PBS News Hour - Full Show - July 16, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: July 17, 2026

Thursday on the News Hour, President Trump is set to make election conspiracy theories a central focus of a primetime address tonight. A fact-check as he revisits the 2020 election. Smoke from wildfires in Canada blankets multiple states. Plus, state and federal lawmakers push for stronger guardrails on kids' use of artificial intelligence, but some advocates say blanket bans are missing the mark. 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 is set to make election conspiracy theories a central focus of a primetime address tonight, a fact check as he revisits the 2020 election. Smoke from wildfires in Canada blankets multiple states across the Midwest and mid-Atlantic. And state and federal lawmakers push for stronger guardrails on kids' use of artificial intelligence. But some advocates say blanket bans are missing. the mark. The onus of putting kind of restrictions, again, falls on families. It falls on parents who are just trying to figure it out. What we really want to ask are companies to design safer products. Welcome to the News Hour. President Trump will speak tonight from the White House, where he is

expected to make new claims about foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. The speech marks an escalation of his years-long effort to relitigate the election he lost. His repeated false claims about the 2020 vote have been rejected by courts, election officials, and independent assessments which found no evidence of widespread fraud. Our White House correspondent, Liz Landers, joins us now with a preview. So, Liz, you have been reporting on this since the president announced this speech earlier this week. What is he expected to say tonight? The president is saying that this is going to be really, really big news. And he went on to say on Tuesday that it doesn't get bigger because without free and fair elections, you don't have a country.

Caroline Leavitt also gave a bit of a preview during the press briefing earlier today. We should have the safest and most secure elections in the history of the world. And what the president will be speaking about tonight will show you that perhaps that is not the case. And we need to make some adjustments moving forward, including the Save America Act. Jeff, elections in this country are very safe and secure. And voter fraud is incredibly rare. So based on what we've heard from the president in the past, it seems that he may repeat falsehoods the 2020 election, as he has done repeatedly.

Nick Schifrin and I are hearing from sources that the president is expected to claim foreign election interference from China in the 2020 elections. The sources that we're speaking to say that there are thousands of pages of intelligence documents that the president is going to point to as evidence of this. And we should also expect the president to mention some of the key swing states that he lost, like Georgia, during this speech later this evening. And the president has remained fixated on this 2020 election loss. Many of the claims he's expected to repeat tonight have been repeatedly refuted, including by members of his own administration.

Walk us through that history. His own administration in 2020, as you just said, put out a number of intelligence assessments after that election looking into whether there was foreign interference and meddling in that. John Radcliffe was the director of national intelligence in 2020. He is now the CIA director. And there was a DNI report that was released that I think there are two key points here that we should review. This was given to President Trump in January of 2021. It says there are no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 U.S. elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results. This assessment also said this of China.

Quote, China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. On the other hand, Jeff, the intelligence community did assess that President Putin of Russia tried to influence the 2020 elections to denigrate President Biden and Iran tried to influence the elections to denigrate candidate Trump. So here's what the president's own attorney general, Bill Barr, said when he spoke to the January 6th committee when he was asked about these non-truths, these conspiracies from the president. I saw absolutely zero basis for the allegations, but they were made in such a sensational way that they obviously were influencing a lot of people, members of the public, that there was this systemic corruption in the system. and that their votes didn't count and that these machines controlled by somebody else were actually determining it, which was complete nonsense. An attorney general Barr was not the only cabinet official or advisor of the president's from 2020, who apparently said this to him. There were a number of Republicans and close advisors to Trump

who said to the January 6th committee a few years ago that they told the president that these were not true conspiracies that he was hearing. I know as part of your reporting, you've been speaking, with election officials around the country? What are they telling you about this? I've spoken with probably a half-dozen election officials in the last few days since this announcement came out, and they're concerned. They're concerned about what the president is going to say tonight

and how it may undermine people's confidence in the upcoming midterm elections. I spoke with one Republican in a swing state who said to me yesterday that every Republican that they're talking to says that the last thing that they need to be talking about as a party is voting machines in the 2020 election. This person said, we as a party need to talk about a 14th century. and other issues that are important to the public.

I spoke with another election official in Arizona who's watching this speech closely because Arizona has primary races on Tuesday of this week. And this person said, I don't know what the president is going to say and whether this will somehow impact our election administration next week. And then finally, the Secretary of State of Arizona, Adrian Fontes, and I spoke on the phone yesterday. And he made the point that the president and this administration keep challenging the way that elections are administered, these mail ballot challenges that we've seen, these executive orders about

turning over election data. He says, this administration keeps losing these challenges in court, and he thinks that this speech tonight will be another futile attempt to influence an area that the president and the executive branch has no influence over. Liz Landers, thank you, as always, for this terrific reporting. We appreciate it. Of course. Well, you can watch PBS News live streaming coverage of President Trump's prime time

address tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern on our website with context and real-time fact-checking from our partners at Politifact. That's at pbsnus.org slash news hour. Now, for perspective on what the president is trying to achieve with tonight's speech, the limits of his authority, and the potential consequences for future elections, we turn now to Ty Cobb, an attorney who served as the special counsel during the first Trump administration. I spoke with him a short time ago. Ty Cobb, welcome back to the News Hour. My pleasure. Nice to be with you, Jeff. Tai, you have described a broader pattern here.

President Trump's focus on voting machines, his efforts to change mail-in-voting, voter registration requirements, most recently his removal of members of the Election Assistance Commission. What does tonight's speech add to that picture? Well, I think tonight's speech is intended to add the predicate that he needs to declare an emergency adder about the time of the election. elections. As Steve Bannon and Todd Blanche have suggested that there will be ICE agents at the polls, I think that that's a virtual certainty, whether that will include the National Guard or not. We don't know. But anything to intimidate minority voters, particularly immigrant voters, and also I think anything that allows them to, you know, try to seize voting machines,

as Trump wanted to do in 2020, but Bill Barr explained to him there was just no basis for it. I think you will see him doing everything he can to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, the election of Democrats, and do whatever he can to remain in power and to keep his cronies in powers so that he can continue doing what he thinks he's allowed to do as president,

which is anything he wants. President Trump has said in the past that he believes of Democrats win control of Congress and the midterms that he'll be impeached. When you say that you believe he's intent on declaring a national emergency, what guardrails remain if the president does, in fact, use the power of the federal government

to shape how the midterm elections are conducted? I think the only real guardrail is, you know, for people to get to the polls, to vote against the level of corruption and insanity and frivolity that we've seen, the type of conduct that has made the world more dangerous and that, you know, has enriched President Trump to the tune of somewhere between, you know, $4 and $8 billion during the time he's been in office. We know he made, you know, $2.2 billion last year, largely on crypto. We know that his

stock trades, you know, he had hundreds of stock trades last year, if not thousands, I think Obama had zero, Biden had 13 by comparison. And many of those stock trades were followed by, you know, statements from Trump, touting the products of the companies that he had bought or giving them government contracts. So what we have seen is so inimical to what it has historically meant to be an American president, where integrity, courage, straightforwardness, and an interest. in the lives of the people that are being governed, we're at the front and center.

We have a president now who's there solely to enrich himself, his family, and his cronies, and to wield power in a way that satisfies his basest instincts. We need people to come out and vote against that. That is the guard rail. Internally, unlike the first administration, when you had people like General Kelly, General Mattis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pompeo,

people of character who would hold up. up their hand when Trump wanted to do something reckless or self-dealing, we don't have that now. I mean, we have the Stephen Miller's of the world, the Todd Blanches, whose mantra is, I love you, sir, you know, I'm your lawyer, you know, who has overseen revenge prosecutions, the hollowing out of 20% of the lawyers in the Department of Justice. Most of the most of the most experienced and talented lawyers who are in leadership positions, they're gone now. And we've redirected FBI and DOJ resources under Blanche and Patel, to immigration cases, to the exclusion of counterterrorism cases, money laundering cases, fraud, and civil rights. So I think we need people to come out

in voting us that that's the best guardrail we have and that's the only remaining guardrail in our democracy. And yet, if there were genuine vulnerabilities in voting machines or attempts by China to interfere, those would be major needs. national security concerns. How should a president responsibly address those concerns without using them to undermine confidence in an election that has already been settled? Well, I think when you say those concerns, I mean, those concerns are inflated, overrated, and exaggerated. There is evidence historically that China and Russia had some influence peddlers that Iran and Venezuela have, that we do this around the world as well, you know,

trying to influence people in public opinion. But on the voting machines, you know, that's been looked at. And frankly, when Fox tried to support Trump's wild claims about, you know, abusive voting machines in 2020, it cost them almost a billion dollars, $787 million that they had to pay out for fraudulently supporting Trump's unfounded claims. And we're going to see, we're going to see that again. You know, Trump's going to make more unfounded claims. The intelligence that comes into the CIA and the FBI is always graded. You know, some of it's good. Some of it comes, some of it comes, arises under circumstances that have some credibility. None of the stuff that you were going to hear tonight is, and particularly the Venezuela stuff. I mean, he's going to use

Maduro, probably fabricated statement of facts to support a guilty plea for Maduro, which will later be followed by the type of Gisleine Maxwell treatment where he gets favorable treatment in exchange for doing what the administration wants. I think people need to see through this. And you're not going to see, you know, reliable people, people historically who, you know, have the respect of the American people, the intellectuals, the historians, the, you know, journalists, you're going to see people that of the type of Bill Pulte and John Solomon, who, you know, have been conspiracy terrorists from the start who are willing to do whatever Trump asks, supporting these claims, but you're not going to see many credible people do this. And I think people need to, when they,

when you talk about serious claims, I think the serious is the flaw in that statement, because They aren't serious. This is unsurious. This is Trump, you know, acting out his fantasy and trying desperately to push his minions to help him pretend as he has rewritten history over January 6th, as he has rewritten history about the 2020 election to go along with him. Tai Cobb, thanks again for making time for us this evening. Good to speak with you. My pleasure. And we start the day's other headlines in Ukraine, where thousands poured into the streets today to protest President Volodymyr Zelensky's decision to fire his popular defense minister.

The crowds chanted shame in a rare public challenge of Zelensky's leadership. Mikhailo Fedorov was seen as an innovator of the country's use of drone technology in Ukraine's war effort, but he often clashed with the more traditional military establishment. While hosting British Prime Minister Kirstarmer in Kiev today, Zelensky insisted that his decision was necessary. To be honest, the president is not supposed to pick sides in this kind of situation during wartime. I would very much like unity. I'm simply pointing out that if the sides cannot resolve the issue, I will have to resolve

it myself. Another part of Zelensky's government reshuffle, Ukraine's parliament approved a new prime minister today, the former head of a state energy company. Sergei Kuretsky is the third person to hold the role since Russia's invasion more than four years ago. In Gaza, health officials say several Israeli attacks in recent days have killed at least a dozen people. A series of overnight airstrikes killed three family members in central Gaza. That's according to a local hospital. Israel has not commented on those strikes. The near daily attacks come despite a ceasefire that took effect last year between Israel and Hamas. Today, family members

held funeral prayers for their loved ones and voiced anger over the ongoing violence. The entire people of Gaza have not lived a single day or a single moment of the ceasefire. It's an illusion. No place in all of Gaza is safe. All of us are exposed to death. And all of us are exposed to danger because we live under an occupation and under aggression. In a separate strike this week, six police officers and a woman were killed in Gaza. Israel has said that some of them were Hamas militants but provided no evidence.

More than 1,100 people in Gaza have been killed since the ceasefire took effect, along with at least five Israeli soldiers. In Texas, Governor Greg Abbott says at least one person has been killed in severe flooding that's affecting central and southern parts of that state. This is just insane. There's a playground, underwater. Surging waters have turned streets into river, in some areas, authorities say more than 70 people have been rescued in recent days.

Governor Abbott has issued disaster declarations for nearly 60 counties across the state and said today he's deploying resources to address the continued flooding. I just want to make sure that all Texans know that we have more than 1,300 Texas personnel, the National Guard, Texas Department of Public Safety. We have all resources, boats, helicopters available to make sure we will be doing everything possible to save human life. The National Weather Service is warning of what it calls a deadly flood wave along the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country that runs along Camp Mystic, where flooding last year led to the

deaths of more than two dozen people, most of them young campers. A White House teleprompter operator has been placed on unpaid leave as a federal regulator investigates possible insider trading in prediction markets. Multiple media outlets have identified the staffer as Gabriel Perez, saying he alleged. allegedly used his access to speeches, like the State of the Union address, to make nearly $100,000 on Kalshi. The platform noticed the unusual betting activity and referred the trades to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt today called the allegations deeply unfortunate and a disgrace. On Capitol Hill, acting attorney

general Todd Blanche agreed to meet with survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse late this afternoon, after Republican Senator Tom Tillis said he'd only vote to advance his nomination for AG if such a meeting took place. Blanche needs support from all Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee for his nomination to move forward, assuming every Democrat is a no vote. Tillis laid out his condition on the second day of Blanche's confirmation hearing, where Epstein survivors and their families stood up to challenge the DOJ's handling of the Epstein files. We may look like grown adults when you see us now, but we were children.

Young girls at the time of our abuse, these are the photos of when our innocence, dreams, and lives were stolen. Epstein survivor Danny Benson criticized the DOJ and Blanche himself for releasing sensitive information about the survivors. She implored senators to, quote,

think about the girls in these photos when casting their votes. Blanche has defended the DOJ's handling of the Epstein case. The FDA has approved a first-of-its-kind cholesterol pill from drug maker Mer. It's called Liphtra. And unlike statins, it works by targeting a specific protein that limits the body's ability

to clear so-called bad cholesterol. According to the American Heart Association, about one in four American adults have high levels of such cholesterol, which can increase the risk of heart disease and strokes. Merck says the pill is set to cost about $300 per month and will be available in the coming weeks. Well, a drop in tech stocks weighed on Wall Street today. By the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down about 100. points. The NASDAQ dropped nearly 400 points. The SMP 500 also closed in negative territory. Still to come on the News Hour, how an escalation in the war with Iran is putting global shipping

at risk. A sharp divide emerges in Congress over billions in aid for Israel. And experimental artist Suzanne Jackson walks us through a new exhibit chronicling decades of her work. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, Headquarters of BBS News. Between now and Saturday, more than 115 million people may be exposed to dangerous smoke and unhealthy air quality levels. That's because wildfire smoke is spreading and triggering health advisories in at least 17 states from the Midwest to the Mid-Atlantic. Thousands have evacuated northern Minnesota. In other states, it's led to flight delays, the closure of pools and beaches, and the cancellation of many other outdoor activities.

Stephanie Sy has our report. People in Duluth, Minnesota woke up to some of the world's worst air quality this morning. Same for the residents of Detroit and Chicago. I felt pretty sick just from... In Minneapolis, Caitlin Smith was struggling just to breathe. This is just crazy. I've never experienced something like this in my life before. I was just exposed to the smoke last night for like five minutes on my bike ride home from work, and I felt really sick.

It's becoming an all too familiar summer site in North America, orange-tinted smoke-filled skies like the one over Toronto's famous CN Tower. As soon as I woke up in the morning, I went outside of my terrace, and you could definitely smell the smoke in the air, and it's very hazy out. It's the result of hundreds of wildfires burning in Canada and the northern U.S. A train crew near Armstrong, Ontario, capturing the intensity of the flames. Oh yeah, look over there. Mike Flanagan is a professor of wildland fire at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia.

Most of the fires were started by lightning. There were some human-cause fires, but the majority are lightning caused. In northern Minnesota, the fires in smoke have forced the evacuation of the boundary waters canoe area. Adding to the fire danger is the oppressive heat enveloping a large section of the country. It has been hot, dry, and windy in Minnesota and northwestern Ontario. Temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Ontario and Minnesota. It was windy. You get lightning strike, fire starts.

It grows rapidly. Those temperatures are record-breaking, if not record-smashing, for many parts of Ontario and Minnesota. And it's part of that heat dome that affected much of western and central United States in the last few days. A weather system in Canada is steering smoke into the U.S., across the Great Lakes and into the northeast and mid-Atlantic region. The cluster of darker dots show where fine smoke particles in the air were measured at dangerous levels today. What is typically happening with a high-pressure system, and these heat domes are high-pressure systems, is the smoke gets injected high into the atmosphere. It kept the winds carry it, but this rich air sinks, warms, and dry.

And as it sinks, it takes the smoke with us. Pretty Armageddon like out here. It is that I think I'm more affected by the way it looks than the way it smells. That smoke is more than unsightly. It's unhealthy. From a health standpoint, there is no such thing as good smoke. Luke Montrose is an environmental toxicologist at Colorado, State University. We know it gets into the systemic circulation and likely has impacts on other organs.

And we're starting to see some instances where researchers are seeing effects on brain health, mental health, and even the reproductive system. And Montrose says when the air is as bad as it is in the upper Midwest, there's no sure way to escape it. This is catastrophic smoke. There are very few spaces that you can go to get away from that kind of smoke. It is going to infiltrate those spaces. Even people who have great immune systems and are really healthy will start to have respiratory effects from these levels of smoke, particularly if it lasts an entire day. Experts say children, the elderly and people with chronic illnesses are the most vulnerable. Symptoms may include sore throats, excessive phlegm,

coughing, headaches, and brain fog. Staying indoors, turning on air conditioners and air filters, and wearing N95 masks can help mitigate the risks. Forecasters are predicting that the smoke conditions will likely ease by Saturday. But with fire weather getting more intense, this won't be the last of such events. In Canada and the United States, we're getting warmer because of human-caused climate change. and the increases in area burn, fire severity are largely not solely due to human-caused climate change. I can't be any clearer than that.

As for the fires currently burning, experts say they may continue through autumn and maybe even until the first snowfall. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Stephanie Sye. Today, the White House said American and Iranian negotiators continue to speak, even as both sides draw a heart. hard line in public. The U.S. military is launching strikes on Iran again tonight, while President Trump has suggested he will soon escalate even further. For its part, Iran today said control of the Strait of Hormuz is a red line. Nick Schifrin speaks now to the head of the UN's maritime organization about the U.S. Iran's struggle for the strait. Today, the waterway that is supposed to supply one-fifth of the world's energy is almost entirely shut.

And today, Iran released video of what it called attacks on U.S. allies and vowed to never give up control of the Strait of Hormuz. Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow the United States as a foreign and extra-regional country to interfere in the state of Hormuz. This is Iran's inviolable red line. The longer and the more that shipping gets used and weaponized, the more than everybody around the world is going to be affected. Arsino Dominguez is the Secretary General of the International Maritime Organization,

the UN's body in charge of the safety and security of international shipping. We saw shipping data today that indicated that the number of ships leaving the Strait of Formuz was in the single digits. That's a reduction even from the last few days. Can you confirm that and why? It is correct. And of course, that's also response to the call that I've been making for ship owners and ship operators not to put at risk the lives of innocent seafarers and to try to transit across

a straight of our moves, particularly because we have seen an escalation in the conflict between the two parties in the last few days. And we're going back to where we were before at the beginning of the conflict. From your perspective, how important is it that full-scale war not resume? Oh, it's very important. The impact on the global economy, the shortages of fuel, LNG, as well as fertilizers for food security. These are the things that we're seeing where the costs are going up and the shortages are happening. So for the longer this conflict goes on, the more difficult that it will be for shipping to supply that over 80% of global goods around the world. And of course, for the innocent seafarers to be able to go back to the normal lives.

U.S. strikes are designed to prevent Iran from attacking ships. The reason for the recent The recent strikes over the course of the last several days is because Iran violated the memorandum of understanding that we struck with them. Specifically, in the memorandum of understanding that they signed, they were not to fire on commercial vessels moving through the strait of Hamos. But Iran keeps striking unless ships sail on an Iranian-approved route. There have been various attempts by the IMO and Oman, as well as by the U.S. military, to try and create a passageway that would hug the Omani coast rather than the Iranian

coast so that ships could transverse safely. Why hasn't that worked? Right now, the main reason is the conflict. Until we have guarantees that no vessel from any country will be affected at attack, we cannot resume transit in the Strait of Formuz right now. This is why the negotiations are so important. And today there is a new risk to global shipping. In Yemen, the Iran-backed Houthis. Who've previously seized and attacked ships are now threatening to try and close the Babelmandeb, the gateway to the Red Sea, 1,300 miles to the southwest of the Strait of Hormuz. If you had a combined problem of the Strait of Hormuz being largely closed and the

Babel Mandeb not being safe to passage, what's the impact on the world? What's the impact on international shipping? First of all, it's going to be a higher cost, and that's a reality. So we will see an escalation not only on the costs, on the prices, but a detrimental effect on the seafarers, which will make even more difficult for us to attract seafarers to the sector to be able to operate the ships. So this is going to have a rolling effect where the negative impact, we're feeling more and more for a long time.

Last night, Iran released an American detainee, Dana Karari, what President Trump called a gesture of goodwill. But there is otherwise signs of ban. and most U.S. and regional officials predict the war will escalate. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Nick Schifrin. Israel's war in Gaza and its joint military operation with the U.S. against Iran are fueling deep divisions on Capitol Hill, especially among Democrats. Last night, more than half of House Democrats voted to end U.S. military funding for Israel

and a separate provision aimed at strengthening U.S.-Israel cooperation, part of the must-pass annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, is also exposing sharp differences. Lisa Desjardin has been on Capitol Hill for much of the day and joins us now. Lisa, it's great to see you. So let's start with aid, U.S. aid to Israel. What happened this week? For the first time, at least in modern memory, a major political party has seen the majority of its party vote to cut military aid, all of it, to Israel. This happened yesterday in a vote in the House, 103 Democrats voted to strip all of the military funding to Israel. That's about $3.3 billion out of the bill.

Now, most every Republican voted to keep the funding, so it did end up staying in that bill. But there's no question. This is exposing, as Republicans intended it to expose, a boiling divide in the Democratic Party. You can also look at the Democratic leaders of the House. There are the three right there. Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the Democratic side, and then the head of the Democratic caucus itself, Pete Aguilar, they voted against cutting this funding, but they're in the middle of the number two Democrat in the House voted yes.

That is a very rare break, as you know, from anyone in Democratic leadership. Again, it's a profound debate. Some Democrats that I spoke with, like Emmanuel Cleaver of Missouri, said, listen, they may not like everything that Netanyahu is doing, but they will not end their support for Israeli aid. What Hamas did was one of the worst things I've ever seen or read about. during my lifetime and I think that we have to make sure that when when Israel is attacked that they can respond. However, other Democrats are seeing what we saw in recent elections, recent

primaries, where we're seeing the base increasingly vote on Israel and increasingly vote in opposition to any more support for Israel specially funding. So I spoke with Pramila Jayapal. She is a progressive and I also spoke to the Republican who sponsored the move Thomas Massey about what they saw here. This is U.S. taxpayer dollars and we have not upheld the Israeli government to any of our domestic laws or international laws in terms of requirements, completely unaccountable money. And it has to stop. I think it shows that public opinion is shifting. I think it shows that

it's being reflected in at least one party here in Washington, D.C. And I think it shows that APEC Its influence on Washington, D.C. has diminished severely. No, other Republicans say it benefits them ultimately. They think this is still a national security issue that they can win on. A-PAC itself, as you know, is one of the most influential groups or has been in Washington, and I think their future is at stake here. They know it. They sent out a statement yesterday after that vote, saying it was just a messaging vote.

However, they said it was dangerous and encouraged enemies of America and Israel. There's also attention on Israel in a different piece of legislation, the defense bill, the NDAA. In particular, this section that would integrate U.S. and Israel defense technology, what more should we know? This is why I love NewsHour. We can get into difficult issues like this. My colleague, Bridget Craig, has been looking into this, and together we wanted to raise this section of the NDAA. This is the House Pass version. Section 219. It is called the U.S. Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative. This creates essentially, Jeff, a new framework to organize how the U.S. and Israel work together on some of the most sensitive and critical technology that they share.

Critics of this especially point to one series of phrases that it would direct data fusion and network integration between Israel and the U.S. I spoke with Josh Paul. He's a former State Department official who left the State Department after he over-protests when U.S. sent aid to Israel for Gaza. he says that this exact statute, this would stipulate, give Israel too much power in the weapons chain and also in determining policy. That would essentially give Israel the leverage that we currently have to be able to drive U.S. policy and to shape U.S. defense approaches. At the same time, it also vastly expands the range of technologies and emerging technologies, some of the most sensitive capabilities that we have for cooperation with Israel. including AI, quantum, biotech, in a way that would, first of all, create a new level of cooperation, but with a partner that has a track record of not protecting U.S. intellectual property.

Others say that's a vast overreaction. This is streamlined, and this is accountability. I spoke with Jonathan Rowey at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and he says this actually could benefit the U.S. So it's in the U.S. interest in terms of how it helps us deal. with threats to our military, to our homeland defense, because Israel ends up being a laboratory, much like we're seeing also in Ukraine right now, where they, you know, Israel is forced almost to develop cutting-edge technologies. So Israel has a much faster turnaround not only to produce cutting-edge technologies for defense, but also to test them on the battlefield.

This is a small part of a big bill, but it was a very high priority, remains a priority for APAC. NDAA, the defense bill, it sets policy for the military, it sets its budget, that's why it's described as a must-pass bill, and yet it's in limbo. Right, it's usually a bipartisan bill. As you know, we're not in bipartisan times by and large, and there are two issues. One is the Senate, the other's the House. In the Senate is being blocked generally by Democrats who have problems with Iran funding and that defense policy there. In the House, the House itself has problems passing a number of bills. There are several issues with the House of the NDAA, but I am told they're going to attempt to pass this bill next week.

Why are we paying attention to it? This is nothing less than our military policy across the board. And in the Trump administration especially, that is America's footprint in the world. And it is also how we use our resources. Republicans in this bill would spend more than we've ever seen before on the military. So it's very important to watch it. Absolutely. Lisa Desjardin, tracking that and so many other things for us. We appreciate it.

You're welcome. Now to our series on the future of AI, one of the biggest concerns how children and teens use it daily. Companies are taking some steps. META, for example, announced its AI tools will now notify parents if its AI systems believe a teen may be considering suicide or self-harm. But many say the companies are not doing enough. Can't be trusted and argue more regulation is needed. The tech philanthropy, the Omidyar Network, is out with a new approach of its own. Michelle Joondo is the CEO, and I spoke with her yesterday.

Michelle Joondo, welcome to the News Hour. Thanks so much for having me. So much of the debate around kids and AI has focused on whether kids should be able to access it entirely and at what age. I know you say that's the wrong question. Why? Yeah, I think, listen, I think access and age verification are a part of the conversation, but we shouldn't end the debate there. The onus of putting kind of restrictions, again, falls on families. It falls on parents who are just trying to figure it out. What we really want to ask are companies to design safer products.

And at the end of the day, you have the world's best engineers who know how to do this versus parents who are just trying to figure it out. And so for us at OmidyR Network, we really focus on design and design standards as a means to a more safe and healthy. ecosystem. Nearly nine and ten kids and teens are already using AI that's according to a national survey. So to your point, if banning it isn't really realistic, what protections should exist? What should those guardrails look like? So there are a few things. You've said it so eloquently. Nine and ten kids already using AI. Our partners at Common Sense Media share that

young people, about a quarter of young people, are using AI every day for something. So the question has to be then on the companies and the platforms themselves to develop safer. One, how do you restrict manipulative and addictive practices? That's something that we all can agree on, particularly things like romantic attachment. The second thing that I would then point to are safety designs. So how do you have built-in breaks? How do you make sure that we're not capturing data from young people who are just going on different apps? And many of the apps that young people use, three and four actually take share and sell their data. So how do you provide greater design features that protect our young people?

The House recently passed the Kids Act, the Kids Safety Act. This regulates social media, video games, AI chat bots. Does that legislation meaningfully address the range of risks as you see them? The Kids Act, and I'm very happy to see Congress start moving in the direction. 80% of Americans have said, we want to see more in this area. But again, I think it is the beginning of the conversation. I don't think it is anywhere near the end. And there are a few key reasons.

Again, we're putting the onus back on parents. If most of the work in the Kids Act is really focused on parental notification, again, I'm a parent. I'm a parent. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm a parent of four. What am I doing here? How am I supposed to lead on this versus companies who know and how? have the technical standards and expertise.

So that's the first thing. The other thing is they're missing something that's called the duty of care in the recent bill that was passed. And that's a legal term, but essentially what that says is as a company, if I'm designing a product, I have to design it as safe as I possibly can. That's all we're saying. And that's missing from the current bill.

So walk us through how a chatbot, an AI chatbot, should behave when it knows it's speaking to a 13-year-old. Well, first off, I think we believe, at Omidyar Network that these are design standards that should apply to everyone. We actually just launched a partnership with AARP, and we're seeing some of the same nefarious design standards really attacking older Americans who are also in a loneliness crisis. So I think design standards that don't focus on manipulating behavior, particularly romantic

attachment, or design standards that say here's a break notification should be kind of common sense, basic. We also want to get away from taking people's data as part of this compromise for using chatbots. And finally, having a real conversation with these companies who know what they can do here and know how to create a safer environment is something that they can and should do, not just the individual consumers who are trying to figure this all out. Your point about data is a good one because there is this concern. How do you actually verify a child's age without creating new privacy? risks. That's right. So one of the things that we're seeing in here in the U.S. and in countries around the world

is the advent of kind of age verification. But again, we don't really, particularly here in the U.S., have a privacy kind of safeguard for all of our information. And so often what's happening is we're asking companies, private companies, to share my personal ID. And yet we don't have any privacy regulation around that. So we actually believe that there are other ways to address that issue. One of the things that we've seen are age estimation. We also frankly believe that if you have privacy baked into your application from the beginning, those are things that you don't necessarily have to have. You know, we're seeing schools restrict smartphones, which is something that most parents support. Some parents might ask, why should AI be treated any differently?

Yeah. Look, I think the bell to bell, and we're seeing this in schools across the nation, that they have a ban on smartphones. And I think that, again, is a part of the conversation. But access is just one step. If you and I step back as parents, and we really think about this, I can restrict some of the behaviors. But just because I take that away doesn't mean that that application isn't doing something nefarious when they actually pick it back up at 5 o'clock. And so my question is, is are we as a society ready to say we want a better design product point blank? It doesn't matter when you pick it up, whether it's before school or after, but we want a product that's safe for our young people. And I think we can do that. When it comes to higher education, we saw this striking example at Brown University. And you're laughing because you know where I'm going with this. So scores on an online midterm, they rose dramatically, and then they dropped when the final. was in person, presumably because students had less access to AI. Does education itself need to be

redesigned to address the reality of artificial intelligence? There is a fundamental question that I think we have to have in society right now and be prepared to answer. For the last 20 years, we focused on how do we develop a knowledge economy? And then we've created perhaps one of the greatest inventions to help us really think about the vastness of knowledge and information. And it is easily at our fingertips every single day. That is a great thing. And yet what we haven't really reckoned with society is what that then means for the process and the systems

of how we've thought about what education should do. In some ways, I understand those young people. They are looking at a job market that is constantly, they're constantly hearing AI will replace them, so they have to be at the top of the class. We're also hearing every day that we're in a global race around AI. So you have all of these pressures,

and then we say you have to know how to use AI. You have to be AI literate. And then we have an education system that hasn't really caught up and decided how we use education in the classroom, but yet everyone has it as a part of their curriculum. So these are real questions about how we learn, learn, what we learn. I don't think we can ask students just to give wrote information or responses.

There is a new way of learning that I think will require all of us to think about critical thinking, about how we grade, about how we talk about these questions. Absolutely. Michelle Gawando, CEO of the Omidyar Network. Always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you so much, Jeff. An artist who has spent decades experimenting with her materials is getting her first national exposure in her 80s. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown traveled to Minneapolis to meet Suzanne Jackson for our arts and culture series, Canvas. There are large paintings that hang in the air, inviting the viewer to walk around. There's no canvas, no backing at all. These are paintings literally made of layers of acrylic paint, along with some everyday household items. Here,

mesh bags, even peanut shells. There works that became a signature style for artists who's The painting becomes the surface and the support. The paint itself is the surface and the support. The paint itself is the surface and support. Yeah. Understanding the strength of paint and how it works with these bags. Some of these are vegetable produce bags. Why are they in your painting?

Because I don't throw things away. And I'm, well, just looking. I look at something and I think. at something and I think, okay, structurally, what can I do with the paint? She's been looking and painting a long time, and now at 82 is having her first major museum retrospective. An exhibition titled What is Love, without a question mark, that started at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and is now at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. More than 50 works made since the 1960s, early representational paintings focused on two abiding

subjects, black figures, and the natural world. And then a move toward abstraction and more sculptural three-dimensional pieces. For the artist herself, it's a chance to look back at her love of painting, her obsession with what the medium itself can do. I look at them with curiosity about what did I do? What was I doing each time? So I look at these and each one, and even this morning looking at this painting next to us, I was thinking it has texture that I didn't see before.

It started to dry differently. So this is an experiment, and all my life it's been an experiment. That's what I see in the retrospective. Jackson spent her childhood in San Francisco, where her father was a city bus and cable car driver, and then in Fairbanks, Alaska. She was always making art, she says, teaching herself at first, before studying in the 1960s at San Francisco State University. And then in Los Angeles at the Ovales, at the Ovalesville.

Otis Art Institute, where she took a drawing class with influential artist Charles White and met other young black artists trying to make their way at a time when the institutional art world was still often closed to them. Jackson turned her own LA studio into Gallery 32, a small, self-funded exhibition space that was short-lived from 1968 to 1970, but highly impactful, with shows that included the first Los Angeles survey of black women artists. Doing for ourselves and having exhibitions and supporting each other as young artist. Because that was necessary.

Yes, so even to the last bowl of noodles, you know, that was the way we helped each other out and supported each other. So that's really what it was about. It's being young people just determined to do the thing that you love the most. Her own creativity took different forms. She was a dancer, poet, theater set, and costume designer. She had gallery shows and began teaching, eventually at the Savannah College of Art and Design. She continues to live and work in Savannah. But for long period, she was largely out of public view.

In some ways, she says now that was healthy, allowing her to play with new ideas. I was just doing it. Just doing something. No one was paying attention to me so I could do anything I wanted to do in the studio. Is that how it felt for it? That's really how this happened. Yeah. because people weren't paying attention.

Paintings on rough, bogus paper. Sculptial paintings pushing away from the wall. Works like Woodpecker's last blues with feathers and leaves. Crossing Ebenezer, though abstract, contains washes of red, the color of blood, and the flow of a river, recalling a Civil War-era mass drowning of emancipated African-Americans. I'm interested in history. I'm interested in how we got here. And that's what the abstraction can do.

It's not telling you a story directly. It's allowing you to think. I want people to think. It would be several decades before the outside world took full notice. For a long time, I felt as if I was not, there were other artists having recognition. I was still plugging along, still working. I think that's the thing.

We kept working, no matter whether we received any recognition or not. Did you feel like you would never get that full recognition? Were there times? I just didn't expect it. I, you know, I might think, oh, it would be nice if I, you know, could do this. Or I would go to exhibitions. Or I'd watch PBS and see people being interviewed and think, oh, my. And all these younger artists are getting recognition,

and many in my generation are being ignored. She's ignored no more. And the exhibition in the Twin City, she says, though planned years back comes at an especially meaningful time. Following the murder of George Floyd and the more recent ICE surge arrests and killings of Renee Good and Alex Preti, traumatizing this community. For me, then, of people coming in,

if this is a place where they can come quietly and peacefully, I hope that it gives some kind of rest and peace. As for Jackson herself, she calls the retrospective a privilege. privilege, compelling her back to her studio to get to work. A first major retrospective at 81, now 82. How does that feel? It's the beginning. It feels like a beginning?

Yes. Suzanne Jackson's exhibition What is Love moves to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts in September. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Jeffrey Brown at the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis. be sure to join us online and right back here tomorrow for full coverage of President Trump's address on the 2020 election, including analysis from David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart. And that is The News Hour for tonight. I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS NewsHour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us.