Rachel Maddow Presents: Burn Order

A special invitation from Rachel Maddow.

Rachel Maddow hosts a special conversation with guests from her "Burn Order" podcast, live from the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles to discuss the fight against the race-based incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II and how lessons from that episode in American history apply today.

An incarceree-turned researcher and a federal inmate-turned Harvard educated lawyer comb through the archives and begin to peel back all of the layers of the government's program to mass incarcerate Japanese Americans. With their startling findings in hand, they and the Japanese American community set out to force the U.S. government to directly confront its actions.

As the cases of the four Japanese Americans challenging the U.S. government's mass incarceration policy arrive at the Supreme Court, a crisis suddenly erupts inside the Justice Department and the War Department as the true motivations behind the policy are now at risk of being revealed. A fierce battle is waged inside the government over whether to disclose the information to the courts, or cover it up.

A principled politician puts his career on the line to stand up against the authoritarian actions of an emboldened federal government. While Americans largely sit by and watch their fellow Americans rounded up and stripped of their rights, a small group of brave resisters sets out to challenge the aggressive actions of the U.S. government and bring an end to them for good.

The U.S. military is deployed on the streets of America, tasked with carrying out the mass round-up of innocent immigrants and American citizens labeled by the government as the "enemy" within. Tens of thousands of American families are forced to live in hastily constructed prison camps — enduring inhumane conditions — while government officials scramble to figure out what to do with them all.

In the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, the man in charge of defending the American west coast has a serious case of the jitters... and also a bright, young aide who is busy drawing up plans to target a racial group in America en masse. With the clock running out, lawyers inside the Justice Department mount a furious effort to stop the policy from going into effect.

The bombshell discovery of a report that U.S. government officials had ordered burned has the potential to expose the truth about one of the most radical policy decisions in all of American history. A policy that one young Naval intelligence officer desperately tried to warn his superiors was unwarranted and unnecessary.

A new show about a government crime and coverup. From the team behind the #1 podcasts “Ultra” and “Bag Man.”