PBS News Hour - Full Show - August 19, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Tuesday on the News Hour, the White House pushes Russia for direct talks with Ukraine, but signs of compromise are still elusive. A look at competing claims from the Trump administration and D.C. city leaders about crime levels. Plus, at the height of wildfire season, thousands of firefighters face frontline dangers, including toxic smoke, with little to no protection. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. And I'm Amna Nawaz. On the news hour tonight, the White House pushes Russia for direct talks with Ukraine, but signs of compromise are still elusive. Competing claims from the Trump administration and D.C. city leaders about crime levels as more federal troops are deployed to patrol the nation's capital. And at the height of wildfire season, thousands of firefighters face front-line dangers, including toxic smoke with little to no protection. If the Forest Service were to allow firefighters to wear masks, it would mean admitting that smoke is dangerous. And that could cause a huge rethinking of the whole way the agency works right now.

Welcome to the News Hour. The White House press secretary said today that Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed to President Trump that he would soon meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose country Russia invaded. And White House officials say one possible location for the summit is Hungary, led by Victor Orban, a longtime Putin ally and critic of the Western coalition that's backing Ukraine. Orban has repeatedly blasted both NATO and the European Union, which Hungary belongs to for what he calls their overly aggressive support of Ukraine's defense. Nick Schifrin begins our coverage again tonight.

In eastern Ukraine today, firefighters rushed to Russia's target of choice, a residential apartment building, where not everyone got out in time. 200 miles to the west, the blood-orange sky of a Ukrainian sunrise mixed with the smoke of a city besieged. Russia bombarded Ukraine once again today, leading Ukrainians. even in Kyiv's quieter streets to distrust diplomatic efforts to find peace. It seems to me there will be some agreements, but I don't think it will be possible to say this is the end of the war.

Even if there is a truce, this enemy will not stop within the borders he has now. We will give them very good protection, very good security. Yesterday, President Trump promised Ukraine long-term U.S. support. We're willing to help them with things, especially probably if you could talk about, But today, in a phone call with Fox News, President Trump created a new support ceiling. What kind of assurances do you feel like you have that going forward and, you know, past this Trump administration, it won't be American boots on the ground defending that border? Well, you have my assurance. You're not president.

Even without U.S. troops, Ukraine says the U.S. can help provide security guarantees by selling some $90 billion of weapons and investing in Ukraine's world-leading drone industry. Already, a coalition of European countries created plans to send troops to Ukraine to help monitor any potential peace deal. And now European countries will negotiate with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on what exactly the U.S. is willing to provide. But European officials are resisting Russian demands for Ukraine to hand over its eastern Donbass region. As President Trump discussed yesterday, was Zelensky in the Oval Office. German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz last night.

The Russian demand that Kiev give up the free parts of Donbos is, to put it in perspective, equivalent to the U.S. having to give up Florida. A sovereign state cannot simply decide something like that. Russian troops and their separatist allies have failed to capture the entire Donbass despite 11 years of fighting. Today, Russian troops have momentum. And Russia's often repeated claim it's defending the Donbass's residents, despite launching a war there, will be part of the negotiations,

said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Without respect for Russia's security interests, without full respect for the rights of Russians and Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine, there can be no talk of any long-term agreements. Besides ruling out sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, President Trump also said it would be impossible for Ukraine to get Crimea back. For a perspective on all the recent diplomatic meetings aiming to end the war in Ukraine, we turn to Pavlo Klimkin. He was Ukraine's foreign minister from 2014 to 2019. He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is currently in Kiev.

Pablo Klimkin, thanks very much. Welcome to the news hour. So given President Trump's summits recently in Anchorage with President Putin and in Washington, D.C., with President Zelensky and other European leaders, bottom line, do you believe there is a diplomatic path to end Russia's war on Ukraine? Not the war itself, because from all my experience, I don't believe in Putin and his entourage changing their calculus on Ukraine. It's not about NATO enlargement. It's not about territory. It's about a simple point

that they don't believe Ukraine does exist in any sense, in the sense of statehood, history, language. So they won't give up on trying to destroy Ukraine. And so if you believe Russia maintains maximalist demands, and a maximalist vision when it comes to Ukraine. Do you believe this diplomatic effort is even worth it? Definitely.

And it's worth trying to reach in a sort of ceasefire. Another dimension for that is a new European security architecture. Europeans who should be, for me, present in any kind of security. commitments and better security guarantees, but unfortunately we are not there. So when it comes to those security commitments, of course, European officials have been working on what they've called the coalition of the willing, sending troops, sending weapons, sending support to Ukraine. But the question now is how far the United States will go to participate in those security guarantees. And today, President Trump ruled out U.S. troops to Ukraine.

But how important is it that the U.S. participate in those security guarantees? guarantees, both for Ukraine to be able to defend itself, and also for Zelensky to be able to sell to Ukrainians any package that he's going to need to sell. It's absolutely critical. And the Europeans need kind of U.S. backstop, U.S. support without that the whole idea, not only on security guarantees, but on security commitments, is not going, going to happen. United States' contribution is absolutely critical to any successful attempt to get out a real sustainable ceasefire. The other aspect, the other major aspect of the conversations here in Washington yesterday were about the map. Russia's demands that Ukraine

give up the parts of the Donbass, the parts of the Donets province that Ukraine still holds and that Russia has failed to capture despite 11 years of war. First question here, why is the Donbass so important to the future of Ukraine? For us, it's about security, because we have all kind of defense lines there. It's, of course, about our emotions, because our guys gave pretty much everything on Donbass. idea to swap Donbass with something else would enact a wave of destabilization through Ukraine. This war is about where Ukraine belongs. So it's really fundamental to start with credible security guarantees and after that go on with any kind of discussions with Putin. So for me,

the real point, the kind of starting point for the discussion should be a sort of understanding among us, our American partners, and our European partners about security. And after that, we can discuss everything else. Pavela Climkin, former Foreign Minister of Ukraine. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot, Nick. In the day's other headlines, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard says that at President Trump's direction, she has revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former government officials. They include some who worked on a review of possible Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In a memo, Gabbard accused the staffers of, quote, politicization, or weaponization of intelligence for partisan purposes. The Trump administration has launched a sweeping effort in recent weeks to cast doubt on the intelligence community's findings that Russia interfered in 2016 in order to benefit then-candidate Trump. Hurricane Aaron is churning off the coast of Florida as a category two storm as it slowly makes its way up the Atlantic coastline. The massive storm is due to stay offshore,

but it's expected to produce life-threatening surf and rip currents from Florida all the way to Canada in the coming days. Along much of North Carolina's outer banks, there are tropical storm and storm surge warnings, and in some areas, authorities have ordered evacuations at the height of tourist season. Local officials are warning of rough surf and large waves that could reach 10 feet, which would make roads impassable. We encourage the local folks to leave as well, because we're not going to be able to provide services. If you have a heart attack, a medical event, house catches on fire, whatever, we're We can't get to you.

And so it's real important that people sort of heed the message. This is going to be several days where we're not going to have the ability to move around in the villages. The biggest ocean swells along the East Coast are expected tomorrow and into Thursday. Already, officials in North Carolina say at least 60 people had to be rescued from Rip Currants near Wilmington. For the first time in 30 years, the American Academy of Pediatrics is offering vaccine guidance that differs from officials. U.S. recommendations. In guidance issue today, the AAP is, quote, strongly recommending COVID-19 shots for kids age six months to two years. Vaccines are also advised for older children at their parents' discretion. That differs from guidance established under U.S. Health

Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which doesn't recommend shots for healthy kids of any age. Instead, the administration says kids can get the shots in consultation with their doctors. The State Department has reportedly canceled more than 6,000 student visas. As first reported by Fox News, around 4,000 were pulled because of crimes including assault, driving under the influence, and burglary. As many as 300 visas were revoked over what an official called support for terrorism, though no further details were provided. The cancellations represent just a fraction of the more than a million foreign students who study at American colleges and universities. But they are the latest example of the Trump administration's tough approach towards student visas as part of its broader immigration crackdown. Nebraska's governor and the Department of Homeland Security announced plans today to open an immigration detention center in a farming area in the state's southwest corner.

Dubbed Cornhusker Klink, officials say the former inmate work camp will provide up to 280 beds for ICE detainees. The announcement follows the opening last month of what the administration calls Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of legal challenges by attorneys who say the inmates are not given due process and are forced to endure poor living conditions. The centers are part of a broader effort to meet the infrastructure needs of the Trump administration's deportation push. In the Middle East, Egypt says the ball is now in Israel's court after Hamas tentatively aggrateful. agreed to a ceasefire proposal put forward by Arab mediators. But Israel has yet to offer an official response. Khamas and Arab officials say the current deal would involve a 60-day truce,

the release of some Israeli hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, a surge of aid to Gaza, plus talks to permanently end the war. A Qatari official said today, the framework is similar to one Israel accepted in the last round of talks involving the U.S. It is almost identical to what was agreed on previously by the Israeli side. This proposal represents the best possible option to stop the bloodshed of our brothers in the Gaza strip, especially considering the ongoing military escalation. In the meantime, hospitals in Gaza recorded 28 fatalities today, including women and children.

Some were killed in Israeli strikes and others while seeking aid. Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says more than 62,000. thousand Palestinians have now been killed in the war. Also today, a United Nations report finds that of the record 383 aid workers killed last year worldwide, nearly half were in Gaza. Air Canada says it will gradually restart operations after reaching a deal with 10,000 flight attendants on strike. The agreement will guarantee pay for work done while planes are on the ground, the driving factor behind the walkout. The strike began over the weekend. affecting some 130,000 travelers each day during the peak summer travel season.

Overall, nearly half a million travelers had their plans disrupted. The airline says flights will resume tonight, though it may take a week or more for service to be fully restored. Don Wall Street today's stocks struggled amid a sell-off in big tech stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial average added just 10 points on the day. The NASDAQ fell more than 300 points. The S&P 500 ended lower for a third stream. session. Still to come, on the NewsHour, we examine the causes behind stubbornly high beef prices.

Russian misinformation finds increasingly sympathetic ears among the religious right in the U.S. And a new biography of legendary author James Baldwin through the lens of love. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubinstein studio at W.E.T.A. in Washington, and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. President Trump paints the nation's capital as a city beset by crime, declaring an emergency and calling in National Guard troops under those emergency powers. D.C. leaders contend there is no crisis, pointing to crime rates trending down now at a 30-year low. Charles Lehman of the Conservative Manhattan Institute argues neither side is telling the complete truth.

He joins us now to discuss the extent of Washington's challenge with crime and how both the locals and feds could pursue smarter solutions. Charles, welcome to the NewsHour. Thanks for joining us. Thanks so much for having me on. So this D.C. takeover, as you've heard, was justified by the president as a response to crime. From what you've looked at, how you've studied it, in your view, was that takeover justified? That's a big complicated question. You know, I think whether or not it's justified comes down to how there's resources get used, how MPD, the city's police department gets used, how the additional federal agents get used. The reality is that there is a history of local federal cooperation

on law enforcement issues that have yielded real results. This is obviously a much more aggressive approach on the president's part. That doesn't mean it can't work. The capital is ultimately subject to the whims of the federal government a way that no other city in the United States is. But a lot depends on how the folks at the federal level and to some extent they're still cooperating entities at the local level are thinking about where they deploy their resources, where the real problems are, what problems they're trying to solve, and how they cognize success over the next 30 days. So if you were looking at where some of those troops and forces were deployed, if it was to address crime, where should they be deployed? And is that

where they're actually showing up? You know, the reality is that in every city in the United States, in every city on Earth, crime is a highly concentrated phenomenon. That's one of the few iron laws or criminology. In about 10% of the blocks in a city, you'll see about 50% of the crime. And that's true in D.C. as well. I've done some research that shows more than half of homicides in 2023. We're in just two wards, word seven, ward eight.

just 10 blocks, not 10%, just 10 blocks were home to 14% of homicides in that year. So a lot of what the city would like to be able to do, what the federal government ought to be able to do is to concentrate resources there. There are mixed signals about where we're seeing federal resources. There's obviously a lot of social media footage of agents in strange places on the National Mall, on New Street. It's a little bit hard to generalize from that. The messaging from the administration is we're taking criminals off the street. Again, it's a little bit hard to get a systematic sense. So, you know, the other question in my mind that isn't well answered is, is deploying these federal troops in non-major crime areas, freeing up constrained MPD resources to go to those more major crime areas, word seven, ward eight, northeastern D.C., areas where you have serious entrenched gang violence problems. I think we have mixed messages about whether that's really happening,

and it's a little bit hard to tell in the proverbial fog of war. I mean, there's also this issue of the statistics themselves, right? You've seen the president call the crime numbers in D.C. fake crime numbers. He said that online. His Department of Justice is now reportedly investigating those numbers. We should point out there was a 2020 lawsuit that was recently settled by D.C. police in which there was a former sergeant who claimed that the MPD, the D.C. police here, misclassified crimes that districts were competing to get their crime stats down. I guess the question

is, are the stats dependable? Is the president right in saying that these crime numbers are fake? And I'm relying here in part on research by a guy named Jeff Asher, who's a crime analyst based out of New Orleans, whose data I and lots of other people go to for this. And he's pointed out that there are, you know, there are some oddities in the data that MPD publishes. They seem to be counting violent crimes differently, i.e. categorizing different things as violent crimes in the data that they publish versus the data that they give to the FBI. And if you look at the FBI's data, they have seen a decline in violent crime, but it is much smaller than the decline that the city's data seems to suggest. That's a discrepancy. It's a reason to sort of question the

fervor of city officials when they say, we don't have a crime problem. On the other hand, it's a little bit hard to claim some malign cover-up when they're reporting the true numbers to the FBI. And more to the point, it seems like the two consistently really strong indicators in the data, homicide and auto theft, are following the same trends, no matter how you look at it. It's also just quite plausible that DC is seeing the same trend that many other big cities are seeing, which is a large and consistent decline in violent crime. So, you know, I think that there are legitimate questions about the magnitude of the drop. I think that the city's strongest claims are probably overstated. I think it is very hard to make the case that the data themselves are less reliable than any other crime number, which are always subject to a variety of caveats. There's also this issue, of course, of National Guard troop deployment.

We're now seeing more Republican governors step up to say that they will be sending their own National Guard troops to D.C. That includes West Virginia, Ohio, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. they don't have the same law enforcement authority that local officials do. So what kind of a difference can be made from their deployment when it comes to crime? You know, I think there's a good way to do this and a bad way to do this. And again, the question for me is always, what are the tactics, what's the strategy, how are we thinking about what we know about policing? The bad way to do this is as a show of force.

If you put a bunch of National Guard units in low crime areas and you're just trying to show off and say, look at what we can do, it's just a partisan box. match where the city is being used as the punching bag to mix my metaphors, that's not a good use of resources. On the other hand, one of the major ways that law enforcement or non-law enforcement officers work is that they're a deterrent. If you put to use the criminological language, a capable guardian in a place that is otherwise likely to be at risk or crime, you will reduce crime even if they don't necessarily have the powers of arrest. More importantly, you can use them to free up MPD officers who do have the power of arrest. They're below, MPD, the D.C. Police

Department is substantially below historical highs of sworn staffing. They could really use the manpower. And so to me, the question is, are they trying to show off or are they trying to act as a supplement? Are they trying to give MPD the breather that they need to really go after the major problems? And that's, you know, that's the cortisive factor. As you've probably seen, the administration is arguing, it's already working. The strategy is working. We saw the Attorney General Pam Bondi today online tout the success that they've seen. She said 52 arrests were made last night, including, in her words, an MS-13 gang member. She also claimed that there have been 465 arrests and 68 guns seized since this takeover began. Charles, do those numbers say anything to you? Do they say progress

that this is working? Look, the reality is you always need more context for a number like that. You know, You think about this, whether it's gun seized or drugs taken off the street or people justly arrested, that's good. That's great. You need to have a sense of where the city was prior to this intervention. And so just sort of giving those raw counts doesn't necessarily paint the full picture. The things that I will be looking at over the next month and next several months is where do the local crime trends seem to be going and how do they fit against what was happening prior to the intervention? There's a real interesting opportunity here for what social scientists think about as a natural experiment where there's been a sudden intervention and we'll be able to compare D.C. before and after this to other cities to learn about what this intervention did. You're not really going to get that information just looking at raw counts of arrests. To some extent, you can go and talk to people. I expect to be doing that. Other journalists expect to be doing that. See how they're feeling. See what their sense of safety is. But I'll be waiting for more data to really draw a conclusion. All right, Charles Lehman of the Manhattan Institute. Thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your time. Thanks again. Beef prices have soared to all-time highs, with many families feeling the squeeze.

Economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at the factors driving prices higher. Got a beef with beef prices? You've got company. I was looking at the price of a pound of ground beef. And three months ago, it was $4.99 a pound. And a week ago, Saturday, it was $7.99 a pound. And it's not just beef. It seems lately like every time I go into the store, I have sticker shock.

It's alarming to me. I'm almost afraid to go in there what I'm going to find. Almost 90% of Americans now say they're stressed about grocery prices, which have been up for three main reasons. Because of tariffs, because of weather and climate conditions, because of the labor cost. And shoppers have been paying more for a number of years. Since the pandemic, food prices are up over 26%. So we're having sticker shock every time we go to that cash register.

Official grocery prices actually dipped slightly last month. But one food that keeps climbing on a monthly and yearly basis is beef. Ground beef is up 11.5% since just last year. Ground beef is the highest price that it's ever been. CPI data started being collected in the 1980s. This is the first time it's over $6 a pound. And when we look at beef and veal prices, they're up over 10%. As of July, beef and veal were up 11.3% over the last 12 months. Why? It's kind of the age old economist, uh, answer. supply and demand. We're producing less beef. At the same time, consumers are demanding beef. We really have had growing demand for beef for a decade. Why is the beef?

Americans have long loved burgers, steaks, all kinds of beef. But there's also a new reason. Okay, have you seen these viral high-protein beef bowls? As we move to more protein in our diet, I think that's part of this overall complex of growing beef demand. Though when prices sizzle, Some folks substitute. I buy less meat, and now we're looking at more beans or tofu, which my family isn't, especially the guys aren't super happy about. But overall, consumers seem committed to beef, even if they're buying different cuts. Folks that move from a high-priced beef items, think a rib-eye to a lower-priced New York

strip or a flat iron steak or something like that. So we have substitution within beef, not always to other meat items. OK, enough about demand. What's on the supply side of the equation? Our herds have been declining, and that's really catching up to us in terms of the total number of animals going to a meat packer. So supplies are declining.

Since April of this year, we've had weeks with beef production down 7% and 8% compared to a year ago. As with so many products in a market economy, there are constant ups and downs, cycles. Beef's no exception. As prices go up and profits are there, we increase the size of our nation's herd, then that boosts production. Prices go down and we start shrinking the size of the herd. On average, that's about a 10-year process.

But wait a second. Prices are now at all-time highs, nominally, if not inflation-adjusted. So in a normal cycle, farmers would be growing their herds. And yet, we have the fewest cattle in America since 1961. What's going on? In a word, the weather. Specifically, drought. When a serious drought, long-term drought hits, eventually we're selling off cows because there's no grass for them to eat. And it's just too expensive to buy feed. Ranchers were having to sell their cattle, which in the long run leads to fewer cattle

available. Callie Williams and her husband run T.W. Angus near Mitchell, South Dakota. Just looking at our ranch itself, we do not put up any of our own hay and so we buy the hay in order to feed the cattle on our operation and we can typically look at spending roughly let's say 100 to 120 per ton for that hay well during the drought that had increased to 200 to 240 per ton that is a drastic increase in our input costs now williams and her husband have full-time jobs and subsidize their cattle ranch but one day they hope it will sustain itself. We are very determined to make this ranch something that if our boys would like to continue

ranching, it's something that they could continue running. So grow the herd by keeping the female calves. But not if it's too expensive at the moment. So some ranchers are selling the calves. I've got a choice. I can sell that calf today at record high prices and take the check today. And I'm going to compare that to what I expect her earnings to be over her productive life as a cow. What are her calves going to be worth in the future? And so it's this

balancing act. And so far, the check-in hand today has been worth more than the future has been. Because of what it costs to keep the calves. Even the Williamses are selling at the yearly cattle sale. And typically that was all bowls that we offered for sale. And last year we offered some females on that sale. And so we will do that again this year. Now higher beef prices aren't up solely due to lower domestic supply. For example, the U.S. has banned imports from Mexico because of a flesh-eating parasite. The New World Screw Worm, we import normally about three to four percent equivalent of our calves that are born in the U.S. from Mexico.

So that amounts to about 1.3 million head a year are sold from ranches in Mexico into the U.S. and so all of a sudden we've got even less beef production because we aren't getting those calves going to feed lots and then to meat packing plants in the U.S. And then there are tariffs on Brazil, for example. There have been some months where it was our largest import source of beef, largely lean beef trimmings for hamburger. We've announced a 50% tariff on products from Brazil, and that includes beef. That will be on top of the already, I think, is 26.5% tariff on Brazilian beef.

So I think we'll see imports from Brazil decline pretty good. dramatically simply because of that tariff. Now, that also works to reduce our supplies of beef, which works towards keeping prices higher. And tariffs, along with volatile weather, higher labor costs, may also help push other grocery prices higher in the coming months. So much of our food is imported now, whether it's coffee from Brazil, whether it's cane sugar from Brazil, whether it's our produce from Mexico and from Canada, wrap all those things together. And I think between now and the end of the year, prices are going to go up probably another 5%. That would be a price rise that will, as usual, hurt most those with already

strained budgets and one that very few Americans are likely to ignore. For the PBS News Hour, Paul Salman. At the height of wildfire season, thousands of firefighters regularly face a host of dangers on the front lines. That includes confronting toxic smoke, sometimes with little to no protection. And a new report says the effects can be dire. Stephanie Sy has our look. For years, the Forest Service has fought against efforts to better protect firefighters from toxic smoke, resisting recommendations to provide masks. That's according to a new investigation for the New York Times. As wildfire seasons grow longer and more intense, the health of wildland

firefighters is under renewed focus. Hannah Dreyer reported this story for the New York Times and joins me now. Hannah, thank you so much for joining the news hour. So I understand you spoke to more than 250 firefighters for this report. You were on the fire lines. And many of these firefighters, you highlighted in the piece, had major health issues. So tell us what kinds of patterns and similarities did you see among their illnesses and their links to wildfire smoke? So I was shocked to find out that tens of thousands of wildfire fighters go out for weeks and months at a time in toxic smoke with no protection, no masks. And like you say, what I found is that many of them are getting very sick.

So I'm talking about otherwise healthy people who are developing rare cancers in their 20s. These men are dying of cancer in their 30s. They're being told by doctors in their 30s that they have ground glass nodules in their lungs, that their lung tissue is dying. And some of the people I spoke to are being told in their 40s that they now need double lung transplants. And this is all illnesses associated with smoke. Of course, it's always hard to prove cause and effect when it comes to these health issues.

But there were a lot of studies that you looked at that showed the links between toxic smoke and certain cancers. You also reported, Hannah, that the Forest Service does not. not only not provide respiratory masks to these firefighters. They aren't allowed to wear masks on the fire line? Why is that? That's right. I mean, any other kind of firefighter, it would be unthinkable that they would go into a burning building without that, you know, mask and compressed air tank that we all know so well. But for these guys who are out fighting wildfires, they are not supposed to wear masks. They're told not to wear masks, even if they want to go and

by their own. And the Forest Service, which employs most of the wildfire firefighters, says that that's because they worry about heat stress. They worry that if these guys had masks on, they might get heat stroke. But in other countries, wildland firefighters now do wear masks, and there have not been upticks in heat stroke at all. We have internal documents where the Forest Service is saying, if these people wore masks, they might be less productive. They might not work. They might work only 80% as hard as they're working now. And people who have worked in the agency say that that's part of what is actually going on here. We also talk to people who spent years of the agency and they say that if the Forest Service were to allow firefighters to wear masks,

it would mean admitting that smoke is dangerous. And that could cause a huge rethinking of the whole way the agency works right now. It could be very expensive. they could have to take lots of other steps to protect these guys from smoke exposure and ultimately hire more crews and spend more money. And we know with our own reporting here at PBS that firefighters and the Forest Service in particular are already really short-staffed among wildland firefighters. But, you know, you spoke to firefighters for this piece.

I've spoken to firefighters who simply don't like wearing them. They describe them as hot and cumbersome. You know, the types of masks that you've just described urban firefighters. firefighters wearing really, really difficult in wildfire conditions. And then there's the culture of not wearing them. So even if they were to change the guidance, even if they were to provide masks, did you get a sense that it would make a difference? There is a cultural resistance to masks, absolutely.

This is a pretty macho culture. It's a culture where people are trying to prove how tough they are and how they're not going to let down their teammates when they're out on a fire. But what we've seen in other countries that now hand out these masks is that that culture can change pretty quickly. And nobody's talking about wearing a mask, you know, 16 hours a day. People put these masks on when it's smoky, take them off when it's not, they can take them off when they're doing very physical work.

But what I saw spending time on the fire lines is that a lot of what they're doing is actually standing right next to a fire in the worst smoke conditions, just watching the fire, making sure it doesn't jump the fire line. And that's exactly when people are wearing these masks in other places. Part of the problem is also the lack of long-term data on the health impacts of wildfire smoke on the entire firefighter population. Is that what has to also change? And how likely is that to change under the current federal government? It's a really tough thing. I mean, there's decades of studies that show that wildfire smoke in general can be harmful to your health, is associated with cancer, with lung damage, but there are very few studies looking specifically

at wildfire firefighters. And part of that, again, goes back to what's been going on at the Forest Service. They've been told for 25 years to start that kind of study. This work actually did get started in 2023. The federal government launched a cohort study of firefighters. Unfortunately, in the first months of the Trump administration, all of the people doing that work were laid off. Some of them have now been brought back, but they say that the work really remains disrupted. That is Hannah Dreyer with the New York Times joining us. Hannah, thank you. Thank you. Over the last decade, we've charted Russian propaganda efforts to affect elections here in the U.S. and overseas.

Those multi-layered campaigns are also a key part of the Russian war against Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to portray himself and Russia as defenders of Christian and so-called traditional values. And as special correspondent Simon Ostrowski tells us, those arguments have found an eager audience within certain sectors of American politics. This church burned down more than 10 years ago in a remote Russian village on the border with Kazakhstan. But since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the video has reappeared all across the Russian internet. Official sources are falsely claiming it shows a church in Ukraine with the accusation that Kiev is destroying churches and going after priests and parishioners across the country. Although the story is untrue, the message that Ukraine is fighting against Christian values has turned into a powerful narrative used to justify the war to the Russian public.

Even the head of the Russian Orthodox Church calls the fighting a holy war and sends Russian soldiers off to battle with a promise of salvation. But the story about a war against Christianity isn't just for Russians. It was designed for export to their Orthodox neighbors, to disillusioned. to disillusioned Europeans, and increasingly to Americans who see in it a reflection of their own culture wars and grievances. Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Green. This is a war on Christianity. The Ukrainian government is attacking Christians.

The Ukrainian government is executing priests. Russia is not doing that. They're not attacking Christianity. As a matter of fact, they seem to be protecting it. Especially within the MAGA movement, Moscow is no longer the old adversary. adversary. It's an anti-woke, anti-LGBQ, defender of Western civilization, a spiritual superpower. Here are former Trump campaign strategist Steve Bannon and Blackwater founder Eric Prince on Bannon's show. Putin ain't woke. He is anti-woke. The Russians people still

know which bathroom to use. They know how many genders are there in Russia, too. Recent polls show that views on Russia are shifting on the right, with Republicans more than twice as likely to see Russia as a partner of the U.S. While most Republicans and most Christians still support Ukraine, there's a subculture on the right and on the far left who are increasingly hostile, according to Mark Tully, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. Do you think it is worrisome or do you think it's overwrought? It is distressing that many people on the right are no longer adhering to traditional conservative values. By most measures, Ukraine seems to be more religiously practicing than Russia is.

So it's a pretext or an excuse for opposing Ukraine. Certainly President Reagan and others from the 1980s would be overwhelmingly supportive of Ukraine today. Here's one of Russia's most prolific propagandists, Vladimir Slaviof, interviewing notorious American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. They don't believe in God. How can you believe in God and be for LGBTQ plus minus divide on something? LGBT is shi. It has nothing to do with God.

A lot of Americans admire Russia and admire you and admire Putin because you've been able to fight this off. And among Americans who admire Putin, you can find the same fake footage of burning churches that were first circulated by the Russian state and its media outlets. The interesting thing is how on American, podcasts and social media, the pro-Christian message is tailored specifically to advocate against America's support of Ukraine. All of this talk of democracy is complete farce. So this ongoing predation, rating of churches which the Ukrainians have pioneered. And if you go to our website, you will see hundreds and hundreds of churches and parishioners crying and screaming and

priests being beaten. And these are our allies. These are the people we're funding. Canadian American lawyer Robert Amsterdam has repeatedly made false claims about Ukrainians burning churches. He says President Volodymere Zelensky, who is Jewish, is personally waging a war against Christians. He doesn't mention that Zelensky's wife is Ukrainian Orthodox or that the couple has baptized both of their children in the faith. One of Amsterdam's clients is the branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which has been accused of maintaining close ties with Russia. Last year, it was ordered to merge with the independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine by a controversial law that went into effect this May. Catherine Colitis from the Institute of Orthodox Christian Studies says the law was motivated by legitimate national security concerns. And while the legislation may arguably have gone too far, it's been widely misrepresented by voices like Amsterdam to American audiences.

There are undoubtedly priests and bishops who are also acting as agents of the Russian state, who are involved in espionage, and the fact that they exist, even though they do not constitute the majority, does make the institution itself a danger. Russia is selling a spiritual war in order to win a geopolitical one. The fiction that Russia is a haven for white, straight, church-going family, families, is smoothing the way for discussions about lifting sanctions on Russia and cutting off aid to Ukraine. And in the polarized echo chambers of America's culture wars, that story is converting many.

Some of Russia's newest American fans may be surprised to learn that the fastest growing population in the country isn't Orthodox, or even Christian, but Muslim. And despite the church's central role in politics and foreign policy, last year the actual percentage of Orthodox believers hit a 20-year low, with less than 1% of the population attending Christmas services. For comparison, about 50% of Americans said they attended Christmas Mass last year. As previously reported on the news hour, Russian forces have targeted evangelical Christians in occupied Ukraine, shutting down Protestant and non-Orthodox places of worship.

This repression follows a long-established pattern in Russia of using terrorism laws to shut down hundreds of Jehovah's Witness, Protestant, and other non-Orthodox congregations. But in the U.S., these stories just aren't getting the same kind of airtime. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Simon Ostrovsky in Washington. It's the first major biography of James Baldwin in more than three decades. Writer Nicholas Boggs offers an intimate portrait shaped by the people who inspired him. Drawing on archival research, original interviews, and newly uncovered documents, Boggs traces four of Baldwin's transformative relationships that depict him not just as a fearless social critic,

but as an emotional, vulnerable man shaped by love. I recently spoke with Nicholas Boggs about his book. Baldwin, a love story. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. In this book, you structure Baldwin's life around four pivotal relationships.

Tell us about them. Well, the first one, really the origin one, is the painter Buford Delaney, who he met in Greenwich Village when he was 16, Delaney was 37. He came to call him his spiritual father. He changed his life. He allowed him to see, as Baldwin put it,

that a black man could be an artist. He'd never known that. He also introduced him to blues and to jazz, music that was God-forsaken in his household, but that he said actually taught him how to be a writer. He saw it was actually black music, more than American literature, that gave him his voice. So Delaney was an important lifelong figure.

He went all the way through till his death in 1979. Baldwin sort of go back to him for advice. Baldwin often would save him. He would save Baldwin. And they really formed this kind of alternative kinship structure that he needed. He was very close to his family, but Baldwin lived so much of his life abroad, as did Delaney, who followed him to Paris.

But Delaney was that sort of, that original, I would say, pivotal love figure outside of the family. And what led you to frame his life and work through the lens of love rather than the more familiar focus of civil rights or the politics of the time? Well, I think love was politics for him. I mean, I think love is everywhere in his writing. It's in his essays, right? The Fire Next Time. he talks about how white and black Americans must like lovers come to understand each other and confront the country's past and present.

All of his novels are love stories from Giovanni's room, Go Tell in the Mountain, another country, if Beelstra could talk. So I really wanted to understand, you know, why it was that we sometimes think of him as a great essayist, but the novels aren't as good. When, in fact, you have to read them together. You couldn't understand the fire next time without reading what he just did. before that in another country where he was looking at these interracial relationships and complexities. And then he called for those kinds of coalitions in the fire next time.

Giovanni's room, he wrote Preservation of Innocence, kind of about the perniciousness of homophobia. He couldn't have written Giovanni's room without having written those essays. So you have to look at everything together for Baldwin. And what about his personal connections to women like Tony Morrison, Lorraine Hansberry, Maya Angelou, Mary Painter? Thank you for asking that, because the risk, of course, in structuring the book through these four great loves with men is that it overlooks the very important fact that Baldwin was extremely close and influenced by many women. Mary Painter, the American economist he met in Paris and wrote these incredible letters to there at the Bionke that detailed his creative process, his love life, their intersections. Maya Angelou was also very important.

Tony Morrison came to the south of France and he was writing if Beale Street could talk his first novel written from the first person perspective of a woman pregnant Tish made some popcorn, took her down into his torture chamber and read it out loud to her to get her opinion. So she had a big influence on him, as did many black feminists in the 70s

and the 80s later in his career. How do his relationships, both romantic and platonic, how do they intersect with the civil rights and social justice theme? that continue to make his work resonate today. Baldwin, there were the relationships he had with others and also the relationship he had with himself.

So his journey to self-love was very complicated. He writes about how love is a battle, love is a growing up. It was for him because growing up, he was told that he was ugly, right? That he was a sissy. So he had this long journey to sort of seeing himself as worthy of love. And so he knew that love was hard-earned. It was hard won. And he kind of used this insight about himself and in his own relationships.

He was hard on his lovers. He asked a lot from them as well to also say to Americans in general, right? This project, this Americans grappling with their past was a love project that only love, as he put it, would throw open the gates to kind of truly coming to terms and truly kind of meeting the moment of the civil rights movement. As you were writing this biography, how did you navigate the tension, assuming there was tension, between honoring his public legacy and then sort of revealing his private, sometimes difficult, emotional interior? Well, because Baldwin had a, even though he died too young, he had a very long career, and he changed his mind about many things. So, for example, early on in his nonfiction, he was not writing about his personal life that closely, right? Especially not his love for other men. But by later in his career, in his late essays of freaks in American ideal of manhood to crush a serpent, both in Playboy,

And then his introduction to his collected essays, the price of the ticket, he's delving deep into his private life. He's no longer being held up as the kind of race man. He's no longer being held up as a spokesman. This gave him a freedom to go back and look at his early relationships with men. The Spanish racketeer who fell in love with him when he was 16. The lovers he had in Greenwich Village. So here he's able to, he is writing about his private life. So in a way, that was very freeing because it would have been different if I hadn't felt that he himself was heading in the

his directions later in his life. James Baldwin's relevance in many ways is at an all-time high, not just in the U.S., but around the world. What is it about his message, his ideas on race, identity, love that speaks so urgently to the present moment? You know, young people love Baldwin, and it's a wonderful thing to see. And sometimes it gets simplified people say, well, they don't, they're sound bites. It's just sound bites. They don't really read Baldwin. I'm not sure that's true, but I do hope this biography helps more young people get introduced. to Baldwin and read him. I think what they love about him is that he's a truth teller. He tells it like it is, and he also speaks across so many constituencies. Listen, this is a different era.

White people and black people are friends. They're hanging out in college, okay? They're hanging out on the basketball court. They're hanging out in life. This country has become an incredibly multiracial country. So I think Baldwin, the intersections that he was. You know, I think there was the interviewer who said, well, you know, you're black, poor, and gay. Like, how did that impact you? And he said, I had the jackpot because he had all of these perspectives. There's a lot of people out there who are having these conversations about the intersections between queer people, black people, women, immigrants. I mean, so Baldwin enables people to kind of attach to these various parts of him

where we're all really speaking to each other as well. Well, I will tell you, the book at nearly 700 pages, it's a triumph. Nicholas Boggs, congratulations, and thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me. James Baldwin, a love story. And remember, there's a lot more online, including a look at a new student loan rule that critics worry will hurt the pipeline for early educators. That's at PBS.org slash news hour.

And that is the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. And I'm Omna Nawaz. On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us.