60 Minutes - 04/02/2023: MTG, The Secretary and the Border, Land of Fire and Ice

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, nicknamed MTG, isn’t afraid to share her opinions, no matter how intense and in-your-face they are. She sits down with Lesley Stahl. Following his testimony before two Senate committees this week, United States Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas talks with Sharyn Alfonsi. They discussed the record numbers of migrants trying to cross the U.S. border with Mexico and why he refuses to describe the situation there as a “crisis.” Bill Whitaker explores the discoveries Icelandic scientists have made in forecasting eruptions like we forecast the weather and could apply to similar volcanoes in the United States, Japan, or Russia. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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ribeye sizzling on the barbecue? A well-marbled ribeye sizzling on the barbecue that was carefully selected by an Instacart shopper and delivered to your door. A well-marbled ribeye you ordered without even leaving the kiddie pool. Whatever groceries your summer calls for, Instacart has you covered. Download the Instacart app and enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders. Service fees, exclusions, and terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has accumulated real power and influence in the Republican Party. She announced she'll go to New York this coming week to join a protest against the indictment of former President Donald Trump.

How much have you styled yourself after Donald Trump? He's often in attack mode, and you appear to be. Yeah, but I think our government deserves it. They don't really deserve to be respected that much. Early morning is often the busiest time for illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border. The day we went out with the U.S. Border Patrol near El Paso, Texas, was no exception. They're headed toward the Carousel. Do you view what's happening right now on the border as a crisis?

I view it as a significant challenge. Why won't you say the word crisis? Iceland is known as the land of fire and ice, with good reason. Since 2021, it has had two major volcanic eruptions. The heat is still coming out, and it will be for a number of years. But even with this, the temperatures here, it's going to take years for this to cool down. Yes, yes. Scientists showed 60 minutes around the island and what they have been able to study. Inching them closer to the day, then eruptions will be forecast like rain.

I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Scott Pelley. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup.

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It's rare for a member of the House of Representatives to become well-known nationally, especially someone in only their second term. But Marjorie Taylor Greene, MTG, is as famous as they get. She's gained her national celebrity, some say notoriety, with a sharp tongue and some pretty radical views, like her proposal for a national divorce where red and blue states would go their separate ways. But she has managed in just two years in Congress to accumulate real power, landing on important committees and influencing the direction of Republican policies. Before Congress, she helped run the family construction company in Georgia, known to

be smart and fearless, and has a history of believing in conspiracy theories. We interviewed her earlier this week, before former President Trump was indicted. We looked up some words that have been said about you. Okay. Crazy. Q-clown. Looney Tune. Unhinged.

Moron. Pretty ugly stuff. Looks like the average troll in my Twitter feed, so I don't really care. You're used to it. I don't let name-calling bother me or offend me. I just don't. How much have you styled yourself after Donald Trump? People say that you are Trump in high heels.

I didn't intentionally style myself after President Trump, but I can see how people draw those similarities. We both come from the same industry, construction. I also have pretty much a plain speaking style, and so does he. But also, he's often in attack mode. And you appear to be. Yeah, but I think our government deserves it.

They don't really deserve to be respected that much. Including, for her, the president. While many consider Marjorie Taylor Greene's behavior outlandish, even thuggish, MAGA activists and right-wing media eat it up. God bless you guys, and keep up the good work. Thank you. In just two years, Green, at age 48, has moved from the fringe of the party to the front row. The House will be in order.

Without changing either her style or her views. On an issue, when I'm outspoken about it and I take my stand or my position, the first reaction is, Marjorie's crazy. Marjorie's extreme. Marjorie's a right-wing extremist. And then what will happen is my colleagues will go back home to their district and their own constituents are coming up and saying, are you supporting Marjorie? Do you agree with Marjorie? Have you co-sponsored Marjorie's bill? And then they find out, oh, maybe she's not crazy. And then they end up agreeing with me. Hi, good morning. This is fueling her clout in the Republican Party, as is her record as a top fundraiser and a close advisor to Kevin McCarthy. After MTG helped him win the speakership, he rewarded her with positions on two powerful committees, House Oversight, that's investigating the Biden family business dealings, and Homeland Security. Now what she thinks about the issues matters, like preventing the government from

going into default by raising the debt ceiling. Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, says that if we don't raise the debt ceiling, that this country will be thrown into an economic and financial catastrophe. And so I'm asking you if you're willing to risk that. You know what's put us in an economic catastrophe is, again, the people that have spent $31 trillion that forced this situation to happen. Well, wait a minute. Trump is as much responsible for that as anybody. I said everybody. Everybody, Republicans, Democrats. It was all before I got here. Would you be willing to vote for compromise? In other words, raise some taxes?

I don't think we have a revenue problem in Washington. We have a spending problem. You know something? That's glib. That's glib. What does that mean? The two sides have to come together and hammer it out. Cut spending. Both sides need to cut spending.

Where do you want to cut it? COVID bailout money and a lot of. Cut spending. Both sides need to cut spending. Where do you want to cut it? COVID bailout money and a lot of green energy spending. But are you willing to let us go into default? No. I've always said I wouldn't do that. So would you compromise? It depends. On taxes. No, I'm not raising taxes. Green complains that the news media harp on things she did in the past, like, as in this video, chasing after a survivor of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting. If school zones were protected with security guards, with guns, there would be no mass shootings at school. And things she says that are over the top, like the Democrats are a party of pedophiles.

I would definitely say so. They support grooming children. They are not pedophiles. Why would you say that? Democrats support, even Joe Biden, the president himself, supports children being sexualized and having transgender surgeries. Sexualizing children is what pedophiles do to children. Wow. Okay. But my question really is, can't you fight for what you believe in

without all that name calling and without the personal attacks? Well, I would ask the same question to the other side, because all they've done is call me names and insult me nonstop since I've been here, Leslie. They call me racist. They call me anti-Semitic, which is not true. I'm not calling anyone names.

I'm calling out the truth, basically. Pedophile? Pedophile. Call it what it is. She also still calls the 2020 election stolen, as she made clear in February. I'm going to tell you, there was blatant outright fraud in the 2020 election, complete and total fraud, you know it. I come home as often as I can when we're not in session. Born and raised in Georgia, she now lives in an upscale section of her home district in the northwest corner of the state.

How many acres do you have? I have 10 acres. Her net worth is estimated at $11 million, but she says when she was a child, her parents struggled financially trying to start their construction company. She told us that her dad, an arch conservative, listened to right-wing talk radio all day long. And naturally, me being with my parents a lot, I listened as well. Your dad knew you as a politician. What did

he think of your style, your pit bullness? He was very proud of me. Your mother, did she ever say, Marjorie, you need to tone it down? Yeah, she did, actually. She's a Southern mom, and she believes in manners. You know, your problem is you're just one of those liars on television, and people hate it. She says her combative style came later in her life after she graduated from the University of Georgia. This is our family photos. And had three children with her now ex-husband. She worked for the family construction business

that she and her then-husband bought from her dad and grew into a lucrative enterprise. What are you up to now? This is 205. Oh, my God. Green didn't discover her brazen gutsiness, she says, till after 2011, when she got hooked on CrossFit workouts. She got into the extreme exercising with a passion, ending up in competitions, gaining self-confidence.

She opened her own gym with a business partner. But at age 43, she sold her stake and turned to politics in 2019. What made me run for Congress when I saw the Republicans in Congress, the House and the Senate, completely fail to deliver the agenda that we had all voted for, the reasons why we voted for Donald Trump. The Republicans? Yep. Pelosi, but the traditional Republicans, who she says failed to rein in federal spending, repeal Obamacare, or fund President Trump's border wall when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress. They failed us. Like who? Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, those, yeah, those types of, Mitt Romney.

I'm not even sure why he calls himself a Republican. Why don't you blame Donald Trump? Well, I blame all of them for a lot of things. But not him. Well, the president doesn't control everything. Hey, how are you? Most of her constituents in her conservative, largely white, working-class district agree with her on the issues and especially like the way she fights for her beliefs. I'm a New York transplant to Georgia, and I just love you. Well, welcome to freedom. Nice to meet you. A Democratic-led House ousted her from her committees because of her past endorsement of violence against some Democratic leaders and her history of embracing QAnon that she explained in a speech on the House floor.

I stumbled across something, and this was at the end of 2017, called QAnon. I was allowed to believe things that weren't true, and that is absolutely what I regret. Well, I apologize to my colleagues. I think apologies are important. Okay, did you ever apologize to Nancy Pelosi about the bullet to her head? I didn't say that, so I don't need to apologize for words that weren't mine. Well, didn't you like it?

Other people also ran my social media. I don't think I did that. Are you saying that you don't stand by what also ran my social media. I don't think I did that. Are you saying that you don't stand by what's on your social media? Well, of course I stand for what's on my social media, but at times, you're not always in control. We have all kinds of people that work on our social media. Did you apologize for your position on Parkland, Florida? What was my position on Parkland, Florida? That it was a false flag? I don't know if you actually have my position. No, I never said Parkland was a false flag.

Did you? No, I've never said that. School shootings are horrible. I don't think it's anything to joke about. We fact-checked before I got to this interview. Have you fact-checked all my statements from kindergarten through 12th grade and in college and as I've paid my taxes and never broken a law.

And I got a few speeding tickets. Do we need to talk about those too? Because I think where you're going down is the same attacks that people have attacked me with over and over and over. Well, if this is what you're known for, I think it's good that you're responding to the charges. I think it's a legitimate thing for us to do. I think being known for them is because people constantly focus on it, but never focus on anything good about me.

Let me button this up, and we'll move on. You want to bring the Republican Party closer to your views. You want to bring the country closer to your views. You've said that. Okay. Here are some of the things you've said, that America should have a Christian government, that abortion should be banned nationally, that you want to defund the FBI. Yes. You want immigration to stop for four years. You've said those things, correct?

Yeah, these are some of my views. The Constitution, the very First Amendment, prohibits having a religion in the government. Yet the Founding Fathers quoted the Bible constantly and were driven by their faith. Mortuary teller green. and we're driven by their faith. Marjorie Taylor Greene. As a fervent supporter of the now-indicted Donald Trump, she was a featured speaker at his rally in Waco last weekend. While she's adored here, the latest national poll has her approval rating at just 29%. Marjorie Taylor Greene, you happen to be here.

Would you like to run for the Senate? No, we'll fight like hell for you, I tell you. The question for her and the country is can she expand her brash MTG brand beyond the right-wing populist base? Yes. Sometimes historic events suck. But what shouldn't suck is learning about history. I do that through storytelling. History That Doesn't Suck is a chart-topping history-telling podcast chronicling the epic story of America, decade by decade. Right now, I'm digging into the history of incredible infrastructure projects of the 1930s,

including the Hoover Dam, the Empire State Building, the Golden Gate Bridge, and more. The promise is in the title, History That Doesn't Suck. Available on the free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. When he was less than a year old, Alejandro Mayorkas and his family came to the United States as refugees, fleeing Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba. Today, he's the first immigrant to head the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. His portfolio includes everything from counterterrorism and cybersecurity to overseeing the Coast Guard and Secret Service. But it's what he's done, or not done, about the large number of migrants crossing the

U.S. border with Mexico that's prompted protests by migrant advocates and fiery attacks by Republicans who want to impeach him. Tonight, you will hear from Secretary Mayorkas about the efforts to push him out of office and why he refuses to call the situation on the southern border a crisis. Early morning is often the busiest time for illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border. The day we went out with the U.S. Border Patrol near El Paso, Texas, was no exception. They're headed toward the Carousel. Before meeting the Cabinet Secretary in charge of securing the borders, we got a view from the field.

The border patrol reported over 2 million apprehensions in the past year, a record high. Some migrants surrendered themselves to border agents with the intention of seeking asylum. But the DHS estimates another 600,000 people evaded agents and entered the U.S. illegally, the highest number in over a decade. Which is why Secretary Mayorkas' testimony before Congress last fall raised a few eyebrows. Secretary Mayorkas, do you continue to maintain that the border is secure? Yes, and we are working day in and day out to enhance its security, Congressman. What the American people see is a border that looks to be chaotic, that looks to be porous.

Well, let's, I mean, the number of people that are arriving at our border is at an extraordinary height. There's no question about that. But that is not unique to the southern border of the United States. There is a tremendous amount of movement throughout the hemisphere and, in fact, throughout the world. The chief of the Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, testified before Congress that some areas of the border are in a crisis situation. Do you agree? I think that we face a very serious challenge in certain parts of the border. Do you view what's happening right now on the border as a crisis? I view it as a significant challenge.

Why won't you say the word crisis? You know what? Because I have tremendous faith in the people of the Department of Homeland Security, and a crisis speaks to me of a withdrawal from our mission, and we are only putting more force and more energy into it. Good morning, Secretary Mayorkas. A lot of force and energy is now being directed at Secretary Mayorkas on Capitol Hill. When you open up the border to the worst illegal immigration in our nation's history, people die.

This past week, Republicans took aim at the secretary, blaming him personally for the drug deaths of Americans, the rape of migrant children, and more. How many murderers have you released into America? Senator, I'm not aware of any murderer whom we've released into the... So you don't know? Senator, let me say something. Do you know? If you take a look at...

No, no, you don't get to give a speech. Congress seems to be more interested in impeaching you than passing immigration reform. One member of Congress said he'd like to arrest you for negligent homicide for the deaths of young people from fentanyl. Another compared you to Benedict Arnold. I disregard that type of rhetoric. I'm focused on the mission. Do you think they're just trying to get you to resign? I'm not going to resign. I love public service. I think it's an incredible honor to be a part of it.

How often do you and President Biden discuss the situation at the border? There's a perception that the president doesn't want to talk about the border. That's a false impression that I consider to be also political rhetoric. I was with the president when he visited the border. I've spoken multiple times with the president. I of course speak with the White House team on a regular basis and with my colleagues in the cabinet. The problems at the border didn't start with the Biden administration and likely won't end with it. Congress hasn't passed major immigration reform in nearly three decades. Secretary Mayorkas is asking Congress for additional resources on the southern border.

This is the first year since 2011 that we have added to the Border Patrol 300 more agents. The fiscal year 2024 budget calls for 350 more Border Patrol agents, more than $100 million in technological investments. Is there anything that's off the table that you won't do to secure the border? Well, the president, as I think you know very well,

has said we are not going to construct more wall that costs billions and billions of dollars, that is immovable, and that is already beginning to corrode. Secretary Mayorkas joined the Biden administration with a resume seemingly well-suited for the job. He'd been the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and deputy director of Homeland Security under President Obama. He was also a refugee, whose Romanian mother and Cuban father fled Cuba when he was an infant. I understand deeply the yearning of parents to give their children opportunities that America offers.

We are a nation of laws. If people qualify under the law, then we embrace them. If they don't, then we return them. The first weeks in office, the Biden administration halted deportations for 100 days, stopped all border wall construction, and suspended the Remain in Mexico policy. Critics say it all added up to putting a come in, we're open sign on the door. I don't think that the more than million people last year that we removed or expelled

would consider the border open. But the messaging, was the messaging wrong there, that, you know, we're open? That wasn't our messaging. But that was the messaging. But that's what migrants were getting. Because remember something, that we are not the only source of messages

that the migrants receive. We have smuggling organizations that exploit the migrants, and those smuggling organizations engage in mis- and disinformation. In December, according to Border Patrol figures, an average of 1,800 migrants a day crossed the border into the El Paso area, overwhelming the city. To manage the increasing flow of migrants from crisis-stricken Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba, President Biden expanded the use of a public health law known as Title 42, invoked during the pandemic, to expel migrants to Mexico.

Mexico has agreed to allow up to return up to 30,000 persons per month. At the same time, the administration unveiled new pathways for migrants to enter the U.S. legally. All the people in this line at a border crossing in El Paso scheduled an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection by using a mobile app called CBP1. Carla Delgado from Venezuela told us her family had crossed the Darien Gap, a dangerous stretch of jungle straddling Panama and Colombia, to get here.

After a series of background checks and screenings, they were granted permission to temporarily enter the United States. By early afternoon, they enjoyed their first slice of pizza in America. They have friends in Chicago and told us they plan to build a new life there and apply for asylum in the U.S. There's a backlog in the immigration system. We know only years from now we'll judge, figure out whether they actually qualify for asylum in the U.S. How is that arrangement good for them? How is that arrangement good for the country?

I would ask them, after they enjoyed their first pizza, how do they feel as compared to what they fled? You mentioned that their asylum claim may not be adjudicated, may not be judged for years. Our asylum system is broken. We need Congress to fix it. The new policies have reduced the number of migrants crossing into the U.S. in January and February, but created a bottleneck on the other side of the border. In Juarez, Mexico, Monday night, a fire at a migrant detention center killed at least 38 men from Central and South America. Days earlier at this women's shelter, we met families who'd been stuck in Juarez for months. Every morning at 9 a.m., women frantically try to refresh the government app, hoping to get an appointment to enter the U.S.

We watch with Karina Briseida, who runs the shelter. By 9.05, all the appointments and hope were gone. It's lottery with people's lives, with people's families, with people's livelihoods, with people's well-being. The Biden administration says this is more humane than what was going on before. It is not the most humane process because the most vulnerable aren't getting access to it. Like Guadalupe Vasquez. She told us her husband had been murdered in southwest Mexico, and one of her sons had been shot in the eye and needed bullet fragments removed. She said she's been trying for two months to get an appointment to legally enter the U.S. I'm willing to wait to get an appointment, even if it takes long, she told us. But I'm going to make it.

If you're not able to get an appointment on the app, what's your plan? I'll try to cross with a smuggler, and I'll cross with my children. We saw more desperation outside a nearby cathedral. Cristina Coronado runs a food program there. Juarez is in a moment of crisis, she told us. More than 10,000 migrants are now in the city, and most of them are sleeping in the streets. As people wait here, are they getting frustrated? Very frustrated, very angry, very confused.

These men told us they'd been trying in vain for weeks to get an appointment on the CBP1 app. Oh yeah, and it gets stuck, right? One opportunity at nine o'clock, no more. Five minutes. Five minutes, no more. And then you have to wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow. We were in Juarez and we're surrounded by a group of migrants. Everybody's holding up the app, pointing to it, saying it's not working, it's not working. And there's frustration. And the numbers are growing. I will not represent to you, Sharon, that it is flawless.

But remember something, that to build a safe and orderly way, and we are continuing to build that, remember where we were two years ago. The Biden administration has reunited more than 600 children that were separated from their families at the border during the Trump administration. But now the secretary is facing what could be another defining moment for the country. On May 11th, Title 42, the pandemic-era public health order will expire. That means without some new arrangement, the only illegal border crossers the U.S. could expel to

Mexico would be Mexicans. Thousands of migrants are waiting at the border, and thousands more are arriving every day. Has Mexico agreed to take back non-Mexicans if Title 42 ends? So we are in discussions with Mexico with regard to how they will handle any increase in the number of individuals seeking to migrate north. If Mexico doesn't accept other nationals, then what? Well, we have all sorts of contingencies. I mean, that's what we do. It's going to be complicated. It's going to be expensive.

It is going to be complicated. It is going to be expensive. This has been complicated, expensive, and challenging for decades. Months before the Geldingadalir volcano erupted in 2021, Iceland's volcanologists knew it was coming. A subterranean serpent of magma was coiling through the depths, looking for a way out. As the magma stirred, it triggered tens of thousands of earthquakes. When the volcano finally blew, scientists scrambled for equipment to record it. Many predicted a new seismic era for the land of fire and ice, and last August the same volcano exploded again. Now, scientists have revealed some startling discoveries from the two eruptions,

inching us closer to the day when eruptions will be forecast as we forecast rain. We went back to Iceland to see how the work was progressing. During the 2021 eruption, we saw chunks of molten rock the size of cars cartwheel into the air. Lava boiled up through nine vents as the earth unzipped, but it was number five, this one, that stole the show. We watched from a hilltop. Look at that. With seismologist Kristen John's daughter as waves of lava poured down the valley. In the end, scientists calculated there was enough lava to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every four seconds. We wanted to see what it looked like now, so we flew back to the same hill. Wow, this is remarkable.

Completely changed. Completely changed. How much lava is out here? So the maximum thickness is about 100 meters, and it is the thickest by the crater. That's a little more than 300 feet deep. Yes. That's a little more than 300 feet deep. Yes. That's incredible. Lava had filled up the valley like a bathtub.

The hills where Icelanders came for a closer look were gone. So was its tongue-twisting Icelandic name. Now we had to learn a new one. So the whole mass that we've seen behind here is called Fagradalsfjall. Fagradalsfjall. Very good, excellent. That means beautiful valley mountain, a lot easier to pronounce, a new name for a new landscape. John's daughter, head of earth sciences at Iceland's meteorological office, told us the 2021 eruptions were highly unusual.

The quake storms that usually reach a crescendo before an eruption instead went silent. The tremors stopped. Only then did the volcano explode. So this was something we didn't expect because before most eruptions, we see an escalation in the process. So we see more and bigger earthquakes the closer we come to an eruption. And what did you find this time? Everything got quiet, and we thought, OK, maybe this is it, we're not going to see an eruption this time.

But we were wrong. The magma bomb lasted six months. Then, this past August, the volcano exploded again. This time, scientists weren't fooled. When the earthquakes stopped, they ran tests that showed the volcano wasn't sleeping. Rocks were still moving, gas escaping. Scientists called an audible and warned the volcano would likely blow within 24 hours. They were right.

Today, the crater is still cooling. It's quiet, for now. Look at that. Wow. Remember when we flew around the plume, the fountain? I remember. I didn't feel as safe at that point. In 2021, we had to veer away from the crater. It was too dangerous to get any closer.

This feels much safer. So do you think the eruption here is completely over? Right now, we are not seeing anything. But we also know that this can happen quite quickly. The warning time we have is not necessarily going to be many weeks, but maybe just a couple of days. The lava field is like a record of the eruption. So we set off at the crack of dawn. That's an hour before noon when the winter sun rises this far north. Soon we ran out of road. Then we ran out of steam.

Our trucks had 42-inch tires, but that was no match for snow that was as fine as sugar. Finally, we arrived to find a vast sea of volcanic rock, just six months old. Geophysicist Freston Sigmundson from the University of Iceland gave us a tour. It is freezing out here, but this is warm. Yeah, feel it. This is the heat of the lava. Look at that. Freston Sigmundson told us if we dug just 20 feet below where we were standing, we'd find molten rock still at a scorching 1,800 degrees.

The heat is still coming out, and it will be for a number of years. But even with this, the temperatures here, it's going to take years for this to cool down. Yes, yes, it will. It's that hot. It is that hot and that thick. Incredible. Sigmundson told us these eruptions had spewed out the largest mix of lavas ever recorded. They cooled in different shapes. Some were as smooth as sidewalk, gnarled like roots, or stretched taut like rope. Yeah, we call them lava cables.

I would say this is maybe one of the best places on planet Earth to see these lava cables here. Freston Sigmundson told us he now wants to find out if their most recent finding, a seismic decline before an eruption, might apply to similar volcanoes in Japan, Russia, or the United States. It's urgent to do so, he told us, as warmer temperatures melt the glaciers that sit like a pressurized lid on many of the world's most volatile volcanoes. So the retreating glaciers have an effect on the volcanoes? Yes, retreating glaciers can increase

the possibility of eruptions. How so? The glaciers, they are pushing down on the Earth. There's a force. So if the glaciers are moving are pushing down on the Earth. There's a force. So if the glaciers are moving, it changes the force. Already, the retreat of glaciers in Iceland, they are causing a lot more of new magma being formed under Iceland than normally. With this new magma came new discoveries.

In 2021, Ed Marshall, a Texas-trained geophysicist, showed us the lava wall when it was a mere 30 feet high. We watched as he scooped the molten lava, flash-cooling it in water. This trip, we met Marshall in his lab at the University of Iceland to see what he had found. We have an instrument called an ICP-OES. And that stands for? It's a inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer. Okay. The impossibly named machine is able to measure with pinpoint accuracy the chemical composition of the rock. But Marshall wasn't expecting what they found next. Crystals.

So what did you learn from these? Well, we learned that they're coming from nine miles deep below the volcano. Nine miles down? It's actually coming from a part of the Earth that we don't normally get to sample, the boundary between the crust and mantle. The magma had come straight up like an express elevator from deep in the mantle, opening a rare window into the Earth's deep plumbing.

Geophysicist Ed Marshall showed us samples of the different lavas he's collected. So here we have a different kind of lava called a Pohoihoi lava. It's much smoother. Yeah. When the lavas were still red hot, they flowed at different speeds. Some oozed out of the volcano. Others exploded, moving as fast as 10 miles an hour. It's important to figure it out because they have different hazard potential. You know,

if you're worried about your town being covered by lava... Be more worried about this one. Exactly. Like so many other volcanologists who'd rushed to the eruption site in 2021, this self-described lab rat told us he was awed by the sheer power on display. You know, you have work to do, but there are times when you just sit there and stare at the volcano. It's just so much grander than you.

It's kind of this almost divine kind of presence every volcano as we learned has its own personality if fagrad dasfeld had elements of the divine others were not as beatific take grimsvoten routinely described as cranky overdue for an eruption grimsvoten is hidden beneath a glacier, making it almost impossible to monitor. So seismologist Kristin Johnsdottir and her European partners tried something new, burying a coil of fiber-optic cables in the ice cap. So the cable we used was only four millimeters thick and so thin they're actually

thinner than a human hair. Yeah it's a bit funny you know it's like you're trenching a very 13 kilometer long hair along a volcano. They devised a makeshift trenching sled to bury the cables to try to pick up volcanic tremors. It worked. Where regular seismometers barely registered a pulse, the fiber optic cable showed Grimsvoten was grumbling irritably inside its icy tomb. John's daughter told us it could be a game changer. And you found how many more earthquakes? 100 times more. Found with this fiber? Yes.

Did you find something in the pattern here that you could say, ah, if we see this, this indicates that an eruption is going to happen? So the potential here is really to be able to understand the volcanoes and the plumbing system. You know, just being able to see this high-definition picture that we were not able to see before. And this, just being able to see this high-definition picture that we were not able to see before. And this is just standard cable, the cable that we use for bringing television into our homes. Exactly. But Iceland is one of the few places in the world to actively watch

its volcanoes. The lack of monitoring elsewhere can sometimes spell disaster, like the 2018 bang out of the blue in Indonesia that killed 400 people. Cornell geophysicist Matthew Pritchard told us they've got to do a better job. So there are about 600 that have erupted in historic times the last 500 years, and of those, only about 35% have continuous monitoring at them. What's the problem? Well, it's expense. It's maintaining these instruments. Again, once a volcano stops erupting, should we continue to monitor it, or has it gone to sleep for another couple hundred years? So it's all a question of priorities. It's a question of resources.

But Pritchard told us there's a solution on hand, spying on volcanoes from space. He's spearheading an effort to establish a satellite network that will continuously monitor the world's most restless volcanoes. Take Mauna Loa in Hawaii. This past November, it tore open the Earth after 38 years of slumber. On the ground, magma forced its way through deep layers of rock until it cracked the Earth's surface. From space, it looked like this. So each one of these contours here means 25 centimeters of ground motion. So on this side of the rift, it moved this way about 25

centimeters, and then this side the opposite direction. And so this is evidence of the magma coming up through the system and pushing the ground to the side as it was coming out to erupt. And all of this captured by satellite? Yes. The satellite can detect what level of movement on the surface of the Earth? Best case scenario, a few millimeters. A few millimeters? That's right. From space? That's right. Cornell's Pritchard told us the new gold standard would be to combine ground sensors with satellite images to help detect eruptions earlier. Next year, a new satellite will be launched that will use radar waves capable of penetrating dense jungle or snow and seeing deeper underground than ever before. But as technology turbocharges the

ability of volcanologists to forecast eruptions, we were reminded that the Earth has been at this far longer than scientists have been collecting data. And that, one told us, keeps you humble. On Tuesday, former President Donald Trump is expected to be arraigned on a multiple-count indictment. It stems in part from what New York prosecutors say was an effort to cover up $130,000 in payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels. She told our Anderson Cooper she signed an agreement with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen 11 days before the 2016 election to buy her silence about a sexual encounter with Trump. Was it hush money to stay silent? Yes. The story was coming out again.

I was concerned for my family and their safety. Now Donald Trump has become the first ex-president in history to face criminal charges. He insists he's done nothing wrong and calls it all a witch hunt. I'm Leslie Stahl. We'll be back next week with another edition of 60 Minutes.