PBS News Hour - Full Show - June 19, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: June 19, 2025

Thursday on the News Hour, Israel threatens to kill Iran's supreme leader after an Iranian missile hit a hospital in the country's south, we unpack more of what's in congressional Republicans' massive budget bill and two men team up to make a grilling product entirely in the U.S., a journey that highlights the hurdles businesses are facing in the wake of President Trump's tariffs. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. On the news hour tonight, Israel threatens to target Iran's supreme leader after an Iranian missile strike on a hospital in southern Israel. We unpack more of what's in congressional Republicans' massive budget bill, including a rollback to the Affordable Care Act. And two men team up to make a grilling product entirely in the U.S., a journey that highlights the hurdles businesses face in the wake of President Trump's tariffs. Making something in America is very, very difficult, and you almost have to go against the economic forces to try to make it happen.

Welcome to the News Hour, as the fighting between Israel, as the fighting between Israel and Iran now eclipses one week. President Trump said today that he will temporarily hold off on deciding whether the U.S. would get involved. Mr. Trump said he'll make his decision within two weeks to allow space for peace talks that could start as soon as tomorrow. In the meantime, Israel and Iran show no signs of backing down with more and more civilians getting caught in the crossfire. Tonight, as the region awaits word on whether President Trump will launch U.S. forces. Good afternoon, everyone.

White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt today made clear the president's decision is weeks away, not days, to allow space for dialogue. I have a message directly from the president, and I quote, based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. That says the war between Israel and Iran. rages on, inflicting a heavier and heavier toll as the conflict reached its seventh day. Iranian strikes injured dozens of people at Soroka Medical Center, the largest hospital in

southern Israel. No one was killed as patients were evacuated on gurneys, but entire wings of the facility were left in tatters. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toured the damage today. We're targeting military sites. We're targeting nuclear sites. We're targeting targeting missile sites. They're targeting a hospital. Iranian officials claimed they targeted military installations nearby. Elsewhere, homes and high rises in Tel Aviv hollowed out from blasts, as hundreds of people have been hurt across Israel.

Meanwhile, in Iran, Israel continued its relentless strikes. Israel says it's not targeted Iranian civilians, but a U.S.-based Iranian human rights group says hundreds have been killed. The Tehran Times memorializing the victims, entire families, an eight-year-old gymnast, a young flight attendant, and an equestrian champion, among others. The Israeli military points to strikes on nuclear targets, releasing video it claims shows a direct hit on the Adak Heavy Water Reactor, a potentially critical component of Iran's nuclear program. Iranian State TV said there was, quote, no radiation danger from the strike. Israel's defense minister today fanned the flame. calling for the assassination of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

We decided on the goals of the war. The goals are to eliminate the nuclear threat. But amid this, the IDF has been instructed and knows that in order to achieve all of its goals, this man absolutely should not continue to exist. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a key Iran ally, also issued a warning that the U.S. not get militarily involved.

Tomorrow, in Geneva, a first opportunity to lower the temperature. Iran's foreign minister says he will pursue talks with his European counterparts, talks that the White House says it will be watching. The president is always interested in a diplomatic solution to the problems and the global conflicts in this world. Again, he is a peacemaker in chief. He is the peace through strength president. And so if there's a chance for diplomacy, the president's always going to grab it. And we take a closer look at the state of play in the Israel-Iran.

war with Abbas Milani. He's director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. Welcome to the News Hour. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. So what do you make of President Trump's wait and see approach here, this idea that he's going to make a decision on whether or not the U.S. will join Israel's war in Iran within two weeks? I think he is exactly as you suggest. It's opting for wait and see. I think he thinks the Israelis are very close to achieve. what they have set out to do, which is dismantled much of the Iranian nuclear program. I think he sees the Iranian regime is rather weak, probably the weakest it has ever been,

and wants to maybe make a deal when the regime is even weaker and then declare victory. He doesn't want, I think, to get involved in a war with Iran or anywhere in the Middle East, as he has often said, but he might be forced to make a choice sooner than later. You say that you think the Iranian regime is as weak as it's ever been. Is that why you believe they might be incentivized to come back to the negotiating table at this point? I think so. I think the Iranian regime is really practically the weakest it has been.

But if you read the rhetoric, it is very much like Saddam Hussein's rhetoric just before the fall. I was just reading some of the announcements and the sites. close to the IRGC, you would literally think that they have won the war, that Netanyahu is on his almost coding death throes, that people are fleeing Israel en masse, and that Israel is desperate, Israel is desperate for a peace. That's what they're telling their bases at home and in their websites. The reality to me is the exact opposite. So play that out for us a little bit here. What kind of deal do you foresee that would

allow both President Trump to be able to declare victory here in the United States and also allow the Ayatollah and the Iranian regime to not look like they're capitulating, to save face back home. I think that's for them the only important thing at this stage. They're willing to make almost any concession, but so long as they can sell it to their base as a victory. And that, I think, would be for them to maintain some minimal sense of enrichment. Mr. Khomeini is deeply attached to his enrichment program

and accepting some kind of even semblance of enrichment, I think will allow him to say, we didn't capitulate, we kept our program, and Israel is the loser and we are the winner. And do you believe that the Iranian leadership would even engage in talks or agree to anything while they're still fighting, while an Israeli bombing campaign is still going on,

or would there need to be a cessation in fighting? And the question attached to that is, Do you believe the Prime Minister Netanyahu would agree to that? Well, I clearly think the regime has been negotiating. I think they have been sending signals. They've been negotiating with Europeans. They have apparently been negotiating with the U.S. What the regime says often is not the same as what the regime does.

What the regime does in private, behind closed doors, is to negotiate to try to see whether they can get a deal, but publicly they continue to repeat their bombastic rhetoric. So I think they are negotiating. I think they can maybe achieve a deal that Mr. Trump might be happy with. I'm not sure about Mr. Netanyahu. But if it goes on for long, I think Mr. Netanyahu under international pressure, and under some pressure from home with the increase of the number of people who are killed or injured, he too might decide that peace is inevitable, at least a short.

peace is inevitable. But I don't think any deal that the regime makes is going to save it for long. Because I think the day after the deal, there will be a political reckoning in Iran about taking Iran to a war that was unnecessary, unwanted. I know people are rightly angry at Mr. Netanyahu for attacking Iran. But I think once that reckoning comes, people will ask Mr. Khomeini, why did you take the country to a war that you knew we are not going to win. It was an unnecessary war.

And why didn't you support even your own folks? I just read before I came on, a comment by Mr. Rezaid, the commander of the IRGC for 18 years. He said we have known for weeks that Israel was about to attack, so we have moved all of our enriched uranium. We have moved all of our sensitive equipment from the sites that we have moved. Israel has hit. That's as stupid a thing to say, and I think as unreliable. People will ask, why didn't you support your own people? Why don't you support the people of Iran? Why didn't you think about shelters for the people of Iran if you knew for several months that an attack was inevitable?

Abbas, it sounds as if you're saying the threats to the regime here are very real, regardless of whether this moves through talks and to a deal or not. What does that political reckoning look like? Is there an opposition in Iran that could leverage this moment and step in? I think there's a great deal of opposition to this regime. If you look at the woman's movement in Iran, they basically forced this regime to back down on the question of force hijab. There are hundreds of strikes in Iran over the last few months. There are people who are fighting this regime every day. They're disorganized opposition. I think there's a great majority of people who say, enough is enough.

We don't want this regime, but at the same time, they want the bombing to end. Clearly, very, very few people I know would say, let's continue bombing, let's kill innocent civilians in Iran. But once that stops, and it will stop, and I hope it stopped sooner, people will ask those questions. People will ask questions from Mr. Khamene. To me, Mr. Khamini's political capital is all but gone. His regime, I think, regardless of whether they make a deal or not, his regime, his constellation,

his dogmatism, his anti-Semitism, his anti-allegiate Zionist rhetoric, his promise of a war, his promise of a destruction of Israel, all of these, I think, will soon be a matter of history. Abbas Melani, Director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University. Thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. My pleasure. And we start today's other headlines here at home,

where the official start of summer tomorrow is expected to bring a stifling heat wave across much of the country. Already large parts of the western U.S. and the upper. Midwest are under extreme heat alerts. Temperatures this weekend are expected to hit triple digits in some places, while dangerously high humidity will make it feel even hotter. The extreme heat is expected to push east next week. Meantime. Indiana is cleaning up after a line of severe storms blasted through the state yesterday, knocking out power for tens of thousands of customers, while flooding and rock slides closed a section of Interstate 40 near the Tennessee North Carolina state line. Hurricane Eric is making its way inland across southern Mexico after making landfall this morning as a category three storm.

It narrowly missed the resort areas of Acapulco and Porto Escondido, crashing into a less populated area with top winds of 125 miles per hour. Along the way, Eric smashed beachfront restaurants and fishing boats, in Wauaca State. Forecasters expect the storm to weaken as it moves further inland and hits coastal mountains. There are no reports of injuries or deaths so far. Spain is rejecting a NATO proposal due next week that calls on member nations to commit 5% of GDP to defense spending. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called that target unreasonable. In a letter to NATO Secretary General, he wrote that it would move Spain away from optimal spending and it would hinder the EU's ongoing effort.

to strengthen its security. Spain was already the lowest spender in the 32-member alliance last year, allocating less than 2% to defense. President Trump has pushed the 5% target, saying NATO leaders rely too heavily on the U.S. President Trump signed an executive order today, allowing TikTok to continue operating in the U.S. for another 90 days. The announcement on his social media platform allows the government until mid-September to try to negotiate a deal for the social media app, which is owned by TV.

China's bite dance. This is the third time the Trump administration has extended the deadline after Congress passed a law last year calling for its sale amid national security concerns. TikTok currently has about 170 million users in the U.S. An investigation is underway after a SpaceX starship exploded during preparations for a test flight. The rocket was still on a test stand at the company's launch site in southern Texas when it was engulfed in flames late last night. see it there. The company says the starship experience what it called a major anomaly, adding that all personnel are safe and accounted for. The Elon Musk-led company had already launched nine of these rockets in the last two years. Six of them either exploded on takeoff or broke

apart on re-entry. And financial markets and many federal offices were closed today in observance of the Juneteenth holiday. It marks the day in 1865 when Union troops freed enslaved African-Americans in Texas, in two years after the Emancipation Proclamation. The day was marked in many ways. In New Hampshire, Oh, freedom. Residents of Portsmouth held a ceremony for the rededication of a memorial park

that was a burying ground for enslaved Africans. And in New York, performers from 15 different Broadway shows held a concert in Times Square, among the many commemorations unfolding across the country. Still to come on the news hour, we examine the push to ban members of Congress from trading individual stocks. And a new jazz fellowship honors longtime musicians who often struggle financially. This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at W.E.T.A. in Washington.

And in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. The Affordable Care Act faces major rollbacks. If the President's big speech, spending and tax cut bill is approved by the Senate. The proposed changes could affect many of the 24 million Americans enrolled in that insurance marketplace and could leave millions of people without coverage. The House and Senate versions of the so-called one big, beautiful bill differ, but they have key changes in common, including shortening enrollment periods requiring additional verification and effectively ending automatic renewals of insurance, making health premiums more expensive and higher cost sharing, and blocking subsidies for many legal immigrants, refugees, and those

on student visas. For more, we're joined now by Sarah Cliff, health policy reporter for the New York Times. Sarah, thanks so much for being here. So these changes we mentioned help us understand how significant they would be for people who rely on the Affordable Care Act for insurance coverage. They would be quite significant. It's estimated by the Congressional Budget Office that about four million people would lose health coverage. That's about one-sixth of the people who currently get Obamacare. And it's not this big sweeping repeal that Republicans used to talk about. It's really a suite of policy tweaks that kind of add up one source that we talked to about this, kind of described it as repeal by paper cut. A lot of small tweaks that add up to millions of people likely losing

their insurance under this legislation. And Republicans make the case that these changes are necessary because they say there's so much fraud in the marketplace. What have you found on that front in your reporting? Yeah, the marketplace has struggled a little bit with certain kinds of fraudulent enrollment. A lot of this had to do with brokers kind of enrolling people in ways that weren't quite okay. The Biden administration did on its way out issue some regulations to crack down on that behavior. And I think what worries, you know, advocates for the Affordable Care Act is that this quest to kind of tamp down on fraud, collect a ton of documents, that it's going to mean a lot of people who really should qualify and do qualify are going to kind of get caught in the

crosshairs and lose their insurance because there's just so much more red taping added in the name of kind of rooting out fraud. The four million people who are estimated to lose their coverage, who are they? Yeah, about a quarter of those are legal immigrants who currently purchase on the marketplaces under the new legislation. These folks who include asylees, refugees, they would no longer be able to purchase on the market or to use the subsidies on the marketplace to find affordable coverage. And then there's a pretty big group of people who just aren't going to comply with the paperwork requirements. One of the really big changes is just a lot more work to get insurance. So you have to submit all your original documents to the marketplace versus how it

works currently where the marketplace will ping all these government databases, kind of check for you if you're eligible. You have to re-enroll each year. Right now, there's an automatic re-enroll So the other folks who are likely to lose coverage are really people who, you know, are buying their coverage, but they might not be as on top of their paperwork. They might not see the renewal notice, and they could end up uninsured that way. Those subsidies you mentioned, many people started getting those tax credits during the pandemic. What's the Republican argument for discontinuing those? Yeah, I think the idea is they feel like it's become too subsidized, that it's almost

become too cheap to get insurance, that people should have to pay a little bit more. more for their coverage. This was meant to be a pandemic era support, and obviously we've moved on to a different period. So I think the idea is it got a little too subsidized and that they want to pull that back as opposed to chip in a little bit more for their coverage. To your earlier point that the GOP tried to kill the Affordable Care Act legislatively, that didn't work. I think there were more than 70 votes in the U.S. Congress during President Trump's first term. Now this effort to dismantle it piece by piece. How effective might that be? I think it'll be decently affected. I don't think it'll disappear. I think Obamacare is still going to be here. Enrollment right now is an all-time high. It's a 24 million people, which is about quadruple where it was the first year it launched in 2014. So it's really working quite well right now. A lot of people getting coverage. I think it'll just get smaller. You'll see that fewer people getting coverage, premiums might go up because the people who are most likely not to fill out their paperwork are kind of younger, healthier people who are going to be less

attuned to their health insurance, whereas the people who really need it are going to jump through the hoops. So you might see some destabilization to some level by the fact that you have more expensive people in the marketplaces and that drives up premiums for everybody. And when you add these changes to the potential changes coming to the Medicaid system, I mean, what does the health care landscape, the health insurance landscape, look like for people who are a low to moderate income? Yeah, you layer in the Medicaid changes. And then we're talking about like a fundamental change to our social safety net. We're getting up to 10 million or so people losing insurance because of the House legislation and because of the expiration of those extra

tax credits you mentioned, another five or so million. So really we'd be looking at the first increase in the uninsured rate in the United States in over a decade. I think it'd be quite significant when you pair it with the really significant nearly trillion dollar Medicaid cuts that are contained within this legislation. Sarah Cliff, health policy reporter, for the New York Times. Thanks again for your time this evening. We appreciate it. Thank you. to highlight lawmakers, trades, and bar Congress from betting on Wall Street. Lisa Desjardin has that story. From his office in Los Angeles, 29-year-old Chris Joseph's is changing the way people see wealth and power.

I didn't aspire to be an expert of what Nancy Pelosi or other politicians are stock trading on a day-to-day basis, but it's been kind of an incredible ride. A few years ago, he saw news stories about members of Congress making big stock trades during COVID. Senators are under a microscope for selling off stocks. Betraying your country in a time of crisis. The first Washington scandal of the coronavirus era. And while they must disclose their trades within 45 days and they can't use insider knowledge, lawmakers are free to trade on stocks for industries they oversee or write legislation about.

Joseph's got on his computer and launched a name and sometimes shame effort on Twitter. The Pelosi Tracker, highlighting some trades by lawmakers and their families, including former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi's husband, Paul. The idea took off, and so did the profits for tens of thousands who followed the account and Joseph's autopilot app. The Pelosi trades are the most popular of many lawmaker choices. Seeing it all, Joseph's questions if this is fair play. Everything that we have on the data size points to these politicians from when we've been

tracking and them have done a great job trading stocks. We think there is alpha. For those who don't know, alpha means an edge. This is exactly the kind of thing that makes people lose trust in their government and we need to end it. Rhode Island Democratic Congressman Seth Magaziner is a main sponsor of the Trust in Congress Act, which would ban members of Congress and their families from trading individual stocks. Members of Congress, when we make decisions about how to vote on a bill, we should be making decisions based on what we think is best for the American people, not what is best for our investment accounts. The liberal is part of an unusual coalition.

His main co-sponsor is conservative, Chip Roy, and working with them are moderate Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick, and progressive lawmakers, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pramilagia Paul. The efforts getting new attention in light of President Trump's own actions. Ahead of his tariff pause on April 9th, Trump posted on his social media platform, this is a great time to buy stocks. That day and the day before, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who discloses her trades immediately, bought stock in nearly 20 companies and sold tens of thousands of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Others have done well in general. Autopilot trackers have Paul Pelosi up more than 15% over the past year. Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw over 18 and New York Democrat Dan Goldman, not far behind. But some Congress watchers say those are defensible gains and a stock trade ban would be a mistake. So ethically, do you think members of Congress should be trading stocks at all? I don't think they should be trading based on information they learn through their job, but I think it's fine to trade stocks, sure. J.W. Verrett is a former Hill staffer, conservative, and George Mason law professor

specializing in banking and securities law. He says plenty of lawmakers may think they have an edge. on Wall Street. Members of leadership do have actionable information from time to time. Your average backbencher doesn't have much information. For your average member of Congress, they're going to earn an above average return just by being in an upper income category and using a financial advisor. Barrett says voters already can see members' trades and act on possible conflicts. His big concern with the ban is that the White House would enforce it and could target specific opponents in Congress. I am more comfortable with Congress policing itself for ethics issues. The idea of a trading ban has some very big backers, including Pelosi herself, President Trump, and Democratic leaders Schumer and Jeffries.

It also polls north of 80% across parties. The question is, will it get a chance to advance in Congress? I believe that if this gets to the floor, it will pass by a wide margin. We have bipartisan support, Republicans and Democrats who support this. The American people support it. but Speaker Johnson is the gatekeeper. Johnson has not committed to bringing a ban to a vote, but he supports the bill, ish.

The counterargument is, and I have some sympathy, look, at least let them, like, engage in some stock trading so that they can continue to, you know, take care of their family. But on balance, my view is we probably should do that because I think it's been abused in the past. In the present, unelected Americans like Mason-Graits are trying to benefit. The Minneapolis engineer has used the tracker and the app to trade off Paul Pelosi's picks for a year and recently checked his accounts.

I believe my portfolio was at about 50% return. 5%%?0%? Correct, yeah. Those are incredible returns, but to Mason, disturbing. Based on what he's seen, he wants the Congress stock ban. A small portion of voters are looking into and are seeing a lot of discrepancies in similarities between the legislation that they're directly working on and the stocks that they are buying as a result of that. So I think that's a major issue that we need to address.

It's a financial price he's willing to pay to gain more trust in Congress. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Lisa Desjardin. Speaker Emerita Pelosi and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green declined our interview requests for this story. In a statement, Pelosi's team tells us she has no involvement in any of her husband's transactions. A spokesperson for Green says all of her investments are controlled by a financial advisor, noting she normally finds out about trades when the media comes calling. The sweeping tariffs imposed by President Trump are already impacting the global economy. But if tariffs are meant to bring jobs home. What happens if the U.S. may no longer have all the tools to do the work? Economics correspondent Paul Salman reports on the hurdles faced when one Alabama

company tried to make a product entirely in America and what it suggests about the challenges ahead. So we're going to have made in the USA like we haven't had before in a long time. More consumers are searching for Made in the USA labels. The economic battle cry these days. Made in America. I made it America. Sounds great. The days of making our parts all over the world because we have wonderful partners now, it's America first now.

And even before President Trump began announcing tariffs to bring back American manufacturing, in Huntsville, Alabama, Destin Sandlin was already on the case. Is it possible to make something in America and be competitive in the marketplace? Sandlin is a rocket scientist and engineer who used to test missiles for. the military. He now hosts the wildly popular Smarter Every Day series on YouTube, more than 11 million subscribers. He's explored everything from why humans don't die at birth, to how to survive an underwater helicopter crash, to what happens to a baseball when it goes past the speed of sound. How do you come up with topics? That's just whatever I'm interested in. That's the

only requirement. His off-the-wall latest experiment to manufacture a product, every single part of which is made in the USA. Could we even do it? Could we make the tools necessary to make things in America? The idea was sparked by the pandemic and a critical shortage in his community. We needed personal protective equipment for medical workers and we couldn't get it. Like, we were waiting on people to fly things into us from other countries. We couldn't make it and that scared the fire out of me. Sandlin and other local engineers organized an effort to 3D print that desperately needed products. Not long after, Sandlin met Alabama businessman John Youngblood who wanted to make a barbecue grill scrubber,

using chain mail instead of the standard bristles, which... Those metal bristles, like a wire brush, will break off and people are swallowing them. And then you're going to the doctor. to the doctor. Yeah, if you ask any ER doctor, everybody's seen it. Sandlin saw his opportunity. Destin asked me straight up. He's like, hey, would you be willing to go in with me on this product and we can make it all here in the U.S.? And I was like, absolutely. I don't think John would have said yes to me if the potential to market on YouTube wasn't there. But it was. And so in 2021, the pair set out.

So I guide them how to mold and how to make molds. They lucked out at first, finding tool and die maker Chris Robeson about to turn 70. So when they finished the molds, we checked them out, made sure everything was going to work for us. And they started making some of the scrubbers first parts. But says Sandlin, manufacturing capacity in America has been gutted. If Chris had decided to retire before I needed that mold made, we would not. have been able to make an injection mold in my area. Or who knows where, given the state of manufacturing in the U.S.

Tool and dye trade is suffering greatly by the fact that we're losing tool and dye makers. Most of them are about my age. We don't have any younger people stepping up to take the place of the people that are retiring. And when they look for the simplest part, a plain old steel bolt that would also be made in America. This little stainless steel bolt right here, it's a one-inch bolt. talked to a bolt manufacturer and he said, yeah, we can't get the material for that. We can't even buy the steel to make the bolt for that cost. So good luck. Also, I think what you're doing is great, young man, in Alabama, but I don't think you're going to get there. Eventually, they found

a bolt maker in Massachusetts. We could buy that bolt for a nickel made overseas, and we pay 38 cents apiece for these bolts. As for the scrubbers' steel handle, And how many parts do you make here, would you guess? Tens of millions. Enter Weston Coleman, a TNC stamping in Athens, Alabama. So the first station, we actually bend the end of the handle down. We just make sure this handle is wrapped fully around on the end. But doing the work in America costs way more than, say, in China.

For every dollar that we would quote a tool for, they're quoting it for 25 seconds. Though long-term, Coleman says, offshoring has its own costs, even before adding possible tariffs. There's hidden costs, there's maintenance costs, there's going to be quality issues and quality cost money, especially if it's a long-term part. You know, John Youngblood and Destin Sandlin, they want this to be a long-term part and a long-term business partnership. And 10 years down the road, there's no telling them what the tooling costs and maintenance costs are going to be on an overseas tool. In short, another example of manufacturing myopia, in America. But so far all parts made in America, including the molded knob that holds

the scrubber to the handle, or so they thought. This was originally supposed to be made in America, but the box came in and they said made in Costa Rica. That's right. That's right. We thought they were made in Mississippi. They were not. One of the things we're realizing is the only things we can verify are made in America are the things that we 100% control the supply chain up because we manufactured it or watched it be manufactured when you say that that's right as for that American bolt that cost them 38 cents we've been told it's made in America and and I mean maybe we're a little naive to believe it well who told you the supplier and we've searched low and high and I do

believe the bolts made here but especially with that 38 cent a price point but they're not sure okay four years on the scrubber is for sale online for $75, a little less at a local Alabama grill store. So we've been in business since 1982. But given the sky-high costs of Made in America, will anyone buy it? Are they selling or? Yeah, I wouldn't say necessarily like hotcakes because grill brushes are not necessarily the hottest commodity right now, but they are selling. So this is how much?

$60. And what's the competition? That probably closest thing on this would be this triple row brush from Napoleon. And how much is this? Twenty-one. Thrice the price, but worth it, says salesman Jason Peasley. Is it a selling point that this is just made in America? No, absolutely.

But for long years, a lofty price tag because of made-at-America, and yet still not everything is. When you started this, Did you realize what a challenge it was going to be, things like this? No. It's a hard thing to do. Like, making something in America is very, very difficult. And you almost have to go against the economic forces to try to make it happen.

Would you agree? I 100%. It's similar to, it's a hybrid of the design that you and I talked about. Still, they've gone back to Robeson, whose laser gives the scrubber its proud final flourish made in the USA. He'll now help make new All-American knobs. So in the end, a kickstart to a Made in America renaissance? We're not going to turn around American manufacturing with a grill scrubber being made in Alabama. It's not going to happen.

But we might excite somebody in Nebraska. And I think that's important because I think the future is for people who make things. I think everybody in the audience would be sympathetic to what you're saying. But I think they'd also be skeptical that we could turn things around. around. It's never going to happen if you don't try. So someone has to be stubborn enough to try it and see what happens. Stubbornness, a product still very much made in America. For the PBS News hour, Paul Salman in Huntsville, Alabama. The lack of legal clarity around consent laws in the U.S.

means that many sexual assaults, especially ones on college campuses and involving alcohol, are not legally crimes. But Texas lawmakers recently passed legislation to change that, and the new law is set to take effect in September. Producer Courtney Norris has our look at the bipartisan bill and the woman it's named after. Ten years ago, Summer Willis attended a fraternity party at the University of Texas at Austin, where she says she was drugged by one man and raped by another. At the time, Willis was a college sophomore and did not report it. She would later learn a loophole in the state's consent law meant what happened to her wasn't even considered sexual assault.

The loophole my rape fell under was because I voluntarily accepted a drink from one person and another person raped me. It doesn't count. one because I voluntarily took a drink and two because that person when I entered the party did not have the intent to rape me even though someone else did in the U.S. there is no national legal definition of consent state laws determining the age of consent and what constitutes lack of consent differ and how a state defines consent plays a key role in whether an act is legally a crime. I think something cracked inside of me, realizing that even if I wanted to,

even if I went to the police the next day, they would have just turned me around. Two years ago, Willis decided to speak up and push for legislative reform in Texas. If we have been drugged and made too incapacitated to say no, it doesn't count. Since telling her story, Willis participated in more than two dozen marathons or across the country to raise awareness for sexual assault, one with a mattress on her back and one on her hands and knees to symbolize the struggle of survivors. Willis' advocacy got the attention of Texas lawmakers. The Summer Willis Act clarifies, among other things, that sexual assault is without consent if the actor knows or reasonably should know that the other person

cannot consent because of intoxication or impairment by any substance. If someone now knows you're intoxicated, that means no. And I think that will be huge, especially on college campuses, and I get chills knowing that we're protecting these kids. According to Raine, a nonprofit that supports survivors of sexual violence, 13% of graduate and undergraduate students experience. rape or sexual assault in the U.S. She didn't want to be here for why she is here, but she has taken tragedy and turned it into triumph. Willis says her story is just one example of how loopholes can allow sex to be considered

consensual despite consent not being given. She hopes more states move to update consent laws. The easiest way to describe this bill, the Summer Willis Act, is that it defines. consent. But there's a lot of other things that happen when you don't define consent. And there are 20 states right now that still don't have those definitions. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Courtney Norris. As aficionado, you might only know the names and music of a handful of stars and legends. But what about all those who've built a life working in this art form?

Sometimes struggling, other times reaching bigger audiences, always having the respect and gratitude of their peers. A new fellowship honors them and offers financial support in their later years. Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown has that story for our arts and culture series, Canvas. So here it is. At 68 years young, New Orleans born and raised jazz drummer Hurlin Riley is ready to bring a smile with his tambourine. Back a band on stage. From childhood to today, practicing, performing, teaching.

He's worked hard to make a life in jazz, including playing with the likes of giants such as Winton Marsalis, Marcellus and Ahmad Jamal. It takes commitment. It takes commitment and also to be, to recognize where you stand of the people who around you, your peers, am I good enough that I can make a living? Am I good enough to be accepted? Am I good enough that I can, I'll be getting the phone calls to make a living? Because you don't always know.

You don't always know. But I tell my students all the time that if you go into music, for any other thing other than the passion and the love of it, you should do something else. At a recent concert at New York City Winery, Riley performed as part of the inaugural class of the Jazz Legacy's Fellowship, 20 musicians, all 62 and older. The fellowship comes with $100,000 to use as the musicians want. For creative projects, they always hope to take on, or for housing, medical, and other personal needs. The four-year program is funded by the Mellon Foundation, with the record also an underwriter

of PBS News, in partnership with the Jazz Foundation of America. An honor season jazz musicians who may not have achieved huge popular success, but have continued to work and contribute to the art form they love. Jazz Legacy's fellow 90-year-old pianist Valerie Capers. Ninety-year-old, that's ridiculous. It's ridiculous, but you're still doing all these things, so you're not stopping anything. Oh, no. Still at it, but remembering well the early days.

My challenge is in jazz to, as you say, to move into it and to be able to maintain myself for of this, well, you're right, quite a period of time. Blind since age six, Capers studied classical music at the New York Institute for the Education of the Blind. But she also fell in love with jazz. Her father was a friend of Fats Waller. And she recalls having to hide her new passion from her piano teacher.

She had no use for dealing with anything that would be jazz or that would be anything like that. Anything but classical music. That's right, that's right. none whatsoever. Capers ended up taking Saturday classes at Juilliard to get her jazz fill. It was exciting just to be around who were playing this music that I just loved and enjoyed so much.

The music brought smiles and laughter and energy when you would play the music. They would just enjoy it. Capers went on to a long career, including leading a trio, playing with the the likes of busy Gillespie and decades of teaching. Another veteran pianist and newly minted fellow, 80-year-old George Pables. The native New Yorker grew up seeing Philonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and John Coltrane, and was hooked.

Hearing the music is one thing. Seeing it and being there while it's being made and watching an iconic figure like Phelonious Monk is something else. Through the years, Cables has played with jazz legends including Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon. But his career hasn't been without obstacles, not only keeping up a working routine, but dealing with serious health problems, including a liver kidney transplant and the amputation of a leg.

They were there things that I had to go through in order to do the things that I want to do. This kind of thing, and the music is a wonderful thing to be involved with. to be involved with this music, with jazz, especially because it's a living music. It's always changing. But, you know, the business is kind of difficult. So it's good to know that there may be fewer things to worry about or to be as concerned about as I may have been. I feel like the music industry can be a bit agist.

We've heard time and time again important jazz musicians who shifted the sound, who passed away, poor, struggling, had to do a go-fund me, you know, to put them to rest in a proper way, and that always breaks my heart. Melanie Charles is a jazz singer, flutist composer, and producer. At 37, she's a generation or two younger than the 20 fellows. But she says she was honored to be on the selection committee of professional musicians and scholars that picked the first group. You will have cult following people.

you'll go to Russia and people will know all your albums, but you're going to go home and you just might struggle financially. You might not be able to pay your rent or your mortgage, or you might have an album that you want to finish, your life's work, that you've never been able to have the budget to make it happen. A protege of 87-year-old jazz bassist Reggie Workman, who was her teacher in college and one of the 20 musicians selected, Charles says a common thread among the fellows is their commitment to the next generations. A lot of the jazz masters, you find that in the career they're always hiring younger musicians. Why is that? It's because they understand that that fresh sound is so important to pushing the music

forward and it keeps them bright and fresh. In fact, several of the band members playing with Valerie Keepers at this performance were musicians she's taught. Oh, I get a tremendous satisfaction because it's a, it's almost like a parenthood in a sense, because you are passing on to to others that are close to you who have spent time with you. George Cable says this fellowship has energized him. He's writing

new music, collecting and organizing older works into one volume. So you're 80 years old, you're still writing music, and you're still performing music. That's what I do. That's my life. And that actually, that makes, that gives me breath, that gives me life, that gives me energy. That makes life worthwhile and meaningful.

As for drummer and tambourine man Hurlin Riley, he too intends to play on. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Jeffrey Brown in New York. Comedian and illustrator Mo Welch has built a career blending sharp humor with emotional honesty. Her recent special, Dad Jokes, explores her childhood with a largely absent father, culminating in a road trip to reunite with him after 20 years. In tonight's brief but spectacular take, she reflects on family comedy and the lessons we carry from our parents, when they show, and when they don't. I never thought that the traumatic stuff was funny because I always love one-liners.

And the first one-liner from dad jokes was, I hate dad jokes. Every time I hear a dad tell a dad joke, I'm so happy that mine abandoned my whole family. I grew up in normal Illinois. I am the second born of five kids. There was a gas station, a mile away. It was the only business in town. My mom worked there was called Turner's, and she would bring all of us there,

and then eventually the manager was like, you have to stop your daycare. I was a shy kid. I used to spend all my time drawing, playing basketball, playing basketball, doing things by myself. My dad was in prison when my older sister was born. And then I was technically a conjugal visit. That is how I was made.

I mean, it was like I was built for comedy. My dad went to prison for stealing TVs from Sears on more than one occasion. But I guess he stole a big enough and an expensive enough TV where he was in there for years. My dad was physically abusive and mentally abusive. The last time that we left, he kicked my mom while she was changing my sister's diaper.

And my mom was like, I've had enough. She left and we never came back. When I was in college, I was the editorial cartoonist and I started comedy and stopped drawing. The first time I did stand-up, I took a class at the Improv Theater. I chugged a few beers and blacked out and killed. And I was like, this is what?

what I'm gonna do forever. Famously what happens is you have a few good shows and then you bomb for, I don't know, five years. After almost 10 years of doing comedy, nothing had happened. I was staying at my mom's house. It's like going to the Panera bread every day. My sister had a pad of paper downstairs

and I just drew this character that looked really depressed and my friend had just purchased a house. And so I just wrote, my friend just bought a house, and I'm having a Pop-Tart for dinner. And then I said, oh, I'm going to draw one every day. And then at the end of the year, I'll see how many I have. And I had, like, 360. I jumped up and down the first time I got a cartoon in The New Yorker.

I was ecstatic. My latest special is called Dad Jokes. It is half documentary and half stand-up special. The documentary part follows me traveling from Los Angeles to Central Illinois to meet up with my dad, who I haven't seen in 20 years. Were you scared? I was terrified.

You could see my hands just trembling. He showed up for me, and that was like the first time I really felt like he showed up for me. Months after, my dad got in a terrible motorcycle accident. I traveled to Tennessee to go see him. There was like a little bit of like, he showed up for me to help me, I don't know, see him for the first time. and then I showed up for him right after that.

I ended up getting married because I fell in love with somebody who was just like, she did have like a great upbringing of like parents to look to. And I thought to myself how I feel about marriage is if it doesn't work, you can always get divorced. After becoming a mom, you just realize that it's all about showing up. Children just need to know that someone has their back and that's how I feel with my daughter.

daughter. My name is Mo Welch, and this is my brief but spectacular take on dad jokes. As always, you can find more brief but spectacular videos online at pbs.org slash news hour slash brief. And there's a lot more online, including a look at how a drop in the number of international students could affect local and state economies as the U.S. State Department implements stricter vetting for student visas. That's at pbs.b.s. Newshour. And join us again back here tomorrow night when we'll have our sit-down interview with Carla Hayden, the first female and first African-American librarian of Congress who was fired by President Trump. And that is the NewsHour for tonight. I'm Omnan Vaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS NewsHour,

thanks for spending part of your evening with us.