PBS News Hour - Full Show - March 10, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

Tuesday on the News Hour, another round of bombings shake Iran as new video indicates it was likely an American missile that hit a school on the first day of the war. Afghans who fled conflict in their home country find themselves caught in the middle of another war. Plus, as the electrical grid faces huge demand from AI, solar power is on the decline in the U.S. because of Trump's roadblocks. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Amman Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. On the news hour tonight, another round of bombings, Sheikh Iran and the region. Plus, new video indicates it was likely an American missile that hit a school on the first day of the war. We examine the growing body of evidence. Over a thousand Afghans who fled conflict in their home country find themselves caught in the middle of another war. It feels like we're not human, like our lives don't matter. We're in danger, and we don't know what will happen. hour from now. And solar power is on the decline in the U.S. because of the Trump administration's

roadblocks. With that portends for an electrical grid facing huge demand from artificial intelligence. In the U.S. alone, what we expect is that we will need 50 percent more electric power in the next 20 years. That's a staggering number. Welcome to the News Hour. The U.S. and Israel's war with Iran shows no sign of slowing today, with both sides trading strikes and vowing. to keep up the attacks. U.S. officials say the campaign has destroyed most of Iran's ability to produce nuclear fuel, while President Donald Trump says U.S. forces have also struck sea-mine-related targets tied to Iranian threats in the Strait of Hormuz.

This comes, as the Pentagon says about 140 U.S. troops have been wounded in the war, including over 100 who've returned to duty. Stephanie Sye begins our coverage. In an eastern neighborhood of Tehran, Red Crescent Rescue workers locate a person in the rubble. It's not clear if they're injured or dead. But a broken doll signals a family lived here. Anguish and ashes left in the wake of an air strike. This rescue worker blames on the quote Zionist regime. And their proxies. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseh today warned the U.S. will not relent until the Iranian regime is defeated.

Iran stands alone and they are badly losing. be yet again our most intense day of strikes inside Iran. The most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikes, intelligence more refined and better than ever. President Donald Trump also promised further escalation over Iran's threats to the Strait of Hormuz. This afternoon, Trump responded to reports that the Iranians are placing mines in the critical oil route, writing on truth social. If for any reason, mines were placed, and they were not removed, the military consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before. Meanwhile, Democrats, including Senate Armed Services Committee member Richard Blumenthal,

came out of a briefing on Iran, raising the specter of a deployment of American ground troops. I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran. We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt later responded. So I wouldn't take Democrats at their word. As for boots on the ground, the president has talked about this repeatedly. Wisely, he does not rule options out as commander-in-chiefs. But neither in the crucial oil shipping lane nor elsewhere has Iran shown signs of surrender.

launching missiles on a U.S. basin northern Iraq, targeting a residential building in the kingdom of Bahrain's capital city. That attack killed at least one person and injured eight. Iranian forces also launched drone strikes on an Israeli oil refinery in Haifa, a major industrial city. Despite mounting global pressure, the battered Iranian regime today made it clear there will not be a ceasefire. Iran's parliament speaker, Muhammad Bogger, saying, we must strike the aggressor in the mouth. An Iranian security official warned President Trump, watch out for yourself, lest you be eliminated. And an Iranian military spokesperson told Iranian media the country, quote, will not allow the export of a single leader of oil from the region. Meanwhile, in Israel, air raid sirens blared across the city today. A new normal,

warning residents to take shelter against incoming Iranian strikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the aim of the war is to enable Iranian citizens to rid themselves of, quote, tyranny. Ultimately, it's up to them, but there's no doubt that through the actions taken so far, we are breaking their bones, and there is more to come. But for many Iranians, the cost of speaking out is too great. People are afraid to go to the streets. They are not afraid of America.

Unfortunately, they are afraid of their own government. At this remote mountain pass in eastern Turkey, displaced travelers are saddled with fear and exhaustion. They are some of the tens of thousands currently fleeing Iran. But others are traveling back to the families they left. For 45-year-old Leila, being with her family, even in danger, feels more bearable than death. I cannot guard being against a bomb,

but when I feel I can with them together, maybe with together die. For Leila and so many Iranians, there is no obvious escape. It's now a war zone, but it's still home. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Stephanie Tsai. As we've been reporting, millions in the Middle East have been caught in the crosshairs of Iran's ballistic missile attacks. That includes more than a thousand Afghan refugees who thought they were headed to the U.S. before the Trump administration froze the refugee program last year. Since then, they've been stranded on an unused military base in Qatar. More than half of them

are women and children. Now having fled one war, they're trapped in another. Our special correspondent, Leila Malana Allen, reports from Qatar. Whaling sirens signal another incoming volley of missiles launched by Iran on the small Gulf nation of Qatar. My phone lights up with the trembling voice of a young teenager. We were eating dinner when suddenly we heard missiles exploding above our camp. I'm terrified right now. I'm shaking. My heart's beating so fast. I don't know what to do. The family has nowhere to run or hide. They're trapped between Iran and the U.S. base that's become the principal target of Iran's attacks here. My brother, he was outside. He was playing. My mom went to

get him, but he was screaming. He said he saw missiles exploding. At Camp Assaliyah near the Al-Dade Air Base, the largest U.S. base in the Middle East, 1,100 Afghan refugees have languished for more than a year. Until last week, their main concern was frustration as they waited to start the new lives they were promised in the United States. Now, trapped in the middle of America's war with Iran, they're just praying they'll get out alive. Since the start of the war until now, everyone's been living in confusion, stress and fear, children asking their mothers, mom, am I going to die now? The camp's occupants have begged State Department staff to evacuate them, but they've been told

they're safe and can't be moved elsewhere for now. A former military camp in the Katari desert, Asai Alia was meant to be a brief stop for Afghans being processed for U.S. visas after the United States pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, which left Afghans who'd helped U.S. forces throughout the 21-year war in danger of Taliban reprisals. January last year, President Trump brought refugee processing to a halt. Since then, Asai'aliyah's residents, 700 of whom have already been fully vetted and approved, have been trapped here in limbo. The State Department confirmed it plans to close the camp by the end of March,

but hasn't disclosed where it will move the refugees. The NewsHour spoke with multiple residents in the camp. We're protecting their identities because they say State Department staff have threatened to block phone and internet access and even deport them if they speak out. about their plight. Calling in secret late at night, one young man told us they've spent days hiding inside the temporary containing units where they sleep, which provide little protection from a missile strike. It's like a prison. We can't go outside. And we don't have any shelter. Last night Iran sent some drones behind the camp. They defended them with missiles from Al-Udeid.

We saw it. It was very scary. Last week, he says one missile section fell on the bedroom of several young children. They were in the cafeteria. If the family were in the bedroom, I don't think they would have survived. How do you feel that Americans are being evacuated and you can't get to safety? We feel like we've been forgotten. And now the Secretary of State is advising the citizens of the United States to leave the Gulf region.

And what about us? You brought us here. Now what can we do? And there are a lot of kids in the camp. Tell me what's happening with them. I have a sister. I have brothers. They're always scared.

All night they don't sleep. They're crying. They ask who will help us. We tell them God will help us, but no one here wants to help us. Residents told the news hour the panic is so intense that pregnant mothers in the camp fear they'll suffer miscarriages. Some children have stopped eating. Several families tried to escape to safety and were turned back by camp guards.

Others report being offered financial assistance if they agree to return to Afghanistan voluntarily. Already traumatized by the war back. home and now reliving what they hoped they'd escaped, their mental and physical health is fast deteriorating. We're going to talk about a few things we talked about yesterday. I think we can probably allay some of your fears. Sean Van Dyva runs Afghan Eback, a group fighting to bring Afghans who worked with the United States during the war to the U.S.

There are 150 family, immediate family of active duty U.S. military service members. So it's not outside the realm of possibility that these services. members are fighting this war in Iran, while missile fragments and debris are falling on the heads of their family members stuck in this camp. Van Daiva hopes the residents he supports won't be silenced by threats from camp staff. He's now taking the fight to Washington and is prepared to report the case to the United Nations. They can't lie to these kids or tell them that they might have Katari police show up and arrest them and then deport them back to Afghanistan and have the camps. Wi-Fi cut.

And none of that's true. None of that is true. They can't do that. And to increase the psychological anxiety that's already being experienced by these folks at the camp, just because Washington doesn't want this terrible story out there. This is a United States government issue, and it's stubbornness from the Trump administration. They know that these people are stuck there. Their blood will be on their hands if they die.

Esan Jamshidi is one of the American soldiers with family stuck at the camp. He came to the U.S. from Afghanistan at five years. old, became a citizen and later joined the Marine Corps. I was like, you know what, this is my opportunity to give back to the country that gave to me and my family. His older brother Masood stayed in Afghanistan, later working as security for the U.S. consulate in Herat, protecting American diplomats, even after a deadly Taliban attack, killed several of his colleagues.

His bravery qualified him and his kids to join the rest of the family in the U.S. after being separated for 20 years. But just days before they were due to travel last year, the rule. Choles changed and they were stranded in Qatar. I'm speaking out now before it's too late. My brother is in danger and I do not want to see my nieces and nephews go through this. They are pretty much scared to that, and they seem to not be able to get away from war. And it's just that hard-breaking to see.

Essan says he feels let down as a Marine and as an American. Served my country was a great honor. And then I see my brother in Qatar and he's not able to get out. he's being treated almost like his sacrifice and his service to the United States government did not matter. It's a feeling every soul in the camp shares, forgotten, abandoned, betrayed. It feels like we're not human, like our lives don't matter. We're in danger and we don't know what will happen an hour from now. With hopes of imminent rescue fading, all they can do is wait in fear.

For the PBS News Hour, I'm Leila Malana Allen in Doha, Qatar. We start the day's other headlines with the latest elections taking place in Mississippi and Georgia. For the Democrats, a hotly contested primary race features Congressman Benny Thompson, who's fighting off a challenge from newcomer Evan Turnage. The 78-year-old Thompson is widely expected to prevail against the 34-year-old turnage, who's taken jabs at Thompson's age. In meantime, in Georgia, it's a crowded field in a special election to replace former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green. Trump-backed Clay Fuller is considered the frontrunner among Republicans in the deeply conservative district,

though Democrat Sean Harris is expected to put in a strong showing in a race that political analysts say is largely defined by the economy. Virtually everywhere, and including this district, it's the pocketbook issues, it's affordability, it's prices, it's inflation, it's those things that everybody has to deal with on a daily basis. And so I think this is a real economics kind of election. We'll see if the foreign policy issues or immigration cuts into that at all. With 17 candidates in the race, it's unlikely anyone will top the 50% threshold to prevent a runoff next month. Today's vote comes as Democrats sued the Trump administration over whether it plans to send armed federal agents to election sites this year. The Democratic National Committee alleges that three federal agencies failed to respond to nearly a dozen Freedom of Information Act requests on the subject. The DNC says the requests must be fulfilled to, quote, ensure that the American people obtain timely knowledge of potential threats to free and fair elections.

President Trump has not discussed formal plans to deploy the military or federal agents to polling places this fall, but voting rights groups have raised concerns following the president's comments to, as he put it, nationalize elections and after FBI agents raided an election warehouse in Georgia early this year. The FDA today approved a drug for a rare genetic disorder, but not for autism, as some officials had previously suggested. Back in September, top health officials in the Trump administration touted lukevorin as a potential breakthrough for treating autism. The FDA, based on NIH research, is approving prescription lucovoren for treatment of autistic children. In the months that followed, prescriptions for the drug reportedly surged, among children. Today, the FDA approved lukevorin to treat a genetic condition that limits delivery of folate, a form of vitamin B, to the brain. But an FDA official said the agency

does not yet have enough evidence to show the drug works more broadly for autism. Alabama's governor has commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old inmate just days before he was scheduled to die by nitrogen gas. Charles Sonny Burton was convicted for the shooting death of a man during a 1991 robbery. even though his accomplice fired the fatal shot, and he himself was not even in the building at the time. The shooter was ultimately spared the death penalty, and Governor Ivy said, so too should Burton, reducing his sentence to life in prison without parole. It's just the second time she has commuted such a sentence since taking office back in 2017.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the next round of talks aimed at ending the war has been postponed until next week. That comes as both Kiev and Moscow are claiming battlefield advances and reporting casualties. The governor of Russia's Bryansk region says at least six civilians were killed and dozens of others were injured in a Ukrainian missile attack today that follows a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Slobyansk. Officials there say three powerful Russian glide bombs struck the city center and killed at least four people. On Wall Street today, stocks steadied a bit as investors look forward. for clues on how long the war with Iran might last. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped around 35 points, so almost flat.

The NASDAQ also ended virtually unchanged. The S&P 500 posted a small loss on the day. And a bit of spring is blooming in one of the most unlikely of places. Death Valley National Park is enjoying its most spectacular super bloom in a decade. That's according to the National Park Service, which says that steady rains last fall helped turn one of the hottest and driest places on earth into a bed of vibrant colors. But the super bloom won't last long. Officials say the wildflowers and lower elevations could be gone by later this month,

while those higher up are set to blossom through June. Still to come on the News Hour, attacks in Toronto and New York City highlight rising security threats in the wake of the war with Iran. And the electrical grid struggles to meet increasing demand from data centers. This is the PBS News Hour from Florida. the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of PBS News. An attempted bombing in New York City is raising questions about terrorism, threats, and security measures to prevent them. The Department of Justice charged two young men from Pennsylvania,

18 and 19 years old, both of whom authorities allege say they were inspired by ISIS. They're accused of bringing two homemade explosives to an anti-Islamic demonstration outside Mayor Zoran Mamdani's residence on Saturday and throwing one into the crowd. The device didn't detonate and there were no injuries, but the incident highlights the challenge for security agencies, at the same time funding for the Department of Homeland Security is uncertain. For more on this, I'm joined by Juliet Kayam of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard's Kennedy School.

She previously served as assistant DHS secretary during the Obama administration. Juliet, welcome back to the News Hour. I want to note, given their composition, these devices. could have caused much more damage had they detonated, but the alleged links to ISIS in this case. What strikes you about that? What questions do you have there? And that's exactly right. You had a very sophisticated, deadly IUD. This is not something that you just sort of wake up and build. It had materials that would TAPT, which is just basically, if they had detonated, would have been deadly to over at least 100 people of protesters and counter protesters

in front of Gracie Mansion. They didn't, fortunately. The two teenagers, and this is the challenge, they said they get radicalized online by ISIS. They have no criminal record, no outward sort of statement that they're about to do this. They get in a car with these devices and then try to wreak havoc,

a very violent, serious attempted attack. Those two stories are really hard for law enforcement to get a handle on because you have the radicalization, but sort of no ties, no conversations, no nexus to any group. It's just an atmospherics of radicalization that we see across the board in terrorism now. And of course, we're more worried about in terms of Islamic-related terrorism because of the war in Iran. I want to ask about the war in a moment.

But to follow up on that idea, you mentioned, you wrote about this in the Atlantic today, and you said this, the challenge of Islamic terrorism in America is that just like the homegrown terrorism of white supremacists, the radicalism is often diffuse. How does that complicate authority's ability to detect it and track it or disrupt it? Yeah, so I started in counterterrorism before September 11th certainly was a part of that. So at that stage, right, you're looking for individuals with direct ties to al-Qaeda or an organization that you know. They're making phone calls. They are traveling. They're getting training. They're there. They're buying things that might disclose them.

And that was the apparatus that was built. Fast forward, you know, almost 25 years, you now have a radicalization process, teenage young men generally, online a lot, feeding their anger, feeding isolation. And while this is particularly related to the radicalization that ISIS uses, which is just diffused, they're just saying,

go out and wreak havoc. It's not directed towards anyone or anything. in particular. But it is very similar to almost all kinds of terrorism we see today, whether it's right or left, international or domestic. And it's that sort of amorphousness of it that makes it very hard to get a handle on and let alone stop before, you know, the guy was able to, as the picture we all saw, is able to throw the bomb into the crowd. You mentioned this moment, of course, more concerns with the U.S. in Iran. I want to ask you about another story that we're following, which was news of a shooting

at the U.S. consulate in Toronto just this morning. We don't have many details yet, but there are concerns about U.S. facilities, U.S. assets being targeted at this moment as the war in Iran goes on. How are you looking at this? What do we know? Yeah. So I think we're deluding ourselves to think that this is just a regional war. It's a regional war with global consequences. We're seeing it in the economy. We're seeing it with oil, and now we're going to see it. We're starting to see it with violence. There's no, and it's both the amorphous kind of violence that I just spoke about. So we don't know who's responsible for the Toronto shooting. I would suspect that it, I won't, I won't guess, but I would say, you know, you want to investigate this as possibly being tied to anti-American

animus. But you also have the threat of state-sponsored terrorism. And when we talk about Iran's to fight back in the Persian Gulf or to protect itself. This is a nation that has used state sponsorship of terrorism as a tool of its aggression, whether it's Hezbollah or planned attacks in the United States or against individuals. The idea that they're going to give up on that effort is, I think, naive. And I think that we are, it is right to view ourselves in a heightened threat environment, both as Americans in the homeland. but also, of course, throughout the world. In the minute or so we have left,

I need to ask you about this moment when DHS funding is caught up in this partial government shutdown. We know there's a budget strain there. We've seen it show up at the airports, right? With TSA agents calling out and very, very long lines at multiple airports across the country.

How is that funding lapse, if it is, showing up in counterterrorism efforts? Yeah, it very much is. I mean, DHS is simply broken right now because not just the funding, but obviously the former secretary, Noam, is out. They don't have a confirmed secretary, so you don't really have leadership. Here's the irony of what's going on at DHS, the thing that kept them from being fully funded.

The border enforcement, the immigration stuff, that's still funded. And it's the pieces that the Trump administration were essentially ignoring counterterrorism, cyber and the cyber threats that we may be facing from Iran, FEMA, and emergency management. those pieces are the ones that are, a lot of them are not being funded. So it's a, it's very bad for Homeland Security for the department as we battle over the funding mechanism. But it's not a department that can rise to the occasion given the risk and threat environment simply because of the same thing we're seeing with TSA. Those parts of the department, it's a big department. the ones not related to border and immigration enforcement, those are the ones that are not being funded. Juliet Kayam of the Homeland Security Project at Harvard's Kennedy School.

Julia, thank you. Thank you. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth today said no nation in the world takes greater care to avoid civilian casualties than the U.S. But the U.S. is currently investigating an explosion at a school next to an Iranian Navy base that Iranian-N.-S. that Iran says killed more than 150 people, mostly school girls. An official briefed on the initial review tells PBS NewsHour the strike was likely American. Nick Schifrin examines videos and satellite images

and speaks to experts for a closer look at what appears to be the deadliest strike of the war. In the moments after the attack, the only sounds were screams. The school where many of these parents had dropped off their children not long before, was now collapsed, gutted. The scale of death clear from the air rose and rows of tiny graves.

Classmates in life and now death, a victim still wearing her backpack. Like in class, all lined up, a roll call of the dead. An official briefed on the initial review tells PBS News Hour the strike was likely American. Video broadcast by the semi-official matter news agency reportedly shows the strike and slowed down. Weapons experts say that is an American tomahawk. And today Iranian state media released these photos it said were taken at the site that appeared to show fragments of an American tomahawk. I could already tell when initial reports came out on this strike, just looking at the damage that this was a deliberately targeted strike package. Retired master sergeant West Bryant spent

20 years in the U.S. Air Force, where he called in air strikes and led targeting cells, and then worked in the Defense Department's Civilian Protection Center until the Trump administration reduced its size. Bryant says this satellite image from after the attack shows six precise strikes inside an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy base. The seventh hit the school adjacent to the base's northwest corner. You have within this IRGC naval compound, which, as it turns out, is a missile headquarter. you have at least seven buildings within this broader compound that were struck.

These impact points were generally center of the building, and they hit each of these buildings almost near perfectly. It's a clear wall that separates the school from the base, but back in 2013, there was no wall. The wall was built by 2016. I will say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around, is used by, you know, is sold and used by other countries. Yesterday, President Trump said that Iran, too, has tomahawks. It does not.

Although Iran does have cruise missiles, the same technology as in a tomahawk. Whether it's Iran, who also has some tomahawks, they wish they had more. But whether it's Iran or somebody else, the fact that a tomahawk, a tomahawk is very generic. It's sold to other countries. But that's being investigated right now. On Air Force One this weekend, President Trump blamed Iran. We think it was done by Iran. They're very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions.

From what you're seeing, could it have been an Iranian air defense missile going awry? You know, taken in aggregate with all of the other information we have, this targeting of the entire compound, the videos of the Tomahawk, the remnants of the Tomahawk, the hallmark of a U.S. strike. I say that's fairly improbable at this point. Bryant believes it is possible that the satellite image the U.S. military used was out of date. As seen in Google Earth, today there is a clear wall that separates the school from the base. But back in 2013, there was no wall. The wall was built by 2016. Potentially using targeting data that is a decade plus old and not updating it and not going

in and verifying what's happening on the ground right now, is this still actually a military target? Are there possibly civilians in it, even if it is? And how? How are we going to address that? None of that happened. No nation in the history of warfare has ever attempted in every way possible to avoid civilian casualties. Today, Secretary Pete Hegesat accused Iran of placing missiles next to schools without connecting it to the girls' school strike. Iran, who targets civilians indiscriminately, who we've seen in the Intel moving rocket

launchers into civilian neighborhoods near schools, near hospitals to try to prevent our ability to strike. That's how they operate. But a U.S. official says that Hegset and Doge cuts reduce the Pentagon's office dedicated to preventing civilian casualties by 90 percent and by two-thirds at the military's Middle East Regional Command. What's the impact of those cuts? You have a drop in a direct reduction in capability, you know, to characterize a civilian environment in order to properly characterize a target and conduct an assessment on risk to civilians at that target or in the general. area. And then you have a de-emphasis on the prioritization of protection of civilians. And that's going to have a filter down effect. That's going to filter down to exactly how you

end up executing operations. Brian and others are careful not to suggest the cuts led directly to civilian casualty incidents. But rhetorically, Hegsath has emphasized what he calls lethality over the laws of war. America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history, all on our terms with maximum authorities. No stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no democracy-building exercise.

Why is it important for you to speak out today in public in case the U.S. military did make this mistake? The principles of restraint, of adherence, to international law of lessening human suffering when we do have to go to war, of the protection of civilians. These are the ideals and principles that I came up with as primary, as foundational for what we were, what we embodied as American war fighters. You know, they hold up the values of the American people. And that's what separates us from those we hold as our enemies. President Trump says he will respect the investigation's outcome.

of one of the deadliest strikes on civilians in the Middle East in years. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Nick Schiffon. The war in Iran and the spike in oil and gas prices are again highlighting the world's dependence on fossil fuels and the role that renewable energy sources could play in meeting future needs. At the same time, demand on the U.S. electric grid continues to grow. But the Trump administration has moved to rollback subsidies and incentives for some renewables, including solar. A new industry report finds solar installations fell 14% over the past year. Our science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports on the effort to build more capacity for the

nation's power needs. It's part of our periodic series tipping point. 40 miles south of San Antonio, Texas, near the small town of Christine, the San Miguel Electric Cooperative plant built more than 40 years ago burns lignite coal, the lowest grade, most car, carbon-intensive fossil fuel. The Lignite is stripped mine from the land surrounding the plant, feeding a relentless loop of extraction, combustion, and air, water, and climate pollution. Craig Corder was the general manager and CEO. It's harder to burn.

It takes a lot more furnace. It takes a lot more prep. It is hard to make electricity from Lignite. Corder invited me over for his famous brisket. He's good at fanning all kinds of things. flames to suit his desires. While we savored his delicious output, he told me about his ambitious plan to replace the old coal plant with solar photovoltaics. They're getting cheaper and cheaper. They are competitive, and a lot of people like them.

The cooperative model is how can we produce this reliably at the lowest cost possible for our in-customer. And solar is now the cheapest option. To manage, the output of the old coal plant. Quarter planned a 400 megawatts solar farm, paired with 200 megawatts of battery storage. During the Biden years, he secured a $1.4 billion federal loan to fund the transition through a program created by the Inflation Reduction Act. While the San Miguel cooperative has not had its loan clawed back, the Trump administration is determined to unwind Biden's push toward renewables. We're getting rid of the falsely named renewables. By the way, they're a joke. They don't work. Despite the rhetoric,

coal-fired power plants now account for only about 16 percent of U.S. power generation, while utility scale solar is the fastest growing source. Almost 70 gigawatts of new capacity are slated to come online in the next two years. Worldwide, solar is now the dominant source of new power, coming onto the grid. As time progresses, I've seen energy go from extremely dirty to very clean. The transition project in Christine is still on track, even though Quarter has moved on. He's now in the business of helping tech companies find locations and determine the best generation method for power-thirsty data centers.

It's a new gold rush. You have everybody and their dog trying to jump into the data center and AI game. To meet urgent data center demands, energy experts say new renewables, along with natural gas generation, will have to be deployed as quickly as possible. And yet... They're out at 2027 to 2030 and beyond to be able to deliver these gas turbines that we need. A utility scale solar project can be online in one to two years. Building a gas plant takes much longer.

The waiting list to buy a gas turbine generator is now at least three years, and in many cases twice that. Site selection and permitting add even more time. But the experts say wind, solar, and battery storage are not yet able to deliver the 24-7 power the AI industry demands. GE Vernova, one of the world's largest gas turbine suppliers, is working through a backlog exceeding 80 gigawatts. Pablo Koziner is the chief commercial and operations officer.

So it's a good time to be in the gas turbine business, isn't it? It's a great time to be in energy. For the past 20 years, the business has grown about 1 to 2 percent a year, but the flat line is now a hockey stick, along with the demand. So in the U.S. alone, what we expect is that we will need 50 percent more electric power in the next 20 years. That's a staggering number. And we haven't seen that type of growth since the 1950s,

right after World War II. Tech companies are demanding many gigawatts of power as soon as possible. This is absolutely a new moment for the U.S. energy sector. Bobby Hollis is the vice president of energy at Microsoft. The company has struck a power purchase deal with the owner of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plan in Pennsylvania. It would mean a mothballed reactor there would come back online to generate power for AI.

What are the projections you see for the rising demand for artificial intelligence, large language models? We know that there's for sure growth happening on the AI sector. We know it's going to be larger probably than cloud is now. But cloud is still in the single digit percentages as far as global energy consumption. Others are offering more specific guesses. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently predicted that his company alone could consume 250 gigawatts of electricity by 2030, roughly equivalent to India's current total power capacity. In terms of long-term strategic investments for the U.S. to make, I can't think of anything more important than energy.

Tech companies are scrambling to find data center locations. One of the biggest moves so far, Microsoft's $7 billion investment, in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, where it is building one of the largest and most powerful data centers in the United States. Wisconsin presented an incredible opportunity for us to come in because there was surplus capacity and surplus infrastructure that could serve us quickly and allow us to build and to do it in a way that actually reduced costs for those customers. But Microsoft is facing strong opposition to many proposed projects. There are concerns about increased carbon emissions, water consumption, and the rapidly rising cost of electricity. In Wisconsin, the company

is vowing to foot the bill for grid upgrades, transmission, and additional generation capacity needed to serve its load. In some states, regulators are requiring their most power-hungry customers to absorb the added cost. But in other unregulated states, that is not the norm. Energy analyst Catherine Hamilton. Whether it's transmission build-out, or distribution build out, or new power plants. All customers foot the bill for that. Residential utility bills have risen almost 30% since 2021. But Hamilton says data centers are just one of many reasons.

Prices are going up because of wildfire mitigation. Utilities are investing in storm recovery. This is where things like the tariffs make a big difference because there's a lot of equipment out there that is in a global market that we're having trouble getting at a good cost. In addition, utilities nationwide have been investing heavily

in upgrading our century-old grid. As it turns out, GE's fastest-growing business is building all the devices that connect power plants to the grid, transmission equipment, energy storage, and software to improve efficiency. That's a very quick way to release more capacity. Now, some of that you can do with the help we provide through software and upgrades and transmission,

but a lot of that also depends on regulation and permitting and a lot of other things that have to enable that. The country is suddenly hungry for more power, much more. It's an urgent need that can be met. But experts in the industry, like Craig Carter, say it won't happen unless others start thinking out of the political box, like they are at the San Miguel Electric. cooperative. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Miles O'Brien in Christine, Texas. And we'll be back shortly with a look at a business boom inspired by a Nordic tradition. But first, take a moment to hear from your local PBS station. It's a chance to offer your

support, which helps to keep programs like the News Hour on the air. For those of you staying with us, an art exhibition from Alicia Keys and Kasim Dean, better known as Swiss Beats, is set to open in San Diego after stops in Richmond, Virginia, and Atlanta. Last year I sat down with the music power couple behind the exhibition for our arts and culture series Canvas. This is no ordinary museum opening celebration because what's inside the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is no ordinary collection. The exhibition is called giants and the couple behind it are giants in music who are now reshaping the art world, Alicia Keys and Swiss

Beats. Alicia Keys. She's a 17-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter. and producer. Since her debut album songs in a minor, Alicia Keys has sold more than 65 million albums and generated over 5 billion streams worldwide. And Swiss beats, real name Kasim Dean, is a DJ, entrepreneur, and Grammy-winning producer behind some of the biggest songs in hip-hop, R&B and pop, working with artists like DMX, J-Z, Beyonce, and Buster Rhymes. Together they've built the Dean collection, now one of the most significant private collections of contemporary

in the world. They took a private tour of the exhibit, seeing it installed for the first time. Around 130 works selected from a collection of more than a thousand. What first sparked your interest in collecting art? Well, growing up from the Bronx and seeing art everywhere, waking up, coming from school, going to school, seeing graffiti on the walls, it always felt like something that we live with, you know, naturally, just like music. you know, I remember wanting to furnish my place

at a very young age and I didn't want posters. And I started going down downtown to look at art. He's always been bringing this into my life and that was how I started to even understand, wow, we can do this. We can collect these gorgeous, powerful pieces of artists that we can relate to and that are so unique and masters of their craft.

And that was how we started to put together the Dean Collection. Do you remember the piece or even the feeling that set you on the path to want to build this collection together? I think the first piece was a 30-foot scope chair. Yeah. She was ready at that time. Yeah. Let's build the Dean Collection.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That was what started this idea that we can express in giant ways. Like, we don't have to have a tiny, small painting. We can have those as well as huge pieces like this Amy Sherald. Deliverance. What does this Amy Sherald piece, deliverance, mean to you, Swiss?

I mean that she delivered a hell of a work. You didn't know this was coming. No, no way. She didn't even say it was ready. She said, you might want to come to my studio, canceled everything, went to the studio, go upstairs, and turned the corner and these two bikes and I almost fainted. And she said from living in Baltimore,

she used to see the rough riders, which is my family's company ride bikes all through her block. And she always wanted to do something to show respect for that. There are paintings, photographs, and sculptures throughout the exhibition displayed thematically on the shoulders of giants, giant conversations, and giant presence. The coolest thing about the Dean Collection is because we're both artists. There's so much love and understanding that we have about what it takes to make art.

One member of that family whose work anchors the exhibition is Titus Kaffar, known for reworking art history to center black subjects long erased from it. We had to fight for 80% of these works in the show. It just... You mean fight to acquire them? Yes. You would think that if you can afford something, then it's available. It doesn't really work like that.

You know, there's waiting list and there's the museums, there's a whole bunch of different things. The biggest part was building up our relationship with the artists and even letting the galleries in the museum know, like, hey guys, we're not flipping art. We're damn their institution ourselves. You know, we're adding to this. we're not coming to take from it. But why be intentional about making it public? It's the right thing to do.

I think it would be selfish for us to have all of this beauty sitting in some storage somewhere or hanging it only in a home when you can share it with the world. The goal, they say, is to inspire people from all backgrounds, elevate the work of living artists, and advocate behind the scenes to ensure those artists receive a fair share when their work is resold. The scale of the collection is staggering.

in size but also in ambition, monumental pieces that command attention. Yeah, the two of you are a major entry point to the world of contemporary art for people who might not otherwise have discovered it. Is that why you included your piano and your drum machine, your beat machine? Yeah, that was a very, very important piece, right? Because when you go into a place like a museum, a lot of people act like they know things or act like they're smart about art or And it's okay to be a student because we're still students. But having the self-portraits out the gate, it make people say, I know them.

Those are my friends right there. And when we came in, one of the gentlemen said to us, brick by brick. Yes, he did. I remember. He said that walking in. That hit me. I thought it was a song you wrote. He said, brick by brick. He said brick by brick.

Literally all of our stories. All of our stories are something that we've cultivated brick by brick. Every single one. And that's all we can do. And then slowly but surely, it is possible that it can become this. For Alicia Keys and Swiss Beats, the Dean Collection isn't just about owning art. It's about expanding who gets seen inside institutions that weren't always accessible and ensuring the next generation walks in not as outsiders, but as giants.

Well, the sauna industry in the U.S. is heating up. More and more health-conscious Americans are embracing this ancient Finnish tradition as a modern way to help reduce stress and promote wellness. The surge in popularity is happening nationwide, but nowhere has the sauna culture taken root more deeply than in Minnesota. Kaomi Lee from Twin Cities, PBS, has the story. These are front row seats, so it's about as close as you can get to Lake Superior and enjoy it from the inside.

of a sauna. This sweeping view is from one of two Cedarline saunas at Cisou and Lolo in Grand Moray, Minnesota. Owner Katie Usum explains the name Sisu comes from Finnish, a nod to the Nordic-style sauna experience she's brought to life here. It refers to the concept of fortitude, tenacity, or grit, and Lolo refers to the steam that rises off of the sauna rocks when you put water on them. Her dream to start a business on the shores of Lake Superior began when she and her family moved here after COVID. That's when Yusim stumbled onto this lakeside property, which included an old fish house.

It was in need of a lot of repair, but it sparked an idea. She and her husband invested a million dollars between savings and loans. At first, some wondered if their business was just hot air. I know there were some people when we opened up and started talking about creating a sauna business. Some people are like, how are you going to make money at that? Or will that last? The risk paid off.

Four years later, Yusum now has eight part-time staff. A floating sauna and a mobile sauna have been added. And there's more to come. About a hundred miles south in the city of Duluth, Justin Jontan has had the same success. He believes saunas, pronounced sauna in Finnish, are having a moment, and he expects it to last. We're too stressed out. We're full of anxiety. We're post-COVID. We're post this pandemic. And we're looking for moments to be real humans next to each other. And Sauna does that.

Justin is a sixth-generation Finnish American. His business features two wood-fired saunas and a cold plunge in the lake. In warmer months, he opens a floating sauna like Katie Usams. He also designs and builds sonnas, shipping out 10 a month all over the country. He now has has 70 employees. We're about a $5 million company today for top line revenue every single year. We've just expanded our manufacturing so that we can do more. We've had over a year-long wait list for our saunas for the last two years. Juntinen says Minnesota is one of the epicenters of the sauna boom in the U.S. This makes sense, considering Finnish immigrants first arrived here in 1864 and brought sauna culture with them. He says investors across the country and abroad, are also getting in on the trend.

Today we're seeing a lot of investment into the sector broadly. Big, big companies, big European companies wanting to come into the states, other home building sort of infrastructure companies, buying sauna companies. Glenn Auerbach isn't surprised.

He's been a sauna evangelist since the 1990s. I call it the Holy Trinity of good sauna and it's heat, steam, and ventilation. It's really that simple. He was an early champion of the mobile sauna movement in the U.S. A decade ago, he built one of the

first portable saunas in the country. After all his time around sonnas, he told us they can have an impact on overall wellness, improving sleep or helping with pain from arthritis, among other things. But he says you should take all specific claims with a grain

of salt. If one is leading with health benefits, I think that it's a tail wag in the dog. I mean, enjoy it and then health benefits down the road. For Katie Usum, taking her clients down that road begins with a calm space to unplug and restore. Hot tea, fluffy bathrobes, and salt scrubs

are all part of the experience. It's not just a transaction. Whether it's making their lives better or they just happen to just really enjoy the 90 minutes that they spent here or the two hours they spent here, you see it. More and more Americans are seeing it too, as the popularity of this centuries-old Finnish tradition continues to heat up.

For the PBS News Hour, I'm Keiomili in Grand Marais, Minnesota. And that is the News Hour for tonight. I'm Omna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett. For all of us here at the PBS News Hour, thanks for spending part of your evening with us.