PBS News Hour - Full Show - July 7, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

Monday on the News Hour, the death toll rises and the search for the missing continues in the wake of the devastating floods in Texas. The war in Gaza and the Trump administration's latest push for a ceasefire loom over Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the White House. Plus, we examine the real-world impacts of the work requirements for getting Medicaid and food stamps. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. Jeff Bennett is away. On the news hour tonight, the death toll rises and the search for the missing continues in the wake of the devastating floods in the Texas Hill country. Everybody knows everybody. And so in a tragic event like this, we're all connected to people who have been lost. The war in Gaza and the Trump administration's latest push for a ceasefire loom over in. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to the White House. And we examine the real-world impacts of the Trump administration's new work requirements for getting Medicaid and food stamps. Welcome to the News Hour. Hopes are dimming for finding survivors from the flash floods that devastated Central Texas on July 4th. At least 95 people were killed

in some of the deadliest floods to hit this country in decades. That includes 28 children. More than 850 people have been rescued since the floods first hit, but dozens are still unaccounted for, including at least 10 young girls. William Brigham begins our coverage with this report.

Days after the deluge, the Guadalupe River was quiet today. But the damage it wrought over the weekend is visible everywhere. What once were entire campgrounds along its banks, gone. Locals are still coming to grips with the terror they experienced. There was a little boy who started floating downstream, and he was screaming, asking for help. I was about to jump in, and my husband had to hold me back.

He said, you're going to go too, and there's nothing you can do if you jump in. I didn't know how I was going to live with that. And thankfully, by the end of the day yesterday, I saw his face online and he had been rescued. Officials this morning said the huge search for other survivors is still underway. This is a massive field that is happening. And again, this is unprecedented flood events. So we are still currently in the primary search phase. This will be a rough week.

Primary search continues, and we remain hopeful, every foot, every mile, every bend of the river. Through the weekend and into today, hundreds of volunteers, from ex-military to local civilians, as well as state and federal teams, joined the effort. Seeing all the devastation and the trees and the clothing, the random bits of flotsam floating around the river, really hits home. So that gives quite a somber feeling to just be out here seeing it in person rather than just on the news. The floods tore through the Texas Hill Country on Friday the 4th. An overnight downpour caused the Guadalupe to rise a staggering 26 feet in a very short period. This time lapse shows how suddenly the waters rose, swallowing a causeway in a matter of minutes.

If you had seen what July 3rd looked like, you will not. never guess that this was coming that night. Cars were floating away with the lights on. You could see the lights and you can hear hunking. And there was like not one or two, but there were dozens of vehicles just floating away. And I was just, it was just too much. This area is home to a number of children's summer camps. For a century, girls have flocked to Camp Mystic on the... banks of the river. Today, the camp confirmed 27 members of its tight-knit community were killed, mostly young campers, like 8-year-old Sarah Marsh, as well as Mystic's longtime director, Dick

Eastland. He was reportedly swept away trying to rescue children. Other victims include 68-year-old Jane Ragsdale. She devoted her life to another nearby girl's camp, Heart of the Hills. The camp had been between sessions on Friday when the flood hit. And 62-year-old Tanya Berwick, whose car got caught in the torrent on her way to work, her son said she had a heart of gold. And 27-year-old Julian Ryan was killed trying to escape his trailer home. His fiancé, mother, and six-year-old son survived. Questions are swirling about preparedness and why more urgent flooding alerts didn't come sooner. The flood-prone Kerr County had contemplated a warning system, complete with river gauges and

sirens for nearly a decade, but some local officials said costs have always gotten in the way. Others have blamed cuts made by the Trump administration to the National Weather Service. Texas is grieving right now. Republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz, whose own kids have gone to Kansas. camp in the area rejected that allegation, noting that the National Weather Service had issued warnings in advance of the floods. After we come through search and rescue, after we come through the process of rebuilding, there will naturally be a period of retrospection where you look back and say, okay, what exactly transpired, what was the timeline, and what could have been

done differently to prevent this loss of life? President Trump said he'll likely visit the flood zone on Friday. And forecasters say, even more rain is on its way to central Texas this week. With dozens still missing, officials fear the death toll is almost certain to rise. For the PBS News Hour, I'm William Brangham. For more on the latest in Texas, we're joined by Tony Plahetsky with the Austin American statesman and KVUE. He's been covering this disaster. Tony, welcome back. And thanks for joining us. As you heard in Williams reporting, some of the biggest questions remain the accuracy of the forecasts and the effectiveness of a warning system, why more people weren't evacuated sooner. What kind of answers are you getting from officials on those? With regard to the warnings, there's apparently something of a divide, even between the meteorological community, about whether or not the forecast adequately prepared the public and notified the,

public once this emergency began unfolding. Some meteorologists say that the warnings and the watches that were in place did not adequately inform the public that flash flooding to this extent was possible. Yet at the same time, others point to the fact that a flash flood watch was posted well in advance of this flooding event and that several hours before the Guadalupe River began to rise and overflow its banks, that there was, in fact, a flash flood warning. They say that should have and could have adequately notified the public that they needed to get to higher ground urgently. I know you're going to continue to cover those questions

in the days and weeks ahead. In the meantime, I know you've also been reporting on some of the deaths of people lost local to your area in and around Austin. That includes two little girls named Lini and Mary were both killed, both eight years old, both campers at Camp Mystic. What can you tell us about them and their families right now?

This camp drew families from all over the state of Texas. Dallas, Houston, many Austin families sent their children for generations, multiple generations to Camp Mystic. Outside my window right now, I look and I see a big green bow that is tied around an oak tree. So many families in the same. city of Austin and across the state of Texas has had such close bonds to the camp and the people who participated in this camp. Those little girls whose families I have been in contact with are among the two of them, two of the children who perished in this flash flood event. And as you can

imagine, Omna, the grief is just running throughout this entire community and throughout the state of Texas this evening. There's another piece of this that we're picking up on here, Tony, that for all the focus on the camp, it's shown a light on how important camp culture is in the Texas Hill country. As you mentioned, it's a community in and of itself, very closely bound together and how devastating the loss has been because of that culture. What should we understand about that? So, Omna, the Texas Hill Country is one of the most cherished parts of the state of Texas. And it is aptly named because it has rolling hills, waterways, anchored in many ways by the Guadalupe River. And across time, different camps have sprung up along the river and also along the lakes that are in the Texas Hill country as well.

So there is a deep culture, a deep love of the camping experience among many families who send their children to those camps. And I think that the fact that that culture is so strong, that love of the experience is so strong, I think that also is just deepening the tragedy among these close-knit families, literally thousands of them across the state. That is Tony Plahetsky of the Austin American statesman joining us tonight. Tony, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. For a closer look at how people on the ground are managing the crisis, we turn now to Austin Dixon, the CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which has been

collecting donations through the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund to help recovery efforts. Austin, welcome to the NewsHour. Thanks for joining us. Hello, Anna. So I just can't say enough how much our thoughts are with you and with everyone in the community. I understand you actually knew personally some of the leaders at Camp Mystic and others who were tragically lost in these floods.

We're so sorry for your loss. Is there anything that you want to share with us about them and what they meant to this community? Thank you. Yes. That is my experience and my experience is emblematic of so many people in our community. Kerrville is a town of about 25,000 people in a county of Kerr County of 50,000 people. Everybody knows everybody. And so in a tragic event like this, we're all connected to people who have been lost. I was personal friends with three people who were swept away and have been identified as deceased at this time. And I'm also family friends with someone who lost one of their granddaughters who was a camp or a camp mystic. My contacts who were swept away that I knew, one was our high school soccer coach.

He and his wife and two children were swept away. I also worked very closely on many projects with a person. pillar of our community, Dick Eastland, who was an owner and director of Camp Mystic, who died during the flood, saving girl campers on his property. And I also knew Jane Ragsdale, who was the director and owner of Har The Hills Camp, another summer camp in the hunt area. These folks are just a few of the names of people who have died. Pillars of the community have given their all to our area and to Texas and ultimately lost their lives in this flood. Awesome. We're so very sorry for your loss and for everyone else is there. And we should share

that your home, thankfully, your family are safe amid all of this. But we've seen from the pictures how deep and how devastating the damage is. We heard Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick earlier saying this is the toughest disaster he has ever been a part of in the state of Texas. Do you agree with that? What is it like on the ground right now? Um, words are hard to find to describe, uh, what it is that we're seeing. And so I, you know, the lieutenant governor has a broader sense of what he has seen in our state, certainly than I have. I know that I cross the Guadalupe River multiple times a day between work and home. I know that I kayak on the river. And like many people, I woke up on the 4th of July with in-laws in town

visiting with plans for a barbecue and board games and a fun day. We were thinking about actually maybe going down to the river because, you know, it was mild temperatures and everything changed. And now the devastation is something that, I mean, it looks like something from a movie. We've got over 20 miles of down trees throughout the river floodplain. A lot of these trees are called bald cypress trees. Some are 200 years old. very, very thick and beautiful, and they've been snapped like twigs. We've got refrigerators and

washing machines, cars, boats, all sorts of stuff that is stuck up in the trees because the water rose so high. The cleanup is going to be massive once the authorities in place at the federal state and local level finish the search and rescue operations looking for anybody who is alive in the rebel. I know you and your organization are collecting donations. Tell us about the response so far. Do you have support or resources from the federal and state level? And what do you need most desperately right now? Right now, what I'm hearing is that we have all the supplies, all the tools, and all the food that we need to conduct search and rescue. We've reunited many people, campers with families, that's still ongoing. But everybody has the stuff they need for now.

And so the easiest way is to make an online gift and donation and not physically come to Currville and Kirk County. We do know that after floods, rivers are contaminated. And so it's not recommended that people get near the water unless they're a part of a professional search and rescue. So for our efforts at the Community Foundation, we are solely focused on fundraising, raising from the American public. And then we will be making grants to local vetted nonprofit organizations, first responder entities, and everybody else that's helping with the recovery. Right now, we're getting a donation about every second online. I've got a team of volunteers here accepting phone calls to take donations online and in person. Our bank has converted itself into a donation station

and we're doing all we can to just respond to the generosity, the love and the grief of Americans and, frankly, everybody all over the world. Well, we are holding you and everyone in the community in our thoughts. We're so grateful you could take the time to speak with us. That is Austin Dixon, CEO of the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, joining us tonight. Thank you, Austin. Thank you. I'm up. The day's other headlines begin with a separate storm flooding parts of North Carolina. What's left of tropical depression, Chantal, dumped up to eight inches of rain in the center of the state this weekend. One woman is dead. Dozens of people have had to evacuate their

homes and more than 60 remain displaced. Chapel Hills Fire Department and other first responders conducted more than 130 water rescues. The remnants of Chantal will move on by tomorrow after dumping heavy rain over parts of the Mid-Atlantic and New Jersey. In McAllen, Texas, near the U.S. Mexico border, a heavily armed man was killed today after he opened fire at a Border Patrol facility. Federal agents returned fire after the gunman, Ryan Lewis Mosquita, shot dozens of rounds at the building's entrance. He was carrying an assault-style rifle and a utility vest. Officers later found other weapons and ammunition inside Mosquita's car. The car had Cordes D.A. written on its door, which translates loosely from Latin to the day of the heart.

DHS said two officers and a Border Patrol employee sustained injuries. A motive hasn't yet been determined. President Trump said he'll place higher tariffs on a number of countries starting on August 1st. He did so by posting letters to the country's leaders on his social media platform, warning them not to retaliate. Among them, 25% tariffs on Japan and South Korea, 40% on Myanmar and Laos, and a 30% duty on South Africa. Wednesday marks the end of a 90-day negotiating period set by the Trump administration to reach trade deals with foreign partners. Trump's team had promised 90 deals in 90 days, but only two trade frameworks have been reached so far. Turning overseas, Russia unleashed a barrage of more than 100 drones across Ukraine overnight.

Ukrainian officials said these strikes and others in the last 24 hours killed at least 11 people and injured more than 80 across the country. That includes Ukraine's second largest city of Kharkiv, where residents described having just moments to find shelter. We grabbed a child and went to the corridor to hide because there was a very scary sound. The house was just shaking. And at that moment, we saw the fire in the window and our balcony window was blown out. Moscow has recently stepped up its attacks against civilians. Ukrainian leaders say Russia has fired more than 2,000 drones, missiles, and glide bombs,

injuring scores of people and population centers in the past week. Houthi rebels in Yemen say that. bulk carrier they attacked on Sunday has sunk in the Red Sea. They claim the company that owns the ship did port calls in Israel. The Liberian-flagged vessel called the Magic Seas was headed north toward Egypt's Suez Canal. It caught fire and took on water during the Houthis attack, forcing its 22 crew members to abandon ship. Israel and the Iran-backed Houthis have since been trading fire. Israel sent fighter jets to hit several ports and a power plant in Yemen overnight. In the In the meantime, in Israel, air defense systems intercepted Houthi missiles.

In Kenya, the capital city of Nairobi is on lockdown, as police say that violent anti-government protests have led to at least 11 deaths. Pro-democracy demonstrators lit bonfires and hurled rocks at police who fired back with tear gas. Many Kenyans have been protesting issues like police brutality and government corruption for weeks, A number of them have demanded that their president, William Ruto, resign. Today is known as Saba Saba in Swahili. It's the anniversary of major protests 35 years ago that helped pave the way for multi-party democracy in Kenya.

A volcanic eruption in southeastern Indonesia spewed a towering column of fire and ash that threatened aviation and kept officials on high alert. The plume from Mount Lewatobi Locky Locky stretched 11 miles into the sky. Its initial eruption was one of Indonesia's largest since 2010. Soot blanketed several villages below and blotted out the sun for almost half an hour, geologists said. There were no reported casualties, but by this afternoon, dozens of flights to and from Indonesia's resort island of Bali were canceled.

Back in the U.S., trash is piling up on the streets of Philadelphia as a major worker strike entered its seventh day following a weekend of talks that ended without a deal. Among the nearly 10,000 workers that have walked off the job from the city's largest municipal workers union, trash collectors, along with other essential services like 9-1-1 dispatchers. The workers are calling for better wages and benefits. Negotiations are expected to pick back up tomorrow. And stocks fell on Wall Street today as President Trump put new pressures on trading partners with his latest tariffs. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 400 points, as both it and the NASDAQ fell by close to 1%. The S&P 500 also backed off by 0.8%. Still to come, on the news hour, Tamara Keith and Amy Walter break down the latest political headlines. Reporters Isaac Arnsdorf and Tyler Pager discussed their new book on the momentous 2024 election. And an artist exiled from Cuba spent decades transforming news.

nature into works of art. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is having dinner with President Trump tonight, his third visit to the White House this year. The two are meeting as Israel and Hamas are negotiating a ceasefire. and the U.S. is lifting a terrorism designation on neighboring Syria. Nick Schifrin's been covering all this for us. He joins us now.

So, Nick, give us the latest status on these Gaza ceasefire talks. Israel and Hamas officials are back in Doha, and U.S. and Israeli officials tell me that the deal on the table is for ceasefire for 60 days. Hamas had been demanding a formal end of the war, but the officials tell me Hamas agreed to sit at the table in Doha thanks to two key adjustments. The first, Hamas would stagger the release. of 10 living Israeli hostages and the bodies of 18 deceased Israeli hostages

so that the final release of Israeli hostages wouldn't be until day 50. That's in response to Israel breaking the previous ceasefire deal. The second key adjustment is that while the proposal does not guarantee the end of the war, what it does is provides personal guarantees from President Trump. The text includes the lines, President Trump guarantees Israeli compliance for the full duration and, quote, the United States and President Trump are committed to working to ensure the negotiations continue in good faith until a final agreement is reached.

Finally, Israel would redeploy to buffer zones in northern Gaza on day one, to southern Gaza and day two, it would release Palestinian detainees, and it would allow for a humanitarian surge, both to the United Nations and the U.S.-back Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Officials tell me that in Doha, last night's discussions, today's discussions, Amna focused on the humanitarian deliveries and the withdrawal of Israeli troops. But a key announcement from the White House today, Steve Whitkoff, the president's man, on this negotiations will head to Doha. That is a sign that U.S. officials tell me they are optimistic,

that even though while Hamas publicly says it wants an official end of the war, Hamas is leaning toward finalizing this agreement. So ceasefire talk sure to be high on the agenda. What else do we expect President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu to be discussing on this visit? An official familiar tells me that not only will they discuss the ceasefire, but they'll discuss the day after the war in Gaza. And, of course, the challenge there is immense. The UN estimates some 90% plus of residential buildings have been damaged or destroyed, and 1.9 million people, that's more than 90% of the population, have been displaced. We also have seen Israeli strikes continue just overnight.

Palestinians say a strike on a clinic sheltering the displaced in Gaza City. You see the aftermath there killed at least six. military says, in total, it struck about 130 sites related to Hamas just in the last few days. An official familiar tells me that on the one hand, President Trump knows that in order to make progress on one of the key priorities that he has in the region, normalization agreements with Israel, Abraham Accords, that he needs to have the end of the war and some kind of day after plan. Netanyahu, though, has not articulated a plan, at least publicly, beyond destroying Hamas militarily, nor has he indicated a willingness to take the steps that Saudi Arabia

is demanding he take in order to have those normalization talks, which is steps toward a Palestinian state. And a U.S. official who's skeptical of this deal does say there is no day after plan and the war could very well resume. However, other officials, including another U.S. official and a regional senior official, tell me that no, Israel in private, has indicated it's willing to take the steps that in public people are demanding it make, and that it's up to President Trump at this point to decide how much pressure to put on Netanyahu in order to make these next steps.

Lastly, Amna quickly, they'll talk about Iran, of course, Netanyahu reiterating his concerns about diplomacy with Iran. Meanwhile today, the State Department we saw lifted a major terrorism designation on the Syrian group that now runs the government there. How big a deal is that? Yeah, that's HTS, Hyattar al-Shams. The State Department declared today that it was no longer a foreign terrorist organization. Of course, HTS was once affiliated with al-Qaeda, but broke with them before taking over Syria

and the former head, you see right there. Now, Ahmed al-Shara is now, of course, the president of Syria. Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was lifting the designation because, quote, the positive actions taken by the new Syrian government led by Al-Sharah. Analysts tell me that this is a significant step, especially as the U.S. plans other steps toward normal. normalizing with Syria, but they don't expect any Syria-Israel normalization, more likely some kind of status of forces agreement in the coming months where Israel would withdraw from Syrian territory. Nick Schifrin. Thank you, as always.

Thank you. This PBS NewsHour podcast is supported in part by Dana Farber Cancer Institute. If you're a bad protein in a cancer cell, you'd better get your affairs in order because now, thanks to Dana Farber's foundational work, protein degradation can target cancer. cancer-causing proteins and destroy them right inside the cell. This Take No Prisoner's approach is making a difference in multiple myeloma and other blood cancers and is how Dana Farber is working to treat previously untreatable cancers. Learn more at Danafarber.org slash everywhere.

President Trump's big tax law includes a major provision the GOP has endorsed for years, work requirements for Medicaid recipients, and for food stamp benefits known as SNAP. Millions now are at risk of losing coverage in what would be the largest cuts to the social safety net since the 1990s. Laura Barone Lopez has the details. Omna, in order to receive Medicaid, able-bodied childless adults between the ages of 18 and 64 will have to prove they're either working in school or do. community service for 80 hours a month. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that 11.8

million Americans could lose coverage over the next decade, because recipients may struggle to navigate the new paperwork, missed deadlines, or simply not apply at all. Another work requirement change could result in more than 3 million Americans losing SNAP benefits, according to an earlier CBO estimate. To help us understand the stakes, I'm joined by Pamela Hurd, Professor of Social Policy at University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy, who watches this all very closely. Professor Hurd, thank you so much for joining the News Hour. Thank you so much for having me.

To start, who is going to be affected by this new Medicaid work requirement provision and what kind of challenges will people face to meet these new paperwork requirements? So really, in the end, the majority of Medicaid beneficiaries will be affected, either because you actually have to meet the work requirement yourself or you have to demonstrate that you're exempt for meeting that work requirement. So you have a very young child or you have a disability or you're in school. So the majority of Medicaid recipients or anyone applying to Medicaid ultimately is affected by these changes. And the large amount of additional paperwork and administrative complexities they'll have to navigate to do

just that. What will some of those new paperwork rules require from people? Well, at a minimum, individuals are going to have to prove much more frequently now that they're still eligible. So if you're on the program, you need to show for that work requirement, for example, every six months the state, at a minimum every six months, states will have to verify that people are still meeting that work requirement. So it's a lot of additional kind of paperwork and documentation that you're going to have to submit and or the state is going to have to figure out how to verify independently without interacting with people. But given the complexities of these rules, it's hard for me to imagine that it isn't going to require a lot of additional work for beneficiaries and applicants.

The White House and Republicans say that they are making these new work requirements in order to root out waste and fraud. I want to know what your response is to that. And is there any reason to increase people's reporting requirements in this way? Yeah, there isn't a lot of good evidence that this would be a way to fix to any kind of, which there isn't a lot of evidence, that there's a lot of waste, fraud and abuse in the Medicaid program on behalf of beneficiaries, at least. The large amount of money in Medicaid or Medicare for that matter that is a function of waste and fraud is actually providers, manipulating. manipulating the benefit system. Really what will happen is these beneficiaries are going to end up navigating people who, the majority of Medicaid beneficiaries effectively currently either

already meet that work requirement or they already meet one of the exception categories. The vast majority of people already do. Another work requirement change is going to apply to food stamps. How to those new work requirements compare to the ones for Medicaid? And who exactly are they going to affect the most? So similar to the Medicaid requirements, the enhanced SNAP already does have work requirements. It's just expanding, basically, the pool of people that those work requirements apply to. And I think the really important thing to understand what we already know about SNAP work requirements is that they don't actually increase labor force participation. anytime SNAP work requirements have been expanded, all that they've done is effectively kick off people from the program.

It doesn't actually enhance labor force participation. So they don't tend to meet the stated goals, which are to increase labor force participation. How are states going to go about implementing these work requirements? And are there any states that you think could find a way to make it less burdensome for recipients to now meet this new, paperwork rules? And could that be successful? You know, that's the million dollar question, which is, will states actually be able to implement that? And I think we have a lot of evidence already that states are going to struggle a lot with the implementation of this. It's very costly to implement. It's administratively complicated. And most states, quite bluntly, don't have the

tools in their toolbox, especially when they only have about a year to roll this out to do it effectively. And we have evidence of this. Georgia, for example, has a Medicaid work requirement. They have spent $90 million on that work requirement, and only 26 million have gone to beneficiaries. The vast majority of the spending has gone to administrative costs. So if that's what we're looking at for most states, it's hard not to see this as an incredibly costly tool to implement. And also one that we've seen in other states, both Georgia and Arkansas, where ultimately most people who end up losing their benefits were actually still eligible. They just couldn't navigate those administrative processes. Pamela Hurd of the University of Michigan, thank you for your time.

Thank you very much. As we learn more about the the devastating floods in Texas that have killed more than 100 people, the administration and local officials are facing questions about the effectiveness of warning systems and whether more lives could have been saved. Joining me now to discuss this and more of the day's political news is Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR. Great to see you both. Good to be here. So Tam, kick us off here. We've seen the president and we saw Carolyn Levin in the White House briefing room take a lot of questions about some of those cuts to the National Weather Service,

or more could have been done. How are they responding to some of those, those criticisms and questions right now? Yeah, they are defending the National Weather Service. They're saying that staffing was adequate. In fact, they are quoting the union that represents national weather service employees who said that staffing was adequate, though there were some unfilled positions. And they went through a timeline of when those alerts went out. And the alerts did go out. Part of the problem was that it happened in the middle of the night. And I think that the White House is very quick to shut down questions about President Trump's desire to wind down FEMA by the end of the year, for instance. They are really sidestepping those questions right now and just focusing on the disaster response, which in some ways is exactly what you want to see, is a focus on the rescue and recovery and the people who are just dealing with this absolute tragedy.

Yeah, and I think this is going to be a conversation that, unfortunately, we're going to continue to have. This has been a horrible tragedy, but we also know we had these horrific wildfires in California. We're just starting into hurricane season. As the president had said just a month ago, he wants to wind FEMA down. Anytime there is a natural disaster, that question then is going to be asked, winding down or laying off members of government, especially members of government, who are responsible for dealing with natural disasters, these questions are going to get raised.

So I do think now it is going to be part of our politics. We may not get the answers that we always want, but it is going to be part of the conversation going forward. And I think already some politicians in Texas are talking about what lessons actually could be learned. And I think that rather than shutting down the conversation about lessons learned, they are looking at figuring out whether there could have been alarms or other alerts. And I think that that might be where this heads.

Yeah. We'll continue to follow that, of course, in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, Wednesday of this week, just as a reminder, was the original deadline for the president to secure, as he and his team said, 90 deals in 90 days before tariffs on more than 50 countries take effect. We saw the president posting on social media today, though, new letters that are being sent out to a number of countries, Japan and South Korea, threatening 25 percent tariffs. 12 other countries were also. sent letters. The deadline is now pushed to August 1st, as the president sort of unfolding all this on social media. Tamp, the fact that the deadlines push, that these letters are being

posted, does that say negotiations aren't working? Yeah, and he's signed a new executive order now really truly pushing that deadline. The White House says that what it means is that they're just trying to get the best deal for the American people. I think for most people watching this, it's really hard to follow the thread at this point. And the reality is, we have a spreadsheet on our White House team at NPR where we're tracking all of these. And the tariffs that are in these letters are very similar to the numbers

that were announced on so-called Liberation Day. It's just the deadline has been pushed there still talking about wanting deals. But also, President Trump has been fairly casual about it and doesn't want to seem that eager to want deals. He likes tariffs as a tool, not just as a tool to get deals, but he talks about it a lot as a way.

to bring revenue into the United States. It's a different kind of tax. Amy, at the same time, tariffs are the kind of thing that actually impact people in their wallets and their budgets. How are they watching this? Right. So I think, Sam's right, that your average American isn't able to put a spreadsheet together.

Maybe they are. Good for them. Following all of this. That's good for your health. What they do know is the uncertainty is really impacting their behavior as a consumer in terms of what they're going to actually buy, planning out for the future. You have a small business. You're also worried about this. So President Trump does like the uncertainty of this and using it as a tool. Americans

like certainty, especially business likes to have a certain amount of understanding of where things are going. And so as this continues to play out, we're now going into August, who knows for how long, the concern among Americans will probably continue. to be very, very high. As they say, not only we're worried about this, but costs they believe are still, they're still very cost sensitive. So any increase in inflation, if indeed this is where some of these tariffs bring the economy is going to be, they're already pricing that in for themselves. Well, Amy, speaking of uncertainty and where things are going, I want to ask you about this ongoing feud between President Trump and Elon Musk, who over the weekend, Musk at least

announced online that he's going to be forming a third party. on his platform X, he wrote, Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom. In response, President Trump posted on social media saying Musk had gone off the rails and calling him a train wreck. Is this a real effort to form a third party?

He couldn't hurt Republicans? Right. I mean, he has definitely put his money where his mouth is when it comes to President Trump and the amount of money that he put on his behalf in that campaign. Whether a third party goes anywhere and what he does with that, it feels like this is,

is a person who's been upset by his experience within the current political system. So he says, I'm going to take my ball, go home, and then make my own party. The reality is he could have much more influence on politics if he took some of his millions and billions of dollars and actually focused it on a certain number of candidates or races of candidates who felt similarly to him on many of these issues. Clearly, the fiscal issue in terms of the deficit is the one driving him. in this case, but he has a lot of other policies that if he funded a candidate on the Democratic or Republican side would be really more efficient than starting another party.

Is President Trump worried about this? He's certainly posting a lot on social media, but I think that the sort of the longstanding reality of American politics is lots of people are fed up with the two-party system, or at least lots of people say they are fed up with the two-party system. They want some sort of middle ground. want the parties to work together and politicians to work together. And then they vote like polarized partisans. And third parties have just not been able to gain a foothold in American politics. They have not been able to break the two-party system. And I don't know if Elon Musk's

billions of dollars really changes that calculation very much. As we say so often here, we will see. Tampa Keith, Amy Walter. Thank you so much. Welcome. Reporters Josh Dossy, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arndstorff are out with a new book unpacking the twists and turns of the 2024 presidential election. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with insiders from the Trump, Biden, and Harris campaigns, the book offers a revealing look at the extraordinary circumstances that led to Donald Trump's returned to the White House and the Republican Party's reclamation of Congress.

The book is called 2024, how Trump retook the White House and the Democrats lost America, and I spoke with two of its co-authors earlier today. Tyler and Isaac, welcome to The News Hour. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having us. Thanks so much. So kick us off here, Tyler. There's no shortage of books about the 2024 election, the rise of Donald Trump, the disarray among Democrats. This is the first book I read where you're really layering all of these narratives and tying everything together, though,

what was it you wanted to achieve in writing this book? Yeah, what we wanted readers to be able to understand is really how we got to where we are. And you can't just start with that fateful debate last June. You need to understand this two-year time period, this remarkable moment in American history where we see Trump, we begin the book with the search at Mar-a-Lago where the FBI is looking for those documents,

and we begin just before the 2022 midterms where there's this lot of anxiety about Joe Biden running again. So we wanted to take readers from those moments to where we are now, and interspers that all in real time with Kamala Harris, of course, as well. So there's a lot to unpack about this election, and we hope readers will find that in the book. There's a line in the book where you write, the election hinged on accidents and individual decisions that had enormous consequences and might just as easily have gone another way. Isaac, there's one key decision, which was Biden's senior advisors, pushing him to debate early

in the memo that you have about that advice. There's a line that says, the earlier you're able to debate the better. That's them telling him, get out there. We know that debate ended disastrously for him. But what was behind that push from his advisors? What that memo really captures is the miscalculation that his advisors made because they were aware of the public perception that he was too old to do the job. But they thought it was just that, a public perception.

And they thought that by putting him out there and showing him to an audience of 50 million people, that would be the best way to address that. Instead, we got something very different. And just add on to that, for most of his campaign, advisors recognized that there was a problem because Trump was leading in the polls, and they thought they just needed to get his message out there more, and they thought he was an effective messenger. And that's why they wanted this debate really. They thought that was the best way to shift the narrative for Biden to make the affirmative case himself. There's also this other detail that you reveal in the book about former President Obama revealing concerns about the Biden re-election campaign almost a year before

election day. What did you learn about that? Yeah, Barack Obama has long not been thinking the highest of Joe Biden's political skills. He encouraged him not to run before the 2016 election. He had concerns ahead of 2020. And after Joe Biden won, he felt strongly that Joe Biden should not run for re-election. And he tried delicately to warn Joe Biden about the political strength of Donald Trump and the political problems that Joe Biden and the Democrats faced. There are many times Barack Obama showed up to the White House and brought up these concerns. But given Barack Obama and Joe Biden's history,

particularly as it relates to running for president, Barack Obama was not always the one that Biden and his aides wanted to listen to. There's some personal resentment there, as you reported in the book, too. And the degree to which personal relationships dictate a lot of these big decisions, there's also you really detail in the book about how on Trump's team, There are a number of former staffers of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who then staffed the Trump re-election campaign. How did that impact how they did their jobs? Well, it was very personal for Trump, too, that he really felt like he made DeSantis,

and DeSantis had no business challenging him. And then going down to his staff, they had personal experiences working with DeSantis and not very pleasant experiences. And they correctly identified him as really the only person who could beat Trump in the primary. So there was a strategic element to it, but they reliant. it because of that personal dimension. One of the great what-ifs of the Harris campaign, Tyler, as you know, was, you know, had she had more than 100 days to redefine herself, to break away from the Biden baggage, could

things have been done differently for her? There's a phone call between President Biden and Vice President Harris before she's preparing to debate Donald Trump. Why is that call important? Yeah, what's remarkable about this is this call happened the day that she is slated to debate Donald Trump in Philadelphia, that infamous debate where she does. quite well in that performance, but hours before that debate, she receives a call from President Biden, ostensibly to wish her good luck in that debate. But what he goes on to talk about is that

he's very popular in Pennsylvania. He reminds her and says, you know, I'm hearing from friends that you're not being so loyal to me in the way that you campaign, and you should be careful because that could have backlash for you if you criticize or separate yourself from me, which is just a remarkable moment because Joe Biden is not popular at this point. That is why he's no longer the nominee, and Harris is trying to separate herself from him. She's having trouble doing that for a whole host of reason, and this call only further hinders those efforts. Isaac, when you look at the way in which Donald Trump won re-election, and you're now covering him as he is president again, how does one inform the other? Well, Trump won by doing it his

way. You know, he had a lot of people throughout his political candidacy telling him, you know, to sand down the hard edges and to tack toward the middle. And Trump ran saying that he was going to pardon all the January 6th defendants, and that's exactly what he did. So by actually running a campaign where he played to his base and played to his issues of immigration and the economy, he's and his advisors feel like that has given them license and a free hand and a mandate to to lean into those issues as hard as they possibly can, much harder than the first time. I always wonder about this, because you speak to so many people inside the white, inside the Biden and Trump and Harris campaigns who share all these stories in an unvarnished way, why do you think that they spoke to you? What is it about the narrative they want to correct

or what is it about the story they want to get out there? Yeah, I mean, I think, as I said at the beginning, our goal here was to tell the definitive and comprehensive story of this consequential election. And I think we cast the widest net possible and wanted to make sure that we reached everyone. We have interviews with Donald Trump. We have interviews, a brief one, with Joe Biden. And we made a real concerted effort to let everyone share their part of the story. And I think there's obviously always some score settling involved and people trying to second-guess other people's decisions. But I think as part of our reporting process, we really tried to gut-check everything and make sure that we were telling the truth at the end of the day. And there's a lot of competing versions of that.

But I think our book does the best job of telling that comprehensive story. So you really understand how we got to where we are today. Isaac, why do you think people want to talk to you? Well, they know that this is history. And they know that this is going to be how they're remembered and the choices that they made and the mistakes that they made and the credit that they can try to claim. Isaac Arndstorff and Tyler Pageer, along with your co-author, Josh Josh Josh, we should say. The book is 2024, how Trump retook the White House and the Democrats lost America. Good to speak with you. Thank you so much.

Thanks. Finally, tonight, we travel into the woods of New England. Michelle San Miguel of Rhode Island PBS Weekly introduces us to an artist who was once uprooted from her homeland and has spent decades transforming works of nature into works of art. This story is part of our arts and culture series, Canvas. This is where the glaciers ended 10,000 years ago and dropped a lot of stone and rubble and boulders, so of course you'll see a lot of stone walls. Some of these lots around here were used for wood by the colonials. So it's kind of a scrubby forest landscape, but it holds all kinds

of histories here. Artist Anna Flores is fascinated by the stories the land holds. It's one of the reasons she likes to start her days by going for a walk in the forest next to her. home in Charlestown. This stretch of southern Rhode Island has a complicated history. It's the land of the Narragansets and they're still very present. It's also a place that's had a history that is very connected to the Caribbean because Rhode Island was part of the slave trade. For Flores, the land isn't simply a muse. It's also an extension of her studio. searching for materials she can incorporate into her artwork. I do a lot of branches. A lot of wood comes in because all kinds of forms of wood, stones,

man-made objects that get left behind and rusted. Flores's work has been featured in exhibits around the world. Her pieces, she says, are rooted in identity, place, and discovery of place. Her work's been described as evocative and, at times, provocative. One of the first larger pieces that I made was a piece called Gaia, and it was made out of a root system that kind of became almost like an earth womb. You know, it was like the earth-giving birth. Flores recalls the piece being censored in the late 90s at a university library, It was moved to a less visible gallery.

I had a discussion eventually with the dean of the library, and it was quite clear. It was censorship. I mean, he just didn't want it in there. He said too many people are stopping and talking. For Flores, Gaia represented how humans have abused the environment. She's not afraid to make a statement through her work. It's a privilege she does not take for granted. for granted. She was six when she left Cuba with her family in the early 1960s as a political

refugee. Fidel Castro's promise of a free Cuba vanished. Castro gloated over his victory and told the world that Cuba was now a socialist nation. Flores, seen here as a baby in Havana, ended up moving to Connecticut with her family. She later graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design where she met her husband. She returned to Cuba in 2002, her first time back since leaving the island 40 years earlier. I felt so Cuban. It's a funny thing to say. It was like this whole suitcase of my life and my memories had been put away for a long time and that trip brought it out. Flores says traveling to Cuba made her feel more rooted in Rhode Island. She spent much of the last decades devoted to creating work that helps communities connect with their

landscapes. We do have an environmental problem. We're not taking care of the planet and of the places we live in. Partly because of ignorance we don't understand how our behavior can affect it. Flores went on to create her poetry of the Wild Project. She's traveled the country teaching people how to design boxes that look like bird houses. Each one contains a poem and a journal where visitors can jot down their thoughts. You can tell people there's going to be birdwatch walks or this or that. And a lot of people won't go hiking. But if you tell them there's a poetry box, a writer they might know wrote something for the box, their children might have been involved in making some of the boxes.

All of a sudden you get this new audience going out, walking. And then maybe you act in a different way. I never planned to be this kind of artist. It was really this place that made me this kind of artist. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Michelle San Miguel in Charlestown, Rhode Island. And that is the News Hour for tonight. I'm Amna Nawaz. On behalf of the entire News Hour team, thank you for joining us. Thank you.