PBS News Hour - Full Show - August 17, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

Sunday on PBS News Weekend, European leaders will join Ukraine’s Zelenskyy for Monday’s high-stakes Oval Office meeting, presenting a united front to Trump. How trouble getting a good night’s sleep has become a public health emergency. The environmental consequences of big tech’s push to ease regulations for AI. Plus, one man’s quest to raise awareness about the threats facing fireflies. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, European leaders will join Volota Mer Zelensky for tomorrow's high-stakes Oval Office meeting to present a united front. Then, how trouble getting a good night's sleep has become a public health emergency. And one man's quest to capture dazzling images of fireflies and raise awareness about the threats

facing these glowing symbols of summer. I stumbled upon a forest with millions and millions of fireflies synchronizing their flashes across vast expanses of the forest and there's been no looking back. Good evening. I'm John Yang. The last time Ukrainian president, Volodomir Zelensky, was in the Oval Office, things got heated as President Trump loudly berated him. But when he returns tomorrow, he'll have reinforcements.

At least a half-dozen European leaders will join him in a high-profile display of unity. After meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, Mr. Trump aligned himself with Russian positions. That triggered European fears that Ukraine could be pressured into accepting a deal on Moscow's terms. Today, Zelensky was in Brussels, meeting with European Commission President Erics. of Wanderland. Since the beginning of Russia's brutal invasion, Europe has been at Ukraine's side, united,

and we will support you for as long as it takes, for just and lasting peace. It's very important that you are with us and that we speak to America and we speak together. To look ahead to tomorrow's meeting, William Taylor, he's a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center. He's a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and was temporary head of mission there in the first Trump term, later testifying in Mr. Trump's impeachment.

Mr. Ambassador, this is going to be a remarkable scene in the Oval Office tomorrow. You've got heads of state flying to Washington on a moment's notice to support Zelensky. How unusual is this? It's very unusual, John. You're exactly right. This is a measure. This is a demonstration of how strongly the Europeans feel about Ukraine and how about supporting Zelensky. They got together.

We remember last Wednesday on a telephone, on a Zoom call, the same group with Zelensky and Trump and that group of European leaders. And they all agreed on what the approach would be. In Anchorage, they agreed to focus on a ceasefire. That seemed to have come apart in Anchorage. Do you think this meeting could put it back together? Can Trump be persuaded?

Surely, surely he can. It is possible that he can. And Europeans, among the Europeans, are some Europeans who understand and work closely and are well-trusted by President Trump. So the answer I think is yes. And is there a danger that the President could feel ganged up on that this could backfire? I understand, actually, that the first part of the meeting will be President Trump and President Zelensky, and then they'll go into a broader meeting, maybe a lunch with all the rest of those Europeans, other Europeans, because Zelensky is one as well.

But so he'll have a one-on-one Trump and Zelensky, and then a broader discussion. Administration officials are saying today that in Alaska, Putin agreed to the United States and Europe providing security for Ukraine, sort of a mini-NATO. How significant is that? Huge. This is huge. This is not something we've heard from the President Trump or from the U.S. administration. And it's so welcome, so necessary, if there's to be a ceasefire, there needs to be some, some, some, some. security guarantee for the Ukraine so that they can be confident that if they do lay down their arms or stop firing, that the Russians won't invade again. And that's what this force would do. At the same time, Mr. Trump told European leaders that Putin does want territory

in exchange for this. How likely is that to happen? This can be done if the Europeans and the Ukrainians will say, look, we acknowledge, we recognize that you Russians are in 19% of Ukraine. We don't like it. We'll never recognize your legal claim to that 19%. But we recognize you're there. So in that regard, Putin will be able to stay in that 19% at least temporarily. The Ukrainians will never agree to a long-term, a permanent, loss of that territory. They won't, and they can't. But they could acknowledge that the de facto

the Russians are there. That might be enough to get a ceasefire. What do you think it's going to come out of tomorrow? Demonstration of unity. I think it's very clear that the Europeans, including Zelensky, will be very together. And they'll be focused on a ceasefire. And they'll be focused on that security guarantee that you raised. They may also talk about, I hope they talk about this $300 billion of Russian money that's in European and American banks to be used to buy weapons from the United States firms, defense firms, for Ukraine to use

and to reconstruct Ukraine once the ceasefire goes into effect. So there's a lot on the table, but the importance is they're unified, and they can make the strong case to President Trump. Do you think it creates a path to a deal? It could. It could. There is a deal there. There's a deal there.

Again, the Ukrainians never will give up, legal claim to that territory, but they'll grudgingly accept that the Russians are there. And they'll probably say they won't try to take back that 19% by force. That could lead to a ceasefire in place. So it's sort of language how you describe the Russian presence. It's how to describe the Russian presence, but that makes a big difference. The West Germans never gave up hope, claim, that East Germany would come back sometime. But they promised, in order to get into NATO,

they promised not to try to take East Germany back by force, by military force. And they got into NATO, and they finally got East Germany back. Former Ambassador William Taylor, thank you very much. Thank you, John. In the day's other headlines, more than 700 additional members of the National Guard are to be deployed to Washington, D.C. in the coming days.

The governors of West Virginia, South Carolina, and Ohio, all Republicans, say they're acting to aid the Trump administration efforts to take over law enforcement in Washington in the name of cracking down on crime and homelessness. Over the weekend, critics took to the streets to express their anger over what the administration is doing. According to the latest Justice Department figures, in 2024, violent crime in the city hit a 30-year low. Thousands of Israelis joined a nationwide strike today to demand the ends of the war in Gaza and the return of the hostages. Demonstrators blocked the major highway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

While carrying photos of some of the 50 hostages, Israel says, are still being held by Hamas. Only 20 are believed to be still alive. They criticized the government's decision to escalate military operations and called on officials to negotiate a ceasefire. In Gaza City, Palestinians tried to figure out where to go as the IDF prepares to take control of the city. The Israeli military says it will provide tents for those who leave, but how much? Ma said the plan will only lead to genocide and displacement. Striking Air Canada flight attendants are defying a government back-to-work order, keeping the airline grounded for at least one more day.

The union representing 10,000 flight attendants said the order was unconstitutional, and that its members won't go back to work because the airline has refused to negotiate. On Saturday, Canada's jobs minister ordered the attendants to resume working and sent their contract dispute with the airline to binding arbitration. Here Canada said it now expects to resume flights Monday evening. Still to come on PBS News Weekend. Why can't Americans sleep? We look at how insomnia has become a public health emergency

and the environmental consequences of big tech's push to ease regulations on AI. This is PBS News Weekend from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour. Weeknights on PBS. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says that about 12% of Americans suffer from chronic insomnia, the difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep. It's more than just an annoyance. The resulting daytime fatigue, depression, and low motivation can lead to accidents, lost productivity, and other consequences.

The August edition of The Atlantic has a writer's personal account of her struggle with insomnia and her search for a remedy. The article is by Atlantic staff writer Jennifer Sr. Jennifer, help us understand what someone goes through with insomnia. What is it like to not be able to fall asleep? And then the next day, how do you feel? It's lonely, actually, not being able to fall asleep. And first, it's perplexing, and then it's anxious making.

And then it's just, it makes you really worn out and depressed the next day. And, you know, disregulated and irritable. And over time, of course, the accumulated, fatigue just runs you down and makes you vulnerable to being sick and, you know, all sorts of things. You can say it makes you depressed. For a long time, people thought that depression led to insomnia, but that's not the case, is it?

Insomnia can certainly be one of the manifestations of depression, right? But I think what's interesting, what increasingly people are recognizing is that in some ways, insomnia is a better predictor of depression than the other way around. And also, that depression follows insomnia more than the other way around. It's bidirectional, as health professionals like to say, but insomnia can make you depressed, for sure. You also write that a lot of the experts you talk to said a lot of the sleep dogma, we're told, needs to be challenged. What are some of the big items there? There's a sizable body of evidence saying that eight hours of sleep is not necessarily the magic number.

There have been many analyses, duplicated over. and over again. Let's say that actually seven is the magic number, somewhere between 6.5 hours of sleep and 7.4 hours. There are problems with all these kinds of analyses. So I don't want to say that eight hours is wrong. But also, we vary from individual to individual. We vary over the course of a lifetime. So that's the biggest thing. And I can give you others, but that's the one that really looms into view. You're right that sleep deprivation, not just insomnia, is essentially a national health emergency that's not being addressed. Talk about that.

Well, yeah, 16.4% of Americans work non-standard hours, which is to say generally graveyard shifts. There is a substantial portion of Americans who also work second jobs. There are single mothers. There are single fathers. If you're a white-collar professional, there is boundary between home and office

has virtually dissolved. And by the way, widespread electrification laid waste to our circadian rhythms over 100 years ago. So there's just a million things that conspire now against a proper night's rest. And tell us about the therapies and remedies you've tried. I mean, in the beginning, when this happened, I tried acupuncture, acupressure, listening to all kinds of meditation tapes. There were tapes in those days, I'm sad to say.

I would exercise like a demon, I would do deep breathing exercises, I did neurofeedback and biofeedback and all the things. I eventually tried chronic behavioral therapy for insomnia, and eventually I started using medication, but that was further down the road and its own kind of independent adventure. Some of the practitioners you talked to said that some of their patients wait 10 years before seeking help. What is your advice to someone who may be going through this? Don't wait 10 years. Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is the gold standard. It involves sleep compression therapy, which is very, very hard to do, but builds up a lot of sleep pressure in a person. It involves curtailing your sleep at first. Why people wait is sometimes because they don't know

cognitive behavioral therapy exists. And there are waiting lists for the practitioners. There are too few practitioners who do it, but there are very good online and also apps that do it to develop by the military and the VA. And you can look to see which one has sleep restriction therapy in it because that's the good one. I would also say, don't be afraid of medication early. Under a doctor's supervision, taking medication can help plop your body back on a rail. But I think CBTI, chronic behavioral therapy for insomnia, is really something that one ought to explore online and hopefully with a practitioner near you. Jennifer Sr. of the Atlantic. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me here.

of AI is creating a data center boom. Across the country, big tech is building massive facilities for their cutting-edge AI infrastructure. But half-century old environmental protections are slowing that. Wired magazine has found that big tech companies are asking the White House to ease those protections and that the Trump administration appears to be all in. Ali Rogan spoke with Molly Taft, a senior reporter at Wired. Thank you so much for joining us. So what regulatory protections are these AI companies seeking to roll back? There's a lot of environmental asks, but one specific protection that caught my eye was a very

specific ask around a section of the Clean Water Act, which is known as a 404 permit, which is named after the section of the Clean Water Act, it refers to. So if you're building anything that will impact a federally protected waterway, if you're building a road across a wetland, And if you're building a building that nudges up into a protected stream, if you're altering the course of a river, you're going to need a permit. It can be a pretty cumbersome process. It can be expensive and add a couple years on to a project. What the federal government has done is said there's a set of activities that we will just say, okay, you don't need to go through this cumbersome permitting process. You can just get a blanket permit.

And what the tech industry is asking for is for data centers to be included in this list. This was a specific ask from META and the Data Center Coalition, which is the industry's largest lobbying arm includes members like Amazon, Google, Meta as well. And so these are the companies that are asking for this very specific permission under the Clean Water Act. And what would this permission get them? It would basically just enable them to speed up construction of data centers. That's been kind of their ask, you know, we're in sort of an interesting political moment right now where across the aisle there's this sense that, you know, one of the reasons we haven't been able to build so much is because we have a lot of environmental regulations that hold up projects that, you know, don't speed them forward. And so this section of the Clean Water Act has kind of long been a complaint from, you know, the construction industry, from the oil and gas industry.

This is kind of one of those regulations that industries sort of see as, you know, a hindrance to their project. So basically, if a nationwide permit for data centers is theoretically granted, they could move forward with a couple of years shaved off the final project. And they also might have to have less public notice of what they're planning to do, which is another ask that was in some of these documents. This isn't the first time that industries have requested these permits, but what seems to be unique about this moment is the alignment between industry and the amenability of this administration. Is that something that you are watching closely in terms of how this all plays out? Yeah, I think that's an important point to make.

On the one hand, there are data centers that have, you know, the environmental footprint of like a Walmart. It probably isn't that big of a deal. But on the other hand, there are tech giants building massive data centers. that could really impact the local waterways. Amazon, for instance, is building a data center in Indiana. They would fill in almost 10 acres of wetland and impact thousands of streams in the region. And so what we're tracking is less what might happen

with specific projects, but more about how the Trump administration is using AI and using the build out of data centers in its larger deregulatory agenda. This is checking off kind of wish list items from multiple industries to get some of these regulations. out of the way. And what are the industries saying about why they need this permit? What argument are they making that the benefits here outweigh the potential environmental risks? Are they making

that argument? I think the industries are saying that, you know, in order for the U.S. to compete with China, we need to be building more data centers tomorrow. We're going to have this huge need for these projects anywhere and everywhere there is availability. And they need to go up as soon as possible for us to win the AI arms race. And I think they'd also say that, you know, many of these buildings have less of an environmental footprint from their actual physical structures than some other things that might require, you know, a more thorough Clean Water Act permit process. But, you know, experts I spoke to were, did say, look, on the one hand, it is true that some of these projects may not have as big of an environmental footprint. But on the other, especially when we're

talking about data center and water use, this is such a complex topic. And, and, and, you know, we're really seeing this industry kind of being let off the leash a little bit and and kind of charging forward and building out structures across the country. Molly Taft with Wired, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Finally tonight, for many, fireflies are our point. part of the story of summer, evoking memories of lazy, hot evenings spent trying to catch them

in glass jars. Now we meet a man who's still trying to catch them, not with a jar, but with a camera. In Amazonian folklore, the light of fireflies is a beacon of hope and guidance from the gods. Japanese legend has it that they're symbols of love, war, and departed souls. And for National Geographic Explorer and Firefly

specialist Sri Ram Morali. Coming from India, fireflies are symbolic of the night and the jungles. Morley's been fascinated by fireflies since the night years ago. He was searching for stars near his hometown in southern India. I stumbled upon a forest with millions and millions of fireflies synchronizing their flashes across vast expanses of the forest. And there's been no looking back. The first time I saw it, I almost felt like I was trying to. transported to another planet. Fireflies once shared Earth with dinosaurs, but now their numbers are declining. This summer, Murali came to the United States to document how fireflies are coping in big cities.

The fireflies in D.C. and New York are found in some of the most urban conditions, like in Battery Park in New York, which is just a couple of blocks from Wall Street. And in the National Mall in D.C., right in front of Lincoln Memorial. To me, how these fireflies have adapted to live in such bright, harsh conditions really amazes me. And I wanted to tell a story about these fireflies about how resilient they are. There are more than 2,000 species. Eastern fireflies have proven to be adaptable to urban environments, but many other species haven't fared as well. Their enemies include climate change, pesticides, habitat loss, and light pollution.

Fireflies flash to communicate, especially to find a mate. And in lit areas, artificial lighting drowns their flashes. So the males and females are not able to see each other. They don't reproduce and there are no offsprings. And in a couple of seasons, the population vanishes. Murielie has some suggestions to prevent that. Support native vegetation and do not use pesticides and keep your outdoor lighting to a minimum. Use a motion sensor if possible.

it helps the migrating birds as well. A little less light could provide a healthier ecosystem so that fireflies will be able to continue to shine for generations to come. And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday. I'm John Yang. For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. Good week.