PBS News Hour - Full Show - August 5, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

Tuesday on the News Hour, new propaganda videos of hostages held by Hamas ramp up the pressure on Israel to reach a ceasefire. We speak with the cousin of one hostage forced to dig his own grave. Trade deals come with a promise to buy U.S. energy, but how realistic are those pledges and can the president deliver? Plus, a decline in maternal mental health and what research says could be to blame. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. I'm the Navaz is away. On the news hour tonight, new propaganda video of hostages being held by Hamas ramp up the pressure on Israel to reach a ceasefire. We speak with the cousin of one of the hostages forced to dig his own grave. They actually managed to break his spirit using this horrible terror tactics of starving him, Recent trade deals come with a promise to buy U.S. energy in exchange for lower tariffs. But how realistic are those pledges and can the president deliver on his plans? And a worrying decline in maternal mental health, what the research and mothers themselves say could be the cause. I lay awake at night, you know, worried about my children's future if worse things happen in our economy or if things get more difficult for us.

Welcome to the News Hour. We begin tonight in Texas, where the state's attorney general is ramping up pressure on House Democrats who left the state to block a vote on a new congressional map. Ken Paxton says he's seeking court orders to declare the Democrat seats vacant if they aren't back to work by Friday. There being 94 members present, a quorum is not present. For a second day in a row, the state's legislature failed to reach a quorum. The map the Democrats are trying to block would help give Republicans as many as five more seats in next year's midterm elections. Some of the Democrats are in Illinois. They said today that the redrawn map would disenfranchise voters of color and that they're not backing down.

Right now there's folks saying that we walked out. And I think everyone behind me will say, we're standing up, and as Texans would say, we're standing tall. There's others that are saying and warning us that they're going to arrest us or make us pay fines. I'll pay that price for America. Today, Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn called on the FBI to take, quote, any appropriate steps to help law enforcement find and arrest the Democratic lawmakers. President Trump was asked about that today as he signed. an executive order related to the upcoming Olympics. Well, they may have to.

They may have to. No, I know they want them back. Not only the attorney general, the governor wants him back. President Trump has been pushing for Texas to redraw its congressional map. Earlier, he said in an interview with CNBC that Republicans are, in his words, entitled to five more seats since he won the state in last year's presidential election. In Central California, a massive wildfire has exploded in size to nearly one. 130 square miles and is still barely contained.

The Gifford fire started on Friday and is tearing through the state's Los Padres National Forest. It's threatened hundreds of homes in both San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. More than 1,000 firefighters are battling the blaze and contending with hot dry conditions and whipping winds. At least three people have been hurt. The Gifford fire is just one of dozens of wildfires currently. currently ravaging the region. The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed the Justice Department

today for files related to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Republican-led committee is also seeking depositions from Bill and Hillary Clinton, plus former FBI directors James Comey and Robert Mueller and attorneys general from the last three administrations, both the Democrat and Republican. It's the latest escalation in the political battle over Epstein, after the DOJ said recently, that it would not release any more files from its investment. investigation. That angered many Republicans, even as President Trump has tried to distance himself from the case. The FBI says that violent crimes in the U.S. fell for a second year in a row in 2024. Data out today shows a 4.5% decline in such crimes overall that includes a nearly 15% drop

in murder and non-negligent manslaughter. And a 1.5% fall in hate crimes, though experts say those figures are still the second highest in the 30 years of data collection. Today's report did not provide reasons for the declines, though they align with a general trend of lower crime numbers since the days immediately following the COVID pandemic. A U.S. Coast Guard investigation has found that the deadly, tightened submersible implosion could have been prevented. The report says that Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush ignored safety warnings

and design flaws which may have led to criminal charges had he survived, Rush and four others were killed when the Titan imploded as it descended towards the wreck of the Titanic back in June, 23. Turning now to the Middle East, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with senior security officials today to discuss options for, quote, continuing the military campaign in Gaza. It comes a day after he hinted it taking an even tougher military approach in the territory. Meantime Gaza health officials say Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza killed at least 45 people. on the last day, including dozens who were seeking aid. All told, authorities say the death toll has surpassed 61,000 since the October 7th Hamas terror attacks on Israel started the war.

The president of neighboring Egypt is calling for an end to the conflict. The war in Gaza is no longer a war to achieve political goals or to release hostages only. This war has long since surpassed any logic or justifications. and has become a war of starvation, genocide, and the liquidation of the Palestinian cause. Criticism is also coming from former top Israeli officials. In a video posted to social media, the previous heads of the Internal Security Service, spy agency, and military, all criticized what they say is the government's prolonging of the conflict, with one calling Netanyahu's war objectives a, quote, fantasy.

On Wall Street today, stocks pulled back after the latest worrying report on the U.S. economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back about 60 points. The NASDAQ fell more than 130 points on the day. The S&P 500 also ended lower. And if you're feeling a bit squeezed for time today, there could be a good reason for that. It may be one of the Earth's shortest days on record. A typical day, that is, a full rotation of the Earth, is, of course, 24 hours or 86,400 seconds. But scientists say today may be 1.25 milliseconds faster.

If confirmed, that would make it one of the shortest days since records started back in 1973. Scientists can't say for certain why the Earth is spinning faster, but they believe the motion of the Earth's core and changes to the oceans and atmosphere could be factors. But all still to come on the news hour, we examine the staying power of QAnon conspiracy theories during this Trump administration. Bangladesh marks one year since widespread protests led to the resignation of that country's leader. and author Garrett Graff discusses his new book on the development of the atomic bomb. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University.

This weekend, Hamas released a haunting video of 24-year-old Eviatar David, an Israeli hostage, abducted from the Nova Music Festival during the October 7th terror attacks. In the video, which is undated, DeVeed appears so emaciated and so pale his own father said he didn't recognize him. DeVeed was filmed by his Hamas captors as he was forced to dig his own grave

in a cramped underground tunnel. We are not showing the video since DeVeed's family says he's the victim of a vile propaganda campaign. They're pleading for urgent international intervention. His cousin, Matan Eshet, joins us now from Tel Aviv. Thank you for being with us, and I am deeply sorry for the pain and the anguish your family is enduring. I read that your family believes that Eviatar only has a few days

left to live in that condition. Have you heard anything else about his health and conditions since the release of that video? We have not heard anything new since the release of the video. We only heard estimations being made by physicians and nutrition saying he looks like he lost more than 50% of his body weight, saying that he has but days to be saved, not talking about the condition that other postages who came back that were with him said that he already had more than 150 days ago. He was shown with another hostage, 21-year-old, Ram Brozlovsky. They appear, as we said, emaciated week. They're begging for their lives, begging to be freed. What went through your mind as you watched that video? First of all, it was terror.

I was terrified to see my cousin like that. He barely looks like my own cousin. he doesn't even sound like him. And I could see in his eyes the lust of hope and the fact that they actually managed to break his spirit using this horrible terror tactics of starving him deliberately, of giving him no stimulant of having no son,

of having no hope of being survived, I saw a broken man. I know that Eviatar's brother met with President Trump's envoy to the Middle East Steve Whitkoff during Whitkoff's recent trip to the region. What message did he receive? We did receive the message that the U.S. government and the Trump administrations are still trying to make sure that the hostages deal will be brought forward. They aren't sure, and they could really talk about the stages of the negotiations, but we are really hopeful that after this horrible video, it will push the world leaders to put pressure on Hamas to make sure they agree to a full deal that will return all of the hostages. Has the Israeli government contacted your family, and if so, what did they say? I'm not aware of contact being made, but for us it doesn't matter.

The biggest thing that they could say is to share or several, but in the end, what we need is to make sure that everybody will understand the entire situation and that he will be brought back home as soon as possible and get some food and some medical attention that he desperately desperately need. By releasing that propaganda video of starving hostages, Hamas is clearly trying to capitalize on the international furor over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Israel is accused of restricting aid. Hamas is accused of hoarding and diverting that aid that gets through. How do those competing narratives complicate the effort to secure the release of the hostages? I think it gives Hamas power by...

seeing that the world believe their propaganda, saying there is not enough humanitarian aid getting into the Gaza Strip while neglecting the effect of Hamas, of taking this humanitarian aid, of not giving it to the people, taking it to the own terrorist people, and to make sure that they have more profit. So they take the humanitarian aid and they take it to the own tunnels or sell it again on the street, an extremely high prices, and then they just cause the people to starve again. And you can see the video that the terrorist hand is so much bigger compared to Vyatah. So even if they don't have the luxurious amount of food that the Western world have,

they are still deliberately malnourishing and not giving and starving Vyatah and all of the other Ossages. You said that you can see in the video that the terrorist's hand is much larger than your cousins. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. You can see there's a moment where they cynically show how the terrorist is like sharing

his own food, giving some canned food. And you can see that moment that the terrorist hand is big, is muscular. He looks like he has been outside. He has normal tan. And I think his forearm is the same width as Aviatar legs, basically. What should the world know about your cousin, Eviatar? Before October 7th, Aviatar was the most beautiful soul you could ever meet. He loves music and he loves his friends.

And he's like the mitigator and his own home. But right now, Avatar is being treated like less than anything. a human being in a terror tunnel, being physically and mentally tortured, being starved, being beaten, being made to dig his own grave, advertise the missing piece of the puzzle for our family. Every person has this family member that fits just right into our family, make sure everything goes as smoothly as it should be. And this is the pieces we are missing right now. The missing piece of the puzzle. That's a great way to describe your cousin.

Matan Esshed, thank you again for being with us. We appreciate it. Thank you for having me. With new tariffs set to take effect on Friday, President Trump continued to negotiate with several countries today. The president of Switzerland flew to Washington. in a late attempt to stave off tariffs of 39% on her country. Earlier in the day, President Trump threatened to raise tariffs on India, saying he was upset over that country's purchase of Russian oil.

In fact, the president has said the new purchase of U.S. energy is key to some of the biggest deal struck so far. But as Stephanie Sye tells us, there are questions about whether those pledges will live up to the president's claims. That's right, Jeff. Energy agreements are a big part of the latest announcements. Japan said it will invest $550 billion in American energy infrastructure and production. And South Korea agreed to buy $100 billion in liquefied natural gas over the next four years.

But the deal really raising eyebrows is with the European Union, which apparently agreed to buy $250 billion worth of U.S. energy a year for the next three years. David Goldwyn, a former top state department energy official in the Obama administration, and now president of Goldman Global Strategies joins me now to break all of this down. David, so good to have you on the news hour. You know, there are people in your field who have crunched the numbers, and they are calling this deal with the EU unrealistic, even delusional. Do you agree? Can Europe buy that much American energy in that amount of time?

And can we export that much of it? Well, the short answer is no. The numbers really are fantastical. I think it's an aspirational agreement. I think it's a strong political signal. But the math really doesn't work. The total U.S. exports of energy last year were $165 billion. If we sent them all to Europe next year, it wouldn't approach $250 billion.

And commodity prices are lower in 2025 than they were in 2024. And Europe itself, if they backed out all of Russian gas, that might be another, you know, that might be another $25 or $30 billion. So you just can't get there from here in terms of the total numbers. Europe would have to vastly increase its demand. The U.S. would have to triple its exports. And the reality is that Europe is working hard to reduce its dependence on hydrocarbons. And at $65 oil, the U.S. oil sector is not growing.

So I think from that point of view, it's impossible. So I really think you can't get there from here either at $250 billion a year, not $750 billion in three years. And even if, you know, Europe were to sign a 30-year take-or-pay contract, it wouldn't be delivered under a new agreement, probably until starting in 2027 or maybe 2030. So it's really politically impossible. And by the time people find out, hopefully it will be in a new administration. I just want to unpack a few things you said there, David. the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said they want to replace their purchases of Russian LNG for American supplies. That is what Trump wanted.

Isn't that a good thing geopolitically, even if it is aspirational, if it sends a signal to Europe in the future to get its LNG from the U.S. And doesn't it also sort of suit the goal of President Trump, which is for U.S. energy dominance? Well, absolutely. We are already, the U.S. already exports, you know, something like 25% of Europe's LNG. But Europe's total purchase of Russian hydrocarp and the small amount of oil and the rest of a gas was something like $64 billion. So if they only bought from the U.S., which would be a little risky for them, you still wouldn't be getting to $250 billion a year. So absolutely, it's a good signal. But the reality is, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe has already been. diversifying towards U.S. LNG. And the question of whether they sign long-term contracts has more to do with how long Europe thinks it's going to use gas and how much. And so this is not going to happen faster than European political consensus will allow. So it's absolutely important, and it's already happening. You just can't get it to $250 billion a year or $750 billion in three years. When looking at the overall strategy, though, of negotiating these so-called deals with countries,

most of which are U.S. allies, is this approach an overall win for U.S. consumers and the larger economy? I don't think that it is. I mean, first, you know, for President Trump, these tariffs are successful in that he's raising an enormous amount of revenue. And so that was his goal and that's happening. But all of that is coming out of the pockets of the American taxpayers. I don't really think it's a win. Also, the president's tariff policy is a dagger pointed at the heart of his energy dominance policy. Because first, you're punishing your primary markets in Europe and Asia by making their economies weaker, making it harder for them to export their goods. Second, you're creating an enormous amount of distrust by bullying your allies into a very transactional approach.

Europeans have had plenty of the use of energy as a tool of coercion from Russia. If the U.S. starts to look like it's going to grant or withhold supplies, you know, depending on what it gets for issues unrelated even to energy, then the smart move for countries in Europe and Asia is going to be to diversify away from the U.S. So I think it's a very risky and destructive policy. And the third thing is that the tariffs are making the U.S. energy production, you know, steel for pipes, copper for wires,

the price of commodity inputs like copper, the price of even oil that we get from other countries, which is refined to make gasoline, all of that is becoming vastly more expensive. because of the tariff policy, and it's undermining the energy dominance policy. It's no surprise that, you know, U.S. international energy companies, you know, like Exxon and Chevron, are having their worst stock performance in years, worse than ever happened under the Biden administration because of where prices are and because of where the economy is.

So it's a very puret victory. David Goldwyn, president of Goldman Global Strategies. David, thanks for sharing your perspective with us. My pleasure. As we've reported President Trump's allies in Congress are hoping that files tied to the Jeffrey Epstein investigation will shift attention or raise new questions about figures beyond Donald Trump.

Liam Brangham reports now on how the president's promotion of fringe theories has helped keep the Epstein case in the public eye. On the campaign trail and in office, President Trump has a habit of courting unfounded conspiracies. That includes QAnon, the belief that some hidden figure in the government, Q, is explaining how Donald Trump is waging a secret battle against dark, nefarious forces, including a cabal of child sex traffickers. This belief evolved from online obscurity to now, where you regularly see Q&on signs at Trump rallies, and the president reposted a Q&N

meme on social media as recently as last week. So to understand how President Trump's amplification of QAnon fuels speculation about Jeffrey Epstein, we are joined by Will Summer. He's a writer at the bulwark and author of Trust the Plan, The Rise of Q&ONN and the Conspiracy that Unhinged America. Will Summer, so good to have you on the program. There is clearly an ideological connection between Jeffrey Epstein and QAnon. And we can talk about that.

But first, remind us, how did QAnon move from the fringe into this more prominent place in our politics? Sure. So QAnon started in October 2017 with these anonymous posts on an internet message board from a figure calling themselves Q. And they said that the world was run by a cabal of pedophiles in the Democratic Party in Hollywood and banking. And that Donald Trump would someday send all those people to Guantanamo Bay and sort of reign as a sort of a, in a utopia. And so this, QAnon believers sort of teamed up with Q and started reading through all the clues. And that's the origins of QAnon. But it was really on the fringe until 2019, 2020, when things like Jeffrey Epstein's death and the pandemic really drove a lot more people into conspiracy theories. And a lot of that, too, was people like were Donald Trump

and his allies embracing conspiracy theories. Trump spoke very positively about Q&N believers during the 2020 campaign. So it's been a very symbiotic relationship between Trump and Q&O. As you're mentioning, Jeffrey Epstein is both a real case of an elite figure engaging in sex trafficking

and abuse of young people wedded to this added conspiracy of unfounded claims and unverified allegations, including this idea of a client list full of bold-faced names that has yet to be released. How do Q&Non adherence

look at this marriage of both facts and speculation? Yeah, I mean, I think the best conspiracy theories are often based in a grain of fact. And in this case, I mean, Jeffrey Epstein really did abuse women and young girls. He really did hal around with powerful and very wealthy people for kind of mysterious reasons that really haven't been explained. And so if you take that kernel of truth, then QAnon believers latch onto it and they spin all of this stuff out of it, the idea that, you know, Democrats were involved in satanic rituals or drinking children's blood, things like that.

And so they see Jeffrey Epstein is almost like a moment where they got a glimpse of what the cabal or the organization controlling the world was really up to. And so that's why they put so much faith and so much effort into trying to get things like the client list or the Epstein files released. I want to play two clips of Donald Trump

talking about this particular issue. The first is from September of last year when Trump was suggested that he will release this alleged client list. And the second, this was just after the floods in Texas, shows him sort of getting irritated that this question is still lingering. Let's listen to those. It's just very strange for a lot of people that the list of clients that went to the island has not been made public. Yeah, it's very interesting, isn't it?

Probably will be, by the way. So if you were able to, you'll be... Yeah, I'd certainly take a look at it. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? This guy's been talked about for years. You're asking, we have Texas, we have this, we have all of the things. And are people still talking about this guy, this creep? It's like the Frankenstein monster here.

You help build the thing and then lament when it comes to get you. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Trump and people like Cash Patel, Dan Bongino, and the FBI, J.D. Vance, all these people raised the profile of the idea of the client list. And they said, this is a really important thing. and we'll release it, we'll consider releasing it. Pam Bondi said the client list was on her desk after taking office. And then suddenly Trump says, whoa, whoa, whoa, like, what are you talking about?

Who cares about that? And then it goes on to even insults his supporters for being interested in it. And so it's a very strange turnabout that I think has been really challenging for people like QAnon believers. Do you have a sense of whether or not this is going to go away? Will these questions be answered? Is there a way to answer them to put to rest these concerns? I don't think there's really any putting this genie back at the bottle. I think both Q&N believers, I think Trump supporters more broadly are going to be very interested

still in Epstein. And I think maybe most worryingly for the president, I think a lot of independent voters who maybe weren't that politically interested, but really latched on to the Epstein case because of its emotional resonance and the idea that there was this mystery at play that something was being covered up. I think those people are still really interested in it. And if it seems like the president is involved in a cover-up or it seems like Republicans are dragging their feet

on finding out what happened or releasing information to the public, I think that will continue to be an issue? Last question, will you study conspiracies? Where do you come down on the Epstein case? Are there still unresolved questions? I think there's a lot that still needs to be answered about Epstein. I mean, even in sort of the most sober, you know,

a versus speculation mode I can be in. You know, I think there was just some reporting suggesting that the video the Justice Department released of Epstein's jail didn't really prove that no one went up to his room the night he died. It's kind of a useless video. It's unclear why the Justice Department brushed it out and now won't answer questions about it. You know, Epstein got a very sweetheart deal in the George W. Bush administration sort of inexplicably that protected him from a lot of criminal prosecution. Why was that? I think these are pretty basic questions that reporters and other experts who have looked at the case have wondered about. And so I think

There are a lot of legitimate questions that remain to be answered. It's interesting that the Trump administration seems to want to close the door so abruptly. Will Summer of the Bullwark. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me. The U.S. fertility rate hit another record low last year, with families having fewer children and a growing number of women opting out of motherhood altogether. A new large-scale study might offer some clarity.

American mothers have seen a stark drop in their mental health. Stephanie Sy is back with that story. He is very rambunctious. He is smart and he is funny. Teresa Ingle wouldn't trade being a mother to Theo for anything. But that doesn't mean it's easy being a parent to a child with autism. He has days where he's very negative and he just kind of absorb it. And then you're thinking of all the things going on that you have no control over and I don't sleep well.

I really don't. I have that, you know, the 3 a.m. thing where you're like, so many things are wrong and how can I fix it? And just feeling kind of powerless. Taking care of Theo is a full-time job. And without a paying job, the high cost of living is only creating more stress. Things have become so precarious. We don't get help. We do have Medicaid.

That's it. And the safety nets are slashed, cut. It doesn't feel good. This Ohio mom is far from alone. We spoke to mothers throughout the country, across race and socioeconomic status. They told us they're overwhelmed, stressed out, and lacking in necessary support and resources. I lay awake at night, you know, worried about my children. future and my future and where things will go if worse things happen in our economy or if things

get more difficult for us. Sometimes my anxiety is so great, I feel stuck. And it was actually my best friend who was like, Michelle, I haven't heard you laugh in two months. And she's like, you know, I think you might have postpartum depression. Maternity leave can be very isolating your home all the time with a little person who wants and needs everything, but at the beginning can't even smile at you. Currently, I feel stressed about it's just the economy. Women tend to internalize and put others first. And our health, all aspects of our health, become unimportant. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found a worrying trend.

Data from nearly 200,000 mothers of children of all ages, found a decline in mental health. Less than 26% of mothers reported excellent mental health in 2023, down from roughly 38% in 2016. Mothers describing their health as just good rose from roughly 19% to 26%. And those who rated their mental health fair or poor rose from 5.5% to 8.5%. It's unusual to see such a big change over such a short period of time. Jamie Daw is an assistant professor at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and co-author of the study. Was that something you saw equally distributed across sort of the measures that you looked at? Yes, these are really declines we're seeing across the board.

The thing to point out though is that not all groups were starting from the same baseline, right? So you could have a similar decline, but we know that single moms, those whose children were insured by Medicaid, those of lower education in particular had much higher rates of fair and poor mental health. Another significant outlier, mothers of multiracial children who saw steep drops in their mental health. Ayesha Mustafa, mother of a one-year-old daughter, says it can add additional mental strain. The comments of like you're going to have trouble with that hair growing up and like being prepared for these racialized comments and like how do I handle that is a whole a whole thing. that makes motherhood as a black woman more difficult

and also raising a black interracial child. A lot of places pediatrician's office are asking mothers to check boxes about their mental health, but then what? There's nothing else. Is she still active? In between performing ultrasounds and blood pressure checks, certified nurse midwife Melissa Scott noticed something in her patients in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

People feeling a sense of isolation, people feeling like, I wish I had some mom friends. I wish I could talk to somebody about some of these feelings that I'm having of sadness around X, Y, and Z. Also feeling like, I'm not sure how to navigate this. Many of Scott's patients are black mothers who have higher mortality rates, worse physical health outcomes, and also saw a decline in their mental health.

Any words of wisdom that you would like to give, these moms who will be soon bringing their babies into the world. Tired of being unable to offer more support, Scott and her colleague, clinical social worker Latrisa Wiley, created a community for black mothers beginning in 2019. Our village now includes over 200 moms and holds meetings twice a month, in person and virtually. We have rich women, poor women, all different types of women. Some partnered, some unpartnered. So it really presents a really diverse conversation. And there is this unifying situation that happens because they're all black women.

So it is very common that someone will say, I'm really struggling with X, breastfeeding. And other women will come around here and just say, okay, how can I help? There isn't the stigma that I see in a lot of mom spaces, even like mom blogs or Facebook or wherever. Mustafa, who going into motherhood had a history of depression and anxiety, participates regularly in our village meetups. Our village has helped spark that joy of being in spaces with folks who look like me and then also making me get out in the community. Do you think that mothers in general have enough support?

No, absolutely not. I think in general across gender's parenthood is hard. And then with mother, there's a lot of expectations of you control the domain. So if you're out with baby, that baby's cold. Why didn't you dress that baby? That baby looks hungry. constant criticism of how someone's doing that I don't see happening with dads. Where with dads is like, oh, you took the kid to the library by yourself.

That's so great. Look at you. Whether it's from increased self-awareness, societal expectations, or economic pressures, the mental health of mothers is a complex issue that Columbia researcher, Jamie Dawes, needs to be addressed. I would hope that our findings will help policymakers you know, really prioritize this issue of supporting parents and not just early on in an early childhood, but throughout your parenting journey from zero to 18 and how this country could better

support moms. Until there is more support, moms like Teresa Engel's health will suffer. I should be, you know, taking better care of myself, not skipping appointments. This is more important than just think fit. It's being here, being present. Ultimately, it's not just the health of mothers at stake, but the children that depend on them. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Stephanie Sy. minister. The country now faces multiple long-term challenges related to climate change, public health, and more immediately, political instability and the threat of tariffs. In partnership with the Pulitzer's Center, our Fred de Sam Lazaro recently traveled to Bangladesh and has the first of three reports. Across Bangladesh's capital, the posters and graffiti are a reminder

of the unrest that escalated sharply and violently last July. By the time, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had fled into exile in neighboring India. At least 1,400 people had been killed and thousands injured, most of them students who led the protests. It's we who accelerated the July Revolution, not the political leaders, we the students, with the general civil. 22-year-old Maria Rahman was part of the marches. She remains hopeful and patient.

Change won't come overnight. But we have now the environment of demorphating factors. That's fuel the hopes of 25-year-old grad student Abidu Rahman. I want to see an inclusive Bangladesh where every political party tolerate each other. He says observant Muslims in this predominantly Islamic country were targeted by Hasina's regime. It was accused of widespread human rights abuses, torture and forced disappearances against political opponents, journalists, and perceived supporters of the faith-based Jemate Islamic Party. I don't trust the police as much as I used to do.

24-year-old grad student, Azeen Sumaya, says things in some respects have gotten worse in recent months. As a woman, I would say the security of people on the street has been really bad lately. Frustration echoed away from the university campus as well. We rode across Dhaka's Banani Lake to the informal slum settlement of Coral. Mohammed Rubel is a boatman. What we had in the past a year ago and what we have now is the same. We don't see any difference. Life has not yet improved.

The expectation was too high. Professor Ali Riyaz, on leave from Illinois State University, heads a so-called Consensus Commission trying to coax some 30 political parties united only in their opposition to Hasina to agree on democratic reforms. The goal was to topple Hasina, he says, with little thought for what then? It was spontaneous.

It was led by young people who have no previous experience, even no idea of governance. Governance is especially challenging in this nation of 175 million people squeezed into a landmass the size of Iowa. Born out of a bloody civil war of independence from Pakistan in 1971, the country has made progress reducing poverty. Homegrown non-government groups have improved lives with microlending to start small rural enterprises and innovative public health programs. It has been less luck with government. Now recognize as the leader of Bangladesh. Founding leader, Mujibu Rahman, Sheikh Hasina's father, was assassinated in 1975,

ushering in decades of instability and autocracy under Hasina. Following the uprising, military leaders invited Mohamed Yunus, whose work with microlending won him the Nobel Peace Prize to lead an interim government. There was probably no one else who could command the support of the people of Bangladesh. However, economist Reza Kibria says Eunice has done little to change the systemic problems that have long plagued the country. The level of corruption in the country is perhaps no less than in Hasina's time, which is saying a lot. It's just a new set of people and not saying that the head of the government is involved in any corruption directly,

but he must bear some of the blame for the mismanagement. Is he powerless to control it? Unwilling rather than powerless. He's not a person who is ready for the rough and tumble of running Bangladesh. After initially agreeing to an interview, Eunice declined to participate in this report. Ali Riyaz agrees a political culture of kleptocracy has survived the Hasina regime when billions were siphoned out of the country from government coffers. I have to grab things, have to capture things. There is this mentality of the political party activists, especially at the grassroots level.

This is my moment. This is my opportunity. Meantime, the country's industrial mainstay, garment making, it's second only to China in size, has its own challenges. Many factory owners have fled the country for fear of repribution for their loyalty to the Hasina government. It's left tens of thousands of workers unemployed and owed wages. On February 9, they just closed the factory.

Under a monsoon downpour, I talked to Tanzira, a mother of two daughters who uses only one name. She said she's owed two-month salary plus severance pay. I have to pay school fees, rent, other essentials, and I have no money. My daughters are in school and they tell me, don't send us to school. The teachers insult us because the fees are overdue. She and hundreds of others were camped outside the Garment Industry Association's offices. The group's president says it's limited in how much it can help. But Mahmoud Hassan Khan says there's an even bigger threat, how tariffs imposed by the U.S.,

the largest market for Bangladeshi garments, will ricochet here, especially if rising prices cause American consumers to cut back. Buyers over there have buying capacity is limited. So if consensurate-front goes down, then order placement will be less. Then if order placement less, then some factory may shut down. The tariffs are pegged to the balance of trade, and Bangladesh sells more to the U.S. than it buys from it. It has offered to purchase more U.S. cotton, wheat, and soybeans,

and is considering an order of Boeing commercial aircraft. But Reza Kibria says the country has few other options. We don't buy too much in the form of aerospace equipment or U.S. cars. You just can't afford it. We never have been able to afford it, and it's not going to happen in the near future. So the poor in this country will suffer from these tariffs. Mohammed Yunus wants a new government to take on the tasks ahead, and today announced that elections will be held next February.

It won't be easy. Sheikh Hasina, whose party is banned from participating, remains active on social media from India, which has not moved on a request to extradite her to stand trial. Until she is brought to justice, it's very difficult for Bangladesh to return to a normal, stable path. The country's election commission said it will soon release a specific timeline for the campaign to begin. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Fred de Sam Lazaro, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Fred's reporting is a partnership with the Undertold Stories Project at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota.

80 years ago this week, the U.S. altered the course of history when for the first time ever it dropped the extraordinarily powerful atomic bomb on Japan. It ultimately led to the end of World War II. The motivation and secrecy surrounding the development of that world-changing weapon and the devastating consequences of its use are the focus of a new oral history out today from author Garrett Graf. He recently sat down with Amla Nawaz to discuss his book, The Devil Reach Toward the Sky. Garret Graf, welcome back to the NewsHour. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So you have compiled these incredible oral histories for some of the biggest moments in world history, D-Day 9-11.

Why did you want to apply that approach to this, to the making and actual deployment of the first atomic bomb? August, of course, marks the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, the bombing of Nagasaki, the end of World War II. And so this is a moment where we have effectively every first-person memory of the atomic bomb we're ever going to have. And so this is trying to sort of tell the story of the Manhattan Project through the eyes of the scientists at a moment when, like,

they don't know who's going to win World War II yet. They don't know whether Adolf Hitler is going to get the first atomic bomb. They don't even know whether an atomic bomb will work. And you do begin with the accounts and the stories of many of those scientists in Germany and in other nations. Albert Einstein, as you mentioned, even Sigmund Freud is quoted in there in the early 1930s. They're commenting on the rise of Adolf Hitler in that moment. Why start with that?

Why are their voices sent to that? When we talk about the atomic bomb today, we instantly think of Japan. We think of the war in the Pacific. But understanding the roots of the Manhattan Project, it's all about the war in Europe. It's about these mostly Jewish refugee scientists fleeing the enveloping cloak of fascism in Europe, coming to the United States, and desperately trying to get the attention of the U.S. government and the U.S. military to launch a all-hand-hand-hand. on-deck atomic bomb effort because they are afraid Adolf Hitler will get the bomb first. Of course, for anyone who saw the movie, the role of Robert Oppenheimer is no surprise in this.

But you write that the choice of Oppenheimer to lead this effort would come to define the Manhattan Project in so many ways. Why and how? We too often think that the whole thing is Oppenheimer and Los Alamos. But the weight of the Manhattan Project really takes place in places like Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Hanford, Washington. where we build these 100,000-person cities, secret cities where we refine and manufacture uranium and plutonium at the scale of kilograms with workforces who don't know what they're doing, don't know how they're contributing to the war effort

in these incredibly secret communities and factories. This is another part that fascinates me for this scale and scope of this project, these multiple locations, as you mentioned, And for all the folks that are pulled together in this, including Oppenheimer, his wife, Catherine, so many others, the secrecy under which they had to work. There are literally signs posted in all the places that they work saying they can't say anything anytime they leave the grounds. How did such an enormous undertaking remain a secret? Yeah.

It has a lot to say about wartime patriotism. It has a lot to say about, you know, how hard it was for information to travel, for news to travel in that. pre-internet era. But a lot of it is also just need to know. There's this fabulous part of the story where in Oak Ridge, those uranium plants, much of the work is actually done by these sort of high school girls

that Tennessee Eastman, the company that's running the plant. They're all local high school girls they hire to work there, right? Exactly, this is who you can hire in 43 and 44 in America. And they run these calutrons, these machines, and most of them learn the word uranium for the first time on August 6, 1945, when Harry Truman announces the existence of the Manhattan Project. There's a major shift, of course, when Hitler dies by suicide in April of 1945.

As you mentioned, Hitler had been the primary justification for that atomic bomb work for so many in those scientists. You quote one, Emilio Segre, who's an Italian-American news, nuclear physicist, who says, now that the bomb could not be used against the Nazis, doubts arose. Those doubts were discussed in many private conversations. What were those doubts and how does the target shift to Japan? What's so striking in the memories of the scientists who were working on it was a lot of them are sad that their work is too late, that they wish that the bomb had been ready early enough to drop on Berlin. And it's only in those final months of the war

when Germany is already defeated or on its way to defeat, that they sort of wrap their heads around, oh, this is actually going to be used in Japan. And that's when their doubts arise because they, again, these are European, you know, mostly Jewish refugee scientists. And a lot of them say,

hey, we signed up to build a bomb to stop Hitler. We don't want this thing used on Japan. Like, that's not the fight that we intended to have here. After the bombings, and you go into incredibly fascinating detail about the B-29 squadron that's pulled together to pull this off. After the bombing, some of the most haunting things in the book are the recollections of the children in Japan, what they saw and what they remember from that day, some five, six, seven years old. There's a ninth grader, you quote, in there who says it was like being thrown into an iron melting pot. My face burned. I jumped into the river. One of my friends found me and asked how his face looked. The skin was hanging down from his face like a rag. I was too scared to ask him about my own face. Just horrific descriptions of what unfolded on the ground. Did the general American public know about the impact of the bombs? Did they support it at the time? Yeah. Those final chapters are just this incredible juxtaposition of the triumph of the Manhattan Project workers, the bomber crew.

You know, the Anola Gay, which delivers the bomb to Hiroshima. You know, they land, they get metals pinned on their chest, and then they go off to a literal barbecue party to celebrate the bombing while Hiroshima burns behind them. And the reality of that bomb was kept from the American public and kept from the Japanese public, actually, for years. And it's really only through the work of journalists like John Hersey, writing for the New Yorker in the summer of 1946,

who bring that full picture back to the American people for the first time. The very last quote is from Albert Einstein. And you quote him as saying, I don't know how the third world war will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the fourth rocks. In looking back at the use of the atomic bomb, do you feel like you learned anything about where we are now or what the potential is for the use of a nuclear bomb?

now. Yeah. This year, we've already seen conflict between India and Pakistan, you know, the two largest nuclear arsenals in the world to ever come into direct conflict. We've seen the U.S. and Israeli strikes on the Iranian nuclear program. You know, we're seeing the U.S. geopolitical instability prompt conversations about proliferation in Europe and Asia and countries like Korea. some conversations in Japan, which is sort of once unthinkable.

And I think for me, those searing survivor testimonies, one of the reasons I wanted to sort of tell that story right now as that generation passes is, but I think we need to, as a society, as a country, as a people, recommit ourselves in this moment where I think we're actually going to see more countries joining the nuclear club over the next decade to fulfill the vision of those Haibakusa, the survivors, that they be the last survivors of a nuclear weapon in our age. The book is The Devil Reached Toward the Sky, an oral history of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.

The author is Garrett Graff. Garrett, always great to see you here. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. And that's the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS NewsHour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us.