PBS News Hour - Full Show - December 6, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

Saturday on PBS News Weekend, the Trump administration lays out its vision for the U.S. role in the world, taking “America First” policies global. How artificial intelligence is helping predict preterm births. Plus, the benefits and risks of an icy plunge as wintertime outdoor swimming gains a global following. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, the Trump administration lays out its vision for the U.S. role in the world, taking America-first policies global. Then we explore how artificial intelligence is helping predict preterm births, and the benefits and risks of an icy plunge as wintertime outdoor swimming gains a global following. It's really refreshing. I think it's an experience that every single. single person has to have once in their lifetimes. Here in winter. Yes, in winter, and I love it. It's really cold, but we love it.

Thank you. Good evening. I'm John Yang. White House envoys met again with Ukrainian officials in Miami today to discuss President Trump's proposed path to peace in Ukraine. It was their seventh meeting over two weeks, including a session this past Sunday that included Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The State Department said they've agreed on a key item, a peacekeeping arrangement for post-war Ukraine. The administration's national security

strategy released this week says ending the war is a core U.S. interest in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and re-establishment. strategic stability with Russia. The congressionally mandated document reflects a shift from the stance of previous administrations, including Mr. Trump's first term. Earlier, I spoke with Matthew Kroni, Vice President and Senior Director of the Atlantic Council's Skokroft Center for Strategy and Security. He helped write similar strategy statements under President's George W. Bush and Obama

and in the first Trump term. I think overall it was a good document with strengths, but also with, we weaknesses. So strengths, a good strategy should tell you what's new and different. And this one did that with the focus on the Western Hemisphere. It also had some new ideas for new challenges, how the United States can maintain technological leadership. So I think those were the strengths. On the weaknesses, I think it downplayed democracy and human rights, which I think is a mistake. It was probably too critical of our European allies. And I think also downplayed the challenges we face from autocratic rivals like like China. You're at the Reagan National Defense Forum right now, and I suspect there are representatives from Europe. What are you hearing from them or from others at the forum about this document? Yes.

Mixed opinions on the document. One European ambassador I was speaking to last night said, this seems to be a consistent message now following J.D. Vance's tough speech at the Munich Security Conference. And so it would be irresponsible as European official not to question America's commitment to Europe and to think about how Europe might need to go its own way. On Europe, the document says that Europe faces the prospect of civilizational erasure because of immigration policies and suppression of political opposition. What's your reaction to that?

Yes. Well, I do think that's something of an extension of domestic politics for the so-called new right in the Republican Party. And so I think they see their enemies as liberals and progressives. that's in the United States, but also in Europe. And so I think taking some of their domestic political positions and exporting those to Europe is what accounts for those passages. You mentioned the absence of talking about democracy and human rights. In their place, it seems to me the emphasis is on economic relationships around the world.

What do you think of that? Our allies and partners in the Western Hemisphere have often felt like they are overlooked, that the United States has paid more attention to Europe, to the Middle East, and to Asia. And so I think they see this new focus on the Western Hemisphere as overall a good thing. And there's also talk about economic partnerships. So I think that makes a lot of sense. It's one of the strengths of the strategy. And I think we'll be welcomed by the countries that are the recipients of that investment.

This document is not only different from previous presidents, it's also different for Mr. Trump's first administration. In that document, the world was framed as competition between those who favor repressive systems and those who favor free societies. What do you make of that change? Well, you're right. That is a big change. The 2017 national security strategy, the main takeaway was great power competition with China and Russia.

This one kind of downplays the threat from autocratic rivals. North Korea is not even mentioned. Russia and China are presented as not posing much of a challenge. So I think the difference is the difference in personnel. And Trump won. He was new to Washington, and so he was staffed by kind of traditional Reaganite Republicans. For this administration, he does have some of those traditional Republicans, but he also has more in the so-called restraint camp and populist camp.

And so I see the fingerprints of these different groups on this document. What do you see is the practical impact of this document? It's something that Congress mandates that has to be produced. But what sort of its practical significance? It does have practical implications. Our allies and adversaries are carefully reading this document. As I mentioned, I was talking about it with several allies just over the past 24 hours. But then it also provides direction to the vast national security bureaucracies.

Mid and lower level officials in the Department of Defense, the State Department, the intelligence community want to know what they should be doing on a day-to-day basis. And so this document does provide an authoritative statement of the president's priorities. How do you think this is being read in Beijing or in Moscow? Well, I think the answer may be different. It does talk a lot about maintaining deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. It keeps our traditional policy with regard to Taiwan, talks about winning the economic and technology competitions with China. The Russia challenge is presented almost as squabbling between Europe and Russia.

Russia and almost positions the United States as a mediator trying to restore stability. So I suspect Putin will see that as a step forward from his point of view compared to traditional strategies that I think correctly portrayed Russia more as a threat to Europe and a threat to the United States. Matthew Kroni from the Atlantic Council. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

And tonight's other headlines, Arab leaders say it's time to move forward on the second phase of the Israel Hamas ceasefire. In remarks to the Doha forum, the Qatari Prime Minister said an ongoing ceasefire agreement needs to include the full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. The remarks came as Israeli defense forces killed three people in an Israeli controlled area of Gaza. Two others died, an airstrike outside Gaza City. The next steps in President Trump's peace plan call for international security force in Gaza. the formation of a new government, and Hamas giving up its weapons, which it has not yet agreed to. Devastation and desperation are evident in newly released 9-1-1 calls from the July 4th weekend flash flooding in Kerr County, Texas.

We want to warn you that some viewers may find this distressing. All right. How many people are there? There's three, and we're stopping to two elderly people. Please roll. I can't. Okay, really quickly, hey, really quickly, I need you to take a really deep breath. I understand we have everybody headed that direction, but I need you to take a deep breath, okay? What's a good callback number for you? I can't get it. I can't get out.

I'm scared. We don't know whether the woman in that call was among the more than 130 lives lost in the flooding. Over the course of six hours, as floodwaters rushed through the area, dispatchers handled more than 400 emergency calls. The family of a National Guard member ambushed blocks from the White House say they're optimistic about his recovery. They say Sergeant Andrew Wolfe is looking more like himself and his head wound is slowly healing.

He's expected to remain in acute care for another two to three weeks. Last night, there was a vigil for Wolf at his old high school in Berkeley County, West Virginia. Army specialist Sarah Bextram was also attacked that day and later died from her injuries. And the countdown to the Winter Olympics in Italy has begun. In Rome, the Olympic flame began its journey to the Games in Milan. Over the next two months, more than 10,000 torchbearers will participate in a 7,000-mile relay through Italy.

The opening ceremonies will be held on February 6th. Still to come on PBS News Weekend, how AI is helping predict premature births and the risks and rewards of an icy, plunge. This is PBS News Weekend from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour, weeknights on PBS. Last year, one in ten U.S. babies was born before 37 weeks of pregnancy, which is considered

preterm. The March of Dime says that's one of the highest premature birth rates among development. nations. Preterm births can have long-term health effects and are hard to predict. Allie Rogan spoke with an entrepreneur who's using AI to help doctors know when it's likely. But first, March of Dimes helped connect Allie with parents of preterm babies to hear about their experiences. My name is Erica Schumate and I am Mia's mom. Hi, my name is Roxanne Romeo and I'm Zara's mom. My name is Lucero Pajano and I am Zayel's mother.

My name is Rubin Contreras and I'm Zayl's dad. My name is Ashley O'Neill, and I am Collins' mom. My name is Emily Greenlee, and I'm Lois' mom. My baby was born at 24 weeks, two days. She weighed 1 pound, 7 ounces, or the best that they could measure, so quick. She was intubated immediately. Zara was born at 26 weeks and 4 days. She weighed 2 pounds, 6.7 ounces, and she spent 93 days in the NICU.

Zaya was 25 weeks and two days when I delivered him. We learned that my daughter actually has Ellis Van Cravel syndrome, which has less than 300 cases reported in the world, but it's highly concentrated in the Amish Dutch population. It's very rare in general, but then to be a family of color, we only know two other families of color that have been directly impacted in the world. I went into labor with Tallinn at 25 weeks gestation at a small community hospital that didn't have their resources to properly care for a child. He was born at roughly a pound and a half. Every day, I would have to call in the morning

to talk to one of the NICU nurses to find out how many episodes she had the night before, which is when a baby stops breathing. And to even imagine your child not breathing is just crazy. He fought. He was a feisty little thing, repeatedly pulled out all of his tubes

but he came home 183 days later Lois is 5 years old now. She is in preschool she's doing very well she just turned 8 on September 27th

it has been an honor of privilege to be this little rock star's mom she is a spunky sassy little toddler. She's going to be three in December. He is, thank God, doing amazing when I tell people that

he's a 25-weeker, their jaws drop. Colin is six now. He is in the first grade. He loves school. He is non-speaking, uses a communication device. He does boss me around. Mom, iPad, please. He has the best smile that lights up a room. He loves playing tricks on his teachers. If they ask him a question, he'll hover over the right answer, giggle and hit the wrong answer and giggle some more. I just encourage people to learn more about prematurity, especially if you know you're pregnant or if you plan to have a child. And I'm not just talking about women. Fathers need to be in the know as well because they are definitely part of this journey. To anyone that is navigating this thing that you never sign up for as a parent, just know that you can get through

it. There is life and love on the other side and also to allow yourself the moments to grief, to grieve through the grief of the pregnancy you didn't have, the parenthood experience that you are not having or will not have, and to also not allow yourself to get in the business of comparing your child to someone else's who is not having the same experience as you. share my story a lot just to tell other people that, like, I know how dark it can do it, but if you just keep going eventually, you'll find the light. It may not be as bright as you imagined or even the same colors you imagine your light would look like, but it can still be beautiful nonetheless. We now turn to Robert Bunn, an entrepreneur who knows this issue

firsthand. He and his wife have four daughters, but his wife experienced nine miscarriages along the way. Her experience inspired him to work on technology. that can help predict whether a pregnancy will end in a premature birth and help a medical team prepare for that outcome. Robert, thank you so much for being here with us. Thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. Tell me a little bit more about what you

and your wife went through to build your family and how that inspired you to begin working in this field. Sure, and we're beginning to start our family. My wife suffered numerous miscarriages. And I was beginning to wonder why this could happen over and over and over and nothing could be done about it. After doing a bit of research, because I have no medical background,

I had to do some research to understand the problem. What I realized is that the reason there's so many premature births is because typically they're a surprise. And when they happen, it's too late to do anything about that time and doctors typically don't have any forewarning. And I so thought, maybe if I could create an AI that could predict that a premature birth is impending,

then doctors would have a fighting chance to prevent that and they have time to do something about it. How does this technology know what to look for and flag issues, potential issues? I eventually learned that the solution is to obtain millions of ultrason images, and then I have the outcomes of what happened to those babies in those images. And then what I did is I created an AI that could figure out how to map the pixels in the images to what actually happened. And I had to build a supercomputer from parts in my basement to get the computer power necessary,

And it took months to train this AI, but basically what the AI eventually learned how to do was to find patterns in these images that then correlated to the actual outcomes, which opened up a whole lot of new discoveries, as well as the capability to predict the delivery date of these babies, which then, of course, the doctors could then act upon and determine if that was going to work or if they needed to do something. Why is it traditionally so difficult to screen for prematurity? One is because ultrasound images are not hard to read. They're very noisy. It's very hard to see things in them. There are some things that doctors know that typically lead to premature birth, but those things typically only happen to a small percentage of women, but the vast majority of women is just you have a history of premature birth or history of miscarriages, so therefore we'll monitor

you closely in the future. But it's not, the accuracy is not as good as it could be. And I think that's the problem I needed to solve is to give doctors very, very much. precise delivery dates of when these babies were going to be delivered so then they could then act confidently to treat those women. I understand your technology is already being used in countries in South America. What have the results been like there? They've been in trial use in both Brazil and Chile, and the doctors are extremely happy.

Probably the biggest thing that makes them happy is the fact that it's able to identify the women who are on their first child who may have a premature birth so they can make sure those women get the care they need, they wouldn't not have gotten otherwise. Then there's also the case where there's high-risk pregnancies, and they want to keep the babies in as long as possible because that reduces time in the queue, and they have a good idea of when the baby is going to spontaneously deliver, and a spontaneous deliver may not be the best choice in that case, and they can do a C-section right before then. So it helps them time the deliveries that need to be much better and have better outcomes.

And then what's your outlook for becoming available to people here in the U.S.? So we've recently submitted our final review for the FDA, and we hope to have approval here very soon. Maybe it's in the next few months. I think life is uncertain, but we feel very good about this technology and that its ability to begin saving lives of babies in America here, too. Robert Bunn with ultrasound AI. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It's a pleasure being here. As the winter solstice nears, it might not feel like the season for jumping in the water, but more and more people are finding an icy plunge invigorating. In this encore report, William Bram takes a look at the world of winter swimming and its potential benefits and risks. Even though the temperatures are plunging, so are these swimmers. A brave group in the northern Chinese city of Harbin,

taking a sub-zero jump one by one into the icy water. I felt prickling all over my body. The water here is about 10 degrees Celsius lower than it is in my hometown. But it still made me feel blissful. These hearty souls are part of the city's winter swimming team, which boasts hundreds of members. They say they train throughout the year to develop the physical strength and mental fortitude needed

to dive into pools carved from ice during the city's annual winter festival. Once these challenges are overcome, you will feel the endless joy brought by winter swimming. Endless joy or crazy obsession. In the Czech Republic, locals there take to the cold waters of the Voltava River in early January to mark the end of the Christmas season.

Well, I've stuck with it. It's a bit of an addiction now. Once you've tried it, You have to keep doing it. In the Danish capital, Copenhagen, it's a tourist draw to brave the icy water. It's crazy. It's really refreshing. I think it's an experience that every single person has to have once in their lifetimes. Here in winter.

Yes, in winter. And I love it. It's really cold, but we love it. Devotees of winter swimming are convinced these bone-chilling dips boosts their health and happiness. Back in the day, I used to get leg cramps, and ever since I started winter swimming, it has stopped. I'm 76 years old, but I've never got a cold because I swim in winter and I feel very well. It brings me good health. Online, advocates say the benefits are many, helping with everything from migraines to arthritis and even weight loss.

It boosts the immune system. It really improves your mental health. Great blood circulation helps you sleep better. helps you sleep better. But not everyone is convinced. Some of the claims that you'll see that splashed over the web, we don't actually have good, robust evidence to be able to support those claims at the moment. Heather Massey studies cold water immersion and swimming at the University of Portsmouth in England.

The level of science is far more powerful from the side of it having negative effects. Massey says the initial plunge into icy water is shocking. And the body reacts instantly, shortness of breath, higher blood pressure, even impaired cognitive function. Definitely make sure you're well fit and healthy before you go in. If you've got any underlying health problems or you're not feeling great, going in cold water is not going to help. She says even healthy people should proceed with caution. There can be very real risks of hypothermia and heart attacks. But Massey is quick to add there could be health benefits and she and other scientists are looking into what they might be.

It may be that it's a placebo effect, but if it's a placebo effect and it works, well, it's still in effect. Evidence or not, these swimmers can't seem to stay away from their icy plunges and the thrills that come with it. It's so cold. I was freezing. I'm saying, if I can do this, I can do anything in the whole world. That's my feeling. For PBS News Weekend, I'm William Brangham. And that is PBS News Weekend for this Saturday. I'm John Yang for all of my colleagues.

Thanks for joining us. See you tomorrow.