bars, why she chooses forgiveness, and what it means to be truly free.

Go to ⁠groundnews.com/Honestly ⁠to get 40% off the unlimited access Vantage plan and unlock world-wide perspectives on today’s biggest news stories.

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