PBS News Hour - Full Show - August 17, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Monday on the News Hour, the 60-day window to reach a deal to end the war with Iran expires as tensions rise around key shipping routes. The president calls for joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises to be scaled back, citing South Korea's unwillingness to help with the Iran war. Plus, scientists study large-scale underwater barriers to slow the melting of glaciers. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. Jeff Bennett is away. On the news hour tonight, the 60-day window to reach a deal to end the war with Iran expires as tensions rise around key shipping routes. The president calls for joint U.S.-S.-South Korea military exercises to be scaled back, citing South Korea's unwillingness to help with the Iran war. And scientists study whether it would be feasible to build a large-scale underwater barrier to slow the melting of glacial. Can it solve it completely forever? No, because if you keep warming the atmosphere, this is going to retreat faster. Welcome to the News Hour. President Trump lashed out at U.S. Allies today as the deadline to reach a deal to end the war with Iran expires. The president threatened to bomb Oman, which has been mediating negotiations with Iran, and called for joint military exercises with South Korea to be scaled back, in part for refusing to join the war with Iran. Iran. Trump also repeated the false claim that the U.S. controls the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway, through which 20 percent of global oil moved before the U.S. and Israel launched the war in February, and Iran effectively closed the strait. He also threatened to seize the strait as a U.S. territory. I like the idea of declaring it a territory. We have total

control over the street. Now, we're taking out millions of barrels of oil a week. If you look at the kind of numbers that we're doing. We're doing the straight is open. For an assessment of where the war stands and what happens next, we get two views. Alan Eyre was a State Department subject matter expert focusing on Iran and a senior member of the Obama administration's negotiating team for the joint comprehensive plan of action or JCPOA deal with Iran. He's now at the Middle East Institute. Anne Ruel Mark Abrecht was a CIA operations officer in the Middle East in the 1980s and 90s. He's now a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Welcome to you both. My pleasure. Alan, I'll start with you because you've made clear you opposed this war with Iran from the beginning. This memorandum of understanding the U.S. and Iran signed back in June, was supposed to do a few things, calling for an end to military operations, for the U.S. to end its naval blockade, for Iran and Oman to define the future administration of the strait. The 60 days are up. Why didn't this work?

It didn't work because there was. was a total absence of any type of mutual goodwill. And so when you reach the ambiguity that's even the best of MOUs, and in this case it was about Article 5 of the MOU, about how to administer the Strait of Hormuz in the temporary period, the ambiguity killed it. Because it said Iran will administer, in essence, traffic through the strait. But the U.S. also was trying to get ships through the southern coast along the Omani border.

That was the fatal flaw that blew up the MOU. So it's like a sprinter tripping out of the starting gate. It never really got a chance. Well, we should point out you supported the war. I don't know if you do still, but you have. Why do you think the 60-day deal collapsed? Well, I'd have to back it up a little bit. I would put the onus here on the United States in that I think it was crystal clear

that the Iranians had no intention whatsoever of giving up their claim to to control the straits and to put levees on ships. At the time they were negotiating this, if you were to read Revolutionary Guard Corps publications, this, it was clear. I mean, there was no ambiguity there. So I don't know what Vice President Vance and others were doing in those negotiations, and I think they should have known that the Persian version of this was not the version that the Americans believed perhaps.

was going to come into play. I think they were just being hopeful. I think the United States wanted to get out of this war. And so it was accepting a memorandum of understanding that really had no grounding in reality. So the US, President Trump, we should say, is claiming that the US does control the strait, that the US could control it and claim it as a territory.

Is any of that true? I think President Trump often says stuff for different reasons. I don't think there's another. correlation between what he says at any given time about the situation and any underlying reality. So no, we don't control the strait. The crucial factor here is Iran possesses the de minimis military ability to threaten traffic so that traffic will not go through the strait.

That's not going to change. Unfortunately, despite the fact that our military is so much stronger, we cannot open and keep open the strait militarily. Also, it is true that Iran has decided it wants to keep control of the strait as a form of strategic deterrence. And that's the hill that literally it's going to die on. Do you agree with that? I agree with that. I don't think there's any chance the Iranian leadership is going to relent.

I actually think they want to intensify the war. That's why the president, I think, has now decided to put all his chips onto the blockade and sanctions. economic warfare to try to either bring the regime to the table or to collapse it. However, I don't think that option it can be accomplished quickly if it can be accomplished. And the clock could be very long on that. Well, the president continues to say that Iran does want to make a deal. But as you point out, there's been economic sanctions, economic squeezing, a bombing campaign, a naval blockade.

None of that has worked. What would bring the Iranians to the table? Oh, I don't think anything will bring the Iranians to the table. I don't think they have any intention. I think right now they believe in pushing this conflict actually gives them the best chance of seeing the United States fail to actually have to admit defeat and withdraw. So I think that's what they're after.

They want the United States to effectively withdraw from the Persian Gulf. They intend to dominate the Arab Gulf countries to make them tributaries. I don't see them relenting. And the President of the United States, I think, has made it crystal clear that he doesn't want to fight the battle of Hormuz and that he wants to go and try this economic approach.

And one could understand there's some foundation there. I mean, the Islamic Republic is an economic basket case. But these individuals who rule the country are extremely hard. They have killed thousands of their own people to stay in power, and I just don't see them relenting. You agree with that, Alan? I agree with much of it, but I do think that Iran is open to negotiation. They haven't, but they're going to negotiate while fighting.

The decision Iran has made collectively in the last week or so is that they're not going to decrease economic pressure on the West of the United States by reopening even partially the strait, because they don't want to lose the initiative they feel they have. The Iranian leadership now, more hardline, more militarized, thinks they're in a wartime footing. You know, they've gone to the mattresses. They don't expect hostility from the U.S. or Israel to stop. So what they need to do in their minds is prepare for ongoing war. And the control of the strait is an essential component of that.

Now, if the U.S. decides to lift sanctions, unlikely, $300 billion reconstruction development, unlikely, unblocked assets, less unlikely, then they might take it seriously because they do need money, right? But they could just as well try to cut separate deals with the six Gulf countries for revenue streams because the two things they want, control of the strait for security, some form of income, because as you point out, they are hurting economically. President Trump also continues to restart the bombing campaign.

Would additional military pressure change the landscape? No, that's the whole point. The theory of the case that if we just, just keep escalating until Iran either capitulates or collapses isn't going to work. Because the people are in charge of Iran right now, if the pain gets to a certain point, and don't forget, they're not feeling pain. They make money off sanctions. The Iranian people are getting the preponderance of this pain. But at a certain point, if they're starting to feel pain themselves, they escalate against GCC energy and economic infrastructure to get the U.S. to stop.

So I don't see the theory the U.S. is pursuing in this war. Well, given where this is now six months into the hostilities, do you look back on the decision for the U.S. and Israel to launch the war in the first place as a mistake? Yes. I mean, given our reluctance to actually do what is necessary, which at a minimum means we're willing to fight the Battle of Hormuz. If we're not willing to...

You mean troops on the ground, in other words. It may require that, yes. You may have to have troops on the islands, on the mainland littoral. I would be very curious to know with the U.S. Navy when it was doing the briefings before this war happened what they told the president. Did they tell the president that you could fight the Battle of Hormuz?

Did they mention the Battle of Hormuz? Did they say you could do it without ground troops? I mean, or did the president discard that information? But it's quite clear now that we're not willing to fight that battle. And if we're not willing to fight that battle, I don't think we could win. So, and I'm, yeah, economic coercion has its place, but I don't think it can replace real warfare, kinetic warfare. So I think they can probably outlast us.

I mean, that's a question that should go to Secretary's Bessent, a Treasury, and the Naval Secretary, of how long we can go on and endure, particularly if they start firing again at the Gulf Arab energy infrastructure, and they're able, through their who. Uthi allies to shut down Red Sea traffic. Then I think economically we're in a very bad situation. We'll have to leave it there for now. Aruelmar correct, Alan Eyre? Thank you so much for being with us. I'm a pleasure. Today, exercises between the American and South Korean militaries began as scheduled,

even after President Trump demanded they be scaled back. This weekend and again today, the president said what he called war games were unnecessarily provocative and a challenge to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, despite recent praise of South Korea by the administration. Nick Schifrin joins me now here for more. So Nick, tell us more about these exercises and what exactly the president is calling for here. So these are our annual U.S. South Korean military exercises called Ulci Freedom Shield, involving tens of thousands of troops.

They started today what the U.S. military calls a, quote, defensive opportunity to strengthen U.S. and South Korean readiness. They've been held for 50 years designed to deter North Korea. But that is not how President Trump sees it. He said they send a, quote, inappropriate and hostile message to an unthreatening and respectful North Korea. President Trump raised the possibility of restarting diplomacy with Kim Jong-un posting this 2019 photo from the demilitarized zone, writing Kim Jong-un and I, get along great.

And this afternoon, the president posted this meme of Kim, Kim, calling President Trump, hey Donald, we cool, right? The president's criticism instead today fell on his ally. South Korean President Lee J. Myeong calling him out over Iran. Take a listen to... I called him, I said, would you like to give us a little hand? We don't need help with Arend. But if you'd like, give us a hand with Iran.

He said, no thanks. And I said, where do we have, we have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong-un, your next-to-a-never. And you're not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That's strange. No, no, we'd rather not get involved. I see, well, why are we involved in helping you? So it's a page out of the president's first-term playbook,

criticizing joint exercises with South Korea, complaining about South Korean burden sharing while publicly messaging Kim Jong-un. Let's talk. So we've heard that from President Trump in the U.S. what have we heard from South Korean officials in response? South Korea's response was muted. The president's office in Seoul said that they were reviewing Trump's comments and that they would discuss helping the U.S. over Iran.

They also said that they wanted a better U.S. North Korea relationship. And that is the irony that the very South Korean administration that the president, President of the United States, Donald Trump, is criticizing South Korea over, is the diplomacy that South Korea's president, is diplomacy that South Korea's administration wants the U.S. to have. Take a listen to Frank Genozy, the president at the Mansfield Foundation, which advocates for diplomacy. I think what is striking about what happened over the last 24 hours is that it appears to have been a move

that took our South Korean allies by surprise. And so these moves are always best when they are coordinated closely. For the military planners on the peninsula, these exercises are at the core, of our ability to deter North Korean aggression. The United States and South Korea view these exercises as defensive in nature and essential to deterring North Korean aggression and to be prepared. But North Korea has always seen these exercises as provocative, accusing the U.S. of planning strikes against North Korea's leadership. And just this week, in fact, Pyongyang launched more missiles, as it almost always does before these exercises, following other tests earlier this year of new weapons.

Take a listen to Jennifer Kavanaugh. She is the Director of Military Analysis for Defense Priorities, which advocates for restraint in U.S. policy. When the United States conducts what adversaries consider to be provocative exercises close to their borders, rather than being deterred, they increase their military spending, their own military activities in their region,

by conducting additional exercises of their own, by increasing pressure on neighbors, by test firing or experimenting with new weapons. My view is that South Korea should be defending itself. And to that extent, having the United States and South Korea training together is unnecessary. Instead, the United States should be pushing South Korea to carry out these activities on its own without U.S. support. And that's the baseline that South Korea should be prepared for. Kavanaugh actually argues that reducing exercises is a small step.

Omna compared to, for example, troop withdraws or reducing U.S. commitment to South Korea. Of course, threats the president has also made against South Korea. Nick, go back for a second to the public messages to Kim Jong-un you mentioned earlier. Is there any sign that North Korea is actually interested in that diplomacy? Publicly, no. As far as we can tell, North Korea is not interested in talking, especially about denuclearization. And it's in a much stronger position than it ever was during Trump's, first term. China and Russia have stopped adhering to UN sanctions on North Korea. Russia's believed

to be providing technology to North Korea, improving its missiles. In fact, Ukrainian President Volodymiel Zelensky, who has received North Korean ballistic missiles fired by Russia, says that they have become 300 times more accurate just in the last year and a half. Thanks to that Russian technology. Listen to Frank Genozy again. This means that North Korea is going to play hard to get. And if Trump is serious about opening up channels to North Korea, he's going to have to come bearing gifts. And that's a very uncomfortable position for a U.S. President to be in in negotiating with North Korea. But clearly President Trump is interested in restarting that diplomacy, Omna,

and is doing so by publicly criticizing his ally South Korea and calling for these exercises. exercises to be scaled back. Nick Sheprin. Thank you very much. Thank you. The day's other headlines begin in the Midwest, where a week of heavy storms and catastrophic floods has killed at least seven people. In Indianapolis this weekend, the White River rose to record-breaking levels, submerging homes and washing out roads and bridges.

Officials said wind gusts and other parts of the state reached about 100 miles an hour, downing trees and power lines. More than 100,000 people are still without power. The storms led to similar scenes across much of Illinois, Ohio, and Kentucky. And there were still flood watches and warnings across parts of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic even today. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Hurricane Lala has weakened to a tropical storm, but not before leaving a trail of destruction across the Big Island of Hawaii and the other Hawaiian

islands. My goodness. They say raging rivers and mudslides swept around 100 homes off their foundations, but the state's governor says no one is believed to have died. The storm hits some areas with nearly three feet of rain as it passed to the south of the islands without making landfall. Over 100,000 homes and businesses remain without power since the weekend, and officials say outages could take days to repair in some areas.

In Indonesia, thousands of people are in limbo as they wait for aid to trickle in after a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake. Collapsed buildings and mounds of rubble line the streets. The earthquake also ripped deep cracks in roads, structures, and bridges. At least 68 people have died and nearly 20,000 others have been left without housing. Many are now sleeping in tents. One father shared his family's harrowing experience during the quake. I woke up carrying my child together with my wife.

We tried to get out of the room, but the The shaking was so strong that we were thrown to the ground several times while trying to open the door. At that point, we surrendered everything to God, whatever was going to happen. Rescuers have struggled to reach isolated communities, including thousands on the hard-hit island of Florida. Indonesia, along the Pacific's ring of fire, has seen more than 1,500 aftershocks since the Saturday quake.

Turning now to the Middle East, U.S. envoy and Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner left Israel today without a breakthrough on the president's stalled Gaza peace proposal. After an hours-long meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the two sides agreed to create two working groups on Gaza. But Netanyahu insisted that Israel would not withdraw from Gaza, as the plan calls for, until Hamas fully disarms. This all follows a rare meeting, mediated by Egypt, that Kushner held this weekend with Hamas political leader Khalil Al-Haya, who was not pictured. The Supreme Court has rejected for a second time President Trump's long-shot appeal of a $5 million civil judgment in favor of writer E. Jean Carroll. In 2023, a jury found that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll in a New York City department store in the mid-1990s.

The president paid the money last month. He's also asked the High Court to toss another larger $83 million verdict that he had defamed Ms. Carroll. The earliest the justices would reconsider that case would be after recess in the fall. Mr. Trump has denied all wrongdoing. Stocks fell on Wall Street today amid rising oil prices and Iran war tensions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 270 points or half a percent. The NASDAQ fell by 0.3 percent. The S&P 500 slipped but remained near its all-time high set last week.

And we have two passings of note tonight. First in the world of sports, legendary pitcher Tommy John has died. He entered the majors in the early 1960s and won nearly 300 games over 26 seasons. But John is perhaps best known for his return to the sport after undergoing a groundbreaking but risky elbow reconstruction, now known as Tommy John's surgery. His career flourished in the years that followed, and thousands of other players have seen their own successful returns from the operation.

Tommy John died this weekend while in hospice care. He was 83 years old. And Hayden Panetteer has died. No official cause of death was given for the versatile actress and Golden Globe nominee. But multiple news outlets report that emergency responders found her in cardiac arrest before she was pronounced dead. Police say there was no evidence of foul play. Our senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has this remembrance. Listen, I'm just here to deliver a message.

You're in danger. Hayden Panetteer spent much of her life in front of the camera. Okay. Show us what not to do. And it began in infancy with a baby commercial at all of 11 months. Why do you dress so weird? Her big film breakthrough came in 2000 opposite Denzel Washington, as the football obsessed daughter of a coach in Remember the Titans.

He did a good job up here. He ran a tough camp from what I can see. Well, I'm very happy to have the approval of a five. I'm nine and a half, thank you very much. She later said the role helped form her approach to acting and a career. I felt like that really shaped me, really shaped my perspective of the industry, made me feel like now I know what kind of actor I want to be. I want to be generous and I want to be there for people, but this can also be fun.

From there, wider fame came on the small screen, first on NBC's Heroes, Claire Bennett, a teen cheerleader with extraordinary powers to heal. Then in Nashville as Juliet Barnes, a rising country singer whose personal struggles play out alongside her career. Panette Tierra also put her voice to work, including Princess Dot and Pixar's A Bug's Life, and in the video game, Kingdom Hearts. But behind the scene, she was dealing with her own struggles. After the birth of her daughter in 2014, she suffered from postpartum depression, while also battle alcoholism. Four years later, she would give up full custody of her child to the father, Ukrainian boxer Vladimir Klitschko. She spoke candidly in a Good Morning America interview in 2022.

I didn't have any negative feelings towards my child. I just knew I was deeply depressed. And I didn't know where, you know, the alcoholism was ending and postpartum was beginning. She went into more detail in a memoir released earlier this year. This is Me, a Reckoning. writing of addiction, depression, sexual harassment, and the pressures of growing up in Hollywood. And she spoke about it in a recent appearance on the Jay Shetty podcast. I just wanted to help people. I want what I have gone through to be for a reason. I finally feel like I have shaken off all of this, this darkness and this negativity.

and that means that I've closed one door and another door is opened, and I can feel it opened, and I can feel all the possibility. Hayden Panetteer died yesterday in Greenville, South Carolina. She was 36 years old. And still to come on the news hour, the United States approaches a staggering $40 trillion of debt. Tamara Keith and Amy Walter look ahead to the next round of primaries. And instead of selling his company for millions, one CEO decides to donate its profits to charity. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington,

headquarters of PBS News. Well, the U.S. national debt is expected to hit a record high as soon as this week, crossing a major threshold of $40 trillion. Our congressional correspondent, Lisa Desjardin joins us now to explain why that milestone is a warning sign for many economists. Lisa, remind us what this all means and why it all matters. Right. The U.S. national debt is important to us because it helps drive the engine of our government, but it is also a cornerstone of the world economy. Those sometimes can be good things, but let me explain why this level is now a new red flag. Let's take a look in defined terms.

We are fast approaching $40 trillion in gross or total national debt. One major problem is that interest alone now costs more than $1.2 trillion a year for U.S. taxpayers. That's according to the Federal Reserve. So we now spend more on interest omnibre than we do on national defense and basically more than almost anything else that government does. Rising debt also adds inflationary pressure to the economy. We spoke with Carolyn Bordeau of the Concord Coalition, and she explained the concern if this red ink line keeps rising. Eventually we will hit some sort of very serious fiscally induced economic crisis, which means that massive debt we're carrying, we will keep adding to it, and eventually it will cause a very serious economic crisis, and that can take many different forms. Often it takes the form of hyperinflation, high interest rates, you know, really, really serious problems that will be very, very difficult for us to get out of.

You know, that the future is not here yet, so why worry about it so much? because neither Congress nor the White House is really addressing the core of this problem. Obviously, all of this has been a long time in the making, Lisa. Remind us how we got here in the first place. Well, part of it have been specific economic crises, but another part has been very distinct crisis of leadership. If you look at the debt for the past 50 years here,

you can see where it rocketed up in those two places. One of those was 2009 with the recession, another 2020 with COVID. But you can also see that it has, that even as the government flooded the zone to try and rescue the economy there here in recent years, you can see it has risen outside of those economic shocks. And both Republicans and Democrats, we see our two most recent presidents there, have seen the debt rise sharply under their watch. Now, as for Congress, it has repeatedly solved problems. I've sat here and talked about it

by just spending more money. And Republicans have continued to cut taxes. All of that sounds great, except we don't have the money to do those things, really, when you look at our deadline. What's happening right now is a lack of leadership and honestly, not just financial sobriety, but honesty about the problem. I mean, $40 trillion is such a huge amount. It is almost incomprehensible. How do we begin to get our heads around it? Right.

We thought about this. First, I just want folks to look at the number. Let's look at it. That's 40 with 12 zeros after it. That's what 40 trillion looks like. What does that mean? It's almost impossible. One way you can think of it is if you stacked up $1 bills, we hear this a lot, it would actually

go all the way around the sun if it was 40 trillion, another thing that might not make much sense. So we tried to come up with a more tangible way of expressing this. Let's talk about houses in America. Right now, the average single-family home costs about $400,000. And if you do the simple math here, 100 homes would be $40 million, I'm sorry, would be $40 million. But then let's zoom out to all of America. That's where you hit $40 trillion. That is a is more than the worth of every single family home in this country. We have roughly 90 million single family homes.

So if you want to know what $40 trillion is, just look at the houses around you. It is the worth of every single family house in this country. You mentioned the lack of leadership on this. Is anyone in Congress talking about how to tackle this? There are some. But by and large, they just talk about their own slice of it, and they're unwilling to compromise over

the tough things that they need to do to get us here. One example is the Freedom Caucus in the House. They've been pushing for tighter budgets for years, but they actually did not get the kind of spending cuts that they campaigned on. And also, in truth, they're not willing to give on taxes and revenues. They want revenue cuts. There's a big debate over what tax cuts do. Senator Rand Paul is an example of a senator who votes against spending cuts,

spending bills repeatedly over the national debt, but very few members of Congress. actually do. And no one is talking about the big picture like Social Security reform, Medicare. What's more two of the biggest voices here are leaving Congress this session. That's Republican Congressman Dave Schweiger of Arizona and also Democratic Congressman John Larson of Connecticut. They spent a lot of time talking about Social Security. Carolyn Bordeaux points out that one of the issues here is that not just we have a problem now, but if lawmakers don't deal with it soon, they're going to have to take more and more drastic

measures and we're talking about significant spending cuts but also potential significant tax increases to actually deal with it and right now we just don't see anyone talking about it one more problem we're at 40 trillion but omna we're now just a few years away from 50 trillion in national debt as well it's another staggering figure lisa d'esartan thank you very much you're welcome at a time when the impact of climate change is undeniable some researchers suggest we need to start work on far more ambitious approaches for tackling these problems. These proposals are often referred to as geoengineering. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien looks at one such concept to deal with the melting

of glaciers and sea ice for our series tipping point. It's time for some scientific fieldwork. Fortunately, mathematician and climate researcher David Holland of New York University has a short commute. The glacier he is studying is right on his doorstep. It's life-changing. When you actually experience it and see it, it transforms it to something very real. This is Greenland's Yakub-Shavin glacier, which has a peak flow rate of about 150 feet a day, one of the fastest moving glaciers on Earth. You're losing more than you're gaining. So it's like a bank account that's being dwindled down.

He is joined by his partner in every respect, wife Denise Holland, the logistical genius that makes it all happen in this tricked-out scientific encampment. We've been doing this for 20 years, and for 20 years I've been sleeping on the ground on a tent. So when the opportunity came along, I said, okay, let's do this right.

Just before they left for Greenland, we caught up with them as they were tallying and testing gear at their home base in the East Village of New York City. This is the packing stage for the luggage, and it's controlled chaos. Yeah, so that's what I do. I use the skills that I have

to kind of make sure everything goes where it's supposed to go. They're hoping to better understand the glacier's rapid retreat by gathering synchronous data from radar, seismic sensors, drones, weather stations, and satellites. There's no AI way out of them.

This is just go-get data, and that's why we want synchronous data, so something will pop out and we'll say, uh-huh. Ultimately, they want to improve predictions on how much and how soon this and other glaciers will add to sea level rise. And that's what propels them on a bipolar scientific odyssey. Four months before he set up camp in Greenland, I joined David on a voyage to Antarctica, to the Thwaites Glacier. The size of Florida, it and the ice it holds back, store enough water to raise global sea levels by as much as 10 feet. And it is melting at an astonishing rate, losing about 300 feet of thickness every year. Undeniably, it's melting. Then the question is why. Warm, salty, dense seawater flows beneath a layer of cold, fresh meltwater, where it attacks the glacier from below, accelerating its melt.

But researchers need more data to say much beyond that. We have a few measurements, a few snapshots, but we've never gotten the sustained measurement at Western Thwaites. Holland had hoped to deploy a sophisticated temperature sensor into the sea beneath the glacier. Unfortunately, the effort came up short. As the sensors descended, the super-cold glacier ice grabbed them and wouldn't let go. It was a crushing blow, but David Huffalo Holland had another mission on his manifest for this cruise. Five days after the sensor deployment went awry on the glacier,

we were 80 miles away, and he was on the poop deck orchestrating the deployment of a pair of robotic moorings. This goes first, right? This goes first, and the line will go out. They are designed to continuously climb and descend on the rims of an underwater canyon that funnels warm water toward Thwaites. Holland hopes the buoys will provide some initial

data on the feasibility of a crazy-sounding idea, could an underwater barrier, a so-called sea curtain, slow down the melting? He showed me a 3D-scale model of the undersea terrain near the glacier. It's quite a coincidence that this particular slice of Antarctica is the place where the warm water is abutting up against the continental shelf break. For thousands of years, the continental shelf protected Thwaites from exposure to a strong deep current of dense warm water that circulates around Antarctica. But researchers believe climate change has altered wind patterns here, creating a pathway for deep warm water to spill over the continental shelf

and flow to the Thwait's grounding line. This is such a small region of the Earth, that it just might be possible to block it and pinch it. The undersea canyon is nearly 60 miles wide. The twin robots will measure the depth, of the warm water and the strength of the ocean currents. Critical data for determining whether an underwater barrier is even feasible. This modification could potentially stop that warm water and block it up.

And if this height is adequate, the water will be at bay. But none of this is keeping critics of the idea at bay. Rob Larder is a marine scientist with the British Antarctic Survey. It really seems like something that's very impractical to me. The underwater barrier is just one of a handful of geoengineering ideas aimed at slowing the loss of glacier ice that Larder finds fault with. Some of the other ideas include draining the meltwater from beneath glaciers to reduce their slide toward the sea,

artificially thickening sea ice to support glacier fronts, injecting aerosols into the air to reduce the amount of sunlight that gets through or spreading reflective material over the snow and ice to reduce the melting. After looking at them from various different aspects, from the feasibility, from how quickly they could be developed to a stage where they might be deployed, from the potential adverse consequences, ecological effects, from the difficulty of governing them in a very geopolitically complex world. None of them passed these tests.

David Holland takes great pains to remind us he's not building a sea curtain, but rather a trove of data that can inform a decision on whether a barrier makes sense someday in the future. Now in Greenland, the people of Greenland will decide. In Antarctica, less clear. But without this data, we're collecting for Greenland and Antarctica, humanity will be left without an engineering solution to stabilize these glaciers. Between Thwaites and Jakub Shavin, David and Denise Holland are moving

from the frying pan to the fire at two of the most consequential glaciers on the planet. They are scrambling to create a forecast of how long the world's glaciers might last, and pondering the audacious notion that humans can do something about it, besides, reducing our appetite for fossil fuels. Can it solve it completely forever? No, because if you keep warming the atmosphere, this is going to retreat faster. The Hollands have a front row seat

to a global problem that is moving at glacial pace. But that may not be as slow as we imagine. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Miles O'Brien. The 26 primary season enters the home stretch with only a handful of states remaining after polls closed tomorrow in Alaska, Florida, and Wyoming. Our Politics Monday duo is here

to break down those races and more. That is Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR. Great to see you both. Good to be here. Let's begin in Alaska. Where voters will head to the polls in non-partisan primaries tomorrow. We know the top four contenders in the U.S.

Senate race head to the general in November. Amy, this is a race. Cook Political and you have rated as a toss-up. Just days before the primary, though, there was some reporting about a campaign staff shakeup by the Democrat in this race, the former Republican, former representative Mary Peltola, senior officials removed from their jobs. What is going on there and can a Democrat win? Yeah, well, first of what's going on there. The Peltola campaign says this is really a lot about nothing. This is just shifting job responsibilities of the campaign manager to a different

responsibility and putting the deputy campaign manager into more of a day-to-day responsibility. Regardless, it gets to your bigger question, which is, can a Democrat win in this state? Now, Mary Peltola has actually proven she can win in this state. She won here in 2022. As a congressperson, remember, Alaska has only one member of Congress. So she has had to run statewide before, one statewide. And even when she lost re-election in 2024, she still outran Kamala Harris by 11 points. Her bigger challenge is that even 11 points wasn't quite enough to get over the finish line.

This is a very Republican state. And for her, her biggest concern right now, even as Trump is less popular than he was in 2024, is that the Democratic brand isn't any more popular. Already, we saw this last week, former presidential nominee Kamala Harris sent out a fundraising email, saying, I want to contribute money to Mary Peltola, give to my PAC so I can give her money. The Peltola campaign said, yeah, thanks, but no thanks. We don't really want to be associated with those on the lower 48 who have a Democratic big D label attached to them. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Tam, I know you're following this drama.

around the Dan's Sullivan, is a phrase, I believe you coined, here two Republicans, one is, of course, the incumbent senator, Dan Sullivan. Both are on the ballot. What are you watching for here, other than confusion on the ballot?

Right. So there is Dan J. Sullivan, a retired teacher and Forest Service employee, and Dan S. Sullivan, the senator for the state. And they are both Republicans who will be on the ballot. Now, it's a top four primary,

so it is quite possible that both Dan's Sullivan will make it through to that general election, which then has ranked choice voting. There's actually been all kinds of interesting shenanigans in this race with outside super PACs, spending money to boost unheard, basically novelty campaigns and various other people who are also on the ballot in an effort to try to game this,

but because it is a top four primary and because it then becomes ranked choice voting, there's just less gaming to actually successfully do in this race. Let's turn now to Florida. I know we've been reporting here and you've been following the Republican Congressman Corey Mills re-election campaign. He's being investigated by the House Ethics Committee, allegations of campaign finance violations and domestic violence.

And Amy, all of that has led Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to say he is not backing Corey Mills in this primary. This should be a safe Republican seat. Does that change if Mills wins? I think it absolutely changes if Mills wins. Now, this is still a very red seat. Trump won this district by 12 points. But Trump is much less popular, even in Florida, than he was back in 2024.

And you also have two members of the Florida delegation. It's not just Ron DeSantis. It's two Republican members of the delegation, also endorsing against their colleague. With Trump less popular, Congress, obviously not very popular either, in a year like this, to have somebody with this baggage is just one more reason, potentially, for voters in that district to either vote against a Republican or to stay home. And so this is why the worry from many Republicans, especially with such a very narrow margin in the House, of just putting any seat in play. And this, his own baggage puts it in play. Tam meanwhile, on the Democratic side in Florida, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz,

one of the most powerful women on Capitol Hill, is not running in her own district, which was redrawn by Republicans there to be more red. Instead, she's running in a neighboring district that's actually a majority minority. It's a district that's consistently sent black Democrats to Congress for decades. What are you watching for in this race?

Watching to see, obviously, whether she's able to win in this race. She is obviously the biggest name running in this race. And there are multiple other candidates who are African American who are running, but they might end up diluting the vote. Or, you know, it's one Debbie Wasserman Schultz versus a field of other candidates. You know, this is not the only seat that had been or has been held by a black member of Congress that may ultimately not be held by a black member of Congress.

the Congressional Black Caucus is expected to shrink because of this Supreme Court decision that threw out part of the Voting Rights Act and led to a scramble of southern states redrawing district lines to basically draw out the seats that had been held by black Democrats. I mean, well, Amy, before we let you go, we saw House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries this weekend, even as primaries are still underway, making a prediction about what will happen. in the next Congress. He said at least 220 members of the House Democratic caucus, when, as he puts it, they will take back the majority. Is that number something you're seeing at Cook Political when you run the numbers? Right. So 218 is the bare majority. So what he's saying

is they'll have a two-seat. You know, he's guaranteeing the only at least a two-seat majority. Now, look, setting the bar low is a classic thing that leadership does, right? So you can say, oh my gosh, look at how far above this bar that we've gone. But I do think he's being realistic in this case as well. The map is very, very small. The redrawing of the lines, especially after the Supreme Court decision, made that field even narrower. Our prediction right now, our range of outcomes are anywhere from Republicans

holding the majority by just three seats to Democrats holding it by 11. So he's definitely within that range. And a 220 seat. majority is the thing that nightmares are made of on either side of the aisle. You do not want to be the leader with that narrow a margin because while we've seen what happens, it becomes almost impossible to pass legislation, especially on the Democratic side where you're going to have a bunch of these DSA candidates who will be DSA members of Congress who may not want to fall in line. Tamara Keith, Amy Walter. Great to see you vote. Thank you. Yes. Late last month,

Eddie Smith, the 83-year-old owner of Grady White Boats in Greenville, North Carolina, made waves when he announced he was pledging nearly all his company's future profits to charity. Instead of selling Grady White, Smith chose to gift it to a perpetual purpose trust that will distribute profits to causes, including conservation, health care, and education. Liz Landers recently spoke with Smith about that decision and why he hopes other business leaders will follow suits. Eddie Smith, thank you for joining us. That's my pleasure.

Why did you decide to turn down the offer? and one of them was more than $400 million, and instead put your company in a trust for employees and give away the profits. That's a great question. Some of the offers were actually well north of $400 million, but I've seen so many of my friends in this industry sell their companies and then be very, very sorry

about what happened to their companies after the sale. Even though they had been promised that the culture would remain the same, everything would stay the same, it never ever does. And I saw that time and time again. And I had hoped and thought my son would take the company into the next one more generation anyway. But unfortunately, he passed away from ALS. So then I was faced with trying to figure out, okay, who's going to take the company forward in the future? And the only option seemed to be to sell the company and hope that you could find a buyer that would keep the company pretty much like it is. I happen to be really.

a New York Times article a couple of years ago about Mr. Shinar at Patagonia and the fact that he had been in a similar situation and had put his company in a perpetual purpose trust. So I started doing some research on that and decided that that was a much better way for me to go. So I feel really, really good about it. I think some friends think I probably crazy for giving away most of my. worth, but it's the right thing to do, and Grady White's future is secure. With this structure of this trust, what do you stand to gain financially from this? Nothing whatsoever. All the voting chairs go into the trust. The majority of the common shares goes into a new 501C4 nonprofit. And so the trust with all the voting shares will own and guide

Grady White in perpetuity. And then the profits, more than 90% of the profits forevermore, will go into the nonprofit, go to charity and hopefully do some really good things and touch lots of loves. How did your employees react when you shared the news? Well, I'm sure when I walked up on the stage and looked out at those 350 very apprehensive people in front of me, they were pretty positive. I was getting ready to tell them that I'd sold the company. But when I explained to them that the company would never be sold, that it would always be the company that they know and love and have built and that we would always share profits with them and furnish all the other things that we do for them. It was screaming, hollering, some tears. It was exciting. You mentioned some of the

charitable projects. What are the charitable projects that you hope the profits go? go towards? How do you hope that the community is impacted? I have a family foundation that I started years ago, and so it'll basically track along the same things that we've been doing for years. We really care about this 29 eastern rural, underserved counties in eastern North Carolina, and lots of opportunity here to do a lot of good. And so we concentrate primarily on education. We do an awful lot in the area of health care. and then conservation. I'm very concerned about clean rivers, clean ocean, fishery resources for future generations. We live in a moment where there is a pretty large wealth disparity in the United States,

and not many other millionaires and billionaires are making the kind of decision that you made with your business. What is your message to other business owners and other high net worth individuals? Well, frankly, that's, I mean, the main reason that I did what I did was, to preserve Grady White forevermore for our employees, our dealers, our customers, and the community. But a secondary motive on my part was to make people aware. I mean, I wasn't aware of a purpose trust until I happened to read the Patagonia article. And I know most of my peers, CEOs across the country that I've talked to, have never heard of it. So my hope was that it would educate and maybe inspire other business owners to at least consider that path if it fit them,

But if it didn't fit them, that I wanted to at least nudge their consciousness about philanthropy. There's so much need, and how much can you need? I mean, I'm comfortable. But I just felt very strongly that maybe, maybe it would get many of other people thinking about their philanthropic journey. And indeed, I've had calls from all over the country for businessmen asking for more details about the purpose trust. and to talk about philanthropy. So hopefully, hopefully that's done some good. And certainly talking to you and shared with your bureaus, hopefully we'll do more of the same.

I went to college with your granddaughter, Suti, and I had the pleasure of meeting your son, Chris, a few times before he passed. How do you think that he and your late wife would react to what you've done with the business? Liz, I'm absolutely positive that they're smiling really big time. I know they both loved all of our people at the plant and loved the journey we've been on for 58 years with Grady White. And there's no doubt in my mind, they're smiling bit tough. Eddie Smith of Grady White Boats, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. And that is The News Hour for tonight.

I'm Omna Navazz. On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us.