PBS News Hour - Full Show - December 1, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Monday on the News Hour, the White House confirms the military fired twice at a single alleged drug boat. The Trump administration decides not to commemorate World AIDS Day for the first time in decades. Plus, with the Supreme Court set to weigh in on the controversial practices of crisis pregnancy centers, we explore their growing role in the anti-abortion movement. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Amna Vaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. On the news hour tonight, the White House confirms the military fired twice at a single alleged drug boat, sparking bipartisan concern about the strike's legality. The Trump administration decides not to commemorate World AIDS Day for the first time in decades, even as funding cuts risk millions more infections and deaths. And with the Supreme Court set to weigh in on the Constitution. controversial practices of crisis pregnancy centers, we explore their growing role in the anti-abortion movement. I wouldn't call them medical providers. I would call them political organizations who are often not revealing their political agenda, at least initially. Welcome to the News Hour.

Today, the White House confirmed that the military fired twice at a single alleged drug boat in early September as part of its campaign of airstrikes in the Caribbean. And a source tells the News Hour the military knew there were survivors in the water after the first hit. As Nick Schifrin reports, the developments have sparked bipartisan concern that the strikes were illegal. On the morning of September 2nd, an American drone flew over what the U.S. identified as a boat carrying drugs. President Trump released this video personally and said a single missile destroyed the boat and killed 11 people he identified as narco-terrorists. But after the first strike, the White House now confirms there was a second strike, ordered by then Joint Special Operations Command leader, Admiral Frank Bradley.

Secretary Hegseth authorized Admiral Bradley to conduct these kinetic strikes. Admiral Bradley worked well within his authority and the law, directing the engagement to ensure the boat was destroyed, and the threat to the United States of America was eliminated. A source familiar confirms to PBS NewsHour the second strike was taken despite the military knowing there were survivors in the water. The Washington Post reported it was a response to a response to a voice, verbal order by Secretary Hegeseth, kill everybody.

I would reject that the Secretary of War ever said that. However, the president has made it quite clear that if narco-terrorists, again, are trafficking illegal drugs towards the United States, he has the authority to kill them. More than a month later, the U.S. military approached survivors differently, rescuing two after this strike on a submarine. It's not clear what led to the shift. On Friday night, Hegseth criticized, quote, fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory reporting, but went on to describe the attacks as, quote, specifically intended to be lethal kinetic strikes.

Three minutes later, from his personal account, he wrote, We have only just begun to kill narco-terrorists. Those responses reinforced already existing bipartisan concern. The chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said, the committee is aware of recent news reports and the Department of Defense's initial response regarding alleged follow-on strikes. The committee has directed inquiries to the department, and we will be conducting vigorous oversight. And the chair and ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee said they, too, are taking bipartisan action to gather a full accounting of

the operation in question. On Sunday, other Republicans questioned the second strikes legality. Obviously, if that occurred, that would be very serious, and I agree that that would be an illegal act. If it was as if the article said, that is, violation of the law of war. When people want to surrender, you don't kill them. And they have to pose an imminent threat. It's hard to believe that two people on a raft trying to survive would pose an imminent threat. Since that first September strike, the U.S. has attacked at least 21 boats, killing more than 80. It's been enabled by a huge regional deployment. The Navy says about 15% of all of its currently deployed ships are in Latin America and the Caribbean. It includes

the world's largest aircraft carrier, which Heggseth visited on Thanksgiving. Out at sea, interdicting cartels, defending the American people, we are grateful for you. President Trump has also said he's pressuring Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The two spoke last week, and today President Trump met his national security team to discuss Venezuela, where Maduro yesterday projected positivity. Sanctions. threats, blockades, economic war, and Venezuelans did not cower. Here, as they say, everyone put on their boots and went to work. President Trump is deciding whether to take further action,

including strikes on Venezuelan soil, while making it clear there will be no apologies for the campaign so far. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Nick Schifrin. For perspective on all of this, we turn now to retired Major General Stephen Leper. He served as the Air Force's Deputy Judge Advocate General, and as such, was the service's second highest ranking uniformed lawyer. Thank you for being with us. So as we just saw in that report, the White House is defending Admiral Frank Bradley, whom the White House today said ordered that follow-up strike that killed survivors on that alleged drugboat in the Caribbean, saying he was acting well within his authority. Based on what's known, was he?

Well, based on what's known, if he was the commander of the operation, and yes, he would have been acting within his authority. Well, say more about that. Okay, well, I mean, obviously his authority as a commander extends to the entire operation in the Caribbean, and that would have included both the first strike and the second strike. the question that we've all been asking over the last several days since the reports first came out are whether or not those orders emanated from a higher level and were simply executed by the admiral and all the people below him in the chain of command or whether the admiral himself ordered the second strike either way that second strike was a violation of the laws of war that second strike, the orders to conduct the second strike were illegal orders, and they should not

have been executed. They should not have been followed by anyone in what we call the kill chain. The Defense Secretary's reported order, the Washington Post reporting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth gave this spoken directive. This is according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation, according to the Post, that the order was to kill everybody. What questions does that raise for you? Well, as an attorney who spent 35 years advising commanders on military operations and many other things, what that means to me is that the secretary either intentionally or unintentionally communicated to everyone below him that there would be no quarter. And what that means in international law is that no court or order basically provides that no one should be

left living after the strike. So it suggests that anyone who surrenders be targeted. It suggests that, as in this case, any survivors of the first attack be targeted, even if those survivors or anyone surrendering, or anyone else who is, quote, out of the fight can continue to pose a threat to military forces. Well, explain why shooting at shipwrecked survivors is not the same as pursuing retreating enemy fighters on land. What's the distinction?

Well, there is a distinction. Retreating prisoners on or retreating forces on land are usually engaged, unless they're surrendering, in a tactical maneuver intended to remove themselves from the battlefield, regroup, and then presumably re-attack. They continue to be combatants. They continue to be targets, lawful targets of the military. On the other hand, survivors of a boat that has been disabled or destroyed and who's survived, are floating in the water with no means of opposing the force that put them there are considered or to combat under international law, they can no longer prosecute their original mission. And as such, our responsibility shifts from targeting them while they were in the boat

while it was intact to rescuing them now that they're floating in the water, clinging to the wreckage. And there's language from the Defense Department Law of War, that spells that out. I'll read from it briefly. It says, members of the armed forces and other persons who are wounded, sick, or shipwrecked shall be respected and protected in all circumstances. Such persons are among the categories of persons placed or to combat, as you just said, out of combat or out of action, making them the object of attack is strictly prohibited. So is there any legitimate gray area here, or is what transpired a clear violation of law?

Well, if the surveillance video showed two survivors clinging to wreckage, then there is no question, but that this was an unlawful order to target those two survivors. There is nothing in international or domestic U.S. law that would justify a second strike intended to kill those two survivors. There were U.S. special ops forces involved in carrying out this strike, and there are people who argue that special operators can push the bounds of the law. In your experience, is that true? No.

The rules apply to everyone, whether they are special operations forces or regular military forces. The rules apply. The law of war manual that you just quoted from a minute ago has an additional provision in it later on in the text that uses the precise example of shooting survivors in the the water as an example of an unlawful order. That order would be unlawful, whether it is given to a regular military force or to special operations forces. There's just no distinction among them as far as the law of war is concerned. Retired Major General Stephen Lepper. Thanks again for your time and for your perspective. Thank you.

In the day's other headlines, the White House says that a recent MRI performed on President Trump was preventative screening, focused on both his heart and abdomen. It follows the president telling reporters yesterday that he was open to releasing the results, even as he said he didn't know which part of his body had been scanned. The president's physician said today all of Mr. Trump's results were, quote, perfectly normal and added, advanced imaging was performed because men in his age group benefit from a thorough evaluation. of cardiovascular and abdominal health. The president received an MRI in October at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center,

a visit the White House billed as the president's routine yearly checkup, but the president had already completed his annual physical back in April. The federal appeals court ruled today that Alina Haba, one of President Trump's former personal attorneys, has been serving unlawfully as the U.S. attorney in New Jersey. It deals a major blow to the Trump administration and positions the case. case for a likely Supreme Court fight. Haba is one of several U.S. attorneys the administration has attempted to keep in place through unconventional maneuvers, despite the fact that she was neither confirmed by the U.S. Senate nor appointed by district court judges to establish legal paths for

holding that job. She's the latest Trump attorney whose appointment has been challenged. Last week, a federal judge dropped criminal cases against former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James after finding that the acting U.S. attorney on those cases Lindsey Halligan was also unlawfully appointed. A West Virginia National Guard member who was shot last week in a targeted attack in the nation's capital is still in serious condition but has showed positive signs in his recovery. Andrew is still fighting for his life. Andrew needs prayers. At a news conference today, West Virginia's governor said Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolf still faces a long road ahead, but he says Wolf responded to a nurse's question with a thumbs

up and has started to move his toes. A fellow guard member, Army specialist Sarah Bextram, died of her wounds last week. Investigators are still working to determine a motive in the shooting. The accused shooter, an Afghan national, has been charged with first-degree murder. In South Asia, more than 800 people are still missing after last week's catastrophic floods claimed more than a thousand lives across Indonesia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Over half of those deaths were on Indonesia's Sumatra Island, where landslides left behind miles of thick mud tangled with trees and sheet metal.

As rescuers scrambled to recover the dead, families are left to absorb staggering loss. This building used to be my house. This was a mosque. This was my parents' house, our rice mill, my younger brother's house, and my in-laws. Now everything is flat with water.

The floods brought on by a rare tropical cyclone have displaced nearly 300,000 Indonesians. That's as a separate storm inundated parts of Sri Lanka. The president of that island nation said the scale of the damage is unprecedented. As a country, we are facing the largest and most challenging natural disaster in our history. We also recognize that we are undertaking the most difficult rescue operation in our nation's history. This is the first time the entire country has been struck by such a disaster. In Thailand, which was also badly hit, authorities were still working to restore water

and electricity. The Thai Prime Minister set a seven-day timeline for residents to return home. And here at home, traveling without a real ID will soon cost you. The Transportation Security Administration says it will start charging air travelers a $45 fee in February if they don't have the newer form of of identification. The government says that fee will help pay for alternative ways to confirm a passenger's identity, including biometrics. It comes as the TSA reported screening a record 3.13 million air passengers yesterday, the peak travel day for Thanksgiving. The highest ever number occurred despite weather issues in parts of the Midwest. On Wall Street today, stocks broke a five-day winning streak and gave back some of last week's rally. The Dow Jones Industrial

average lost more than 400 points or nearly the percent, the NASDAQ dropped by almost 90, and the S&P 500 ended a half percent lower. And today marks 70 years since Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus in Alabama. That historic act of defiance sparked the 13-month Montgomery bus boycott, organized in part by a young Baptist minister named Martin Luther King Jr. A pivotal moment in the civil rights era, of Parks' civil disobedience and the boycott that followed culminated with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses was unconstitutional. And still to come on the News Hour, Dammer Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest political headlines. We explore the growing

influence of anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers, and a young farmer gives her brief but spectacular take on building community. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubin's Stein's studio at WETA in Washington and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Communities across the globe commemorated World AIDS Day today, honoring those who've died from the disease and reaffirming a commitment to end an epidemic that's killed more than 44 million people worldwide. But this year, for the first time in decades, the U.S. government decided not to mark the occasion. and the Trump administration has reportedly barred agencies from commemorating or participating in the event as well.

William Brangham has more. Jeff, that directive comes after the administration slashed funding for global HIV AIDS prevention and treatment projects earlier this year and move to eliminate many domestic initiatives as well. In part, because of those steep cuts, the UN now estimates global funding for HIV has dropped 40% in two years, and public health leaders argue decades of progress are at risk. To help us take stock of this current situation, we are joined again by infectious disease expert Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis. He recently resigned from his leadership role at the CDC,

citing the agency's new policies on vaccines, which he argued will endanger people's lives. Dr. Daskalakis, so nice to have you back on the program. World AIDS Day was created, almost 40 years ago, at a time when you're probably not old enough to remember, but stigma in this country around HIV was oppressive. And the activist mantra back then was that silence equals death. Given that, what do you make of the administration saying,

we are not commemorating World AIDS Days? We will remain silent on that. It's a really painful question to answer. I mean, I think at the end of the day, so much progress has happened in HIV, but we're not done yet. And so I think that this really signifies on a very important day of commemoration, the administration not only not pushing the accelerator on ending the HIV epidemic globally, but actually pumping the brakes.

So I think it fits in with so much of what's happened with the funding and some of the other possibilities of funding that may still happen for the domestic program. So, you know, I think it signals that this is not a priority. The State Department put out a statement that said an awareness day is not a strategy. Under the leadership of President Trump, the State Department is working directly with foreign governments to save lives and increase their responsibility and burden sharing. The administration is arguing that the work is still continuing, albeit with a different level of rigor, what is your response to that assertion?

So, first of all, it's true. A commemoration day is not a strategy, but the things that are a strategy are the things that they're unplugging. And so a lot of the work that's happening in PEPBAR, so many of the things domestically are actually strategies that have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing the rate of HIV infection, not only domestically, but globally, and save millions of lives. So the strategy is already being unplugged by the administration, and really the commemoration day is just a symptom of that bigger disease, and that disease is a lack of concern.

So I think that they're looking at PEPBAR as transactional, trying to figure out ways to trade aid for potentially access to specimens and data. That's not really a strategy that I think is based on good practice, nor based on the important role of the United States and ending HIV globally. As you've been mentioning, we know that there has been tremendous progress made against HIV AIDS. I mean, deaths have been plummeting. There's this remarkable new prevention drug Lena Capovir that's starting to get into people's arms, but still over a million people every year contract HIV. How much of this do you attribute to the administration now stepping away from

it's long-term funding for some of these projects, like PEPFAR. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's already folks who are modeling how many lives had been endangered or lost based on the pullback from global funding. What we're going to see is, you know, more babies being born with HIV globally and potentially even domestically, more people dying of HIV. I haven't seen an AIDS ward like I did in the late 90s and 2000s for decades, and I fear that that's going to come back when we don't have the right infrastructure to support the work necessary. You brought up on a cap revere. So that is an amazing intervention. That and Cabotabere

are both long-acting injectables that can prevent HIV infection. But if there's no infrastructure to deliver that, it may as well do nothing. If it just sits on the shelf without public health and an infrastructure to deliver it, it's just going to be technology that doesn't have any impact. And so I'm really scared about it. I'm scared that this lack of concern by the administration, and frankly, you know, something that is going to erase so much of their legacy with ending the HIV epidemic and even before that, Republican administrations that led to PEPFAR as well as Ryan White, I think that they're dismantling a legacy that is one that I think should be celebrated rather than ignored. I want to switch gears for one moment, if you don't.

mind, to your recent work at the CDC, where you oversaw vaccine policy with regards to respiratory diseases like COVID. Recently, the head of the FDA's vaccine division, Binae Prasad, wrote a memo that blamed the deaths of 10 children over the last few years on the COVID vaccine. It did not seem to provide any real evidence for that assertion. What do you make of that and the other moves that the administration is making with regard to vaccine policy. Yeah, so first, important to say that, you know, any death is a sad thing, but I just to be very

frank that, you know, that memo is in effect a glorified social media post without any information backing it up. So, you know, I think that the responsible thing to do when you have such information is first, share how you've come about on that conclusion. So it is at this point an announcement, whether it was overt or not, that doesn't have any of the data or process backing it. So I think that my first response when I heard it was it doesn't mean anything unless we know more. And I think that that means not only releasing sort of what the data are, but also what the process is, how they've come to that conclusion. And frankly, for things that are this complex and controversial, it is standard to have third parties review the data and review the process to see if they're reproducible and if they agree with the assertion.

So, you know, it's very strange to not have advisory committees, experts, and external scientists be engaged in such an announcement. And frankly, it's irresponsible to do that as a memo to your entire center, assuming that no one is going to share that outside of the agency. All right. That is Dr. Dmitry Daskalakis, former center director at the CDC. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle search for answers on how the military carried out strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats, and a special election in Tennessee could serve as a bellwether for the midterms. To discuss that and more, we turn now to our Politics Monday duo. That is Amy Walter of the Cook political report with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR. Great to see you both. Good to be here. As we reported earlier, we know President Trump's meeting with his national security team to talk about the pressure campaign on Venezuela. And you both saw today, as Nick reported earlier, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers expressing concerns about that that's now a confirmed second strike on a drug boat, even as there were survivors in the water.

Tam, you heard the White House say earlier that the commander who ordered that strike was well within his authority. Is that explanation enough to quiet the concerns of lawmakers? I don't think it is, in part, because we're also getting other further explanations now coming from defense officials who are speaking off the record. Or on background, there's just a lot of movement here, a lot going on, and there are a lot of questions. There's also a political challenge for the White House, because other than saying these are drug, narco-terrorists, the White House has been. really built a strong public case for this. Typically, if the United States is getting involved in a military operation, the level of troop buildup and other members of the military that are now in that region, that level of buildup, you would expect a concerted public campaign

to build support. And that really hasn't happened. The support isn't clearly there. And you also have cracks in the MAGA coalition because you had people like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, most notably, saying, hey, you said no foreign wars, you said no regime change. What exactly are you doing? Amy, we're seeing those cracks in the party. Is that crack filtering down to the base as well? Well, what's interesting speaking to this point about not making the public case, there was a CBS poll out. I think it was last week. And 76 percent of Americans said, We don't really know what the Trump administration is doing here. They'd like to have more information.

Now, overall, if you ask people, do you think it's a good idea to call these terrorists, these people who are in these boats who are delivering drugs, terrorists, and then the United States military can target those boats? A majority of people agree with that. So that actual piece, but what they don't have, what the public doesn't feel, is that they have adequate information about what the administration is. actually trying to do writ large and why they're doing it. As for the cracks, I mean, I just think the fact that you have Democrats and Republicans

in the Senate and in the House saying, we need to investigate this, is a sign of more pushback from a Congress that has really allowed the president to move forward on a whole lot of things that normally have congressional oversight. So it's really the first chance that we're getting to see a bipartisan. in push against some of the president's actions. And we'll see how far that push does move ahead. But I do want to ask you about the other news today about the acting U.S. attorney in New Jersey.

That's Alina Haba, who's President Trump's former attorney, after months of back and forth over the validity of her appointment, a federal appeals court today upheld the lower court ruling, disqualifying her from that rule. All that comes in the context of this, a political report that says President Trump set a record in his first year for the most nominees withdrawn. from the Senate, largely due to vetting issues and pushback from lawmakers. Tam, he's withdrawn 57 nominations. That's nearly double what Joe Biden did in his first year and more than double his rate in

his first term. What do you take away from all this? Yeah, and the remarkable thing is that, as Amy says, this is a Congress that hasn't, at least publicly pushed back very much on this president. One thing that stands out to me about the president withdrawing nominations, yes, some of that is coming from congressional pushback, but some of it, is also, you had, for instance, the NASA administrator, the nominee for NASA administrator. Trump, he was about to get Senate approval.

Trump withdrew that nomination because he was mad at Elon Musk and somebody said, oh, this guy made donations to Democrats and said, Trump said, well, he's not loyal enough. Then months later, he renominates him. So there's been just a ton of churn in that area. But you haven't seen the sort of cabinet-level turnover or staff turnover that you saw in the first Trump term, in part because the president has surrounded himself with loyalists. Right. And those loyalists, we thought we might have seen more pushback from Congress on some of those picks that were controversial. We didn't see that on the cabinet level. On the judicial level,

we've seen some of it. Now, some of it is really partisan. But it's notable there was a Bloomberg law analysis that found of all the U.S. attorneys that the president has appointed, the ones that have the most, as they describe it, unorthodox background. So people who, we could say, maybe not qualified as much for a job like this are almost exclusively in places that are blue areas or democratic-leaning areas. And so what we saw in New Jersey was a perfect example of this. These are also places where the president has maybe some specific people in mind that he wanted to see prosecuted. Obviously, we saw that with Jim Comey in Virginia, who was another U.S. attorney who there are questions about whether she is able to legally keep her job.

And this case in New Jersey, similarly about, well, actually, New York with Letitia James. Right. Yeah. Let's look ahead to tomorrow now. I do want to get both of your takes on this because voters in one Tennessee congressional district we're going to head to the polls to vote for a new member of the House. Amy, I want to start with you on this because this is a district. President Trump won very strongly just last year.

recent Emerson poll shows the Republican candidate in the race ahead by just two points. Right. What's going on in this race? Why is this? This shouldn't be close at all. You're exactly right. And to me, it's just the continuation of a trend we've seen throughout the most of this year, which is these districts that Trump won overwhelmingly in the previous election now are coming in a little bit less overwhelming for the Republican candidate. It tells us that the president's overall approval rating, while it's a big problem for Republicans in districts that he won by a small margin, it's also becoming a problem in districts that he won by larger margins.

And I expect, and the Cook Political Report still rates this as a seat that Republicans should hold on to. But the fact that Republicans are having to spend money here or having to put effort into this should be a warning sign for any Republican, even in a district. that Trump carried by a pretty healthy margin in the last election. It's also notable that the ads that are running in this congressional district run by Republicans, again, this is District Trump won. They should be saying things like, hey, don't you want this candidate to come and put Donald Trump's agenda through?

Don't you love Donald Trump? They don't really mention Donald Trump. That's what the primary was about, but not the general election. Well, T, take up on that, though. Speaking of Republican efforts, Speaker Mike Johnson was there today. We've seen Kamala Harris there in recent weeks as well. President Trump posted online about this race telling people, don't take this race for granted. He's remotely taking part in a tellerally.

What does all of this tell you about how Republicans are looking at the race? Yeah, don't take this race for granted is President Trump's message because he has determined, as he said after the elections in Virginia and New Jersey, if I'm not on the ballot, Republicans just don't show up. So this is him sort of projecting, ah, you're going to keep a little. arms distance, little distance there. You know, the remarkable thing is, in his first term, he was doing political travel, you know, immediately after Election Day, all through that first year.

He was campaigning in special elections. He was on the road. He has not been doing domestic political travel. He just hasn't. He hasn't been out there selling his agenda, and he hasn't really used his political capital for candidates in these special elections and other elections. And you saw that with Virginia in New Jersey. He didn't travel there.

It's not even that far to go to Virginia. And he isn't traveling for this race either. It made me fair to say this is a bellwether for the midterms. I think it's a bellwether in the sense that if Republicans are having to fight to defend seats like this, that sets up for a very, very difficult midterm election. And we shall see. Amy Walter, Tamara Keith. Great to see you, Bo. Thank you.

You're welcome. Tomorrow, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving a group of faith-based pregnancy centers in New Jersey. The organization is hoping to block the state's attorney general from investigating whether they misled women into believing the centers offered abortions. The case highlights an effort to crack down on these so-called crisis pregnancy centers. For our series, The Next Frontier Special Correspondent, Sarah Barney, reports these organizations are a growing part of the anti-abortion movement in a post-row America. And I was terrified. I mean, like, no 18-year-old wants to find themselves in that position. Four years ago, Hannah Miller, then a freshman at Randeis University outside of Boston, became pregnant.

After searching for abortion care on the Internet, the Minnesota native called one of the first clinics to pop up. They were really trying to beat around the bush, really trying to just get me there. What happens when you went inside? It looked exactly like any doctor's office, down to a woman in scrubs. Hello. Hello. But partway through the appointment, Hannah realized she had come to the wrong place. Instead of an abortion clinic, Hannah was sitting in a crisis pregnancy center.

Known as CPCs, these mostly faith-based non-profits, offer resources to pregnant women to steer them away from a abortion. But reproductive rights advocates in the medical community have criticized CPCs for using deceptive and at times unsafe practices. They told me that I was eight weeks pregnant at a time when I was six weeks pregnant. Did anything she said change your mind? No. It made me kind of more resolved in my decision, but it changed fundamentally the way that I felt about it. It felt like something I needed to be ashamed of.

These centers are part of a larger strategy, says Carrie Baker, in the next frontier of the anti-abortion movement. When people think of the anti-abortion movement, they think of the push to try to make abortion illegal. And they haven't focused as much on the ground game, which is what CPCs are. Baker teaches gender, law, and public policy at Smith College. She says after many abortion clinics were forced to close post-Rowe, the conservative Christian movement has priority. replacing them. Don't murder an innocent child. As of last year, there were more than 2,600 crisis pregnancy centers and only 765 abortion clinics in communities across the U.S.

Many of these centers, which typically provide free diapers, pregnancy tests, and anti-abortion counseling, offer health care services and medical advice without a license. As these clinics get more and more things like ultrasounds and appear more and more medical and encourage people to rely on what they're saying. They're more of a danger. I wouldn't call them medical providers. I would call them political organizations who are often not revealing their political agenda, at least initially. Baker points to cases where patients were misdiagnosed, delaying needed medical care, or were misled about the safety of abortion. And because nearly all of the centers are not licensed medical clinics, and because of that not

subject to federal health care privacy laws, critics worry about what they are doing with patient information. There's a fair amount of evidence that anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers are collecting information about people, and they're creating a mass database of young pregnant women or people that may not yet be pregnant but might become pregnant. My concern about CPCs is that they are actually surveilling women. for criminal prosecution. This year, the Crisis Pregnancy Center industry is expected to bring in more than $2.5 billion.

From 2017 to 2023, nearly 430 million in federal dollars were awarded to more than 650 CPCs across the country through teen pregnancy prevention, welfare, and other federal programs. And though a majority of funding for CPCs is from churches and private donors, An increasing amount is coming from state taxpayer dollars. We stand here today because Planned Parenthood and their allies want to destroy life and not protect it.

At the center of the abortion fight today, Missouri is home to more than 90 CPCs. We want them to be the best darn mom they possibly can be, and that's where we come in. Brian Westbrook is executive director of Coalition Life. The Anti-Aboration Group runs a crisis pregnancy center in the St. Louis suburb. They send out protesters for so-called sidewalk counseling to abortion clinics in and out of the state. We never believed that any mother wakes up in the morning saying, yeah, I really wanted abortion. I don't think anyone ever wakes up thinking they're excited to do that.

And so what we want to do is we want to coach them. Then they can kind of pause, think about it, make a logical decision of, yeah, maybe I shouldn't go through with this abortion. Westbrook says they served around 1,100 women last year and on average help four to five people per day. Our goal is to create a family unit that the child would be in a good spot to go into, to be born into. The center offers pregnancy and STI testing, ultrasounds, and pregnancy coaching. Westbrook says that work is made possible because of private donors. In Missouri, residents receive a 70% tax credit when they donate to groups.

like Coalition Life. Last year, the state approved $11 million in these tax credits. That's on top of the state's long-running alternatives to abortion program, which received more than $8 million in 2024. It certainly does help. It helps our donors, for sure. They become a little bit more generous. But I try to stay away from government funding as much as we possibly can. For some pregnancy centers, that's fantastic for them. For us, we want to be able to operate as independently as humanly possible, and we know that a lot of government funding comes with a lot of strings. Missouri is not alone. From 2021 to 2024, anti-abortion centers in at least 21 states received funding through grants, state programs, budget allocations, or tax credits.

Carrie Baker says even in states where abortion is legal, crisis pregnancy centers are hard to hold accountable. Just like a church can say whatever it wants on a Sunday morning, they're like, we're like a church, we can say whatever we want. We don't charge for our services so we can't be regulated. We don't have to reveal any information. But that may be changing in Massachusetts. Last year, a CPC in Worcester settled a lawsuit that alleged a nurse failed to diagnose an ectopic pregnancy. That's when a fertilized egg in plants outside of the uterus, a condition that is dangerous if left untreated.

The woman survived but needed emergency surgery for massive internal bleeding. Whether you need pregnancy care or abortion care, avoid anti-abortion centers. That summer, Governor Maura Healy, a Democrat, launched a $1 million education campaign to discourage residents from going to CPCs. In order to get at anti-abortion centers at this very real problem and threat to the health and safety of a lot of people, we have to do it in a way that does not run afoul of the First Amendment. That's hard to do. Democratic State Senator Becca Rausch authored a bill requiring a licensed health care professional

to supervise any ultrasound related to a pregnancy. It was signed into law last year. Because of search engines and algorithms and money, a lot of times the first places that pop up are at these anti-abortion centers. But if they can't provide any ultrasound services because it's illegal in Massachusetts for them to do so, because they lack a license and the appropriate training to do so safely and accurately, then that doesn't happen at the get-go. But some groups are pushing back. Your Options Medical, which runs centers in eastern Massachusetts, is suing the state, saying its education campaign violates the group's free speech and equal protection rights. This experience has been, for all intents and purposes, it did not have

the effect that they wanted it to in so many ways. Weeks after her CPC appointment, Hannah was able to get abortion care at a licensed clinic near Boston. She says the ordeal inspired her to study reproductive health and policy. Class of 2025, we made it! This May, she graduated with a degree in public health. I felt incredible shame, incredible guilt. I was so embarrassed, and I felt stupid. Like, how could I've not seen this sooner?

And I've thought about this for a long time, and I've kind of come out, say, You should not feel that. They should feel that. Hannah hopes talking about her experience will help others avoid the same pain in the future. For PBS News Hour, I'm Sarah Varney in Massachusetts. And we'll be back shortly,

but first, take a moment to hear from your local PBS station. It's a chance to offer your support, which helps to keep programs like this one on the air. For those stations staying with us, we bring you now an encore report on this Cyber Monday. Many of the products Americans will buy today and over the holiday season are made overseas. That's despite rising prices from tariffs.

So why is it so difficult to manufacture affordable goods here in the U.S.? economics correspondent Paul Solman reports. So we're going to have made in the USA like we haven't had before in a long time. More consumers are searching for made in the USA labels. The economic battle cry these days. Made in America. I made in America.

Sounds great. The days of making our parts all over the world because we have wonderful partners now, it's America first now. And even before President Trump began announcing tariffs to bring back American manufacturing, In Huntsville, Alabama, Destin Sandlin was already on the case. Is it possible to make something in America and be competitive in the marketplace? Sandlin is a rocket scientist and engineer who used to test missiles for the military. He now hosts the wildly popular, smarter everyday series on YouTube, more than 11 million subscribers. He's explored everything from why humans don't die at birth to how to survive an

underwater helicopter crash to what happens to a baseball when it goes past the speed of sound. How do you come up with topics? That's just whatever I'm interested in. That's the only requirement. His off-the-wall latest experiment to manufacture a product, every single part of which is made in the USA. Could we even do it? Could we make the tools necessary to make things in America? businessman John Youngblood who wanted to make a barbecue grill scrubber using chain mail instead of the standard bristles which those metal bristles like a wire brush will break off and people are swallowing them or you know and then you're going to the doctor

yeah if you ask any ER doctor everybody's seen it. Sandlin saw his opportunity. Destin asked me straight up he's like hey if would you be willing to go in with me on this product and we can make it all here in the U.S. And I was like, absolutely. And so in 2021, the pair set out. So I guided them how to mold and how to make molds. They lucked out at first, finding tool and dye maker Chris Robeson about to turn 70. So when they finished the molds, we checked them out, made sure everything was going to work for us.

And they started making some of the scrubbers first parts. But says Sandlin, Manufacturing capacity in America has been gutted. If Chris had decided to retire before I needed that mold made, we would not have been able to make an injection mold in my area. Or who knows where, given the state of manufacturing in the U.S. Tool and dye trade is suffering greatly by the fact that we're losing tool and dye makers. Most of them are about my age.

We don't have any younger people stepping up to take the place of the people that are retiring. And when they look for the simplest part, A plain old steel bolt that would also be made in America. This little stainless steel bolt right here, it's a one-inch bolt. I talked to a bolt manufacturer, and he said, yeah, we can't get the material for that. We can't even buy the steel to make the bolt for that cost. So good luck. Also, I think what you're doing is great, young man, in Alabama, but I don't think you're going to get there.

Eventually, they found a bolt maker in Massachusetts. We could buy that bolt for a nickel made overseas, and we pay 38 cents apiece for these bolts. As for the scrubbers' steel handle... And how many parts do you make here, would you guess? Tens of millions. Enter Weston Coleman, a TNC stamping in Athens, Alabama. So the first station, we actually bend the end of the handle down. We just make sure this handle is wrapped fully around on the end.

But doing the work in America costs way more than, say, in China. For every dollar that we would quote a tool for, they're quoting it for 25 cents. Though long-term, Coleman says, offshoring has its own costs, even before adding possible tariffs. There's hidden costs, there's maintenance costs, there's going to be quality issues and quality costs money, especially if it's a long-term part. In short, another example of manufacturing myopia in America. But so far all parts made in America, including the molded knob that holds the scrubber to the handle. Or so they thought, this was originally supposed to be made in America, but the box came in and they said made in Costa Rica. That's right. That's right. We thought they were made in Mississippi.

They were not. One of the things we're realizing is the only things we can verify are made in America are the things that we 100% control the supply chain of because we manufactured it. or watched it be manufactured. Okay, four years on, the scrubber is for sale online for $75, a little less at a local Alabama grill store. So we've been in business since 1982. But given the sky-high costs of Made in America, will anyone buy it? Are they selling or? Yeah, I wouldn't say necessarily like hotcakes because grill brushes are not necessarily the hottest commodity right now, but they are selling.

So this is how much? $60. And what's the competition? Probably closest thing on this would be this triple row rush from Napoleon. And how much is this? Twenty-one.

Thrice the price, but worth it, says salesman Jason Peasley. Is it a selling point that this is just made in America? Absolutely. But for long years, a lofty price tag because of made it America,

and yet still not everything is. We're not going to turn around American manufacturing with a grill scrubber being made in Alabama. It's not going to happen. But we might excite somebody in Nebraska. And I think that's important because I think the future is for people who make things. I think everybody in the audience would be sympathetic to what you're saying. But I think they'd also be skeptical that we could turn things around. It's never going to happen if you don't try.

So someone has to be stubborn enough to try it and see what happens. Stubberness. A product still very much made in America. For the PBS News hour, Paul Salman in Huntsville, Alabama. In this season of gathering around the table, we hear from self-proclaimed proud ag youth Anisa Davila from Salinas Valley, California, known as the salad bowl of the world. Davila has led her high school chapter of Future Farmers of America,

which has more than a million students participating nationwide. Tonight, she shares her brief but spectacular take on what she's learned about leadership, responsibility, and community through farming. The poem I'm reciting is lineage by Margaret Walker. My grandmothers were strong. They followed plows and bent to toil. My grandmothers are full of memories. smelling of soap and onions and wet clay,

with veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say. My grandmothers were strong. Why am I not as they? My grandmothers were both from Mexico and they migrated here to America, and they're very much my role models. My father and my brother both work

in the agriculture industry in the Salinas Valley. The Salinas Valley is sometimes referred to as the salad bowl of the world. Gonzales is a small little community town. It's surrounded by fields. We're also kind of split by the freeway, so sometimes they're also called like a little gas station stop. Entering my freshman year,

I chose to take ag biology instead of regular biology because I was introduced to the FFA program, which is Future Farmers America. Once your food reaches a table, I mean, it's gone through so many processes in order for you to be able to safely consume it. There's so many different jobs in the agriculture industry that you don't necessarily think of off the bat. Like there's plant science, there's animal science, there's the dairy farmers. I raise livestock for FFA and I'm currently raising a market goat called Grover. And he is such a silly little goat.

We have a farm at our school and so I go and I feed him in the food. morning and then in the afternoons, probably after this I'll go and feed him again. Being an ag youth is definitely empowering. Agriculture in general is just so diverse. It's definitely a battle that we face to educate people that the agriculture industry isn't just a farmer in a field. My name is Anisa Davila and this is my brief but spectacular take on representing ag youth. Well she is delightful and you can watch more brief but spectacular videos online at pbs.org slash newshour slash brief. And that is The NewsHour for tonight.

I'm Omna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at The NewsHour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us.