PBS News Hour - Full Show - January 15, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: January 16, 2026

Thursday on the News Hour, the president threatens to deploy military forces to Minnesota in response to protests against his immigration crackdown. Venezuela's opposition leader strikes a positive tone after a meeting that could have far-reaching implications for her country's future. Plus, the death of a Black midwife after giving birth renews questions about disparities in maternal health care. 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. And I'm Amna Navaz on the news hour tonight. The president threatens to deploy military forces in Minneapolis in response to protests against his immigration crackdown. Venezuela's opposition leader strikes a positive tone after a meeting with President Trump that could have far-reaching implications for her country's future. And the death of a black midwife just days after giving birth by a cesarean section renews questions about disparities in maternal health care. Black women are at higher rates of cesarean section, at higher rates of preeclampsia. They have higher rates of almost every possible comorbidity or complication. Welcome to the News Hour.

Protesters clashed with ICE agents in Minneapolis again today after a man was shot and wounded when he allegedly assaulted federal officers. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frye called for calmer reactions on the street. that says President Trump is threatening to deploy U.S. troops to the Twin Cities to quell the protests there. And the state's governor, Tim Walz, is asking the president to lower the temperature. Special correspondent Fred DeSam-Lazero starts our coverage with what's unfolded over the last 24 hours in Minnesota. This morning, new threats from President Trump of heavier intervention.

This after protests broke out in Minneapolis again overnight. On social media, Trump warned he'd use the Insurrection Act. That's the 18th century power of the president to deploy the U.S. military if the president decides local authorities cannot maintain order. It was last used in 1992 during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Minnesota's Attorney General Keith Ellison said he's ready to go to court if it's invoked. It all came just after the dusts' situation. settled from overnight scenes like this.

Crowds gathered after an ice agent shot of Venezuelan National in the leg during a targeted traffic stop. Administration officials alleged the man and two others attacked the agent with a shovel and a broom handle. In the biting Minnesota cold, it is one thing that is dialing up the temperature. After the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good one week ago. The crowd is engaging in unlawful acts. At a late night press conference, the city's police chief said yesterday went too far. But protesters hurled rocks and fireworks at law enforcement. Mayor Jacob Fry called for calm.

And for anyone that is taking the bait tonight, stop. That is not helpful. Go home. We cannot counter Donald Trump's chaos with our own brand of chaos. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. As hard as we will fight in the courts and at the ballot box, we cannot and will not let violence prevail. In Washington today, PBS News Landers

asked the White House if President Trump is working with the governor to de-escalate. Governor Walls' office is saying today that he's trying to get a hold directly with the president, have he spoken. Look, the president is always willing to answer the phone when people pick up and call. But I would ask that the governor stops in citing

the harassment and illegal obstruction of law enforcement in his state. Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem said, Insurrection Act or not, ICE isn't going anywhere. Remember, we are there in surged operations because of the largest fraud scheme in American history. Tying the crackdown to Minnesota's welfare fraud scandal. Separately, the president himself has threatened to defund states with so-called sanctuary cities that include the Twin Cities. For many, it's as if ICE is around every corner.

Locals have spotted arrests as their kids board the bus to school. And in random ID checks. Secretary Nome today said people should carry ID to confirm their legal status. Make cold, make cold, make cold. Something not legally required of U.S. citizens except in circumstances like travel. Are you okay with federal agents and officers violating people's Fourth Amendment rights? by asking for papers without reasonable suspicion. Every single action that our ICE officers take

is according to the law and following protocols that we have used for years. Meantime, schools in the area are reporting a sharp drop in attendance, and several districts will soon offer students the option to attend online. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Fred de San Lazaro in Minneapolis.

President Trump's threat to invoke the Insurrection Act is sparking concern among critics who warn that the law's sweeping powers make it easy to misuse, especially in moments of domestic unrest. To help us understand what's at stake, we're joined now by Elizabeth Goitin, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Thank you for joining us. My pleasure. Based on President Trump's past rhetoric and past actions, how seriously should we take the prospect that he might actually invoke the Insurrection Act? I think we need to take it seriously. He has certainly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act in the past, but this is coming on the heels of a Supreme Court decision that rejected his efforts to use a different law to deploy the military in U.S. cities, but that left open the possibility of using the Insurrection Act. And so I think in the wake of this sort of defeat that he faced in his attempts to deploy the military elsewhere, he might be looking for an opportunity to show that he can.

still meet good on his threats to use the military as a domestic police force inside the United States. And practically speaking, how would he do it? Well, under the Insurrection Act, he would issue a proclamation, and then he would have the authority, at least unless the courts held that he didn't, to deploy either active-duty troops or to federalize the National Guard and deploy National Guard forces. and under the Insurrection Act, he can, at least in theory, use them to conduct law enforcement activities. So the Insurrection Act is generally considered to be an exception to the Posse Cometatis

Act, and that's the law that normally prohibits federal armed forces from engaging in civilian law enforcement. How often has the Insurrection Act been used and in what situations? It's been used very sparingly, and I should say that even though, the law on its face is written in vague and archaic language that seems to give the president quite a bit of discretion, the Department of Justice has long interpreted it more narrowly and has opined that it should only be used as a last resort. And in keeping with that approach, presidents have invoked the Insurrection Act only about 30 times in our nation's history. And in virtually every one of those instances, either a governor requested assistance

because state and local law enforcement were completely overwhelmed, or the state itself was actively obstructing federal civil rights laws. If a president were to deploy federal troops to a state like Minnesota over the objections of the governor and local officials, what would that mean legally? Where does state authority end? and federal power begin? Well, the president has the authority to federalize National Guard forces and remove them from state command and control when authorized by statute. And so if he invoked the Insurrection Act, he would take command and control of the National Guard.

Now, the states could file challenges in court and could argue, and I think they would have a strong case, that the president was exceeding his authority under the Insurrection Act, and that the actions of the military were in fact violating the Posse Comitatis Act. In that case, a court could enjoin the president's use of troops, but in the initial invocation of the act of the president does have the authority to assert command and control over federalized National Guard forces. So why, in your view, would this be an illegitimate use of the act? Well, there is chaos in Minneapolis, but it is chaos that is of the federal government's own making. The vast majority of the violence and lawlessness in Minneapolis is coming from ICE.

And the purpose of invoking the Insurrection Act would not be to quell that violence and lawlessness. It would be to enable it. That is clearly an illegitimate use of the Insurrection Act. And more than that, it would set an incredibly dangerous precedent. And that plays into what critics argue that the deployment of these ICE agents to Minneapolis and the protests it sparked, that this was all just a test case to justify invoking the Insurrection Act and potentially deploying the military

to Democratic-led cities in this election year. That was the plan all along, that immigration enforcement was really just a pretext, to which you would say what? Well, the president has certainly been very clear that he does not view the use of the military in U.S. cities as a last resort. He actually has said that he thinks that USCDs should be training grounds for the U.S. Armed Forces.

And, you know, if you look at the last nine presidencies combined, not including the first Trump administration, presidents have deployed troops to quell civil unrest or enforce the law only twice. President Trump has deployed troops or requested or attempted deployment of troops seven times in his first year in office. So he certainly intends to use the military very differently from the way the presidents have used it in the past and the way that the law has been interpreted to permit the use of the military in the past. Elizabeth Goitin with the Brennan Center for Justice. Thanks again for your time this evening. Thanks for having me. We start the day's other headlines in Iran, where a bloody regime crackdown looks to have rained in widespread protests, even as the threat of U.S. intervention remains. President Trump has signaled an interest in de-escalation, though he hasn't ruled out military action.

The president and his team are closely monitoring this situation, and all options remain on the table for the president. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said the president was told by Tehran that some 800 scheduled executions of protesters had been halted. But today, the Trump administration placed new sanctions on several Iranian officials they described as being the architects of the attacks on protesters. At the UN today, U.S. Ambassador Michael Waltz condemned Iran for claiming that the protests were a foreign plot. Regardless of its excuses, and you will hear many today from the Iranian regime and from its friends, the regime is solely responsible for the economic misery of the Iranian people and the repression of their freedom, and they will be held accountable. The U.S.-based human rights group says at least 2,600 protesters have been killed by state forces.

Iran remains largely shut off from the world as a state-imposed Internet blackout remains in place. European troops have begun arriving in Greenland after talks in Washington failed to make progress on President Trump's push to take over the territory. Danish Air Force troops landed late last night, and NATO partners, including France, Germany and others are sending small numbers of forces as well as well as. This comes after the Danish foreign minister said a fundamental disagreement over Greenland remains after meeting with American officials at the White House. Greenland residents say they are relieved to have the support from allies, but worry about what comes next. I don't think facts affect Trump. And to be honest, as it seems right now, the major threats to security in Greenland comes from our U.S. allies.

The White House said today that the presence of new European troops in Greenland would not affect President Trump's position on taking over the territory. Federal prosecutors are charging 26 people for allegedly rigging NCAA and Chinese Basketball Association games. Fifteen of those charged played Division I basketball as recently as last season. The charges include wire fraud, bribery, and conspiracy. In a press conference today, authorities said, Fixers paid players up to $30,000. a game to deliberately underperform, then placed large bets against their teams. U.S. Attorney David Metcalf says those involved, quote, poisoned the American spirit of competition for monetary gain.

When criminals pollute the purity of sports by manipulating competition, it doesn't just imperil the integrity of sports betting markets and imperils the integrity of sport itself. The indictment claims that fixers and players tried to rig 29 games across multiple seasons involving millions of dollars in bets. It comes after a series of NCAA investigations that have led to at least 10 players receiving lifetime bans. A federal appeals court today opened the possibility that Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil could be re-arrested and possibly deported. The three-judge panel reversed a lower court decision that led to his release last June saying it didn't have jurisdiction. They added that Khalil, quote, will have to wait to seek

relief from allegedly unlawful government conduct. The former Columbia University graduate student is a permanent resident whose wife and son are American. His case became a high-profile example of the Trump administration's crackdown on pro-Palestinian activities on campus. His lawyers say they plan to appeal. Four astronauts are safely back on Earth after NASA's first medical evacuation of the International Space Station. Splashdown of Crew 11. The crew touched down in the Pacific near San Diego early this morning. They ended their mission more than a month early because one of the astronauts was experiencing

an undisclosed medical condition. The astronaut has not been named for privacy reasons. All four were taken from medical checks when they landed, as is standard procedure. NASA and SpaceX officials say they're working to move up the launch of the next crew currently set for mid-February. On Wall Street today, stocks posted decent gains, thanks large to a rebound in AI-related shares. The Dow Jones Industrial average gained nearly 300 points.

The NASDAQ rose about 50 points on the day. The S&P 500 snapped a two-day losing streak. And the U.S. Postal Service revealed a new stamp today featuring boxing legend Muhammad Ali. The unveiling took place in his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky. The stamp features a photo of Ali from 1974 with his last name in bold letters. The Postal Service has printed 22 million of the Ali Forever stamps which went on sale today. The three-time heavyweight champ once joked that he should be on a stamp someday because, as he put it, that's the only way I'll ever get licked.

Still to come, on the news hour, the confusion caused by a slashing, then restoration of mental health and addiction funding. The White House targets wind power projects putting energy businesses in jeopardy. And a cutting-edge 3D scanning technology helps to run. replicate classic works of art. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. Today, Nobel Peace Laureate Maria Karina Machado met with President Trump and said she presented him, her Nobel Peace Prize.

Their lunch came after the president spoke yesterday to Venezuela's acting president, a woman who in the past disparaged Machado and is now empowered by the Trump administration to leave that country. Nick Schifrin examines the country's current and would-be leadership. In Washington today, the woman who won a Nobel Peace Prize for advocating democracy brought her prize to the man she says can deliver democracy. I presented the President of the United States, the medal of the Nobel Peace Prize, as a recognition for his unique commitment with our freedom. Ms. Machado, how did your meeting go with the president?

Mucato met with bipartisan senators who call her Venezuela's rightful leader. Whether she one day becomes that, she said today was up to Trump. Know that we count on President Trump for the freedom of Venezuela. It was two years ago that Machado was banned from running for president, but she handpicked a candidate at Mundo Gonzalez, who defeated then President Nicolas Maduro by two to one, according to the opposition's tally. And on his third day, as Secretary of Sotomay, state, Marco Rubio called Gonzalez Venezuela's, quote, rightful president and reaffirm the United

States' support for the restoration of democracy in Venezuela. But then the U.S. captured Maduro, and faced with a decapitated Venezuelan regime, Machado was sidelined. She doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country. She's a very nice woman, but she doesn't have the respect. So instead, the Trump administration empowered now interim president, Delci Rodriguez. had a great conversation today. And she's a terrific person. I mean, she's somebody that we've worked with very well.

But Rodriguez was Maduro's handpicked deputy. Most recently, she oversaw the oil industry, but activists accused her of helping hand over the country's security and economy to American adversaries, Cuba and Iran. And she was, for decades, a follower of the country's nationalist Chavismo leadership. And here we are, the peoples, dozens and hundreds who people who took. came together here, precisely to tell the North that there is no way they can subdue us or subject us to their imperial orders. Recently, she's proved open to working with the country she used to call the imperialist,

releasing 70 political prisoners, including five Americans, and opening up the world's largest oil reserves to American investment. But activists say she cannot deliver the rule of law that U.S. investment requires, and they say she cannot be trusted. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Nick Schiffrey. And we turn now to Laura Dib, Director of the Venezuela program at the Washington Office on Latin America. Thank you for being here. We appreciate it. Thank you so much for your invitation.

Maria Karina Machado is wrapping up day one of a five-day visit to Washington. How should we assess her visit and her meeting with President Trump and other U.S. policymakers? What it says about her standing? After she had been dismissed by President Trump on January 3rd, After his remarks, right after the strike, he said that she didn't have the support of Venezuelans. So there was a lot of concern among members of Venezuelan civil society that Venezuelans were being left out of the decision-making process around the future of Venezuela and that their agency was being undermined. So I think that the fact that President Trump met with Mara Corina Matal, but also a group of bipartisan senators is a good. good sign that they're listening to members of the Venezuelan opposition.

How much influence does she have in Venezuela right now? It's hard to have influence when you're dealing with an authoritarian government. Between Chavez and Maduro, they rule for 26 years. So I would understand also the concern from the administration that even though she has popular support, she has limited capacity to hold power in the government. whole power in this context. And you've noted that Edmundo Gonzalez won roughly 67% of the vote with her backing. If that level of support exists within Venezuela, what is the missing peace that prevents

real political change? Authoritarianism. I mean, Venezuelans have committed themselves to fighting for democracy through different means. I mean, five different rounds of negotiations, peaceful demonstrations, participating in elections despite the lack of free and fair election conditions, the Carter Center, the UN panel of experts have said this. Marri Corina Machau was banned from running for office

just as other members of the opposition. So it was impossible for the opposition and for civil society to mobilize and actually exercise power when Maduro after that election decided to hang on to power through repression. And one thing I would notice is, And after Mauda was taken, there has been silence in the streets. And a lot of people are wondering, well, if he was so unpopular, why are the streets empty?

And the answer to that question is the brutal repression that came afterwards. 2,000 people were detained. Just today, around 1,000 remained detained. People were killed in the streets. So people are very much afraid of going out and speaking out their minds. So on that point, how should we understand the interim present? President Delci Rodriguez within the current power structure in Venezuela. Terseo Rodriguez has been a member of the government since the beginning of Chavez.

I mean, she has held different positions. She was the Minister of Oil. That's important because she has a relationship with the private sector that other members within the Chavismo government didn't have. And she was the vice president under Maduro. She was also the Minister of Foreign Affairs at some point. But given all of these conditions, one has to wonder whether she will actually be the one that opens some doors towards democratization. So far, that doesn't seem to be the case.

If there is no political transition and if repression continues, does Venezuela realistically become a place where major oil companies to include U.S. firms can invest? The meeting that President Trump held with some of this oil companies was very telling, because it was very telling because, for example, ExxonMobil, who has owned billions of dollars, said that Venezuela was uninvestable because there needed to be a change. And I think that's a clear message also that oil companies should send. It is impossible to invest without a certain rule of law and legal certainty. You can't invest in a country where there are no democratic openings. The reality is that, and I think that's something that not only the U.S.,

but other countries, democratic countries, should be sending the message that in order for the complex humanitarian emergency in Venezuela to be reverted, there needs to be some sort of democratic opening. This cannot just be a change in actors without a real democratic transition. Is there a realistic pathway where economic engagement could actually create pressure for democratic openings in Venezuela? I believe that should be the case. And I think that sadly, we have seen how the administration is more driven by economic interest than it is about the concern for human rights and for democracy.

The national security strategy that the administration published doesn't mention the word human rights, not even once. So this is a context in which realistically, and from a pragmatic standpoint, then this economic actors have the potential to actually. actually create those openings. But I also have the responsibility to say that all the literature, all the research on transitional justice explains how no process of democratic transition can be sustainable without the participation of civil society.

And this is something that is definitely lacking right now. Laura Did. Thanks again for your time this evening. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much. The death of a black midwife following complications from giving birth has renewed difficult questions about inequities around black maternal health care.

Black women are still at a considerably higher risk to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. Stephanie Sy has more on this story. Janelle Green Smith, 31, was laid to rest in Spartanburg, South Carolina this week. Her death sent shockways through the community of black midwives, which include her aunt, Nicole Wardlaw. What do you think people will remember most about Janelle? They talked about her being the friend that was the glue that held everything together,

that she showed up for people, that she just her presence, she had a big presence. This is Green Smith in April 2024. I wanted to be a part of the solution and step into a role as the provider that would listen to my patients when they said they were in pain. I wanted to be the provider that would answer the questions and that would go above and beyond to allow my patients to feel comfortable in their journey of pregnancy and in labor. The patients loved her, that she would show up for them,

she loved on them. I remember someone talking about how she was just always asking why, why is this, why is that, that she wanted to know the why and make things better. That's the question I keep asking myself is why. She had so much knowledge, she was an experienced midwife. Why did this happen?

It was the perfect storm. She was pregnant. She developed preeclampsia, but she never stopped working, fighting, showing up. She showed up. She had a shift the day before she was admitted to the hospital herself. She worked 12 hours and caught seven babies. So she showed up.

for clients and did the work even though she herself really needed to be cared for. So as a midwife, who midwife is the midwife? Wardlaw says Greensmith herself didn't have a midwife because there weren't other practices in the area that took her insurance. In the United States, black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women. There's a foot. Integrating midwives into maternal care has been shown in studies to decrease maternal

deaths. Jessica Brumley is president of the American College of Nurse Midwives. Black women are at higher rates of cesarean section, at higher rates of preeclampsia. They have higher rates of almost every possible comorbidity or complication that an individual can have. They're more likely to seek care in systems of care that are not high quality. How are you today? And we know that standardized care and care practices can help to improve outcomes. Do we know why black women are more susceptible to preeclampsia in pregnancy? The chronic stress, the generations of chronic stress, the different exposures to racism in this country,

and all of that adds and creates what is known as weathering, right? And so it makes it more difficult to manage these conditions in individuals who've had these exposures. There's no cure for preeclampsia, but it can be resolved once the baby is born. Green Smith underwent an emergency cesarean section, which carries its own risks. Her incision opened up, and so they had to take her back to the operating room to close the incision. And it was after that operation that during the recovery period, there were complications and that ultimately contributed to her death. Explain to us, how is it that black women are

still so much more vulnerable to dying of pregnancy-related causes than other women? This is a really complex issue, but I think that it comes down to the fact that that the system is designed to create these outcomes. We get the outcomes that the system is designed for. And when we think about historically where our system has come from, it came from centering childbirth into the hospital, away from the community, away from the people who cared for us,

our community-based midwives, black granny midwives, and that nurturing environment into an environment, into an environment that wasn't welcoming and still isn't often very welcoming for black women in our country. I don't know if it was professional courtesy that the assumption was just made that she knew all of the things

and would be able to take care of herself. I don't know if there were expectations of her that wouldn't be expectations of other people. But what I do know is, that she's not coming back and we never want this to happen to anybody else. Brumley says gaps in postpartum care in the U.S. don't just harm black women. So if we can design a system where black women have the best outcomes, everyone else will have better outcomes too. Because even though black women have some of the worst outcomes in the U.S., the U.S. has some of the worst maternal health outcomes in the world.

white women aren't doing much better in this country. We have to think about how do we change what we offer and offering a service that people think is valuable. No one should have to fear for their life in order to grow their family. And I don't think it's fair that people should lose the joy of what should really be an amazing, beautiful life event. Janelle got to experience some of that joy, holding her daughter Eden, only for a short while. Born premature, Eden is still in the hospital. Eden is doing great. She's thriving. She's growing. She's meeting her milestones. She is the fiest little fighter. She has her mother's spirit. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Stephanie

Sy. One day after the Trump administration cut off billions in funding for mental health and addiction programs across the country, the White House has now reversing course choosing to restore some $2 billion in federal grant money. The decision which impacted thousands of organizations and grant recipients was reversed after bipartisan political pushback. Brian Mann broke this story for NPR. He joins me here now in studio. Welcome. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Okay, before we get into the whole back and forth on funding, just tell us about the programs that would have been impacted. Where are they? Who do they serve? What do they do? Yeah, so first of all, we're talking nationwide, over 2,000 programs. And I think,

I think one of the things that's important to understand is that for mental health and addiction, there's kind of like a quilt of programs. A lot of it is local governments, it's nonprofits, and these are life for death programs. These are programs that are literally keeping people from overdosing. They're checking them on people with severe mental illness. They're helping people transition to safer environments if they're living on the streets. And a lot of the public health people I've been speaking to talk about their clients being extraordinarily vulnerable. So if these programs go away, people can land hard. People are talking literally about fearing that their clients would die if some of these services vanished.

So they get notification late on Tuesday, as you reported, that the funding was being cut. This was funding approved by Congress, we should note. Were they told why? Was there any heads up to that? Basically, there was no heads up. This was a bolt out of the blue. Suddenly this letter arrives in inboxes all over the country. And what it says, this is from SAMHSA, part of the Health and Human Services Department, it said your program no longer aligns with the Trump administration's agenda.

That's pretty much it. And a lot of these programs had been scrambling to try to adapt to the Trump administration's guidelines. People were really trying to play ball with the administration, and they still got these letters. You're out. The money stops now. This was not, we're giving me six months. It was immediate. And that meant people were literally talking.

about closing their doors within the week. And within 48 hours, they get notification, never mind? How did that happen? Yeah, that's right. What happens is that this set off a firestorm. And I think it's important to say this was a bipartisan firestorm. There were Republicans who were working the administration. There were Democrats working the administration.

Grassroots organizations all over the country were reaching out to the White House to members of Congress saying, this is going to get people killed. And so quickly, my sources tell me that inside HHS, inside the White House, there were high-level meetings, people saying, how did we get here? What do we do? And so late last night, a source from the administration called me and told me anonymously, we're reversing this. We're going to fund these grants.

The money will flow. So it sounds like it was the bipartisan political pushback, hearing from the organizations about the impact that helped to reverse the decision. But someone had to be making those decisions in the first place, right? have you been able to learn about who was behind that? Yeah, this is really troubling to a lot of the public health professionals that I've been talking to. So within HHS, there are people who know about these programs and they know about the life-saving work that they do. But my sources tell me that this decision to cut off the grant funding came from outside that professional staff, that they were not consulted.

So there was politics involved here. There were people who are not expert in mental health or addiction who made this call. We haven't been able to identify who that was. We don't know exactly where the acts fell from. And similarly, we can't even lock down who reversed this decision. And one of the things that's frightening to these organizations out there is that that leaves them with a lot of uncertainty. If they don't know who's making the shots here, calling the shots. They don't know what's going to happen next week or the week after that.

It's important to say that last year, the Trump administration did something very similar. They froze a lot of grants, slow-walk them. This is the kind of uncertainty that makes it hard. I mentioned this kind of quilt of programs. It's already very, very fragile. Keeping it together with this kind of day-to-day uncertainty is really tough. These are agencies and systems that you regularly, deeply report on. What is all of this revealed to you about how things are working in these agencies that have, as you mentioned, life and death issues in their hands?

I think it's dangerously fragile. The people I talk to, they're already exhausted. They're already working with people who are severely ill. people who are using fentanyl or methamphetamines or who have severe mental illnesses. This is tough work. And when suddenly you hear overnight that you may lose your job, that you may not be able to pay your rent, that adds to this uncertainty. And so I think we are really looking at a very fragile American public health system that is hitting moments like this. And people are saying, can we hold it together?

And one of the things that I'm hearing is that people are looking to the Trump administration for real leadership. What is the plan going forward? If we don't match your agenda, what is the agenda? How can we get together on that page? And right now, that communication just isn't happening. So on the front lines for these organizations, the funding seems to still be there for now. For now. But is there still an impact?

Is it like it never happened? Oh, no. This is sent shockwaves through the system. People are going to be much more cautious about hiring, starting new programs, that people are going to take fewer risks in terms of innovating and trying to help more people. People are still reeling. I mean, this was an emotional,

this was, people have talked about this as a day of panic for the entire American public health system. And so I think from top to bottom, people are going to be figuring out where we go from here. Who do we trust? Who do we communicate with? And, you know, for a system that is based on science, that's based on health care, you know,

this felt like a moment when it could all fall apart. It's an incredible reporting. We'll continue to follow you as you follow this story. Brian Mann of NPR. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. A federal judge cleared the way today for construction to resume on an offshore wind power project in New York State. It's the second time this week a court ruled against the Trump administration and its efforts to kill new wind power facilities. President Trump has moved not just to stop approving new facilities, but to halt the completion of those under construction. It comes as wind energy has grown in the U.S. responsible for producing about 10% of all our electricity.

But as science correspondent, Miles O'Brien reports for our tipping point series, the uncertainty is having an impact already. Connecticut fisherman Gary Yerman is navigating some strong political cross-currents these days. A staunch supporter of Donald Trump, he's also a vocal advocate for offshore wind. the very energy source the president loves to hate. We don't allow windmills. We're not allowing any windmills to go up. It ruins the landscape.

It kills the birds. They're noisy. Those big windmills are so pathetic and so bad. Despite Trump's disdain for wind, Gary Yermann saw an opportunity in the energy transition and seized it. There's a lot of money that's been spent to create this green energy, which I believe that we need to. more energy in this country.

He co-founded Sea Services, a company that helps offshore wind developers with logistics and security using local fishing crews and vessels. Sea Services employs 200 commercial fishermen on 20 boats, turning a source of friction into a new livelihood for working mariners. There's a lot of people that are counting on that, a lot of families that are counting on it. Then in August came the Trump administration's order to pull the plug on the rest of the Revolution Win project, which was nearly 80 percent complete. It was a devastating blow to Yermann's business, and yet he continued to give Trump the benefit

of the doubt. Trump's got something in mind. We don't know what it is yet. When he gets down to what he wants, you know, to get out of this, the deal will get struck in, you know, Revolution Wind will start again. There was no deal. But in September, a federal judge lifted the ban on construction. Still, the Trump assault on offshore wind continues.

Right before Christmas, the administration suspended all offshore wind leases, including revolution, citing national security concerns, specifically claims that turbines interfere with Defense Department radar systems. Interior Secretary Doug Bergam explained on Fox News. These projects, they create radar clutter, they create radar shadows. This is the thing we want to look at, that we've, with national security concerns, are pausing these projects until we have an opportunity to see if there can be mitigation to secure these concerns. But the Pentagon reviewed and approved these offshore wind sightings

years ago under multiple administrations. Political leaders here remain dumbfounded. I don't think the Trump administration really understands the consequences. Dan McKee is the governor of Rhode Island. What are permits worth if all of a sudden when you're 80% in a project, regardless of what the project is, that somehow the federal government is not going to honor those permits? The smallest state has made a big bet on offshore wind.

It invested $100 million in infrastructure and job training. In return, it hoped to get 2,500 jobs and electricity for 350,000 homes at 9.8 cents per kilowatt hour, roughly half the cost New Englanders paid during last winter's peak demand. Our biggest asset in Rhode Island is our ocean. And we expect that this industry is not only going to help support our ratepayers that need to support our businesses, we need to take advantage of the resources that we have. But the administration's broader strategy to suspend offshore wind leases, revoke permits, and halt future. leasing has be calmed an industry once breezing toward production of 30 gigawatts of clean energy

by 2030, enough to power 11 million homes. Across the country, demand for electricity is taking a sharp upturn after many years going in the opposite direction. Chris Seiple is vice chairman of Wood McKenzie, a global research and consultancy firm focused on energy. For 70 years, there's been a very consistent trend. Each decade we've gotten less and less electricity demand from the same amount of economic growth.

That long plateau in electricity demand was made possible by major efficiency gains and the relentless offshoring of American manufacturing. But that 70-year trend has now reversed. Manufacturing has been gradually returning to the U.S. for years, accelerating during the Biden administration, when the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Chips and Science Act, and The United Inflation Reduction Act spurred hundreds of billions of dollars in investment in semiconductor, batteries, clean energy, and advanced materials manufacturing. There's a single semiconductor manufacturing facility being built in Arizona

that could eventually reach 1,200 megawatts of electricity demand. That is more demand than all of Colorado Springs, the city of about 500,000 people. This is just one single facility. But the biggest drivers of new electricity demand are data centers, the energy-hungry facilities that power what we call the cloud and the rise of large language models driven by artificial intelligence. Cepel says data centers already account for roughly 4 percent of U.S. electricity consumption, and growth is accelerating.

About 24 gigawatts of data center capacity is currently under construction, and utilities have committed to another 136 gigawatts of future data center buildout. If all that construction happens, data centers would consume 25% of the electricity currently generated in the U.S. This is more capacity than exists in the entire country of France that U.S. utilities have committed to add. But there's a problem. It takes a lot longer to build a power plant than it does to stand up a data center.

The Trump administration claims unleashing American energy is a priority, but the agenda is almost entirely focused on unleashing fossil fuels. Pound for pound, coal is the single most reliable, durable, secure, and powerful form of energy. Wind developers have filed lawsuits to restart their projects. One judge has already allowed work to resume on the Revolution wind farm. It's just one battle in a development. developing legal war with Washington. Now he's going to force us to go to court to make sure that we're protecting our jobs

and our energy and our environment. Trump has tilted at windmills since 2011, when plans surfaced to build 11 of them off the coast of his golf course in Scotland. Many energy experts say pulling the plug on renewables will not enhance national security. In fact, they say it will undermine our ability to meet growing demand. and it will weaken an already fragile grid. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Miles O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island. The Art of 3D scanning.

Paul Solomon looks at how technology is being used to examine and replicate classic works of art and some ethical questions about what it means to preserve authenticity and democratize access in an age when the line between originals and copies grows ever thinner. It's part of our arts and culture series, canvas. Ever want to do this to a beloved painting before a museum guard said, don't touch? Well, I did from the time I was a kid, and now I actually can feel the paint.

This is an art tech story prompted by entrepreneur Jerry Kaplan. It's like a jack rabbit, but it's a robot. Kaplan has gurued me and you through the emerging high tech world for a decade. Mary, what do you feel about your own death? I guess technically I cannot die since I am a digital being. But what's the art angle? My mother died last year at the ripe old age of 99. And one of her most prized possessions was a painting of me and my little sister

from what was an unknown artist at the time by the name of Wayne Tebow. And the picture was titled Children of the 60s. But now it's worth millions. What do we do with it? There are two of us, me and my sister. And while we would both like to have a copy, the truth is that it's just too far. So unlike King Solomon split the baby in two, he came up with a high-tech solution. This is an exact, precise reproduction at a micro level.

Of the Kaplan's Tebow, and of this lady, a half a millennium young. The technology was first used to analyze her condition. You know, nobody expected these paintings to last for 500 years. Particularly with the Mona Lisa, there are stress factors and twisting of wood and things that are, you know, certainly occurring over time. The surface, for example, has been cracking for centuries, and eventually says Patrick Robinson of Aria's technology, to preserve it will mean to store it safely away. Same for other time-honored paintings and frescoes, vangos, monas, and other works of the far

away past. You can imagine, you know, cities that are affected by water levels and things like that and destruction. We intend to be at the center point of those restorations or those things. historical archiving, if you will. And be rescuing art from disaster, says Aria's advisor, Marco Soriano. Pulling the fire

that took place in California where billions of dollars of artwork were burned and not insured properly were lost. The National Museum of Brazil also was destroyed multiple masterpieces that had been there destroyed. So we would like

to preserve that part of culture of our civilization that can easily be raised if it's not protect the property. So how exactly to preserve works forever? You can now create a high-tech laser scanner. Apply it to the art. We scan them to 10 microns, which is the same width of a tenth of the human hair, or similar

to an actual size of a blood vessel. Arius engineering head Roland de la Cuesta. You can see the fine cracks. You can see paint strokes to the level of a three stable hairbrush. And then on top of that, you get the color. And besides solving problems like the Kaplan estate or saving the Mona Lisa. Making it easier for restorations, for insurance, for valuations. You know, you look at the girl with the pearl.

When that was restored, you know, they used a print on the wall of the museum. Did people know that it was not the original? Could they tell? I would, you know what, Paul, I say universally, anything we do, no one can tell without knowing. The scanner was used to make multiples of contemporary artists Stolley Amsterdam's portrait of Salvador Dali. Just like Andy Warhol did additions, you know, tomato soup cans with a red background, with a blue background, with a white background, whatever it might be. On YouTube, advisor Marco Soriano, an electric motorcycle maker, doesn't strike you as an old master buff, but he joined the ARIUS team to expand the business. If you're the buyer of that piece of art, of artifact, it needs to have some kind of a record so that you can understand what it is.

So our technology would, in a certain way, authenticate if that's real or not. He's also nuts over Piero della Francesco's 15th century resurrection. When I saw it for the first time, I almost want me cry. It has such a strong and meaningful value to all Christianity, to all Catholic. in the world. ARIUS is scanning the already damaged fresco. That really is a cultural historical object, which spreading it around the world, having other people who can't travel to central Italy in the case, Italy, in the case of Pierrador

Francesca, that sounds good to me. Art historian Adrian Randolph does see potential downsides. What happens when you have many, many objects which are reproduced, the value of the original might decline. So I assume there could be some sort of financial. what, disruption to the market. And aside from the economics is the issue of how we experience art. Even just in terms of a cultural artifact, does it change its status, which is fascinating

and a little destabilizing, I think, for those of us who have always emphasized students and experts going to see the things on site. Amy Herman, an art historian and educator, cites a German philosopher for inspiration. As Walter Benjamin said so long ago, he said, there never is a perfect copy of a work of art. No such perfect copy ever exists because it's missing its presence and its time and its place. Herman too argues that the way we view original art is a singular experience. I think that this process of using this 3D scanner opens our eyes literally and figuratively to things that we couldn't see before augments our appreciation, but it doesn't

necessarily change that immediacy, that experience of sitting in. sons of Polkrow are sitting in Frick's galleries and having that one-on-one with the work of art. But here in my house, this laser-scanned burial at sea by British painter J.M.W. Turner is a pretty singular experience, too. And a tangible one. For the PBS News Hour, Paul Salman. Remember, there's always a lot more online, including a look at how much you should be paying for rent in today's economy. That is on our YouTube page. is the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. And I'm Amnon-Vaz. On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us.