PBS News Hour - Full Show - December 9, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Tuesday on the News Hour, Republicans challenge limits on campaign donations in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks out about President Trump as she prepares to leave Congress and we explore the economic and security concerns surrounding the Trump administration's decision to sell advanced artificial intelligence chips to China. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett on the news hour tonight. Republicans, including Vice President J.D. Vance, challenge limits on campaign donations in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, once a fierce ally of President Trump, speaks out as she prepares to leave Congress. There's a problem in the Republican Party. When the leader of the Republican Party, the president of the United States, United States would actually attack one of his own members that has been so good to him. And we explore the economic and security concerns surrounding the Trump administration's decision to sell advanced artificial intelligence chips to China.

Welcome to the News Hour. With less than a year until the 20th, 2006 midterm elections, it's already expected to be one of the most expensive campaigns in history. And how that money is being spent could be changing. At the Supreme Court today, major arguments that could reshape campaign finance laws. Arlisa Desjardin is more on the Republican push to remove key spending limits. The ads have begun. The 26 battle for Congress and a waterfall of spending are underway. North Carolina doesn't need another career politician. John Hustead supported the tariffs that are jacking up prices.

Life in Maine, the way it should be, is harder, thanks to Janet Mills. And all of that could be significantly affected by the nation's highest court. The case filed in 2022 by the Republican House and Senate campaign committees, as well as then Senate candidate, J.D. Vance, sues the Federal Election Commission over current law. That law puts a $7,000 limit on how much individuals can give a candidate per cycle. But individuals can donate more than a million dollars to political parties. So the law separates the two. Parties are limited in how much they can spend directly with the candidates.

Those are called coordinated expenses. Republicans want to remove those limits and be able to send more money to candidates. Doing so would change decades of candidates. campaign law. So all of these limits, all of these rules, they're all about preventing corruption. Adav Nodi is the exec director of the campaign legal center and a former lawyer at the FEC. He says these limits were put in place after the Nixon Watergate scandal, which exposed large, secret donations. There was a widespread bipartisan understanding that while some amount of money is needed to run elections and campaigns, it is best if that be limited, that no undue,

amount of it come from anyone's source, and then it be fully disclosed to the public. This century, the Supreme Court has overturned some limits, including in the Citizens United case, removing caps for donating to Super PACs and ruling they violated free speech. That argument is central today. If you're telling someone they can't pay any money to help broadcast their speech, that's the same thing as limiting their speech. Carrie Severino is president of JCN, a conservative legal group, which supports removing these limits. She also argues the limits create a convoluted system, parties and candidates

with the same goals, but which can't work together. We want Americans to have information about their candidates and forcing that information to be incredibly costly by having all of these extra limits and tying the hands of the political parties who are trying to communicate with voters isn't a good way to do that. But Democrats see other motives. It's just that the Republican Party doesn't believe in campaign finance reform, and they don't want these particular limits in place. Mark Elias is an elections attorney, representing the Democratic Party before the Supreme Court. He sees corruption risk. If the coordinated party's spending limits go away, then now the money that is going into those committees in these hundreds of thousands of dollar checks or

million dollar checks can now be spent on an unlimited basis to benefit a particular candidate. And that opens up a risk of quid pro quo corruption, bribery, that is exactly why the Supreme Court has upheld these kinds of base limits before. In today's arguments, Justice Brett Kavanaugh questioned how the court should balance concerns about corruption versus political speech. The combination of campaign finance laws and this court's decisions over the years have together reduced the power of political parties as compared to outside. groups with negative effects on our constitutional democracies. I'm also concerned, of course, about quid pro quo corruption and the circumvention concerns. Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the court's liberal justices questioned if the case would lead to a steep, slippery slope. Once we take off this coordinated expenditure limits, then what's left?

What's left is nothing, no control whatsoever. Justices will issue a decision in the case by next summer. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Lisa Desjardin. And we start today's other headlines in New York. The federal judge has approved a motion by the Justice Department to unseal records from the grand jury investigation of Gilane Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime associate. Judge Paul Engelmeyer had rejected such requests in the past, but today cited a new law signed by President Trump that requires the government to release files related to Epstein by

December 19th. But he cautioned that the Maxwell files won't reveal anything new, noting they do not reveal any heretofore unknown means or methods of Epstein's or Maxwell's crimes. We have an update now to a story we brought you. last month. The Army has filed criminal charges against a gynecologist who has been accused of secretly filming patients. Dr. Blaine McGraw has been charged with indecent visual recording and conduct unbecoming an officer, among others. They stem from his work at the Fort Hood Army base in Texas. Officials say there are a total of 44 victims. He's currently being held at a county jail in Texas. President Trump is doubling down on threats to expand U.S. military operations

against drug trafficking targets. In a wide-ranging interview with Politico, Mr. Trump said he was open to actions in Colombia and Mexico, and he declined repeatedly to rule out a ground invasion in Venezuela. It comes as administration officials briefed top lawmakers today on the military's nearly two dozen strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. Democratic lawmakers are pushing Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth to release unedited video of a September strike in which two survivors were killed as they clung to the wreckage of their boat.

His answer, we have to study it. Well, in my view, they've studied it long enough, and Congress ought to be able to see it. I told him that every member of Congress, so many members of Congress, Democrat and Republican, had a right to see it, wanted to see it, and should see it. Also today, Navy Admiral Alvin Halsey, who will retire from command of the campaign to destroy alleged drugboats held a separate classified video call with lawmakers. Honduras is seeking the arrest of the country's former president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was pardoned by President Trump and released from a U.S. prison last week.

The Attorney General of Honduras is asking authorities there and Interpol to execute a 2023 arrest warrant for Hernandez over fraud and money laundering charges. He was sentenced last year to 45 years in prison for helping move tons of cocaine to the U.S. Mr. Trump announced his plan to pardon Hernandez just days before national elections in Honduras, claiming that he had been treated unfairly by prosecutors. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says he's ready to hold elections within 90 days, but only if Ukraine's U.S. and European partners can help ensure security for such a vote. Zelensky has been criticized for staying in his role after his term ended last year.

Just today, President Trump said in that Politico interview that without elections, in Ukraine, quote, it gets to a point where it's not a democracy anymore. Zelensky has said it's unsafe to hold a vote during wartime and has pointed to Ukraine's constitution, which bars elections while martial law is in effect. But today he offered to work with that country's parliament to change the law to allow a vote. Australia has officially rolled out the world's first social media ban for those under the age of 16. It's up to the companies to decide how they enforce the ban. 10 platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, face fines of up to $30 million U.S. dollars if they fail to comply. One high schooler who is part of a lawsuit challenging the ban says it's unfairly cut off his access to the broader world.

As young Australians, we will be completely silenced and cut off from our country and the rest of the world with this band. We've just grown up with this our entire lives and now it's just being taken away from us all of a sudden. The rollout is being watched closely by other countries which are considering similar measures amid global concerns over the impact of social media on children's health and safety. On Wall Street today, stocks ended mixed ahead of tomorrow's decision by the Fed on interest rates. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gave back about 180 points on the day. The NASDAQ managed a modest gain of about 30 points. The S&P 500 slipped just six points, so roughly flat.

And Raul Malo, lead singer of The Mavericks, has dialed. He helped write He helped write some of the band's most popular songs, including There Goes My Heart from 1994. He co-founded the Grammy Award-winning group back in 1989, fusing Alt-Country, Americana, and Latin sounds. Molo brought his expansive, soulful voice to more than a dozen albums in both English and Spanish.

Last year, he announced that he had stage four colon cancer. Raul Mallow was 60 years old. Still to come on the News Hour, how parents and students are deciding which college to choose in the ever-changing higher education landscape. A man wrongfully detained by ICE discusses his arrest and treatment in an immigration facility. And our list of the best books of 2025. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Green rose to national prominence as one of the most

vocal backers of President Donald Trump. But the pair fell out, dramatically and publicly, after she called for the extension of expiring health care subsidies and fought for the release of the Epstein files over his objections. She prevailed in the latter fight, but has announced that she'll be resigning in early January. Marjorie Taylor Green joins us now from her office on Capitol Hill. Congresswoman, welcome to the News Hour. Thanks for joining us. Hi, thank you for having me. Can we just begin with some of the news today, which, as you know, is President Trump kicking off what the White House says is going to be a series of events

talking about affordability. I know you broke with the president, side of the Democrats on this issue, specifically as it relates to health care costs during the shutdown. But I have to ask, You've seen the polling. You've seen how Americans are looking at this. Do you think the president has lost the Americans' trust on this core issue of affordability? Well, this is an issue. Actually, I've been talking about for months and months. Americans truly suffered under the past four years where we saw inflation skyrocket to 40-year highs in 2022.

And while inflation has steadied, prices have not really come down except in a few key areas. But unfortunately, over the past year, we've seen the president in the White House as a whole focus tremendously on foreign policy. My stance, of course, and many others is no more foreign wars. That means that we don't have to participate or fund them. But we haven't seen a strong focus on America's economy and affordability, just as you mentioned, just until recently, Now, I'm happy to see that turn and that focus put there, but I think, unfortunately, that should have been the focus the entire time. We've seen President Trump also previously dismissed concerns about affordability as a Democratic hoax. You think that was a mistake?

Yes, I do. Affordability or the lack of ability of Americans to afford the costs of living is not a Democrat hoax. You know, credit card debt is at an all-time high right now. And there's many other problems than the economy. It just hasn't quite stabilized yet. You've also broken with President Trump when it comes to backing an effort to release the full Epstein files. And I know you've said in the past, too, the survivors have come to you and offered to provide you a list of the perpetrators they've compiled so that you can read it on the House floor. You've only got a few days left in Congress. So are you going to do that before you leave?

Well, just to be clear, they have not given me that list of names. So that's a list that they still hold. And I can tell you firsthand, I can understand the fear that these women have to release that list of names. And they are the only ones that can choose to do so. So if they were to give me that list of names, I certainly would be willing to do it before I left. When you came out to back the release of those files, you said that President Trump told you that people will get hurt. if those files are released. I have to ask, what did you take that to mean? Was the president talking about himself? I really don't know what that means, and I can't comprehend it. So just going by what

the women themselves have told me, and I've met with them several times, as they said that Donald Trump had done nothing wrong, their attorney said that he was the only one that helped them years ago with Jeffrey Epstein and lawsuits and convictions. So it's, again, based on their words, it doesn't sound like Donald Trump is guilty of harming them in any way. So if I may, if that's the case, who do you think the president is worried about here? Well, if he says people will get hurt, I don't think it's the women. I think it's maybe the men that they're talking about, that they're scared to say who they are. Maybe those names are in the files.

And we don't know because all the files have not come out yet. Now, Congresswoman, I have to ask you, as you've pointed out, you were a staunch vocal MAGA loyalist for the president, voting with him 98% of the time. And it went very quickly to you, breaking with him publicly and deciding to leave Congress within just a matter of months. And earlier this year, you know, you were calling him my favorite president of all time. Meanwhile, he's called you a lunatic, a traitor after your recent 60 Minutes interview. He said your views are, quote, those of a very dumb person. Is he still your favorite president of all the time? time? Well, I think the president words are unfortunate, but this is the behavior that unfortunately America is used to seeing from Donald Trump. And when I've talked a lot about how politics have become so toxic and it's violent. You know, my office has reported 773 death threats since I've been in Congress, and that isn't, that's not all of them. There were many more. And after the president unfortunately called me a traitor, even though I have been his most loyal member of Congress and have such a strong voting record with him. I also have legislation that directly

reflects many of his executive orders. You know, the result of that was a pipe bomb threat on my house, a pipe bomb threat on my construction company, multiple pizza doxine deliveries, and a direct death threat, multiple direct death threats on my own son. And this is the type of the nature of toxic politics that I think America is so tired of. But it shows, it really shows there's a problem in the Republican Party. When the leader of the Republican Party, the president of the United States, would actually attack one of his own members that has been so good to him. I very much support America First policies, which the president campaigned on. I would love to see him be successful in those for the American people, but I just can't allow

myself to be what I call a battered wife and be treated this way. It's just too much. It's too high of a bar, and I shouldn't have to wait here until I'm possibly murdered like Charlie Kirk or, God forbid, one of my kids be much. murdered as well. And Congresswoman, it's so disturbing to hear what you've been facing recently as a result, as you point out, directly of the president's own words. But as you all know, the president has long really focused much of his anger and ire on Democrats, on officials, on lawmakers, but also everyday civilians. I mean, election workers in your own state of Georgia

face those kinds of threats from the president. Do you now, knowing what you know now, having experienced what you've experienced, do you wish you'd spoken out earlier about some of that rhetoric that you're clearly worried can lead to real world violence? Yeah, this is actually something I've been talking about recently. You know, I've been here five years and have seen it up closely, not just from my perspective. I've watched many of my colleagues go through political violence. We've seen it across the country. We saw the president shot at a rally. We saw Charlie Kirk assassinated, Josh Shapiro's home. You know, know, arson burned, the Minnesota lawmakers, and the list goes on and on. And this is not

what it should be like for any lawmaker on either side of the aisle. But there's a the, it's, I call it the political industrial complex. It's the way the two parties are built and they're designed to attack one another. And that's how fundraising happens. That's how people get elected. It's literally ripping our country apart. And I don't think that's a good thing. So it's just something I don't want to participate in. But Congresswoman, I have to ask, people will wonder if you felt this way before, the fact that you didn't speak out against it until you experienced it yourself, they'll wonder why not? No, I actually had. I'm on record many times denouncing political violence when I had seen it on both sides. So I am on record denouncing it. Can I ask?

You mentioned this political, industrial complex. Obviously, these systems are made up of people, right? People who are acting and saying things in different ways. And I know our audience would welcome the chance to hear from you on this because they want to see that end to that political toxicity as well you've talked about. They've also seen headlines in which you yourself have been yelling at President Biden calling him a liar during the state of the union or saying your Democratic colleagues at a congressional hearing was messing up her reading because. of fake eyelashes or tweeting after Pope Francis died that evil is being defeated by the hand of God. So I want to give you a chance to speak directly to our viewers and just reflect back on

anything you have said in your time in office that you wish you hadn't, something you wish you hadn't done. Well, I've already addressed that and I've done that publicly. And I think the problem with the political industrial complex is I'm not only have I been a part of it, but I've also been a victim of it. I'll give you an example that has been outlandish. People accused me of being the January 5th pipe bomber. For a very long time, they made videos. It was posted all over Twitter. It was Twitter at the time. I've also been used by Democrats and many of their campaigns and fundraising emails demonized so that they could raise money off of me. And so I've been a victim of it as well. As a matter of fact, all of us have. So this is something that I've

definitely already addressed. Forgive me if I've missed it. Do I take that to mean that you do regret yelling out during the state of the union calling President Biden the liar? So just so you know, I've already addressed that. I think it was on Dana Bash's show on CNN. I've already also addressed that back in 2021. And so it's just important to understand that this is something that I have definitely already addressed. I just want to be clear. Congresswoman. That is to say that's, is that a yes I'm hearing from you? Yes, it's already been addressed. And a technical note, we lost Congresswoman Green's video feed during the interview and were unable to reconnect. But we thank her for joining us.

to dominate artificial intelligence, President Trump yesterday announced he will allow NVIDIA to sell its H-200 computer chip that's an advanced chip used for developing AI to China. In a truth social post, the president said the sales would move forward under conditions that allow for continued strong national security and that the deal would support American jobs, strengthen U.S. manufacturing, and benefit American taxpayers. Under the arrangement, the U.S. government would receive a 25% cut of NVIDIA's sales to China. The decision marks a sharp reversal from the Biden administration, which had banned shipments of advanced AI chips to China, and from President Trump's own earlier stance when he followed a similar ban on national security grounds.

For perspective, we're joined now by Chris Miller, author of Chip War, the fight for the world's most critical technology. He's also a professor of international history at Tufts University. Thanks for being with us. Thank you for having me. So help our viewers understand why this is happening now. We know that NVIDIA's CEO, Jensen Wong, has aggressively lobbied to lift this ban. In your view, would actually change the president's position.

Well, I think the president was convinced that the sales of these ships would generate enough revenue, both for chip companies, but also for the U.S. government, that it was in the U.S. interest. I think there's also a belief in some quarters in Washington that if you sell more chips to China, you can dissuade them or prevent them from trying to build up their own chip ecosystems. And those were the two primary rationales for this flip-flop on export control policy. We'll lay out the core national security concerns here. I think there are two main categories of national security concern. First is that it's already the case that all of the world's leading militaries and

intelligence agencies are using AI for their own purposes. You already see drones powered by AI flying in the skies. between Russia and Ukraine, you already see intelligence agencies using AI to sift through information, and this is only going to continue. And so there's a strong reason to believe that whichever country has the best AI capabilities for its military will have the strongest military power. That's the first reason. The second is that it's clear we're entering a new era of technology that will be defined by companies that have the most advanced AI capabilities. And I think just like there was a huge geopolitical implication driven by the fact that the U.S. had the world's

largest tech firms, companies like Google and Facebook and the Internet era. Well, in the AI era, it's going to be the same. If it's U.S. firms that lead, the U.S. will gain a lot of leverage from that. If it's Chinese firms that lead will be at the whim of the Chinese government. And so shaping the future of the AI ecosystem is itself something that will have not only economic, but also, I think, really substantial geopolitical implications. Well, let's talk more about that, because this same day the Trump administration approved the sale of these H-200 chips to China, the Trump Justice Department announced that it had shut down what it called a tech smuggling network involving these exact same chips. And the Trump DOJ put out a statement, part of which

reads this way, these chips are the building blocks of AI superiority and are integral to modern military applications. The country that controls these chips will control AI technology. The country that controls AI technology will control the future. So, What does this apparent contradiction signal? Well, look, I think the Justice Department is right in describing the importance of these chips, which is why there's been a bipartisan consensus in both houses of Congress among not just the current administration, but also the prior administration to control the most advanced AI technologies. And the Trump administration itself has been divided internally about what the right policy approach is here.

And I think it's only after a whole lot of internal debate that the president, decided to reverse his prior decisions to actually tighten controls on these semiconductors. Supporters of what the president is doing here argue that the White House wants to ease trade frictions with Beijing. This is a key way to do that. They also say these H-200 chips are roughly 18 months behind Nvidia's most advanced offerings. Are either of those arguments persuasive in your view? Well, I think it's true that the chips under discussion are not the most advanced chips that U.S. firms can produce, but they're a lot more advanced than what China can access at scale today. The key dynamic is that China does not have substantial volumes of chip-making

capability at the cutting-edge level that AI requires. In a base case today, if you look at projections for next year, the U.S. plus its partners like Taiwan and Korea will produce over 95% of the world's AI chips. China's going to produce less than 5% of them. So China needs to import U.S. semi-conductors to keep its AI companies going. It needs our chips to train their most advanced models. And so, yes, it's true these aren't the most cutting edge, but they're better than China can get today. And so selling these chips will almost certainly enhance China's AI capabilities. The Commerce Department still has to finalize these rules. There's pushback from Democrats and Republicans on the Hill. Democrats to include Mark Warner, the top Democrat in the

Senate Intelligence Committee, he said in a statement today, unfortunately the Trump administration's haphazard and transactional approach to export policy demonstrates that it does not have any sort of coherent strategy for how we will compete with China, specifically as it relates to whose chips, tools, cloud infrastructure, and ecosystem will influence the most AI developers worldwide. How much power does Congress have to stop or reshape this? Of course, Republicans controlling both chambers. Well, Congress has thus far relegated export control policy to the executive branch. That's been a long-standing approach. But I think we have seen a number of initiatives in Congress from Republicans as well as from Democrats to take back some of that authority and

impose some legislative restrictions on chip exports as well. And so I'll be watching carefully whether these efforts in Congress pick up steam and they could be driven by the president's decision to loosen some of these controls. Chris Miller, thanks so much for sharing your perspectives with us. We appreciate it. Thank you. We're in the middle of that fraught period when high school students are finding out what colleges they've been accepted to and have to then decide which is the right one for me. About 60% of high school students are going through this process right now. William Brigham has more on this exciting and bewildering phase in American life and why some select schools may not necessarily be the right fit.

It's part of our series, Rethinking College. Anyone who is in the middle of this or has been through it recently knows exactly what we are talking about. The process of applying to college has likely never been more pressured, with college costs soaring, competition rising, and many schools mired in controversy or conflict with the Trump administration. Luckily, we have a recurrent guide to this anxious period. Jeff Selingo studies and writes about higher education, and he has a new book, Dream School,

finding the college that is right for you. Jeff, so good to have you back on the program. You urge families in this book to slow the process down, to start talking to kids even younger, like even 10th grade in high school, about what it is they really want out of higher education. Isn't that extending this stressful period? And what do you want parents to be talking to them about? Well, often, William, what I say in the book is that we often start the college process midstream. What do I mean by that?

We just start putting names on a list on a piece of paper. And where do we get those names from? Those are the names that we see on stickers on the back of car windows. Those are names that we hear in our community. In fact, I did a survey for the book of 3,000-plus parents. And I asked them, how important is prestige to you as a family, as a parent? And only 16 percent, prestige of the school. And only 16% said it was important to them.

27% said it was very important to their kids. But this is where it got interesting. 62% said it was important to people in their community. So we often look for those social clues about what is a good school without first in our sophomore and junior year. Just understanding what do we want? Do we want a big school, small school, big public, small, private. Do we want rural or urban?

And I often tell people within 100 miles of home, they could go visit every time. of college and university. Forget about the name, but just go and see what you really want out of the process first. What do you really want out of college before you start to put names on a piece of paper? You also urge parents to dial back certain things in their conversations.

Like, what do you want them to do in that regard? Well, so often what everything we're doing in high school is about getting into college. Often, as I've been talking about this book, I would have parents or students coming up to me and saying, well, do I need to take one more AP class? Do I need to become captain of yet another team? Do I need to join another club?

What else do I need to do to get into X college? And what I often ask them, I turn the question around and I say, what do you want to do? Because what's going to happen is at some point your application is going to land at one of these super selective colleges. They're going to open it up. They're going to read it in seven or nine minutes. And then they're going to make a decision. And they have way many more qualified applicants than they have seats. And that decision will come back to you and hopefully it will be good, but it might be a denial.

And often what I hear from students is when they get denied, what did I do all that for? Meaning what they did in high school was to get into college. And we really should return high school to what it was meant to be. A moment of exploration, right? The teenage brain is developing so quickly. It should be a moment of exploration and fun, not about another hoop to jump through to get into college. But you're swimming against such, I mean, I know you know this on your book tour. You must be seeing this everywhere you go.

Yeah, people basically nod politely. And they go on and do the same thing over again. There's so much of this talk about getting into the right school, the perfect school that's going to get you the right network onto the best job. And you think a lot of those assumptions are wrong or misleading. Like, explain a bit more about that. The book is not to say don't apply to the top colleges, right? But most of the top colleges, their application numbers have tripled in the last 20 years. and the size of their freshman class has stayed the same.

So even if you're highly qualified, you're more likely to get a denial. And so you need a plan B. And often that plan B could be just as good as those selective colleges, especially when it comes to the job market. You know, we found not only in the research that's done by David Deming at Harvard University, but also in our own research that we did, that graduates of these colleges are ending up at great companies. They're ending up in the Fortune 500 from lower-ranked school.

just as often as those at higher-ranked schools. So I often tell parents and students as they're touring campuses, talk to professors, talk to the career center, ask them where last year's graduates have gone on in your major. Where have they gone on to work? Where have undergraduates gone on to intern? That tells you a lot more about the quality of where those students are going to end up than any ranking of a college.

No, there is also this new overlay in higher education, and that is the conflict that higher ed is having with the Trump administration. Allegations that schools have overlooked anti-Semitism, pulling back research funds at a lot of these schools, how do you counsel parents and students to navigate those waters? You know, I think it's really hard because you're making a decision on a college or university for the next four years. It's very much like I get a lot of questions right now from parents

about which are my kid major in. I was told three or four years ago computer science was the future, And now we know because of AI, it may not be the future necessarily, or at least in a big way. And so I think if we're making decisions on short-term things like what's happening right now with the Trump administration or what's happening with AI majors, I think it's too short-sighted. I think we should be making decisions on the long-term and what we want to pursue long-term on what we think this college will be for the long-term. I think we should pay attention to what's happening, but I think there's a lot of noise. and the signal really is a longer-term play when it comes to higher education. It's not just something that you're going to do for four years.

It seems like it's also getting back to that essential age-old question about the purpose of education. Are you here to get a job in four years, or are you here to learn and become a critical thinker and hone your talents and skills or your art or whatever? And it's more important than ever with AI, right? When you think of how do you complement technology rather than compete with it, it is those age-old things that we all. always knew that college provides, the opportunity to think critically, to problem solve, to actually just get things done, to work in teams, to read and communicate. All of those skills are going to be even more important, I believe, in an AI-driven world.

The book is Dream School, Finding the College that is Right for You. Jeffrey Slingo, always great to see you. Thank you. It was great to be here. Thank you. While President Trump's targeted immigration sweeps in cities like New Orleans and Minneapolis have drawn national attention, the reach of his administration's policies extends far beyond those headlines. Lisa Desjardin spoke with one man caught up in what authorities call the Portland sweep, now entering its eighth week. A 55-year-old construction worker, Victor Cruz, was detained by immigration and customs enforcement on his way home from work in Hillsborough, Oregon. eyewitness video posted on social media shows ICE agents and civilian clothes pulling him over and

arresting him. The grandfather of two entered the country illegally 26 years ago. He has a construction business and a work permit. Victor was detained in Tacoma, Washington for three weeks. Victor joins us now with his lawyer, Julia Breaker. Thank you to you both. You were on your way back from work when you were detained. Tell us what happened. As soon as I saw them stop behind me, I knew that it was ice. They asked for my name. As soon as I get off from my car, I told them that I have a permit to war legally here.

And one of the officers wanted me to show the ID. He told me, this means nothing to us. For us, you are still an illegal. And they just coughed me and shame me. around my waist, my ankles, and they put me in their vehicle. When you got in the vehicle, it seemed they were looking for someone else. What did you hear? One of the officers have a picture of the man that they were looking for,

and they were talking, just each other asking if it was me, if it was the person that they were looking for. I was scared, terrified, and I was just thinking about my family. I didn't know at that time if they knew that I was arrested or not. So it was a terrifying moment. As soon as they arrest me and we got into an immigration facility in Portland, Oregon, They ruined my, my fingerprints, and still they didn't found anything. And at the other officer, you just told me, well, since you are here, we must take you to Tacoma.

You were detained for three weeks. There are a lot of questions about how the Trump administration's handling detention. What was your experience? They put us in this sale with AC. It was really cold and the room was, it's made out of concrete. The benches are of concrete. In the cell that I put in in the beginning, it was 80 of us. And the food also is not good.

It was a lot of hours between one meal to another's. Julia, you and another attorney were able to get him out of detention. What is his status right now? Mr. Cruz has what's called deferred action status, which means that the Department of Homeland Security has looked at his application and decided that they're going to defer any removal or deportation on his case while his case is pending. But he was still detained despite having that status? That's correct. Is that lawful, in your opinion? No.

because when the Department of Homeland Security makes such a determination, it goes in complete contradiction for it to then detain that person and put them into deportation proceedings. We did reach out to the Department of Homeland Security, and here's what a spokesman told us about this case in particular. She said no one was arrested by mistake. ICE will continue to arrest illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country. Work authorization does not confer any legal status in this country. country. How do you respond to that statement from Homeland Security? I think this statement by Homeland Security is an attempt to obfuscate the fact that Mr. Cruz's rights were violated

in the process of this arrest. It simply doesn't make sense that the Department of Homeland Security would both grant him a status that explicitly says that he won't be removed and at the same time put him into removal proceedings. Victor, I want to ask you, there is a fierce debate, of course, about immigration in this country right now, as you well know. Some people argue that you broke the rules

when you entered this country. You did it illegally and that you should be forced to leave. What do you say to those people? I don't know if people can say that it was a crime that I crossed the border without any proper documents, but I can tell to them that they are getting the wrong people

in the sale that I was in, like I said, it was about 80 people, and 90% of those people that were in there had no records at all. You now have ankle monitoring, your work permit, you were not given that back. What has this time meant for you and your family? I'm not able to go to work, and it is awful because I'm the main provider for my family. So it is kind of a scare, knowing that. The bills and the rain are not going to wait for us. My wife and I are very scared to even go outside to the store

because there is still a lot of ice activity around these neighborhoods. We also discuss about what we're going to do in the case that I get detained again. It is sad that all this is being happening, but I told my wife and kids that if anything happened to me again, I just don't want to leave the same nightmare again. I will just sign my deportation right away because I don't want to go through this again. Sorry. It was so hard on, not only on me, on myself, but on my family. They don't think that they can go through the same situation again.

That's a discussion no family wants to have. Thank you. Yeah, I'm so proud of them. Julia Breaker and Victor Cruz, thank you. much for talking with us. Thank you for having me. Well, it's that time of year when PBS News Hour invites two of our regular literary critics to highlight their favorite books of the year. Jeffrey Brown picks up that conversation for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

2020 was another year of great releases across an array of genres. For a look at which books you should be reading and gifting this holiday season, we're joined by two of our favorite readers and recommenders. Maureen Corrigan, a professor at Georgetown University, and book critic for NPR's Fresh Air. And acclaimed author Anne Patchett, who's also the owner of Parnasse's books in Nashville, where she joins us. Nice to see both of you again.

So let's start with fiction, as we often do. And Patchett, I'm going to start with you and give you two picks. Okay, I'm only going to take one of the two picks because my other pick is going to be my best book of the year. This is very close to my best book of the year. This is the loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Karen Desai. It was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is a sweeping epic about two young people who are both from the same small town in India. they are living in the states.

And when they're in the states, they feel too Indian. And when they go home to India, they feel too American. And this is the story of how they slowly wind their way to one another and maybe cure their loneliness. Kieran Desai is a brilliant, all-encompassing writer. And I love this book. Okay, and I love Aunt Patrick. She makes her own rules.

When I give her two, she takes one, and she'll take her other one later. Maureen, do you want to take two? My first pick is The Antidote by Karen Russell. Nobody does the old, weird America better than Karen Russell. This novel is bookended by two real events, an epic dust bowl storm and an epic flood in 1935 in Nebraska. And in the middle is our main character, a prairie witch called the antidote who holds people's memories that they otherwise can't contain.

My other one is by Lily King, Heart the Lover, and Lily King... Which is sort of a follow-up to an earlier one, right? It's a follow-up to writers and lovers, but Lily King is such a brilliant designer of narrative that you don't have to have read the first novel to really fall in love with this one. It's about a love triangle at a college campus in the 1980s, and it follows our main character, a woman nicknamed Jordan, as she tries to pull her life together in the decades afterwards.

All right, let's move to nonfiction. Ann Patchett, you can start this one again. Erin D'Ate Roy, Mother Mary, comes to me. Erin D'Ate Roy burst into the literary scene in 1996 with her international best-selling Booker Prize winning the God of Small Things, which sold over 6 million copies. This is the story about her relationship

with her brilliant and difficult. called Mother Mary Roy, but that's really only about 15% of the book. The rest of it is about Erindate Roy's life. She was an architect. She was an actress. She was a screenwriter. But more than anything, she was a political activist. But let me throw in one small book that I also love that just came out. And this is called A Long Game Notes on Fiction Writing by Elizabeth McCracken. There are so many people on your holiday list who want to be writers, and she has wonderful, wonderful, tough love, direct, and very funny advice on how to be the writer you want to be. All right, Maureen, too in the nonfiction category. Yeah. Last scene by Judith Geeseberg. Judith Geeseberg is a historian. In 2017, with a lot of her research grad students, she could.

constructed a website, the last-seen website, that gathered together every ad they could find placed by formerly enslaved people looking for their family members who were sold away. This book focuses on 10 of those ads. It really deepens our understanding of the lived experience of slavery. So that's one. And then switching gears, Patty Smith's Bread of Angels. Oh, her latest memoir. Her latest memoir in this year, which celebrates the 50, anniversary of her landmark album horses. Patty Smith is such an American original, and her prose is both filled with poetry, but also this rough authenticity, and I love her. As do many. Yes, yes. All right, now, Anne, I've been to your great bookstore in Nashville. I know you have a

wonderful children's book section, so this one's just for you. All right, let's start off with my favorite picture book this year if we were dogs by Sophie Blackall. This is about two people who are having a conversation, hey, what would we be like if we were dogs? What would our relationship be like? This is the answer. It turns out one of the people that doesn't want to be a dog. We cannot keep this book in the store. And not only do parents love reading it to children, the children are going crazy for this book. So Sophie Blackall, writer and illustrator. And then, coincidentally, Sophie Blackall is also the illustrator for the Norendi series. These are three very tiny little books by Kate D. Camillo, three very short novels put together in a boxed set.

They are a little bit fairy tale, very imaginative, very beautiful. They all have a full arc. All right, Maureen, I've got a special category for you. We're going to call this surprise or a hidden gem. Something that took you unawares. Gertrude Stein and afterlife. I didn't think there was a lot left to learn about Gertrude Stein. This is a new biography.

A new biography. Somehow Gertrude Stein inspires, I think, almost an obsessive investigatory zeal in her biographers. And I read this at night before I went to sleep, like a detective novel. it goes deep into Stein's life in Paris and, of course, her relationship with Alice B. Toklis, but also the afterlife, how her reputation has been constructed, reconstructed. It's fascinating.

And, Anne, your favorite book of the year that you could not live without? Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. This is just such a terrific novel. It goes from the First World War through Vietnam, showing the effects of war and love, war and peace, shall we say, on a small Ohio town. This is a book that women will love, that men will love, that, you know, if you have someone on your list who says, oh, I only read nonfiction, they still will love this

book. It really meets everyone's needs, and everyone who comes to this store has loved it. All right, Maureen Corrigan, a favorite. Oh, gosh, don't make me. I am making you. The antidote. I would come back to Karen Russell. That's the book I'm going to keep thinking about long after Christmas and the holidays and everything. It's an amazing book.

All right. As always, you both have given us a great list. Maureen and Patchett. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Before we go, we want to invite you to join us tomorrow morning. Dima Zane and science correspondent Miles O'Brien host a special live stream on all things science.

Hey, Miles, are you on your way? Are you ready? I'm wrapping up a few loose ends, Dima, but I am on my way. Are they ready? Are you all ready for this? Hope you are, because we are going live for a special, tipping point event, December 10th at 11 a.m. It's all about science. It's about communicating science. We have some of the greatest influencers out there, scientists, academics, and people who are just good at explaining things to talk about how to explain this complicated world of science, the environment, and climate in the digital era. I'm excited about it. Yep. Learn how to spot

misleading AI online. Get tips on how to fight science misinformation. See how legacy media is taking bold steps into the digital space and so much more. And this conversation is all driven by... You! It's an AMA! The mother of all AMAs! This is going to be amazing. For more than three hours, awesome guests, we'll be answering your questions on Reddit. And it will all be live right here from our digital studio.

I'm really looking forward to being there and working with you, and I really hope everybody takes a few moments to participate because we can't do it without them. We'll see you soon. We'll see you soon. And you can watch and take part in our AMA. That's our Ask Me Anything session. You can do that on our website, pbs.org slash news hour.

And that is the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Amna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS News Hour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us. We'll see you tomorrow morning.