In this award-winning investigative podcast, host Maren Machles explores how accountability failures in Washington D.C. impact the lives of people all over the country, and she showcases the investigators, experts, and activists who work to keep our government working for the people.
In the second season, Maren and POGO’s investigative reporters take a look at the Department of Homeland Security. They trace how an agency established to protect the nation from security threats has doubled down on detaining migrants, sometimes in horrifying conditions, while failing to address the more immediate security threat caused by far-right extremism — even within the agency’s own ranks.
In the first season, Maren focused on the department’s Office of Inspector General, revealing a shocking pattern of misconduct that resulted in a failure to investigate some of the most troubling events in recent history.
In 2024, Bad Watchdog was a silver medalist at the New York Festivals Radio Awards and a nominee for the Ambie Awards' Best Politics or Opinion Podcast.
For more, visit pogo.org/podcasts/bad-watchdog
Bad Watchdog is a member of the Airwave Media network and a part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
All content for Bad Watchdog is the property of Project On Government Oversight and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
In this award-winning investigative podcast, host Maren Machles explores how accountability failures in Washington D.C. impact the lives of people all over the country, and she showcases the investigators, experts, and activists who work to keep our government working for the people.
In the second season, Maren and POGO’s investigative reporters take a look at the Department of Homeland Security. They trace how an agency established to protect the nation from security threats has doubled down on detaining migrants, sometimes in horrifying conditions, while failing to address the more immediate security threat caused by far-right extremism — even within the agency’s own ranks.
In the first season, Maren focused on the department’s Office of Inspector General, revealing a shocking pattern of misconduct that resulted in a failure to investigate some of the most troubling events in recent history.
In 2024, Bad Watchdog was a silver medalist at the New York Festivals Radio Awards and a nominee for the Ambie Awards' Best Politics or Opinion Podcast.
For more, visit pogo.org/podcasts/bad-watchdog
Bad Watchdog is a member of the Airwave Media network and a part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
In the final episode of “Bad Watchdog,” Nick and Adam discover that Cuffari knew about even more missing January 6th text messages from the Trump-era DHS leadership team, and Maren asks the million-dollar question: Why hasn’t this guy been removed from power? Experts weigh reforms to the inspector general system that would improve accountability for bad watchdogs and discuss what may be preventing President Biden from taking action. Maren gives Cuffari’s staff the final word.
For transcript and show notes, visit pogo.org/podcasts/bad-watchdog
Bad Watchdog
In this award-winning investigative podcast, host Maren Machles explores how accountability failures in Washington D.C. impact the lives of people all over the country, and she showcases the investigators, experts, and activists who work to keep our government working for the people.
In the second season, Maren and POGO’s investigative reporters take a look at the Department of Homeland Security. They trace how an agency established to protect the nation from security threats has doubled down on detaining migrants, sometimes in horrifying conditions, while failing to address the more immediate security threat caused by far-right extremism — even within the agency’s own ranks.
In the first season, Maren focused on the department’s Office of Inspector General, revealing a shocking pattern of misconduct that resulted in a failure to investigate some of the most troubling events in recent history.
In 2024, Bad Watchdog was a silver medalist at the New York Festivals Radio Awards and a nominee for the Ambie Awards' Best Politics or Opinion Podcast.
For more, visit pogo.org/podcasts/bad-watchdog
Bad Watchdog is a member of the Airwave Media network and a part of The Democracy Group, a network of podcasts that examines what’s broken in our democracy and how we can work together to fix it.
