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

Episode Date: July 15, 2026

Wednesday on the News Hour, President Trump's nominees for Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence face contentious confirmation hearings. Reporting on the new Air Force One leads to concerns about press freedom after New York Times journalists are subpoenaed. Plus, law enforcement camera technology is helping solve crimes, but also raising questions about surveillance and privacy. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Jeff Bennett. I'm the Navas is away. On the news hour tonight, President Trump's nominees for U.S. Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence face contentious confirmation hearings. Who won the 2020 election? Answer it. What is your answer? I've given you my answer. What is your answer? How reporting on security concerns surrounding the new Air Force One landed New York Times journalists with subpoenas. and the concerns that is raising about press freedom. And law enforcement's growing access to camera technology

is helping solve crimes, but also raising questions about surveillance and privacy. What's the tradeoff we're making in society? Are we comfortable with that level of tradeoff? And I think those are fair questions to ask. Welcome to the News Hour. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee today

for more than five hours of testimony on his nomination to serve, permanently in the role. As Justice correspondent Ali Rogan reports, Blanche faced pointed questions about his record as President Trump's personal lawyer, the fate of a proposed settlement fund for people who claim they were targeted by the Justice Department and his handling of the Epstein files. Do you swear or affirm? Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche took tough questions from both sides of the aisle. I'm here today to earn your trust once more. On his three-month record, in the acting role. This isn't a confirmation hearing. This is more of a performance review.

Up for review, a short-lived settlement of a suit President Trump brought against the IRS in which people claiming politicized prosecutions could apply for part of a so-called anti-weaponization fund. Blanche has said the fund is dead, but has declined to put it in writing. Has there been a written agreement of the parties to modify the settlement fund? No, the settlement fund's just not moving forward. There's no modification. It's just It never started. No money went from the Treasury to any other account. There's no commissioners. It's not moving forward. But just to be clear, the President of the United States, who was a plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund.

Blanche also took questions about a rebuke of the fund by a federal judge in Florida, who said the case was brought in bad faith. She shared her order with the New York State Bar for possible disciplinary action. Do you intend to appeal the Department of Justice? We weren't really even part of that decision. So to the extent there's something that we can't appeal, I very vigorously will encourage the department to do so. In the hearing room today, a handful of survivors of late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some of them appeared in a video earlier this week,

urging senators not to confirm Blanche over his handling of the Epstein files as deputy attorney general. Todd Blanche failed us. He failed victims everywhere. We deserve better. Those survivors criticized Blanche and the Department of Justice for redaction errors that revealed their personal information, which they say led to retramatization and fears for their safety. Blanche acknowledged those errors. Will you apologize to them for the mishandling and mistakes that were made by the United States Department of Justice? I will absolutely say that any mistake that we made should not have been made. While praising the work of the attorneys who reviewed the files. Whenever we learned that any victim's name had been improperly not redacted,

we immediately took the document down. Several lawmakers repeated claims by survivors that the DOJ purposely redacted names of powerful people connected to Epstein. Your explanation, quote, it isn't a crime to party with Mr. Epstein. Mr. Blanche, these survivors deserve much better. And urged Blanche to meet with the survivors in the room, which Blanche said he could not do directly. Will you meet with these 10 survivors? I'm asking you on the record. If they have lawyers, as you know, I'm prohibited from meeting directly with them.

I have met with counsel for survivors, as has many people in the Department of Justice over 30. But if they are represented by counsel, we will work with their counsel. There were revealing exchanges on many issues before the Department of Justice. but it may be a quick, apparently flubbed response that remains Blanche's most memorable answer. Are you in President Trump, France? I'm his lawyer, was his lawyer, and now I'm the deputy attorney general. Blanche led Trump's defense team on several cases between his presidential terms, which critics have called a conflict of interest since he joined this DOJ.

One of the cases was special counsel Jack Smith's probe into Trump's involvement in the January 6th, 2021. riots. Blanche said he has recused himself from January 6 cases, but he did move this year to vacate the convictions of 12 of the riots leaders. Blanche defended his involvement. These people were convicted in the January 6th investigation, which also involved the president, who you represented. You were involved in dismissing those cases where you're not? I was, I'm the acting attorney general, so yes, my department moved to dismiss. I was so You didn't recuse yourself from that matter. No, there's no reason to, from the Proud Boys matter?

Yes, it was, you know the rules. There are rules to say, yes, there are rules. And that's not one of them. Blanche needs the support of all committee Republicans in order to make it to a full Senate vote. Two of them, Tom Tillis and John Cornyn, lost their primaries and were viewed as wild cards going into the hearing. Cornyn told reporters he still has concerns, but Tillis seemed supportive. Thank you, Mr. Blanche. You've done a great job today.

The committee reconvenes tomorrow for a second day where they will hear from Blanche's supporters and critics. Meeting adjourned. Thank you, Senator. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Allie Rogan. Another Trump nominee for top post-faced senators today. U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee for his confirmation hearing to become Director of National Intelligence. The job is largely focused on foreign threats and national security, but as Nick Schifrin reports, much of today's hearing focused instead on the recent past. Today on Capitol Hill, a hearing that was supposed to be about the future of the intelligence community, was instead dominated by the history of the 2020 election.

Who won the 2020 election? You know, I'm not going to do this with you. Jay Clayton is the president's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, a lawyer with more than 30 years of experience, President Trump's first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and most recently U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, one of the Justice Department's most prestigious roles. Do you deny that Joe Biden won the 2020 election? Senator, I'm not an election to deny. Joe Biden was certified as the president of the United States. And yet repeatedly, in response to Democratic senators, Clayton refused to use the word,

to describe Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Who won the 2020 election? I have answered the question. Answer it. What is your answer? I've given you my answer. What is your answer? You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you asked

to lead America's intelligence community? Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president's deluge? I say it was rigged, just like the election was rigged in 2020. Since 2020, President Trump has claimed he won that election. And PBS NewsHour has learned that tomorrow night he will unveil new purported details in what he has long claimed without hard evidence was fraud. Part of the president's efforts to find fraud ensnared his last director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. She says that President Trump directed her to observe an FBI raid on an election office in Fulton County, Georgia. Georgia. By statute, the Director of National Intelligence is barred from participating in domestic

law enforcement or intelligence collection. Are you aware that former Director Graberd testified that her presence at the raid was, quote, requested by the president? I'm not aware of that until now. That did not sit well with Virginia Democrat and committee vice chairman, Mark Warner. And I trust you. I know you, but it's strange credibility to think that you were not aware of Director Gabbard's intervention in a domestic election activities in Fulton County. To be clear, the ODNI's role is principally outside the United States. There are other vital issues concerning the office

of the Director of National Intelligence, including its size and scope. Recently, acting director Bill Pulte, launched a wave of firings, a downsizing driven by President Trump and supported by Intelligence Committee Chairman, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton. The ODNI has unfortunately become yet another bloated agency that incentivizes bureaucratic make work as opposed to genuine intelligence work.

There needs to be a place of oversight, a place to resolve conflict. I look at it as a board of directors' roles. And to the extent that the ODNI has gotten into operations or started to play the roles of some of those other agencies, it probably should pull back. The Intelligence Committee is expected to vote on Clayton's nomination early next week. He would need all nine Republican votes if the committee's eight Democrats all oppose his nomination. For perspective on today's hearing, we turn to Fred Flights, who had a 25-year career in the intelligence community. During the first Trump administration, he was deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff to the National Security Council staff.

He is now vice chair of the American Security at the America First Policy Institute. Fred Flights, thanks very much. Welcome. Good to be. Is Jay Clayton the right person for the job? I think so. I was very impressed with him today. He came off as a distinguished leader, a distinguished manager, someone who has a very good report with Congress who has experience dealing with congressional oversight.

He also talked about his intelligence experience, his work as a judge dealing with counterterrorism, narco trafficking. I think this makes him a good choice in someone who will help implement the president's desire to reform and downsize the office of the drug. Director of National Intelligence. Let me ask, though, about the number of times that Clayton was asked by Democratic senators, also Angus King, an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats, about whether Biden, quote, won the election in 2020.

Clayton refused to use that word instead saying Biden was, quote, certified. What do you make of that? Is that important? I think it's a shame that the Democrats, six years after the 2020 election, still want to make an issue out of that. The Democrats want to make an issue over who won the election. Really, they wasted a hearing, which was an opportunity to discuss serious national security issues. I just think they're trying to use this hearing to create talking points and sound bites for the next election in the midterm.

Does it concern you about the most recent Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, that she got involved in domestic politics? There is a lot of evidence that you and I have talked about over the years that foreign adversaries have tried to influence elections. But the Senate intelligence community, the intelligence community itself has always said that there's no evidence that any foreign actors manipulated any votes. Does it concern you if the Director of National Intelligence is involved in domestic politics? Well, there's pretty substantial intelligence that many nations, China, Iran, and Russia have tried to influence the outcome of our elections. Did it make a difference in the outcome? Well, that's something we can debate and look at the information. I think that our intelligence community has a responsibility to make sure that if there are hostile powers trying to affect the outcome of our elections, especially presidential elections, they need to do that.

All right, that's zooms out. Let's zoom out. Clayton and Chairman Cotton of Arkansas talked about the need to cut the size of the staff of the Director of National Intelligence, as you mentioned before. Why do you think that's important? I like the way Cotton began this debate. He said that the ODNI, the Office of Director of National Intelligence, is a wasteful, an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. He would like to see it numbered in the teens, if not the hundreds. Right now, there are thousands of bureaucrats work in this bureaucracy.

I was with the CIA for 19 years. I really don't know what this bureaucracy does. When I was on the House Intelligence Committee, I just noticed they sent in tons of senior officials, so many of which, when we had a witness table, we couldn't fit all the ODNI and other intelligence community officials. So many officials, so many cooks stirring the soup, makes it very difficult to get intelligence out quickly to the president when he needs it.

We need to have a streamline and effective U.S. intelligence community. The ODNI, instead of being a small coordinating office to make sure the intelligence agency share information, that's what the 9-11 Commission wanted. It now produces intelligence. It has the National Intelligence Council. It has issue managers who do the same thing on regional issues and on functional issues. I think Senator Cotton is exactly right. He is a very good bill on how to pare down the ODNI.

And do you think the president will support Clayton being a strong director of national intelligence, even as the structures will reduce in size at the very least? I think Clayton will get similar directions from the president that Pulte did to basically right-size this organization. So intelligence is lean and mean and gets the president what he needs quickly and without political influence. Fred Flights, thank you very much. Good to be here. In the day's other headlines, the White House official tells the news hour that President Trump has overturned the temporary pause on ICE traffic stops. On social media, Mr. Trump praised the practice, calling it, quote, one of ICE's most important and effective crime fighting tools.

The agency said yesterday that it would suspend most stops after two fatal shootings within a week. In both instances, ICE agents were also not wearing body cameras. Today, the DHS said that moving forward, all ICE arrest teams will, have at least one agent with a body camera. The U.S. military launched multiple waves of new strikes against Iran today, the third wave in 24 hours. U.S. Central Command said overnight and daytime attacks targeted dozens of Iranian missile and defense sites.

Iran launched its own wave of strikes on Gulf nations overnight and has threatened to disrupt all energy exports from the Middle East. President Trump has signaled that he would broaden attacks next week to include civilian targets like bridges and power plants. On a visit to Pennsylvania today, Mr. Trump said he isn't giving Iran a deadline to return to the talks. I don't like giving deadlines, but they pretty much know this story. They better behave. For its part, Iran's foreign ministry said today it has no plans to negotiate.

Meantime, the U.S. naval blockade entered its first full day back in effect. The U.S. military said today that its forces, fired on and disabled, an oil tanker trying to break the blockade. Here at home, the intestinal parasite that has spread to at least 34 states was a topic on Capitol Hill today. Dr. Erica Schwartz, the Trump administration's nominee to lead the CDC, told the Senate Health Committee she'd use, quote, radical transparency to rebuild public trust in the agency. When asked about the CDC reducing its mandatory reporting of cyclosporiasis last year, Dr. Schwartz said she had not been aware, but vowed to address the outbreak.

You commit to reinstating the required reporting for cyclospora? You have my commitment to work with your staff and work with the CDC. A scientist to understand what can be done. Why was it? Why did it stop? And what can we do moving forward? We shouldn't need thousands of people to get severely ill before we reinstate programs and systems that were haphazardly canceled. The CDC has confirmed more than 1,600 cases and is looking further into more than 5,000 other suspected cases.

Heavy smoke from several wildfires burning in Canada and Minnesota is causing unhealthy air for millions of people across the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. In places like upstate New York, hazy skies have reduced visibility and affected traffic. The National Weather Service is advising people in affected areas to stay indoors. Intense heat and drought conditions have fueled large fires across at least 15 states. In Minnesota, fire officials say that shifting conditions on the ground mean they're having to prioritize which fires to put out first. I highly feel like this is going on for a while, so I do ask for patience. As the weather does what it wants to, we have to be able to react with the situation,

with the public and firefighter safety as our number one priority. Meantime, satellite footage shows storms moving across southern Texas today, where torrential rain has caused potentially life-threatening floods. Forecasters say as much as 20 inches could fall before the storm's ease by Friday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the Pentagon will start testing U.S. soldiers 30 and older for testosterone deficiency. In a video announcement with text that reads the High T Department of War, Hegset said this. the screenings would be part of a mandatory annual health assessment. He added that any recommended treatment, including hormone replacement therapy, would be optional. This initiative, it's not about artificial enhancement.

It's about restoring and optimizing your natural capabilities. Current medical guidelines generally advise against blanket testosterone screenings. The U.S. Treasury announced today that it will begin rolling out a new $1 coin featuring President Trump's likeness. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant says the coin is part of commemorations marking 250 years of American independence. Despite its gold-like finish, Treasury says the coin contains no actual gold. Federal law prohibits the U.S. Mint from putting the likeness of a living person on currency, but Bessent says the new coins are permitted because they are commemorative. The coin is expected to enter circulation this fall. Well, Argentina is through to the World Cup final,

after a dramatic two-to-one win over England. The defending champions scored both goals late in the game in a span of about seven minutes. 39-year-old superstar Lino Messi made the assist on both, adding to his legendary career. Argentina will face Spain in the final on Sunday, where they will try to be the first men's back-to-back World Cup champions in more than 60 years.

On Wall Street today, stocks ended higher after a series of strong corporate results, the Dow Jones Industrial Act. average added 150 points on the day. The NASDAQ grows about 150 points. The S&P 500 also posted a modest gain. Still to come on the news hour, the latest legislative push to make daylight saving time permanent. Why fewer Americans are reading for pleasure. And the National Youth Poet Laureate explains how he uses his art to bridge worlds. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETE.

in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. Several New York Times reporters were subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury today after the paper published stories raising security concerns about the new Air Force One, a plane gifted to the Trump administration by the government of Qatar. White House correspondent Liz Landers looks now at the questions the case raises about freedom of the press. In some cases, the subpoenas were served by federal agents to New York Times reporters at their homes. The paper denounced the actions and vowed to fight efforts to compel the reporters to identify confidential sources. The Trump administration issued subpoenas to five of our journalists in what I think is a naked attempt to intimidate the New York Times and to keep us from reporting on matters that we think are essential to national security.

Joining us now to discuss this is Will Creeley. He's the legal director for fire.org, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Well, thank you for joining NewsHour. It's an honor. Thank you for having me. The Justice Department says here that they are targeting the leakers of the classified information in this case and not the journalists. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was asked about these subpoenas today. The Department of Justice requires that I authorize it, which I did. And those reporters, we're not targeting reporters.

They're material witnesses, just like a reporter would be a material witness to a car crash. They are witnesses. And so... And the question you want to ask them is who were their sources? No. That goes to the heart of the First Amendment. No, the question we want to ask them is who provided them with classified national security information which everybody in this body should want to protect.

What does the law say about what protections journalists have in this case? Well, the law has been clear for a long time that somebody else's illegal conduct does not remove speech about a of public concern, like the president's new jet from First Amendment protection. There's no federal shield law, but the heart of the First Amendment does indeed protect this kind of activity. What we're seeing here should be a last resort. Subpoenaing reporters is a shot across the bow designed to get people to stop asking questions about subjects the administration would rather not talk about. And it's chilling. In this case, the subpoenas were issued to these five New York Times reporters, and some were served to.

at their homes. Is that unusual? And why do you think it was done in that way, in your opinion? It is unusual. And it's theatrical. It's designed to send a very clear message. Stop asking questions, sit down and shut up. I'm awfully tired of federal law enforcement agents showing up on people's doorsteps about protected speech. And unfortunately, this is just the latest in a pattern. This administration has evinced a real hostility to press that should concern Americans no matter their politics. It's designed to get people to sit down and be quiet. The New York Times has said that it will fight these subpoenas. How do they do that? And what could they argue in court? Well, 55 years ago, the New York Times found itself in the Supreme Court defending its

publication of the Pentagon Papers. And in deciding that the publication of those papers was protected by the First Amendment, despite the arguments then, like now, that national security dictated otherwise, just as Hugo Black wrote, the First Amendment was a designed by the founders to protect the governed, not the governors. That's us. And I hope the First Amendment will protect the New York Times again here. I imagine the New York Times will fight. They've called it brazen, and so it is. What happens if the reporters refused to testify? Well, I don't want to speculate, but we shall find out. I imagine they could be held in contempt.

We will see. We will be watching closely. I think, again, every American who cares about a free press, who cares about knowing what's going on with our government should be tuning in. This isn't an authoritarian dictatorship. We're not China. We're not a repressive society where you can't ask questions of our leaders. We should want to know what's happening with the folks who make decisions that affect our lives, including the president of the United States. You mentioned this, but this is not the first time that the Trump administration has tried to subpoena

or question journalists about stories that are critical of the administration or the president. is this a pattern that you're seeing? How would you describe this kind of behavior? Again, the president is in court and his administration is in court against the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. Just last week, my colleagues were in Iowa State Court defending a pollster and Seltzer against charges filed by the president alleging that her poll constituted consumer fraud. It's beyond the pale.

It is a direct attack on the First Amendment's protection of our free press. And the 250th anniversary of our country, we should demand better. How does this administration compare to previous administrations? I mean, other presidents and other administrations have asked reporters to reveal their sources, but how does this moment compare to those? That's right. Other presidents have done it, but this is not something we should get used to. Just because other presidents have done it, and they have of both parties, isn't a grounds for justification. We shouldn't normalize this behavior.

We should ask for the freest press we can demand. That's what we deserve under the First Amendment. That's what we are guaranteed beyond deserved. Again, I think that you have to look at this in the larger context of the president's attacks on the press. Really, almost from day one, attacking the press has been a trademark of his, and the result is a chill on speech. Well, Kreeley, thank you for your expertise. Thank you so much for having me.

Law enforcement agencies across the country use AI-powered cameras to scan billions of vehicles each month, often without drivers even knowing they're being recorded. Supporters say the technology helps solve crimes. Critics warn its rapid expansion is creating a nationwide surveillance network, raising questions about the balance between public safety and personal privacy. Paul Salman dives into that debate. A quiet Saturday afternoon last September. Denver resident Chrysana Elser gets an alert.

from her doorbell camera. A nearby Columbine Valley police officer has come calling. You know why I'm here? No. He pulled out a picture of my truck and accused me of stealing a package. We have cameras everywhere in that town. You can't get a breath of fresh air, in or out without us knowing. Police operated cameras had recorded her driving near the scene of the crime. Only problem, she had nothing to do with it. They caught me 20 times driving through the neighborhood that we drive through to go to work every day. Police had simply matched their video with doorbell footage of the theft, showing a blonde, like Elser. Well, can I see this video?

If you go to court, you can. If you're going to deny it, I'm not going to extend you any courtesy. If you're going to lie to me, I am not going to extend you any courtesy. It was shocking to have somebody come in so strong and rely on the digital evidence. Small black cameras mounted on utility poles began appearing around the neighborhood in 2024. But so what, says Elser? took the stance that everybody else takes that, that big deal, it's up there. If I'm not doing anything wrong, then why am I worried about it?

Turns out these cameras extend far beyond Denver. Today, more than 100,000 are installed across all 50 states, according to crowdsource data from anti-surveillance organizations. The vast majority owned by security tech company, Flock Safety. Let's shape a safer future together. We build hardware and software that helps city self-crime. Flax's Josh Thomas says they make. make other devices to detect gunshots, for instance.

But our bread and butter product is a license plate reader. We are pinpoint focused on the back of a vehicle to identify the make, model color, the license plate, the state of the license plate. Time stamps, locations. But Flok's AI powered cameras also record bumper stickers, dense, to match against local and national law enforcement hot lists. So when there's a wanted person, an outstanding warrant, a hit and run, a missing person, they will add those license plates to the list.

So in real time, if one of those vehicles drives by a flock safety device, we'll send an alert to local law enforcement. The data is also stored on a searchable cloud database for 30 days. And so misuse can happen. As with Chrysana Elsa, among others, documented in local reporting. But it's rare, says Thomas. What's far more common, he says, the technology helps solve crimes.

They're helping solve somewhere between 800,000 to a million crimes every calendar year. So roughly about 20 to 25 percent of all reported crime in America is being solved in some way or another with flock technology. You can always take the stories of the worst case scenario, but what's unfortunately and doesn't seem to get hit a lot are the stories of the best case scenario. Todd Chamberlain, Chief of Police in Aurora, Colorado. And there are some stories where lives have been changed through the use of this technology. As in Denver last December. A woman had put her child, a 14-month-old baby into her vehicle. She had her car idling.

Somebody came along, saw an opportunity to steal that car. And that mother was basically left watching her car drive away with her 14-month-old baby in it. Flock tracked the car, reunited mother and child. Thank you guys so much. Without that flock technology, we might not have found that for two or three days later. That technology saved that 14-month-old baby's life. So on balance, technology for the good? Well, Chrysana Elsa, for one, might disagree.

And Flok allows search data to be shared with police nationwide, potentially tracking Chrysana Elser's anywhere. When you have a national database of these cameras that can be queried by law enforcement without a warrant, that qualitatively shifts something about the surveillance. Joseph Cox is a journalist with 404 media. This isn't a small beat local police officer just looking into local crimes necessarily, you can have an officer on the other side of the

country, search for vehicles on the other side of the country as well. On behalf of ICE, for example. And that has clearly worried a lot of people who are now having a conversation about, do we actually want these cameras in our community? A few weeks ago, using a commercial search engine, I very easily found the administration interfaces for dozens of flock safety cameras. And last December, YouTuber Ben Jordan gained access to over 60 flock video feeds in cities across the country.

All this is relying on is knowing where exactly to look. And with that, we're able to see just how powerful some of these cameras are. But Flox Thomas says the leak was caused by cameras mistakenly configured to be public-facing, rather than private feeds. We have hundreds of thousands of sensors out in the world. A very, very small number had a public-facing IP address. He did find those. And the second we found those, within 48 hours, all of those were changed.

Which is either reassuring or not. There are YouTube videos that can teach you how to hack these cameras. Meanwhile, opposition is growing. If this camera sees you, you will be put on a database alongside every other law-abiding resident of this city. We are asking for the flock contract to be terminated in full. In the past year, dozens of cities have canceled contracts, following public backlash. And Flack now says it's willing to talk about

how its tech should be regulated. There's kind of no denying that it has clear benefits to cities. But the question, I think, is a very real one, which is, what's the tradeoff we're making in society? Are we comfortable with that level of tradeoff? And I think those are fair questions to ask.

Back in Denver, Chrysena Elser parry the charges against her with surveillance tech of her own. I gave him a Google map of where I was. I gave him the video from my job. truck that showed where I drove, gave him the video of the business I was at. She spent real money on tech defense. Why? If there's digital evidence out there that somebody has of you, you should have your own digital evidence. You mean this is like spy versus spy?

It was all kind of like, what do I have in my arsenal to prove myself innocent? Her own digital evidence ultimately cleared her, which is why she suggests that you, me, and everyone should have an arsenal of our own. But that's assuming, of course, that we can afford it. The PBS News hour, Paul Salman. It's a debate that has consumed a lot of time, literally. But yesterday, Congress took its biggest step yet toward ending the twice-yearly changing of the clocks. The House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide. The bipartisan bill now heads to the U.S. Senate where a similar effort stalled several years ago. For more, on the push to stop changing the clocks, we are joined now by Scott Yates, founder of the Lock the Clock Alliance.

Scott, it's always good to see you. So you've been pushing for this for years. We've seen momentum before. It's not become law. Why might this time be different? Well, we've never seen it pass the House before. I mean, it's never gotten the floor for even to be able to have a vote. So this is just a huge step forward. And I think it shows the kind of momentum that we have. And I think it shows the excitement over. over an issue that's actually bipartisan. I was pleased to see a wide margin, both among Republicans and Democrats, voting for it. So I think with that kind of momentum, we can go over to the Senate and say,

look, this is what the people want. And clearly that's reflected in state legislatures across the country and in the House vote yesterday. In your view, what do we gain by stopping the twice yearly changing of the clocks? One of the things I was really encouraged to hear yesterday were all different politicians getting up and talking about the health

detriments of the clock changing. You know, it wasn't that long ago that we just thought of changing the clocks for daylight saving time as kind of annoyance, but we didn't think of it as deadly. But now the research is really clear that it really is deadly and very disruptive. It's bad for schools. It's bad for businesses. It's bad for everybody. The only thing that we don't agree on is completely is on which time zone we should be

locking into. But I think we've got a solution to be able to address that without having to have the clock changed twice a year, which is what I think most people actually are the most interested in. It's just they don't really care that much which one we lock into. They just don't like the switching. Well, what's the solution? Well, the solution is actually an amendment that I proposed back when it was in the Senate last year to have a two-year implementation period. And what that allows is for each state to be able to have enough time and the school boards to weigh in and everybody in a state to be able to say, look, this is a time that makes the most sense for us.

You know, anybody that says they've got a perfect solution that works for every state in the country has some other agenda they're trying to push. Saying that you've got the exact right solution that works for Massachusetts and also works for Indiana, well, that's just not possible. So I think if we have a two-year implementation, which is an amendment that was accepted and is now part of the Senate version, that would give people of, for instance, Indiana and Michigan, a couple of states that I think would be really well served to be on permanent standard time to be able to make. that decision. Senator Tom Cotton, as you will know, he has opposed permanent daylight saving time. Here's part of what he said. By moving the clock back an hour in winter, permanent daylight savings time would push winter sunrises to an absurdly late hour, depriving Americans of morning sunshine that's essential for our safety and well-being. So under permanent daylight saving time, 87% of Americans would see winter sunrises after 8 a.m. There's also this 19th,

1974 experiment with permanent daylight saving time when dark winter mornings were linked to an increase in pedestrian accidents involving children walking to school. How do you answer those safety concerns? Well, once they actually did the research about what happened in 1974, they found that there really wasn't much of an increase in pedestrian deaths. And they've studied a lot since then. And if you're interested in pedestrian safety, there's no question that permanent daylight saving time is the more safe alternative. More light for pedestrians later in the day equals fewer pedestrian fatalities. But, you know, with respect to what Tom Cotton says, one person's absurdly late is another person's, that's just fine. A lot of people, especially in rural areas, are already getting up in the dark

when it's in the winter, and they're already going to school in the winter, especially if they have sports. And what a lot of those people have told me is they don't want to go to school and go to work in the dark and come home in the dark, which is what they're doing now. So if they can go to school and work in the dark and come home with a little bit of light so that they can have a little bit of time to play outside. At the end of the day, that's all the better. But my view is it's not up for us to say. I think it's right for the Congress to say we should stop switching twice a year, but it's appropriate for each state to have the discussion and decide which time's only want to lock into permanently. It's a state's right issue, which is something I think

Senator Cotton would agree with. Here's a history question. There is this long-stand. myth that daylight saving time originated with farmers. How did that misconception take hold? And where did it originate? You know, it originated from a retailer in Boston who thought that if people had more time, more daylight at the end of the day, they would spend more time shopping.

But he didn't want to say that. So he said, let's say it's the farmers. And that myth has stuck with us all the way through. Scott Yates, founder of the Lock the Clock Alliance. Always good to speak with you. Thanks so much. Thank you, Joe. In the last few years, there's been growing concern about how reading habits are changing among children,

both in school and at home. That includes questions about what kids are reading and why fewer books seem to be part of their educational diet. Now, a provocative new essay is widening the lens, raising similar questions about reading habits across the broader population. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has our conversation. You can see it in the numbers. Fewer than half of all American adults reported reading. a book of any kind in 2022, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. And just 38% read a novel

or a short story. A separate survey found the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on a given day fell from 28% two decades ago to 16% in 2023. In some ways, it's a continuing trend. But a provocative new cover story in the Atlantic puts it far more dramatically. The age of reading is over. It's by road. Horowitz, staff writer at the Atlantic, who joins me now. And thanks so much for being with us here. Now, it's a big statement that you're making. So why don't we parse it a little bit? What do you mean, first of all, by the age of reading? Yes. So what I meant by the age of reading was that this is bigger than what the statistics are showing us, that what we're, is really going away is a time

when reading was a major way that people transmitted, you know, culture, information. news, and really derived meaning from text. And, you know, my piece is arguing that that's ending and that we're entering what I call a post-literate age. And as you remind us at the beginning of this essay, this age of reading, which many of us have been so immersed in for so long, it actually doesn't have that long a history. Yes. Well, so, you know, I think we think of reading

as kind of something that's innate or inevitable, but actually it's quite historically contingent. Reading first emerged 6,000 years ago, and it was only relatively recently that large numbers of people could read and that people spent a lot of time, pleasure reading. So this is something that is kind of new, and when this age started,

it really transformed society and the way people thought and the way politics and culture worked. And as it's going away now, and we think we're seeing changes of the same magnitude in our society. Now, you refer to what we're entering as a post-literate age. And there's been plenty of discussion, of course, about social media, short videos on TikTok and elsewhere.

And you're arguing that we are reading differently already. So what do you mean by a post-literate age? If we look at the statistics, people still know how to read. The literacy rate is actually historically very high. And, you know, in many ways, we're probably reading more words than ever, if you think about the number of emails and text messages and social media posts you're reading. Like, we're inundated with words and we're surrounded with them. But what's happening is that this kind of, you know, these number of words that we're swimming

in has made it so that it's almost so difficult to focus on, you know, any serious or complex work of literature for an extended period of time. And so it's not a crisis of literacy. It's that we are entering a post-literate age. And you write, reading shaped the modern mind, its disappearance will reshape it. How will that change things? The bedrock principle in neuroscience is that you get good at what you practice and your brain adjusts to, you know, improve at the things that you spend time doing.

And so if we are spending less time reading, as we know that we are, we are going to struggle much more to do it. And it's not that, you know, we're going to be unable to decode words, but we have much less background knowledge and vocabulary to aid in comprehension. We are less accustomed to persisting through something for an extended period of time. And already we see that, you know, two decades ago, the average attention span on a screen was two and a half minutes. And five years ago, it fell to 47 seconds. So we're already seeing, you know, people, kind of being less accustomed to focusing on something. We're already seeing an erosion of some of our, you know, abilities to do complex synthesis and analysis and comprehension. And we can expect that that

would continue. And some of these things, you know, we have been looking at on our program and, of course, have been well documented elsewhere, just the way this impacts children and the way they learn. Yes. I think for me reporting this piece, sort of the most chilling statistic I found was that, only 2% of American adults report reading to a child on any given day. And so I think, you know, we see now that the current generation, the current young generation enjoys reading much less and spends less time reading than today's adults did when they were kids. You know, we know that every year older a child gets, the less they like to read in focus groups. High school students described reading for pleasure as an alien practice.

And something else that we know is that schools are assigning fewer and fewer books. And throughout middle and high school in a survey last year, teachers in middle and high school reported assigning between zero and four books a year. And 80% of elementary school teachers in a separate survey said that students receive a digital device by the time they enter kindergarten. So we're seeing that schools are really changing where they're assigning far fewer books, And so I think that we can expect that this trend that we're seeing will only accelerate in the years to come. So one thing you write about in the piece is the way that the changes in thinking, the changes in reading impacts who has influence in our culture. It's gone away from some of the traditional perhaps sources as writers to influencers and others.

Tell us a little bit about that. You know, in a recent poll 30 percent or 60 percent of Gen Z said that they, would be an influencer if they could. And so I think it's a very different way of culture being passed, of power, you know, being in society. We know that cultural and economic power tends to flow to people who are skilled at using the dominant communications media of the age. And right now, that is short-form video, and it's not text.

I can't resist at the end of our conversation you're pointing out that this death of writing, warning comes in a very long and fairly complex essay form. Yes. So I write in the piece about my own experience reading and growing up in a family of readers and having books passed down to me from my parents and my older siblings. And there definitely was an irony in putting this warning about how nobody reads in a 9,000 word essay. But, you know, I wanted to share my experience because I think that other people can relate to it. I loved reading when I was a child and I still love reading today, but I noticed that it almost slipped away from me without me even noticing.

All right. Rose Horowitz, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. For a decade, the National Youth Poet Laureate Program has honored some of the country's top young writers who use their words to inspire social change. Fred de Sam Lazaro recently spoke with its newest laureate in his hometown of Cedar Falls, Iowa. It's part of our ongoing arts and culture series, Canvas. As Daniel Umezzie strides through the halls of Cedar Falls High School, he carries with him many titles, Homecoming King, Two Sport Athlete, Entrepreneur,

and now National Youth Poet Laureate. In April, the 18-year-old was selected from a pool of hundreds of young writers, local poets laureate from sites around the country. I'm still relatively shell-shogged, right? I mean, it's all that, you know, kind of bundled into this emotion of, you know, excitement and honor. Ume Mazeera grew up in Nigeria. He was passionate about art and music from an early age. I played the piano for 14 years.

I played the drums. I played nine instruments, actually. So I've done a lot of the arts, drawing, painting, crocheting, knitting. I mean, I did architecture for a while. So everything I've dabbled in and all. And he was an avidavit. reader regularly scouring the books in the library of his preacher father. I would read the dictionary because our dictionary had pictures and I'd love to read.

I love to find out all the different words, all the different ways you could say a certain thing. He has always been that kind of child that is hungry for knowledge. Sometimes just feel like his mind walks round the clock. Like, does this mind ever get a break? When Ume Mesee was 13, his mother got a nursing job in the year. in the U.S., so the family, Daniel, his parents and two siblings moved first to Texas, then to Iowa.

The biggest thing I would say I experienced with it was the culture shock. I mean, you don't say, I'm sorry, you say my bad. You don't write with a pen. You use a pencil to shading your answers. It's a bit of a shock when you grew up with a group of people, a group of friends, and you have to move, right, and then you leave all of that behind to start a new life and to meet new people and grow new connections. Writing and poetry in particular soon became the way Umemizier bridged his two worlds.

I come from two Nigerias. A nigeria with words of rain on zingtongs and laughter rumbles. Berthet, down the yellow throat of traffic, a terry chest, bear and clotted with coal. I come from a language. From a mouth laced with generation, so when I say the words, Odima, it is fine and it will be fine, and I am telling you that it is fine. I come also from a second Nigeria, one where the generator's chesty cough is the most of the most of the chesty cough is the most reliable sound in the neighborhood.

One, where the madmen cry in the streets and no one knows their names, and no one watches as the street preachers lay hands and potholes, but the madmen still say amen in faith that one day God and the government might share a contractor. I come from two Nigerias and they do not wrestle in my ribs. They take turns breathing one lung each, which is why some mornings I wake up short of air and do not know which country to ask. Does your mind go to particular themes?

What do you write about it? A lot of my writing is based on memory, memory of place, memory of people, memory of things, memory of objects, memory, memories that I don't even have. Memory doesn't, it's not a one-way street. You make a memory with someone, the person makes a memory with you. It's a relationship, right? And we can explore that with poems. You can explore that with music. And it really is a beautiful thing to understand that once you get to expression, then find communication a whole lot easier.

And poetry is a way to kind of like toe that line, you know, back and forth. Umezzei tries to write at least one poem a day. His phone is filled with one-liners he jots down any time he gets a new thought, sometimes in the middle of the night. His notebooks are similarly packed with poems he's workshopping. In the sun, I am visible through my skin, an ocean of stars see-through spursely interstitched into a pool of lucid wax. I couldn't decide if it was black or wax.

I can taste it in my saliva. freedom in all shapes and colors like my daddy, feet stomping, tongue twist and fever in his bones. When I'm all grown and grown, I'd like to be a preacher. During his sophomore year, an English teacher encouraged Ume Mizei to enter a local poetry competition. He won and went on to become the Cedar Valley Youth Poet Laureate and the Iowa student poet ambassador before winning the national honor this year.

A country that is bruised but whole. He follows in the footsteps. of poets like Amanda Gorman, who was the first national youth poet laureate in 2017, and read her poem, The Hill We Climb at President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021. Ume Mazeer will now travel the country for readings and workshops. He hopes to champion work that spurs social justice, political participation and self-exploration. What of silence is not absence, but an actor and his drama, presence with attention like smoke in the closed room

I confess I do not understand its purpose some days it protects me others it feels like inherited debt I remember biting my tongue till it bled not from fear but from believing that speech would cost more than silence ever did I want to see a change right in society where youth are taken seriously

and then from that point on you know we can find that youth have the confidence to then speak up on matters whether it be politics whether it be matters of sexuality, whether it be matters of, you know, religion, whether it be matters of war. And I see poetry is a huge, huge tool for that, because poetry gives you the freedom to say a lot of things. Poetry gives you the freedom to be free from whatever you might think holds you back. Ume Mazeera graduated from high school in May.

He plans to go to Iowa State University in the fall, not to study creative writing, but, get this, aerospace engineering. Already he started a company with three friends developing drone technology to aid in disaster relief. And he hopes to earn a master someday at the renowned Iowa Writers Workshop. For the PBS News Hour, this is Fred D'Sam-Lazero in Cedar Falls, Iowa. That's the News Hour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS News Hour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us.