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From the team behind NBC News’ Peabody award-wining, Pulitzer-finalist series Southlake, comes a new podcast about who gets to protect kids — and from what. On a balmy night in August 2022, a mom in wire-framed glasses approaches a microphone in a packed school board meeting room in a Dallas suburb. In a quavering voice, she says “I lost my son,” and blames a queer teacher for her child’s estrangement. Moved to investigate further, reporters Mike Hixenbaugh and Antonia Hylton start doorknocking in the Grapevine-Colleyville school district and discover more than just a family broken apart in the midst of an anti-trans culture war raging in Texas and beyond. They also uncover a story about a fringe religious movement wielding newfound power, the revival of a long-simmering quest to remake American education in God’s image, and, at the center of it all, a cellphone company dedicated to funding conservative causes. A year after a coalition of wealthy donors, political operatives, and pastors pour time and money into a Grapevine school board election, helping sweep Christian conservative candidates into power, opposing groups attempt to fend off another defeat. All this plays out against a backdrop of growing Christian conservative influence in local and national politics, as megachurches rally their congregations around their preferred candidates, and ministers, like the father of Senator Ted Cruz, preach of an “evil agenda” invading America’s schools. With transgender issues as their latest rallying cry, national leaders of the Christian right — from Steve Bannon to Rep. Lauren Boebert — look to mobilize evangelicals to take over school boards as the next step in a campaign to retake America. Grapevine tells that story, and those of a teacher and a transgender teenager caught in the crossfire.