PBS News Hour - Full Show - January 27, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Tuesday on the News Hour, the Trump administration changes its leadership for immigration operations in Minnesota after public backlash from two deadly shootings. Taiwan fears that the American operation to oust Venezuela's leader might embolden China to invade. Plus, we hear from the whistleblower who said DOGE mishandled Social Security data, a claim the Justice Department now admits is true. 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 Trump administration changes its leadership for immigration operations in Minnesota in response to public backlash from the two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens. Taiwan expresses fears the U.S. operation to oust Venezuela's leader might emboldened China to invade. And we hear from the whistleblower who said Doge mish handled American Social Security data acclaimed the Justice Department now adjourned. admits is true. That database houses personal information, as I understand it, on all living and dead Americans. So this is a real risk to everybody. Welcome to the News Hour.

President Trump said today he's going to de-escalate tensions amid his aggressive immigration crackdown that's centered on Minneapolis. And toward that end, the president said he wanted what he called an honest inquiry into the shooting death of Alex Pretti and had his border czar Tom Homan meet with state and local officials. But at the same time, Mr. Trump said during a trip to Iowa today that the adjustments should not be seen as a pullback, and he again blamed Preti for carrying a gun which was legally permitted. As special correspondent, Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, skepticism of President Trump's changes remains high in the Twin Cities, even after the departure of Border Patrol commander

Greg Bovino. Gregory Bovino's final night in Minnesota was a loud one. Protesters turned up the volume outside what they believed was Bolino's hotel. Police arrested some demonstrators at the scene. Bolino leaves a community far more on edge than it was when he arrived. Under his command, federal agents fatally shot another U.S. citizen on Saturday, Alex Preti. It came two weeks after Renee Good was killed by ICE officers. This week, Bovino claimed, without evidence, that Preti had...

had been planning to quote, massacre law enforcement. We're doing a big investigation. I want to see the investigation. I'm going to be watching over. I want a very honorable and honest investigation. In Washington today, PBS News' Liz Landers asked President Trump about his administration's characterization of Prettie, who had a state permit to carry a fire on. Do you think he was acting as an assassin in Minneapolis?

Who is that? Mr. Pruddy, your deputy chief of death said that. Without being said, you know, he can't have guns. He can't walk in with guns. What about the Second Amendment? Listen, he didn't walk in with guns. You can't do that. But it's just a very unfortunate incident.

Meantime House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on the president to fire Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noem. He appeared on MS now this afternoon. Christy Noem is a despicable, corrupt, pathological liar. And in the event that she is not terminated, we are prepared to initiate impeachment proceedings against her in the House of Representatives. Back in Minneapolis, Bovino's replacement, White House border czar Tom Homan, arrived for meetings with Mayor Jacob Fry and Governor Tim Walz. Outside, the streets were quieter than in recent days,

Minnesotans paying tribute to their neighbors. You're compelled to do something about it, or at least get closure and try to figure out how in the hell can this keep happening to this community? And out of towners showing their support for the community and skepticism of today's leadership change. One is out, there's another one coming in. I don't know if things are going to change or not.

I doubt it the way this year has gone. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Fred DeSam-Lazero in the Twin Cities. For more on the Trump administration's evolving response to the deadly shootings in Minneapolis, We're joined now by our White House correspondent, Liz Landers. So, Liz, we saw on Fred's report there. President Trump told you he did not think Preddy was an assassin. Why is that significant?

It's notable because the administration is changing their tone on what happened in Minneapolis. On Saturday, within hours of this shooting happening, White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller took to social media to call Prattie an assassin. And that was reposted by the vice president of the United States. So within a few hours, you had two. two top White House officials taking this stance that he was an assassin. Today, we're seeing the president distancing himself from that, saying that Preddy and Renee Good's shootings were both terrible. He said, I hate to see that. And I also just want to

note something else about our exchange about handguns there and the gun that Preddy was apparently carrying on his person when that happened. He was legally permitted to have that gun, and Minnesota has open carry policies there if you have a permit. We also know that the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, her top aide, Corey Lewandowski, had a two-hour meeting last night at the White House. What do we know about that? The New York Times reported that they requested the meeting with the president in the Oval Office with a number of top White House officials to talk about what happened in Minnesota. And apparently the president is still backing Noem. He said today that he has confidence in her, that she's not going to step down. He said

she's doing a very good job. And I also want to add, Amna, that within the last few minutes, The Department of Homeland Security has sent a note to Congress with more information about what actually happened in the Preti shooting, saying that two federal officers fired shots on Saturday. That's new. We should also note that during all this criticism of ICE, the president is in Iowa today. He's giving a speech about the economy. Tell us what we should know about that. The president and the White House has wanted to refocus the message on affordability. We heard the White House press secretary talking about that. The president touting while he's been on the ground, in Iowa, that gas prices are down there, that his tax bill that passed over the summer

will be cutting taxes on tips, Social Security, some of those other signature issues that he's been discussing. But this is also a political visit that he's making. Iowa has several key midterm races. We're in a midterm election year now. There is an important Senate race there, governor's race. And there are even congressional races like Congresswoman Miller Meeks, who won her seat by a mere 800 or so votes in last year's election.

So there was some, you know, good old-fashioned campaigning that he was doing on the ground there at a diner earlier today, talking with Iowans, touting some of his policies, also talking politics. All right. Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, beginning our coverage tonight. Liz, thank you. Minnesota is the latest flashpoint in a federal crackdown

involving ICE, Border Patrol, and other agencies. But it's far from the only place, being targeted. Aggressive tactics have played out in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and now Maine. The protests, the clashes, and the violence have raised urgent questions about where this all leads. And a recent piece for The Guardian, Claire Finkelstein warns that what's unfolding in Minneapolis closely mirrors a U.S. Civil War simulation she oversaw in 2024. Claire Finkelstein is the Director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania in she joins us now. Thank you for being with us. Thanks for having me. And we should say these

simulations you helped run weren't designed to predict a second civil war, but were instead meant to stress test the system. What motivated those exercises? And what were you most worried about then? There were really two things that motivated us. And let's remember, this was conducted in September of 24. So it was before the presidential election. But we were worried. We were worried about what had happened on January 6th, 2021. We were also worried in the wake of the immunity decision. And what was that going to mean for potentially a more unfettered Trump's second term and whether or not the rule of law would prevail and about the tensions, potential tensions,

between the federal government and state and local governments and what that could mean for the rule of law? When you look at what's unfolding now in Minneapolis, what feels uncomfortably familiar from those simulations? Well, one of the things that happened was we saw a spinning out of control, and I hope that's not what's happening in Minneapolis, but a lot of what's been happening is going in that direction. We saw a spinning out of control of the federal government. We saw refusal to abide by court orders. We saw the difficulty that courts have in acting in time and difficulty enforcing their orders. So we've seen all of that. And then the attempt to attack state officials is something that we also looked at.

Why are clashes between state authority and federal forces? so much more destabilizing than traditional or conventional unrest? Because traditional unrest is really about the people. It's not about government, per se. And hopefully, and this is what we've had for most of our history, you have the federal government and the state governments working together to try to get control over that unrest, to de-escalate the situation, and to work ideally in harmony together, or at least to have a functional working relationship and to partner together.

A lot of those partnerships are of longstanding, person-to-person relationships. That was one of the things we found in our tabletop exercise, which is that those personal relationships can be very effective in de-escalating situations, sort of backdoor conversations. But when you have the federal government and the state government unable to work together and giving different narratives, it's profoundly confusing to people.

And of course, it will have a tendency to escalate violence as well as to really do damage to the rule of law. And you've said that ICE is acting in ways that even exceed what was imagined in your simulations. What stands out to you? We did not have federal agents or federal troops openly defying the law firing on protesters and frankly killing them in cold blood. We had imagined federal agents a little more like what happened in Portland in 2020 or even Philadelphia that summer, where agents were going back and forth with protesters, some of whom were violating the law and where federal agents were using harsh tactics,

but not to the point where they were openly attacking American citizens and actually quite clearly exceeding rules for the use of force. And further applying your insights to this moment, the Department of Homeland Security, its officers, have fired shots during enforcement arrests or at people protesting their operations 16 times since July. No officer has faced criminal charges, and the administration has not announced disciplinary proceedings against any of the officers that would be agents involved. So how should we understand this moment? Two American citizens shot and killed by masked federal

agents with no immediate accountability. So you said the right word, which is accountability. that is key, even if there is a deal struck, and I'm heartened by the fact that President Trump and Governor Walts had a productive phone conversation. But a deal is not enough. There needs to be accountability for the illegal actions of federal agents, at least a full and fair investigation. And state investigators need to be in on that. Beyond that, of course, state investigators have the right to conduct, and prosecutors have the right to conduct their own prosecution in this situation. Now, the federal government will claim immunity or will claim that the agents have at least qualified immunity. But there's a lot to argue there legally. And I think there's every reason

to think that those agents were going beyond what they needed to do in order to carry out their official duties, which would vitiate the claims of immunity. In your simulation, at what point does a democracy stop being governed by law and start being governed by power? If courts can't or won't resolve the conflict between the federal government and the state, then we have a serious threat to our democracy. We rely on courts, and everybody should want these disputes to be resolved in a court of law. and should commit themselves, whether they like the decisions or not, to abide by court decisions.

When that doesn't happen, as to some extent happened in our scenario, then you know you've got a real threat to democracy. Claire Finkelstein, director of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. Thank you for your time this evening. Thanks for having me. In the day's other headlines, at least 42 people are now reported to have died as a results of last weekend's winter storm. That includes three young brothers in Texas who fell into an icy pond. And forecasters are warning the temperatures will remain well below normal for the eastern U.S. in the coming days. Cruise in Nashville are working around the clock to clear fallen trees.

More than half a million customers were without power today, mostly across the south. Many Americans are facing dangerously cold temperatures even inside their homes. I'm layered up in my bed, you know, two pairs of pants, socks, hoodie, a cardigan. So it's probably at least 40 to 40 degrees in my house right now. As millions across the country are still scraping away and digging out from the ice and snow, weather officials are warning of another winter storm that could hit the southern and eastern states this weekend. TikTok has reached a settlement in a landmark case related to allegations of social media

addiction. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. But it means TikTok will not be part of a trial getting underway today in California, where plaintiffs will argue that social media companies intentionally tried to hook young users. They're seeking monetary damages and want companies to change the way they design their platforms. That trial will continue against Facebook owner, meta, and YouTube. Snapchat was part of that case, but reached its own settlement last week. Federal investigators say that last year's crash between an American Airlines jet and a U.S. Army helicopter over Washington, D.C. was, quote, 100% preventable. Any individual shortcomings were set up for failure by the systems around them. At a day-long hearing today, NTSB officials said air traffic controllers were routinely overwhelmed and had grown accustomed to close calls.

They also said the jet's pilot was not alerted about the helicopter, and that the airspace over the nation's capital was crowded that night. NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homandy expressed frustration that years of warnings to reroute helicopter traffic were ignored. Yet we know over time concerns were raised repeatedly. Went unheard, squashed, however you want to put it, stuck in red tape and bureaucracy of a very large organization. Just last week, the SACC,

FAA placed further limitations on planes and helicopters sharing airspace near Reagan National Airport. All 67 people on board, both aircraft died in last year's crash. Activists now say that more than 6,000 people were killed in Iran's recent crackdown on nationwide protests, and they warned that number could rise. The latest figures come from a U.S.-based human rights group are nearly double the official death toll. The protests began late last month amid widespread.

anger over a weakening currency and rising prices. Just today, Iran's Rial fell to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar. And this week, a U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in the Middle East to lead any American military response to Iran's bloody suppression of the protests. Back in this country, the nation's population is growing at a slower rate because of President Trump's immigration crackdown. That's according to estimates out today from the Census Bureau. The U.S. population grew by just 1.8 million people in the year that ended last July to around 342 million people.

That amounts to just 0.5 percent growth, which is the slowest pace since the early days of the COVID pandemic. The Bureau cites a historic decline in net international migration as the driving factor behind the decline. UPS is planning to cut up to 30,000 jobs this year and shut two dozen facilities as part of a broader restructure. effort. The package delivery company says it will also continue its pivot away from Amazon deliveries and focus on more profitable areas of the business. UPS shares ended slightly higher following that news. Elsewhere on Wall Street today, stocks ended mixed ahead of tomorrow's rate decision by the U.S. Federal Reserve. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 400 points on the day. The NASDAQ managed a gain of more than 200 points. The S&P 500 also ended higher.

tragedy has made BAFTA history. Chloe Zhao's Hamnet is now the most nominated film by a female director in the history of the British Academy Film Awards. It's up for 11 nominations, including Best Director for Zhao herself. Meantime, the political thriller, One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, leads the pack with 14 nominations. Ryan Coogler's vampire epic Sinners is close behind with 13 nods. All three are nominated for Best Film, alongside Marty Supreme and sentimental value. The winners will be announced at a ceremony in London next month. And the world has been marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day,

a chance to honor the millions killed by Nazi Germany during World War II. The UN established the day more than two decades ago to coincide with the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Burkenau. Today, survivors paid tributes at the Nazi death camp 81 years since it was freed by Soviet troops. More than one million people died there, mostly Jews. While in Germany, Berlin's famous Brandenburg Gate was lit up with the words, we remember,

as flowers and wreaths were laid at the city's Holocaust Memorial. Still to come, on the news hour, TikTok users claim they're being censored after the change to U.S. ownership. A new book explores how Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson were pitted against each other during the Red Scare. And a free diver gives her brief but spectacular take

on protecting the ocean. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. Just days after a group of mainly American investors approved by President Donald Trump took over control of TikTok's U.S. operations, some users now say the app is censoring

and limiting their content, including posts and messages about Jeffrey Epstein, and the shooting deaths of U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis. One content creator says his U.S.-based followers couldn't access his post about the shooting death of Rene Good. So this is how it should appear. The latest video under my three pinned videos is the ice shooting analysis. But this is what my page looks like, according to people who message me.

And even weirder, this is how it appears in their watch history, a blank square. The red X mark is just them pointing it out to me. And California state senator Scott Weiner said TikTok wouldn't let him share this post about ICE for several hours. I am advancing a bill now to say that in California, it's not going to be just local and state law enforcement who can be sued if they violate your rights, but federal agents can as well. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new state investigation to determine whether TikTok is violating state law by censoring content critical of personal. President Trump. The company issued a statement today saying it had suffered a cascading systems failure that had caused multiple bugs on the platform after a power outage at one of its U.S. data centers. For more, we're joined by tech journalist Jacob Ward, host of the Rip Current podcast. Welcome back to

the NewsHour, Jacob. Hey, Jeff. Great to be with you. So you have a lot of politically engaged users now saying they feel censored on TikTok, videos getting zero views, their reach suddenly disappearing. Based on your reporting, what is going on here? Well, I mean, I think on the one hand, it's important to just remember in the context of American public discourse, right, that the way we communicate with one another is controlled by a handful of private companies. And as a result, we don't get to know. So, Jeff, we don't really know. Is there some sort of censorship going on here? Or is this, as TikTok's new ownership says, a cascading failure that originated from one of its data centers? What I can say is that it

seems as if every kind of creator trying to post content, whether they were cooks or makeup artists or political content creators, none of them could post for a while there. And so it doesn't seem like it's specifically aimed at it. But if you're someone whose work is consistently something that speaks out against the government at the moment, then you're going to feel particularly persecuted. But it seems that it sort of went across everybody. So at the moment, this doesn't feel like it was an intentional piece of censorship. I think this ownership group is too newly in charge to make that kind of move, but that's not to be confused with the idea that they couldn't do that. I think the capability of doing so is incredibly powerful and worth watching.

Well, let's talk more about that, because people point to Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, now X, as an example of how ownership can reshape a platform's ideology. So given how this deal came together and who approved it, is TikTok vulnerable to that same kind of shift? Yeah, well, Musk Wright rewrote the rules of what any of us expect as to how ownership of a major communications platform would work, right? And so you're absolutely right to bring him up because he really sort of like changed the game. And now we're in a world where close allies of the president of the United States now are co-owners of this incredibly powerful and influential platform. And what they have bought from this Chinese consortium and sort of in partnership with this Chinese consortium is a very sophisticated system for censoring anything you want.

Because this thing had its origins in China, it has incredible capabilities to detect in real time whether you're saying things it doesn't want you to say. I have been in the position of making reference to the Nazis during World War II. and the word Nazi can get you kicked off of a live stream or get the reach of your post put away. So it's very easy to do so. I don't think it's happening right now, but if in future they decided to do what Musk decided to do, they would have every kind of controls available to them to pull that off

because that is exactly how TikTok is built. And TikTok recently updated its terms of service. So what should users of this platform understand? Yeah, in many ways, they've just sort of rewritten a more broad set of language for capabilities that the platform seems to have had before. But for instance, they're saying that they can much more precisely track your location. You can turn that off in your device settings on your phone. They also say that they'll be able to follow you elsewhere when you are elsewhere off of the

platform. They can send advertising out to get you. So that's something you can also turn off. But all of this, I think we should remember, is pretty standard issue for. the surveillance capitalist world we are in currently. All of these platforms are trying to do the same kind of stuff. Just this is a more explicitly spelled out thing in the terms of service here, Jeff. And separately, Jacob, TikTok has reached a settlement to avoid being involved in this landmark social media addiction trial. What more should we know about that? That is such an incredibly

big deal in my world. I've been waiting for this trial to start because of the incredible amount of documentation that has come out already in this. And so TikTok and Snap, the maker of Snapchat, those two have settled, which leaves Google, YouTube, and Meadow, which is Facebook and Instagram. And incredible stuff is already coming out that shows not only did these companies deeply value the business, you know, the business value of kids was an enormous thing for these companies. And they were aware of harms to kids for years and years and years without necessarily acting on them. The companies, of course, say that they are always trying to. to make improvements. But the discovery we are seeing here is going to give us a view into how

social media has worked and worked, especially on the minds of children for many years here, Jeff. Jacob Ward, host of the Rip Current podcast, always a pleasure. Appreciate it, Jeff. China removed its top Army General last weekend and what many analysts see as a move to cement loyalty to President Xi Jinping. It is rattling Taiwan in one of its islands, Kinmen, that is much closer to China than Taiwan amid already heightened fears that the U.S. capture of Nicolas Maduro could emboldened China to mimic the move against Taipei. Special correspondent Patrick Falk has more. In the distance, Siamen, part of mainland China. On a day as clear as this, you can see just how

close it is. This is Kinman, an archipelago administered by Taipei, even though the main island of Taiwan lies more than 100 miles away. Its proximity to the mainland has put it on the front line of cross-straight confrontations. These anti-landing spikes are remnants of its Cold War defenses decades ago to prevent an amphibious invasion by China. Practically speaking, its use is now limited. Warfare has changed considerably. What remains on this beach is a stark reminder of the battlefield.

told. Tong Senpao is a local councillor. He's lived here his whole life, and like many people from Kinmen, is numb to communist aggression. Only weeks ago, China launched some of its largest ever live-fire war games, assimilating a blockade of Taiwan. In recent years, Beijing's ramped up its military muscle against the island, which it considers its own, but has stopped short of invading.

the shock capture of Venezuela's leader, some believe that could change. It's quite possible that one day China might adopt a similar approach or methodology to wage war, directly targeting Taiwan's capital or presidential office. Washington's operation in Caracas drew swift condemnation from China, calling it a violation of international law. The U.S. has placed its own power above multilateralism and military actions above diplomatic efforts, posing a grave threat to peace and security in Latin America, the Caribbean and even internationally. But the raid has also drawn comparisons at home in China on social media,

with many commentators saying it offers a blueprint for Beijing to take Taiwan. The prospect of a strike may not be far from its sights. 2027 is widely cited by military analysts and government officials as a critical milestone for China's ambitions regarding Taiwan. US intelligence believes that's when President Xi Jinping has instructed Chinese forces to be capable of what's termed a strategic decisive victory over the island. But there's another school of thought

on how the Trump administration's show of force might make Beijing reassess its designs on reunification. Wang Ding Yu is a Taiwan legislator and believes America's decisive operation in Venezuela may act as a deterrent. He says if China had the ability to pull off something similar, it would have done so a long time ago. China has intention.

They are willing to do this from a long time. They try to invade Taiwan and annex Taiwan. There is a gap between your ambition, your intention and your ability. Still, China's military capabilities are growing. Over the past decade, average annual spending on defences has risen by about $100 billion. Taiwan's government, meanwhile, has proposed to beef up its own forces by nearly $40 billion per year to counter the China threat. But it's been blocked by the legislature, controlled by an opposition that favors closer ties with Beijing. We need to do more to enhance our self-defense capability, to enhance multilateral costs.

operation to deter China their ambition. I think that would be a true lesson we learned from this. In Kinman, life goes on regardless. By night, this group of islanders gathers to enjoy the most American of pastimes. Among them, teachers, soldiers and ordinary workers with little concern about the powerful geopolitical forces surrounding them. What happens will happen. There's nothing you can do.

Whatever we say can't change the situation. Whatever their fate, they hope this place remains a baseball diamond and not a battlefield. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Patrick Fock and Kinman, Taiwan. The Social Security Administration now says members of Elon Musk's Doge team working at the agency last year, accessed and shared sensitive data. In a court filing earlier this month, the Trump administration amended what it had previously disclosed, writing that one Doge employee at SSA signed an agreement

with an unnamed political advocacy group to analyze voter roles to, quote, find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain states. In another instance, a Doge member shared personally identifiable information of a thousand people in an encrypted email attached, though the government says they aren't sure what specifically was shared or whether it was accessed.

And SSA also said Doge shared data on third-party cloud servers that are, quote, outside SSA's security protocols so the agency doesn't know what information was shared or if it still exists on the server. The latest disclosure seemed to confirm some key concerns first raised in a whistleblower complaint last summer filed by the agency's chief data officer. That whistleblower, Chuck Borges, involuntarily resigned from government in August and filed a retaliation complaint late last year. I spoke with him earlier alongside his lawyer, Deborah Katz.

Welcome to you, Bo. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Great to be here. So, Chuck, before we get into the details, these new details, with no filing, rather, confirms what first you shared when you came forward in your whistleblower complaint months ago. What did you think when you saw all this, especially after months,

of government denials? I'll be honest, I was pretty disappointed. You know, this is a situation where the public loses. You know, my disclosure essentially outlined three concerns that I had. The first was that Doge employees had inappropriate access to our data. The second was what they violated a temporary restraining order, and that the third was that they had uploaded sensitive social security data to a cloud server without adequate security control.

security controls. In all three of those instances, the public state is at risk. So to have validation of those first two concerns is disappointing, especially in light of the fact that these could have been investigated and uncovered months ago. Well, speaking to that timeline, Deborah, the court filing was on January 16. There were a number of corrections to the previous testimony from agency officials. What's your understanding of why it took so long for the government to correct those previous testimonies. Because the government's not telling us the truth. I still don't think we know the false story.

The allegations that Mr. Borger just raised are quite serious, and he raised them with the federal agency that is responsible, Office of Special Counsel, for investigating his disclosures. And rather than investigating it, they've kicked it to a different agency. In terms of his retaliation claims, they haven't investigated at all.

So we have a situation in a very real sense, where the fox is guarding the hen house. Let's talk about what's at stake here. Chuck, you mentioned in some of the details of what you came forward to share. Broadly speaking, what are the dangers, as you see them, of sharing that kind of personal data on a cloud server?

So social security data is your most sensitive personal information. It's the information that's on your birth certificate. So when you apply for a mortgage and you have to answer security questions, and it's what's your mother's made in name? and what's your place of birth and what's your father's middle name, all of that information is held resident at Social Security. So to put that personally identifiable information

that can be used to propagate identity theft, mortgage fraud, steal small business loans, impersonate dead people, into an environment where it could be downloaded or accessed inappropriately or stolen or shared, It's a risk to literally every single living and dead Americans' ability to have a daily life. And we should point out we don't know what was on the cloud server, correct? So my disclosure pretty specifically alleges that a database called the numidant, which is the master database of your personal information, was uploaded to an AWS cloud environment. Now, that is different from the court filing last week, which resided around specific data access for specific Doge employees.

But if those first two things that I alleged were correct, I'm very concerned about the third one, especially when you're normally protecting data, it is very easy to produce documentation that shows that the data has been safe and secure all along. Let me try to square some of the information we've seen out there now, because when you came forward, you warned the personal information of some 300 million Americans could be at risk. The government in their filing says information from 1,000 people was shared on email. Do you believe it could be limited to just 1,000? No. There's no way. No.

And why not? So, again, my disclosure outlined a pattern of bad behavior. This court filing validates the first two pieces of that puzzle. The third piece has not yet been validated or refuted yet with any documentation. But if the first two allegations are correct, I'm very concerned about the third. As far as the 300 million, that was just initial news reporting. That database houses personal information, as I understand it, on all living and dead Americans. So this is a real risk to everybody.

Deborah, there's also this other piece of it we reported on where Doge employees were alleged to have secretly been in contact with a political advocacy group, part of an effort, as we know now, seeking voter information and personal information there. Those employees, we understand, have now been referred to a federal watchdog group to see if they violated the Hatch Act, which would bar government employees from using their job for political activity. What do you know about that probe? Do you trust that there will be accountability there? I trust there will be no accountability there. In fact, when members of this administration have been found guilty of violating the Hatch Act, there's no consequences, none at all.

The Hatch Act is, there are no criminal penalties. If this has happened, these are criminal violations, and they need to be fully investigated, and these people need to be prosecuted. And there needs to be a complete, thorough investigation to see the extent of this. And I believe, as Mr. Borges just said, it's far greater than the 1,000 documents that they acknowledge, 1,000 people that they acknowledge are at risk. A thousand is a far cry from the 300 million that you think could be at risk here. So can Americans know, can they be sure that their data has not been compromised?

They can't be sure until the agency releases documentation that proves or refutes my allegations one way or the other. To date, they have released zero. As a matter of fact, if I recall right, one of the people involved in the investigation into my concerns was one of the people named in the disclosure. We also need to disclose here for our audience's benefit. You are now running for office. I am correct. You're running for a Maryland State Senate seat. Tell us why. I had a very good job at a very high agency. I walked away from that to do the right thing. Now I see the challenges we have at the federal level. I see them replicated at the local level. I want to fix where I live. I want to be a leader.

that will do the right thing rather than what's politically expedient. And I want to solve people's problems and replace leadership that, quite frankly, doesn't have the imagination, the initiative, and in some cases the moral integrity to do it. We've talked to a number of other whistleblowers from various agencies who've talked about harassment, backlash after they come forward.

Did you see any of that? Do you have any message for people who are still working in the government? I do. I did not receive any political retaliation. There were some legal back and forth at the time, which I've never had a lawyer until now, so I'm guessing that's pretty common.

But I'm still here, I'm still safe, I'm scared, and I'm sure we're all scared. But you can't let the fear control what you do. If you know something, if you see something, you have a duty to your fellow Americans to step up and find a way to get the truth out there. Let's foster a more transparent government. Let's foster one that protects people.

So if you're out there and you're scared, reach out to me, reach out to others, reach out to attorneys who can help you. Let's make sure the American people know what's going on. Chuck Borges here with his attorney, Deborah Katz. Thank you both for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. And following our conversation this afternoon, the Office of Special Counsel reached out to Chuck Borges' attorney to gather more information about his retaliation complaint. At the beginning of the Cold War in 1949, baseball great Jackie Robinson appeared before the House on American Activities Committee

to publicly disavow the comments of another prominent Black American, actor, singer, and activist, Paul Robeson. That fateful testimony is the subject of a new book, Kings and Ponds, Jackie Robinson, and Paul Robeson in America, by journalist and author Howard Bryant. I sat down with Bryant recently to unpack the parallel lives of these two trailblazing. men and the forces that ultimately pitted them against each other. Howard Bryant, welcome back to the News Hour. Thanks for having me back. And let's start our conversation with the key moment in your book, that testimony in front of the House on American Activities Committee in 1949,

Paul Robson was this outspoken activist with Soviet sympathies. And he had been quoted as saying, it turned out the quote was somewhat exaggerated, but he was saying that black Americans would never fight for a country like the U.S., against a country like the Soviet Union that believed in their equality. And this was Robinson's response in front of the committee. I've been asked to express my views on Paul Robson's statement in Paris to the effect that American Negroes would refuse to fight in any war against Russia because we love Russia so much.

I haven't any comment to make except that on that statement, except that if Mr. Robeson actually made it, it sounds very silly to me. But he has a right to his personal views, and if he wants to sound silly, when he expresses them in public, that's his business and not mine. So how did Jackie Robinson find himself there pitted against Paul Robeson? Well, the biggest reason he found himself pitted against Robeson is from his employer. Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, the man responsible for integrating the big leagues.

with Robinson in 1947, Jackie really felt a responsibility. He felt a loyalty to Ricky. Ricky really implored him to appear. Jackie didn't want to do it. He felt like it was not his area. He was not that well-versed in the politics, and certainly not the politics of the Cold War. But he also felt another responsibility, which was in his memoir, he would say that he did not want the white allies who were sympathetic to civil rights to abandon that fight if they felt that black citizens were disloyal to the United States, and he felt a sense of responsibility to ensure that. Paul Robeson, we should remind folks, was a giant of his time.

Is his disappearance from popular memory? Is that a historical accident or a deliberate act of forgetting? It's a 100% deliberate act, And it shows the power of the Cold War and the power of McCarthyism and so much of the language that we're hearing today about enemy of the people and the enemy within. This is what it was back then. And I think there was no greater disqualifying word, no greater weapon against an American citizen than to call them a communist at that time. And I think one of the things that I was really trying to get at is the tension in the African American community in this book. because so much of the black establishment felt that Robeson was toxic,

and they abandoned him as well. And in doing that, really isolated him and set the stage for the federal government and the rest of the country to really turn its back on him as well. It was certainly not an accident. Time did some of it, but really it was deliberate because of the tensions of that period. And how did Jackie Robinson come to think of that testimony later in his own life? Did he regret it? Well, exactly, Jeff.

And I think that the regret is a hard word for Jackie because he's an athlete, just like Robeson was an athlete, and it's really hard to admit that he was wrong. However, he and Paul Robeson both ended up at the end of their lives quite disillusioned at the lack of progress in the country. And Jackie especially, that's why the title is what it is, the questions of whether or not I did the right thing and whether or not I was being used or manipulated or whether Robeson was or whether we all were, Rachel Robinson gave a great interview in 1976 where she said that, you know,

Jackie was a patriot, he was a citizen, and it was, he was my country right or wrong, but he did receive, she said, we got two bad pieces of advice that we never really lived down. One was Jackie Robinson's support of Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, and the other was this testimony, and against Robeson in 1949,

And so he didn't exactly say, I regret doing it, but he did say, if asked to do it again, I would say no. So I think that's as close as we got to it. You call this story an exposed route on the beaten path of the story of baseball integration. What made you want to write about this era and these men? Really embarrassment was the first. I've been such a baseball fan for so long, and I've been reading about Paul Robeson and Jackie Robinson, and how many times if you read baseball history that Jackie Robinson testified against Paul Robeson.

And then I just kept reading, and I felt like the story was so relevant to today, and it's so important, these two giants, how could it be that you had, at one point, Paul Robeson was the most famous black men in the world. Jackie Robinson, the most important black athlete in the second half of the 20th century, how did this happen? How did they find themselves in opposition? What were the forces that, that,

put them in this predicament. And to me, it was just so representative of this question that African Americans are constantly having, and we have to this day, about belonging and about patriotism and about that two-ness, that ability to, one, be patriotic, and feel like you are a part of this country, while at the same time living in, at that time,

a segregated society, and all of the forces that sort of came to it. It's a really important, moment that I just felt was completely underreported. Building on your point about the parallels between that time and this current moment, what lessons do you think this story has for us right now? I think the biggest lesson to me, especially when I think about Paul Robeson, is the power of the times that you live in.

The complacency that we have today is very, very similar to the complacency that people felt back then, that the country wouldn't go as far, that we still believed in our institutions, and the institutions would save us, and that common sense would prevail. And you think about that, it sounds very similar to how we are today, that this is just a time and we'll get through it, but the effect of the Cold War, the effect of McCarthyism on Paul Robeson's life, the United States did not allow him to leave the country. They refused to issue him a passport, which was unconstitutional, and yet it happened. There were all kinds of, legal and extra legal things that took place there that really destroyed this man.

And on the other hand, when it came to Jackie Robinson, we talk about April 15th, 1947 as the transformative moment that it was, but we also don't talk about what it did to Jackie Robinson as a person. And so what I wanted to do was sort of break from a little bit of the mythology and dig into the effects of what these pioneering men have, what they went through in real time. And really, when I think about it, how, what is past his prologues, so much of what is happening then is happening now. The book is Kings and Ponds, Jackie Robinson and Paul Rubison in America by journalist and author Howard Bryant. Howard, always great to speak with you. Thank you. Thank you again, Jeff.

Free diver and ocean conservationist Hanley Prinslow has spent her life helping others connect with the ocean and understand our responsibility to care for it. Here, she shares her brief but spectacular take on protecting what we love. Something I love sharing with people is that our bodies are 70% water. 70% of the surface of our planet is ocean. Our tears have the same salinity as the ocean.

We are water, and I truly believe that we protect what we love. and that when something we love is threatened, we act. I grew up on a horse farm outside Pretoria in South Africa, and my childhood consisted of riding horses, bearback, climbing the tallest trees, catching frogs, and listening to owls at night. I had two rules.

come home before the sun sets and don't die. Some of my earliest memories are of wanting to be a mermaid, exploring the dams on the farm, the rivers, that stillness of being below the surface. Free diving came to me later in my life. Free diving is when you go down on one breath and swim underwater, holding your breath. In my mind, the penny dropped and I was like, that is what I have been wanting to do.

There's a small village on the southeastern Cape of the Baja Peninsula called Cabo Pulmo, where the jackfish that's cool there are about this size and there are thousands of them. And when you get in the water, you just see this ball of silver underneath you. And as you dive down, it opens up and swallows you. And suddenly you can't see the surface of the water, you can't see around you, you can't see the bottom, and you're surrounded by this swirling, living cloud of fish. It feels like I've dived into the center of our world, of our planet, and become something other than myself. The ocean has not been a place for everyone in South Africa.

And in 2010, I started the Iron Water Ocean Conservation Foundation, wanting to share the ocean with more than the few who get to go into the water. And for many of the young children we work with, it is the first time anybody in their extended family have had this experience. And it's empowering. My dream is to instill in my children some of the wildness I got to experience as a child. whether it's the fascination and reverence of an inchworm on a plant in our garden or the absolute majesty of a kelp forest soaring from the bottom to the surface,

I want them to always remember that they are wild. My name is Hanley-Prince-Lew, and this is my brief but spectacular take on protecting what we love. As always, you can watch more brief but spectacular videos online at pbs.org slash newshour slash brief. And that's the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. And I'm Amna Nawaz.

On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us.