PBS News Hour - Full Show - February 4, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Wednesday on the News Hour, the expiration of a nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia makes the future even more uncertain for the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. Federal agents' use of surveillance tools to track immigrants and protesters raises questions about civil liberties. Plus, a look at Stephen Miller's rise to prominence and influence on the Trump administration. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. I'm the Navas is away. On the news hour tonight, the expiration of a nuclear arms treaty between the U.S. and Russia makes the future even more uncertain for the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. Federal agents' use of surveillance tools to track immigrants and protesters raises questions about civil liberties. And we look at the influence of presidential advisor Stephen Miller on Trump administration policies and how he rose to his position of prominence. Cultural issues can kind of catapult someone like Stephen Miller from the fringes to the center of a conversation that's dominating the nation. Welcome to the News Hour. For the first time in more than a half century, there are no limits on the world's two largest atomic arsenals. The sole remaining nuclear arms treaty in the world, known as New Start, is expiring. And arms control advocates fear a new arms race. Nick Schiffrin starts our coverage. They're the world's deadliest weapons, able to obliterate entire cities.

And when mounted on missiles, can fly thousands of miles in minutes. And for the last 15 years, the deployment of Russian and American long-range nuclear weapons has been restricted. Today is an important milestone for nuclear security and nonproliferation. It was 2010 when President Barack Obama and then Russian President Dmitri Medvedev signed a new strategic arms reduction treaty. It limited the U.S. and Russia to 700 deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles on land, at sea, and on heavy bombers.

And it limited to 1,550 the number of deployed nuclear warheads. It also included extensive verification measures, such as movement notifications, data exchanges and on-site inspections, although the inspections stopped during COVID and never resumed. That the New START treaty is in the national security interests of the United States. In 2021, U.S. and Russia agreed to extend the treaty for another five years until today. Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to extend it further into next year. In the past, the New START treaty worked. It worked well, fulfilling its fundamental role as a constraint, curbing the arms race and controlling weapons.

But today in Washington, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said New START was no longer fit for purpose. In order to have true arms control in the 21st century, it's impossible to do something that doesn't include China because of their vast and rapidly growing stockpile. For years, China's stockpile has been a fraction of the U.S. and Russian stockpile, what Beijing has long labeled a minimum level required for national security. But the Department of Defense says by 2030, Beijing will have more than a thousand warheads, including lower yield, tactical nuclear weapons. But regardless of adversaries' arsenals, for decades the U.S.'s nuclear deterrence works

thanks to trust that the U.S. will provide allies a nuclear umbrella. But some allies are losing the faith. I think one of the direct consequences of the recent diplomatic noise is that that credibility just isn't there right now. Yonest Kibsgaard is a lieutenant colonel at the Norwegian Armed Forces Command and a professor at the Staff College. He says the U.S. can no longer be trusted to use nuclear weapons to protect Europe and is urging a Nordic nuke, allowing the U.S. to focus on China.

It's crucial that America actually focuses on Southeast Asia. And that means that European allies need to finally step up and actually complete their defenses. Back on New Start, there is a debate over whether the U.S. should extend or walk away from the treaty. So for that debate, we get two perspectives. Rose Gottmiller was the chief U.S. negotiator for the New START Agreement during the Obama administration and is now distinguished lecturer at Stanford University. And Frank Miller had a 30-year career in government focusing on nuclear weapons and national security. He's now a principal at the Skokcroft Group, an international consulting firm.

Thanks very much to you both. Welcome back to the News Hour. Rose Gottmeller, let me start with you. You think the U.S. should continue to abide by the limits in New START. Why? I think that the limits of the New START Treaty are important because they keep not only the United States under limits, but they keep the Russians under limits at a time when the Russians could move rather quickly to upload warheads and put more warheads on each of their missiles.

And therefore, I think, outrun us in this period when we are looking at, China building up, as Secretary Rubio quite rightly said, they are building up quickly. So it's, to my mind, a no-brainer to keep the Russians under limits as we ponder and plan and prepare to confront the Chinese on this matter. Frank Miller, is it a no-brainer to extend the treaty for one year? Absolutely. No, absolutely not. Paradoxically, getting rid of the treaty makes us stronger, makes the world more peaceful. The treaty capped U.S. force levels, deterrence force levels, at the 2010-2011 levels. The world is vastly different. We now face an antagonistic Russia and a growing antagonistic China. And so if we are kept at deterrence levels that are inadequate to deter Russia

and China simultaneously, which is a conclusion that a commission that Rose and I both served on in 23, then by signaling that we're not prepared to keep our deterrent at current levels, we suggest to the Russians and the Chinese that we are bluffing, not that we have a real deterrent. Rose Gutter Miller, does the caps limit our ability to deter? Well, Frank and I differ on this quite clearly, and he's a greatly respected colleague, but I will say that it's a question of how fast do we have to move right now. President Putin was talking about extending the limits of new start for one year in order to prepare for new negotiations and strategic stability talks.

I don't think anybody denies, certainly I do not, that we have a very severe development here with China building up its nuclear forces all of a sudden. And so we need to plan and prepare carefully at this moment for what we do about China. But what concerns me is the immediate tactical move that the Russians might make. They are prepared to put more warheads on their missiles. That was also a finding of the Strategic Posture Commission that Frank and I served on. and it concerns me that the commission report said, as soon as Russia is released from new start limits, it may start to build up and put more warheads on its missiles immediately. So Frank Miller, would Russia do that if the caps are lifted?

Russia could do that. And to be perfectly honest, that doesn't bother me one bit. What bothers me is that the United States doesn't have a deterrent force adequate to deter China and Russia simultaneously. And if the Russians want to make the rubble back, that's up to them. But we can build up slowly. Nothing's going to happen overnight. We're talking about taking warheads out of storage and putting them on existing submarines, on an existing land-based missiles. This is a process that will take several years to do. So there will be nothing sudden. And we could always engage during those years in new arms control negotiations with the Russians and perhaps the Chinese. But this treaty has run its course.

Rosamont Goddramiller, what's wrong with taking more warheads out of storage? Well, there's nothing wrong with it, and in fact, we are planning and preparing to do so. But Frank said very clearly this is going to take a couple of years to do. So why would we take a chance in this coming year as we're preparing and planning for new talks with both China and I stress Russia? Why not take a little time with an insurance policy in place, the new START treaty limits, to plan and prepare and prevent the Russians from some. suddenly starting to build up. Whether or not they're making the rubble bounce,

one could say we're making the rubble bounce if we're building up also. But I think it's important to bear in mind, this is not a question of disagreement between Frank and me. We need to counter both of these powers, these nuclear powers. It's can we take a year to plan and prepare and do it carefully when we know it's going to take us some time to begin to upload our missiles anyway, to put more warheads on our missiles anyway?

Frank Miller, I saw you shaking your head during that answer. But my counter to my friend Rose is that we've taken two years. The report from the commission came out in 23, the Biden administration embraced the report's conclusions in 24. We've given the Russians time. It's now incumbent upon us to begin to take our deterrent to the levels. And we're not talking large numbers of organs, but to slowly build up our force so that it can deter Russia and China simultaneously as U.S. policy stresses. if we can deter simultaneously, the risk of their aggression, their attack on us or our allies, is dramatically reduced. In the two minutes that I have left, can I bring us back to the argument you heard from the Norwegian colonel in our story? And Frank Miller, let me actually start with you. Is it a good idea for U.S. allies who are doubting U.S. nuclear credibility today to

consider their own nuclear weapons? No. Nuclear proliferation is not a good thing. I don't know the colonel. He's clearly very young. The fact is, from the beginnings of NATO in 1949, allies have always questioned, would the U.S. come to their aid in extremists? We have done so for 80-odd years. We have deterred attack against the NATO alliance. And so people are going to have to put their faith in the United States, just as their fathers and grandfathers did. But Rose Goddermeller, there is clearly some European doubt, some European

loss of faith, if you will, in the U.S. nuclear guarantee. Do you believe that Europe or frankly even Asian allies today should doubt the U.S. nuclear guarantee? This is one thing that Frank and I do agree squarely on that the notion of friendly deterrence is not going to, I'm sorry, friendly proliferation rather. We need friendly deterrence, right? But friendly proliferation will not serve us well, because for one thing, the NATO-European allies as well as our Asian allies need to concentrate on conventional force build-up and conventional force modernization. These nuclear programs are vastly expensive and cost a grave amount, and these countries have other things to spend their resources on. Well, it's always nice to it. And possibly have them within 10 years.

Yeah, within 10 years, absolutely. It's always nice to end with an agreement. So Rose Goddour Miller and Frank Miller, thank you very much to you both. Thanks for having. Thank you. In the day's other headlines, the U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the state of California to use a newly drawn congressional map that favors Democrats in this year's midterm elections. The justices today rejected a request by California Republicans to override an appeals court's approval of the map, which could help Democrats flip five seats.

It comes about two months after the court cleared the way for Texas to use a map aimed at helping Republicans pick up five seats of their own. That map was pushed by President Trump and helped kickstart a nationwide battle over redistricting. Officials in Fulton County, Georgia are challenging the FBI seizure of ballots and other documents related to the 2020 election. In a filing today, they said they're seeking the return of the materials that were taken during a raid last week at the warehouse where the records were stored. County Chairman Rob Pitts, a Democrat said, quote, this case is not only about Fulton County. This is about elections across Georgia and across the nation. Mr. Trump has long falsely claimed that the 2020

election was rigged. Just this week, he called for Republican officials to take over voting and nationalize U.S. elections. In Gaza, several Israeli strikes today killed at least 21 people, including two infants. Health officials say that among the dead was a medic in Kan Yunus who rushed to help two victims when he was hit. In a separate attack, Israeli troops fired at a residential building in North Gaza. Israel says the strikes were in response to a soldier being injured by militant fire, which it sees as a violation of its ceasefire agreement with Hamas. A relative of those killed said many of the victims in one attack were from the same family. We can't comprehend why this is happening to us. Our relative, his wife, had given birth.

The baby girl who was six or seven days old was martyred. They were all killed. What can we do? Where can we go? We don't know what to do. This isn't a life. Also today, Palestinian officials said that medical evacuations at the Rafa border crossing were halted. Israel insists that the border remains open and that any delays were due to a lack of coordination with the relevant agencies. A top Ukrainian official says that talks today in Abu Dhabi with Russian officials were, in his words, substantive and productive. The negotiations are aimed at ending the nearly four-year war and are being broken. by the U.S., with Envoy Steve Whitkoff and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, attending. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that the doors for a peaceful settlement are open,

but added that Russia will continue its military campaign. Russian attacks today killed at least nine people across Ukraine and wounded more than a dozen others. Separately, President Zelensky told a French broadcaster today that an estimated 55,000 Ukrainian soldiers have now died in battle. There's been more fallout from the recent release of millions of documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Starting overseas, the British government said today it'll release documents related to Peter Mandelson, who was appointed as ambassador to the U.S. despite his ties to Epstein. Bill Gates said today he regrets every minute he spent with Epstein after an email alleged

that Gates was having an extramarital affair, which he denies. This all comes after lawyers for Epstein's victims reached. a deal with the Justice Department to protect the identities of nearly 100 women who were reportedly affected by the release of the documents. The man who tried to assassinate President Trump at his Florida golf course has been sentenced to life in prison. In court today, Ryan Ruth also received a seven-year sentence for a firearm offense. Federal prosecutors had been seeking life, saying his crime was unacceptable in this country

or anywhere. In 2024, a Secret Service agent spotted Ruth with a right-of-one. aimed at then candidate Trump. He was taken into custody without his ever firing a shot. Today's sentencing caps off a chaotic trial in September. Ruth tried to stab himself with a pen after the jury found him guilty on all counts. Former Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton has died. The Democrat served 34 years in the House, where he led the powerful House Foreign Affairs

and Intelligence Committees. He also served on the congressional probe of the Iran-Contra scandal, and later in life, served as vice chair of the 9-11 Commission on the government's failures to prevent the attacks. He made a number of appearances on this program where he spoke about the complexity of foreign policy. You have to use other tools of power. And that can be covert action. It can be diplomacy. It can be political steps, economic leverage, all kinds of things. His counsel was sought by Democratic presidents, including Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. In 2015, then-President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Lee Hamilton was 94 years old. On Wall Street today, stocks ended mixed amid ongoing weakness in tech shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 260 points on the day. The NASDAQ lost ground, falling around 350 points. The S&P 500 also ended in the red. And a Doberman pincher named Penny is the latest winner of the most persistent. prestigious prize in the U.S. dog show world. For Best and Show at the 150th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show is the Doberman Pinchie.

The fan favorite at the Westminster Dog Show in New York beat out 2,500 other dogs spanning more than 200 breeds. Penny becomes the fifth Doberman to win top honors. Runner up and receiving just as many cheers was a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Koda. Still to come on the news hour, hundreds of people are laid off at the Washington Post. We speak with its former editor, Marty Barron. We report from Antarctica as researchers there face serious obstacles to measuring the continent's fastest melting glacier. And renowned dancer and educator, Alicia Graf Mack, discusses her new position leading the legendary Alvin Ailey Dance Company.

This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. President Trump's borders are Tom Hohm. announced today that roughly 700 immigration officers will be withdrawn from Minnesota after what he described as unprecedented cooperation from local law enforcement. But about 2,000 agents are still expected to remain on the ground for what he described as targeted operations. During an interview with NBC News today, President Trump was asked why he directed Homan to withdraw some of the officers and what he had learned from Minneapolis. I learned that maybe we're not. Maybe we're not.

We can use a little bit of a softer touch, but you still have to be tough. These are criminals. We're dealing with really hard criminals. In Minneapolis and elsewhere, there continue to be real concerns about ICE's tactics. William Brangham focuses on that part of the story. That's right, Jeff. Holman's announcement comes amid ongoing intense protests about the use of force by ICE agents and the fatal shootings by them of Renee Good and Alex Pretty.

But there's a whole other set of tactics. that immigration officials are using to track suspects and protesters. This growing surveillance arsenal includes facial detection apps and databases, cell phone trackers, and drones. For more on how this technology is being deployed on U.S. streets,

we are joined by Joseph Cox of 404 Media. Joseph, thank you so much for being here. You have been covering all these different technologies that ICE agents are using and how they're able to scoop up information about people, without them really knowing what they are doing. Let's talk about some of those technologies.

One of them is called Webblock. Explain what that is, what it does. Yeah, so Weblock allows ICE to track the location of mobile phones without a warrant, crucially. Now, this data is not coming from the telecoms. It is not coming from AT&T or Verizon or T-Mobile. It is most likely coming from the advertising ecosystem behind ordinary apps on your mobile phone.

So Weblock allows ICE to draw a map around a particular neighbourhoods or a block or a general area and then see the location of all of the phones in that particular place that the tool has data on. They could follow it from that location to somewhere where the phone stays overnight. Presumably that's where the person is sleeping and maybe where they live. They can then follow it to their potential employer as well. And again, crucially, it allows ice to stay. to do this without a court order, without a subpoena. They're just buying access to the data itself.

So if they knew my name or they knew that I was a particular person of interest, they can just scoop up that publicly available data, commercially available data, and then use it to track me. They would most likely do it based on a location. So I do want to stress, we don't know exactly what ICE is using this for, but the tool has been marketed by the company that sells it to monitor things like the Black Lives Matter protests that we had several years ago. What ICE would probably do is draw a map, draw a circle around a particular location, see the phones there, and then if those people or devices

are of particular interest, they would then follow those and then figure out who that person might be. I see. Another one of these devices is called Paragon Solutions, which is a phone hacking tool. What does it do? I mean, Paragon sells some of the most powerful surveillance technology that law enforcement and intelligence agencies are able to purchase. It allows ICE or any government customer to remotely break into most likely fully up-to-date mobile phones. Now, this is an exceptionally powerful capability. It would allow ICE to read signal messages, for example, messages which are usually encrypted, or all sorts of other data on the mobile phone as well.

It's really extraordinary that they would have that ability. another one called Mobile Fortify is somewhat similar to what people might have seen at airports when they go to check in for their flights. What does that allow the government to do? So Mobile Fortify is ISIS and now Custom and Border Protection's facial recognition app. An ICE officer can point their mobile phone at any person inside the United States. It will then query a database of hundreds of millions of images and other government databases as well to verify whether this person has been given a deportation order, whether they're a citizen, bring up other personal information as well.

And we have seen both ICE and Customs and Border Protection using this tool on American streets, where instead of going up to somebody and asking for their passport or other identification document, perhaps they don't want to hand that over, the DHS officials will just use this app to scan their face. And crucially, ICE argues and believes, you cannot opt. out of this scanning. If ICE wishes to scan your face with Mobile Fortify, they believe that you must comply with that. Is any of this legal? I mean, anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Constitution knows there's a prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. I'm not a lawyer, but this certainly seems to fall right squarely in the middle of that. I think that's a really

interesting thing about a lot of these surveillance technologies, is that it is a legal gray area, or if anything, ICE might actually be acting legally as well. When it comes to web lock, the phone location data, they don't need a warrant because they're buying it from a commercial broker. They don't need to go to a court and get permission to do that. With the facial recognition stuff, mobile fortify, they don't need to do that either in their eyes because they already have all of that information. It is already querying all of these government databases.

Now, with the mobile phone spyware, yes, hopefully ICE would get a warrant before deploying that when the FBI has deployed hacking tools in the past, they have sought a warrant as well. But again, the exact contours and context which ICE is actually using that technology is really unclear. So frankly, we don't know if they've obtained a warrant to use that. How can people protect themselves from this? I mean, we're not trying to shield people from being able to escape criminal activity or repercussions for it. But if someone is legally protesting? Is there anything that they can do to try to hold off some of these more invasive searches? Yeah, I think that's the thing with Weblock especially, is that it's quite an

indiscriminate tool. This is not like it just includes the mobile phone data of criminal suspects. I would just say that people should probably be cautious and vigilant about the apps they install on their phone. If you install a video game, for example, and it asks for your location data, maybe take a minute and think, I don't know if that game really needs my location data. Because ultimately you don't really know where that information is being transmitted to. And it could end up in the hands of any other number of companies or potentially ICE as well. Joseph Cox of 404 Media. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Really appreciate it.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller is one of Washington's most polarizing power brokers. He's a chief architect of the administration's immigration crackdown, and his portfolio has expanded to include foreign policy as well. White House correspondent Liz Landers has this closer look. The U.S. military is repatriating illegal immigrants at a pace and a skill that has never occurred before in American history. One of the brains behind all of President Trump's second term policies, Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, Stephen Miller. To all ICE officers, you have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop you or tries to obstruct you is committing a felony. The 40-year-old hard-lined conservative grew up in Southern California and became politically active at a young age.

I do like that he's really good about voicing his opinions, but I don't like the way he does it. That's clear in this video made by his classmates at Santa Monica High School, which has excerpts from the speech Miller delivered while running for student government. Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors for faith that's doing full? Witnesses say those comments got him escorted off stage. Miller went on to Duke University, which was thrust into the national spotlight in 2006, when white members of the school's lacrosse team were accused of raping an exotic dancer who was black. You're a student, pretty much the only person will talk to us. What's going on?

Miller made multiple TV appearances defending the players. This was never about what happened to this particular woman, according to her testimony, nor was it ever about these The state's attorney general later dropped all charges against the players and the accuser eventually admitted to lying. He is appearing as essentially a spokesperson on major, major primetime shows. Ashley Parker is a writer at the Atlantic who has covered Miller. These cultural issues can kind of catapult someone like Stephen Miller from the fringes to the center of a conversation that's dominating the nation. Miller began his career in Washington working for influential Tea Party Republicans like former congresswoman, Michelle Bachman, and then Senator Jeff Sessions. As a top aide to Sessions, Miller helped craft messaging against a 2013 bipartisan immigration bill that would have created a path for millions of undocumented immigrants to gain legal status.

I believe the interest that needs to be protected is a national interest of the United States. Other Republicans lined up behind Sessions, and although the bill passed in the Senate, it eventually died in the House. A few years later, Donald Trump entered the political scene, voicing his hardline stance on immigration. The first senator to come on board and endorse Donald Trump was Jeff Sessions. And very shortly thereafter, Stephen Miller joins the Trump campaign. Miller soon began writing speeches for Trump with a heavy focus on immigration, including his acceptance speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland that summer. We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration.

Miller also delivered his own speeches on the campaign trail. Everybody who is trying to stop Donald J. Trump wants that border to stay wide open. They want illegal immigrants to continue pouring in. They do not want to protect the American people. What it really is is a pairing, a kind of natural, pairing of two like-minded individuals when it comes to immigration. This was not a place where Stephen Miller really had to pull Donald Trump to the right or to the extreme, but he did sort of provide an intellectual framework and policy understanding and philosophy of these views

that Trump sort of intuitive but might not have originally been able to articulate. Please raise your right hand. President Trump quickly put those words to action, once he entered the White House. And as a senior advisor to the president, Miller was one of the architects of some of his most controversial policies. And this is the protection of the nation from foreign terrorist entry into the United States.

That includes the executive order dubbed the Muslim travel ban. It barred foreign nation of seven predominantly Muslim countries from visiting the US and was an early signal of how Trump would assert executive authority. Our opponents, the media, and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned. It also included the administration's zero-tolerance immigration policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the border. Late today, President Trump signing an executive order that he says will keep families together.

Trump eventually ended that policy amid political pressure and the courts. halted and narrowed the travel ban. After President Trump's loss to Joe Biden in 2020, Miller echoed lies that the election was stolen. He described on TV that December the scheme to seat fake pro-Trump electors to overturn the results. So we have more than enough time to write the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certified Donald Trump as the winner of the election. Ashley Parker says Miller spent the time after Trump's 2020 loss, strategizing for a potential second term. He's learned things in the first term. He now understands, for instance, why the travel ban executive order he wrote in Trump's first term was kind of a disaster. It created chaos at the airports. There was a huge backlash in the country and it was struck down by the courts. He now understands how to craft that order in a way that will be far more effective in achieving their goals. And so he comes back with sort of a battle plan for what he will do. do and how he will do it if and when Trump retakes the White House.

No police officer. Trump tapped Miller to be his deputy chief of staff for policy when he returned to the White House. With Miller's oversight, the administration hit the ground running by issuing a flood of executive orders. Miller has continued to push his anti-immigration agenda. He came up with a strategy of using the Alien Enemies Act to quickly carry out deportations. Birthright citizenship is the biggest, costliest scam.

in financial history. And has been a vocal supporter of President Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship, which the Supreme Court is set to rule on this term. I think he's got a more expansive role now, right? Chad Wolf served as acting Homeland Security Secretary during Trump's first term and worked closely with Miller. He comes armed in this administration with a lot more experience than I would say than he did, you know, showing up in 2017. I think he understood immigration, but then the question is, how do you effectuate the policy within that executive branch within DHS and the Department of Justice and State Department.

I think he understands that a lot better today than he did then. And last month, Miller delivered the administration's early and forceful pushback after the deadly shooting of Alex Prettie by immigration agents in Minneapolis, calling the ICU nurse a would-be assassin before walking that back as videos of the incident circulated. Miller's role has expanded beyond immigration, playing a key role in foreign policy. from Venezuela to Greenland. You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.

Ashley Parker says it's all a sign that Stephen Miller's importance has only grown this term. In the first Trump administration, Stephen Miller was a senior advisor. He was incredibly powerful. he had the trust of the president. But this term, it is that on steroids. And it is hard to overstate just how broad Stephen Miller's purview is in Trump's second term and just how powerful and important he is. PBS NewsHour asked the White House for an interview with Miller for this report. They did not make him available. But White House press secretary, Caroline Levitt, sent this statement. Quote, Stephen Miller is one of President Trump's most trusted and longest serving aides.

president loves Stephen. Further evidence that as Miller's portfolio has grown inside the White House, so too has his influence with President Trump. Washington Post is laying off a third of its workforce across both the newsroom and its business operations, a massive blow at a storied newspaper that has struggled in recent years to stay profitable and retain subscribers. The cuts reportedly affect more than 300 of the approximately 800 journalists in the newsroom and include eliminating its sports desk and books section entirely. The Post's executive editor said the changes, though painful, were meant to, quote, reinvent the paper for a new era. For more on these cuts and their implications were joined now by Marty Barron,

who was the editor of the Washington Post from 2012 until 2021. Welcome back to the News Hour. Thanks for having me. You have described this as among the darkest days in the Post, history. What do these layoffs mean for the paper's mission and its ability to continue doing in-depth substantial reporting? Well, I think it's important to keep in mind just how widespread these cuts are, not only the sports desk, the books department, but pretty much the entire arts department, eviscerating the foreign staff, largely eviscerating the local staff as well. So these are huge, huge cuts. And they're going to be, they're going to be, they're going to to do enormous damage to the newspaper's ability to cover its community, to cover the country,

and to cover the world in all the ways that it should. The executive editor, Matt Murray, said today that the paper's structure was built for a different era and that refocusing on what he calls these core coverage areas like politics and national security will help the post better navigate technological change, shifting audience habits, cost pressures. Do you buy that argument? Well, Matt is doing a really good job as editor of The Post. The Post is doing extraordinary journalism every single day, and I commend them for that. I admire what they're doing. That said, they seem to have announced a new strategy just about once a year now, saying that it would better position themselves for the future, and none of those things have worked. I don't think what they're doing now helps position them for the future. It diminishes the brand. It diminishes the coverage. It offers less to their readers. They're going to have fewer subscribers as a result of this, probably not more. So I understand why Matt is saying that.

He has to say something positive about what's happening, but I don't think there's very much positive to say. You served as editor under Jeff Bezos back in 2013 when he purchased the paper and pledged long-term investment and support for the newsroom. What do you make of what appears to be a shift in both his relationship to the paper and his willingness to invest in its future? Well, he was great at the beginning. And for a long time, as a matter of fact, he set out a vision for the Post to be national and international as opposed to regional, which it was largely before.

He invested heavily in the Post. We innovated tremendously over the years. We grew tremendously as well, practically doubling the staff. And we were profitable for about six straight years. And so that was a lot of progress. He was proud of it. He spoke proudly of it. And so now we're seeing, you know, a diminished outlook.

And I think that he became sort of detached in about 2019 when his marriage broke up, when Amazon was struggling later in 2020, when the Amazon was struggling with the pandemic and all the aspects of that. And then I think he really became. took it real turn after it looked like Trump was going to be elected president yet again. And that was in 2024. And 11 days before the presidential election in 2024, they killed an editorial that was endorsing Kamala Harris. He said the paper wouldn't endorse ever again for president.

And hundreds of thousands of subscribers canceled at that time, aggravating the financial problems that they had. Subsequent to that, he did all sorts of things that made. things even worse, appearing at the inauguration on the stage with Donald Trump, buying the Melania so-called documentary for an exorbitant price, buying the right, Amazon buying the rights to the apprentice, and Amazon had bought the rights to the Melania's documentary as well, and then completely changing the opinion pages so that essentially they have no columnists who are really left of center. And they're very deferential to Trump. And I think they lack a moral immoral core. And so all of that has driven subscribers away. And so for every subscriber that they get

coming in through the front door because of the high quality news coverage, I think they're losing maybe two subscribers out the back door. Of course, I don't know the numbers exactly, but clearly they've been losing a lot of subscribers. Why does an institution like the Washington Post matter at this moment in particular? Look, I think it's the reason that every news, organization matters. It's an organization. I think the role of a news organization is to give the public the information it needs and deserves to know so that they can govern themselves. The Washington Post has a long history of that, and particularly of holding government to account, keeping a close eye on government. That happened, of course, during Watergate. I think we did that when I was

editor on the first round of the Trump's time in the White House, his first term. And the continue to do that today. I think they're doing a tremendous job of that. People need to know what's happening in their government. They need to know what's happening in the corridors of power, whether in government or in business or in nonprofits or wherever it might be. And they need to know what's happening around the world. So if you don't have reporters around the world, you're not going to know what's happening. And we need more than one news organization doing that. We need multiple news organizations doing that. So look, the press is built into our democracy. It's It is provided for in the First Amendment to the Constitution because the founders understood that you needed an institution that would keep watch on government.

And, you know, James Madison, who was the principal author of that amendment, talked about the need for freely examining public characters and measures. We are not stenographers and we should not be propagandist. And that is the role that the Washington Post has historically played, and that's the role that it should continue to play. Marty Barron. Thank you for your time this evening. We appreciate it. Thank you. Well, if you've been following Miles O'Brien's reports from Antarctica on our broadcast and online,

you know he's reporting on an international group of researchers trying to measure what's happening to one of the fastest melting glaciers there. And their work is trying to capture information in ways that have never been done before. Tonight he has an update on how all that turned out, part of our periodic series, Tipping Point. At long last, they got to the core of this far-flung mission. Hot water was sluicing through glacier ice like a knife through butter. A milestone moment at the most menacing glacier of all, Thwaites. It was a long, strange journey to get to this place and time. Eleven days on a Korean icebreaker from New Zealand to West Antarctica.

Ten days waiting for the clouds to lift, so the helicopters could too. And ten more setting up camp on the vast void. in the teeth of harsh Antarctic winds. Great. Probably. Researchers at the Korea Polar Research Institute, Kopri, partnered with the British Antarctic Survey, Bass. They wrote the book on this Blitzkrieg boring method.

Pete Davis is a physical oceanographer. We shovel for days, and then the wind, the wind was too strong. We had to delay. Partly it's uncomfortable for us, but also the windchew factor. It just makes everything freeze and free. is obviously all the worst enemy. This glacier is large enough to raise global sea levels two and a half feet. It is a river of ice flowing at a rate of 30 feet per day, ripping apart into chaotic riffs

strewn with ice boulders, melting tens of times faster than its neighbors. And this is the perfect spot to figure out why. It's on the grounding line where the glacier, the land, and the Amundsen Sea. meat 3,000 feet below. It was a little after 4 p.m. January 30th when they broke through the bottom of the ice. As they reeled in the hot water hose, Pete Davis showed me a mother load of scientific instruments ready for dunking. Devices that measure salinity, temperature, depth, current, and dissolved oxygen.

This is the take-home data. You know, if we get this down to the bottom of the ocean, even if we don't recover, cover it, we have a profile, and that is 100% more data that we've ever had from here before. On the other side of the tent, the mooring instruments designed to gather all those readings continuously for perhaps a year, transmitting the data in near real time. What we're trying to study here more to do with kind of processes and the process are melting. A year is more than enough to see the processes in action and to get the understanding that we want.

As Friday slipped into Saturday in this place of no sunsets, the temperature dropped, measured invisible breath and what looked like an invisible driller, his gloves warming up on a hot hose. The team gave the sensors a warm bath and sent them down. They got five profiles of the water below. A successful warm-up act for the main event, the mooring that would stay behind. Down it went. But around 1.30 p.m. on January 31st, there was trouble below.

So, Pete Davis logged in to the mooring instruments. It looked good at first, but then he realized they all had identical temperature readings. Okay, actually, I'm pretty sure we're stuck. I think we are stuck at about 650 decibels. Um, I'll come down and discuss options. Thank you. I'm parled up until each, but I don't. They pulled a little bit, but everyone here knew they'd lose this tug of war.

Remember, freezing is their worst enemy. When super cold glacier ice grabs an instrument, there is no plan B. If you linger at any one location with equipment, it could freeze to the side. And unfortunately, something along those lines happened. Keith Makenson is a 37-year bass veteran. The instruments are frozen solid 2,300 feet below the surface, 650 feet from the bottom of the ice. The exhausted, tight-knit team tried to console each other, but there's a deep well of sadness. The whole team has worked really hard for many years.

It's a really hard blow. And yet they did not walk away empty-handed. They have a snapshot of data from a place where none existed before. And it's not a pretty picture. The water temperature here is nearly 34 degrees, 5.5 degrees warmer than the freezing point of glacier ice in seawater. There's no question why the glacier is melting, but the forecast they hope to give the world remains elusive. Antarctica does not give up its secrets easily, but the people who come here to unlock them won't give up either. For the PBS NewsHour,

I'm Miles O'Brien at the Thwaits Glacier. The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater has just launched a 20-city U.S. tour under its new artistic director Alicia Graf Mac. She's a renowned former Ailey dancer herself and an educator who is now fusing those roles to lead the modern dance troupe which started back in 1958. She joined me in the studio this week as part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. Alicia Graftmack, welcome to the News Hour. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. You're only the fourth artistic director in the 70-year history of Alvin Ailey, and you're launching your first season by opening the national tour here in Washington. When you step into rehearsal now or even a performance,

what feels most different from the last time when you danced with the company? It does feel like a wonderful homecoming to return to the company now in this role as I had danced with the company for six years. I have a great responsibility to hold this very important organization in my hands. I am so supported by the artistic team,

by our administration, by our audience, by the community in this work, and it feels like nothing short of a blessing. I saw where you said previously that the organization is really rooted in Alvin Ailey's big dream. How do you honor the specificity of his vision and the tradition of Ailey while still making space for new voices and new pieces, new choreography? Mr. Ailey set the blueprint so many years ago. When he founded the company, he not only wanted to highlight, his own choreographic voice and create the works that he made, as he said, from his blood memories of growing up in rural, south, in Texas, but also that he wanted to provide a platform for emerging choreographers, for new voices, and specifically for choreographers of color,

as there was not that many platforms for those artists to share their work. And so this is the blueprint that I follow, even now in 2006, that we honor his voice and we always perform his works, including Revelations, which is a work that is seen by more people around the world than any other modern dance work. Also, that we find voices that reflect what we are going through today, voices who will bring their authentic truth and identities to the stage. To your point, I mean, you've emphasized that ALE is for everyone. It's not an elitist art form. In practical terms, what does that accessibility look like?

The ALE organization is all about accessibility. The dancers, of course, are elite artists. They are world-class dancers, but we are open for everyone. We have an extensive school that offers dance education for everyone. And we also have an arts and education and community outreach program that touches students around the country from curriculum in the school systems to free performances for children. What did teaching dance reveal to you about where the art form is versus where you want it to go? Part of the work is to empower the artist, the student, the dancer to know their own story, their own identity,

and to be able to let that shine on stage and just watch them. reach their, what I call their moving moments on stage, these very high points that artists on a very high level reach sometimes, right? It's the high that you get when everything comes together, the music, the movement, the idea, there's nothing like it. Well, let's talk more about that, because you first experienced the magic of Alvinnelly as a young dancer with big dreams. Now you're launching your tour here in your hometown, Washington, D.C.

What does that full circle moment? What does that mean to you? It's everything. I can recall Ailey being my North Star from the time I was a child. And my parents, I grew up in Columbia, Maryland. They would expose me to dance both in Baltimore and Washington and all around. Being a young person and seeing your dream on stage and seeing people who look like you, you know, that the idea that representation matters is real.

That work is so important. And it's so important that we keep the arts alive, especially in the environment and culture that we're living in today. A new sense of hope, and there are also new works on stage that people will see. They pull from popular music, folklore, spirituality, ancestry. What connects the work thematically? All the works that we perform are visceral. When the dancers move, the audience will feel affected by what they're doing.

We're all about spirit, humanity, and truth. There's also an idea that the work is not so elite or... Heady. You can sit and enjoy it and feel something, and I think that's really important. You have worked under Judith Jamison. You've worked under Robert Battle. Your experience really embodies the legacy of ALE. How do you bring all of that to bear in your current role? That is so correct. I was hired by Judas Jamison when I first started in 2005, and she is someone that I've looked up to forever, as she was a very tall, black woman, I myself am quite tall. And to know that she saw my gifts and my instrument as an

asset to the company is one of the many ways in which the AILI organization has changed the climate and the field in itself, that we look for artists who are unique in every way. And all that Robert Battle brought, especially in his sense of curation and bringing different voices to the table, I take all of that with me. When audiences encounter this tour, when they leave the theater, what do you want them to walk away with? I want them to understand that in the present moment that we are boldly presenting our work and that we are bravely standing on that stage all over the world.

but I also want them to have a sense of the history from where we come and the legacy that Alvin Ailey set forth, which required so much bravery, so much courage in 1958. And if Mr. Ailey could do that in 1958, I certainly can do that in 2006. Alicia Graft-Mack, a real pleasure to speak with you. Thank you. Thank you. And that's the News Hour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett.

For all of us here at the PBS News Hour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us. Thank you.