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

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Wednesday on the News Hour, the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney leading the case against former FBI Director James Comey face heightened scrutiny for their handling of the indictment. President Trump fosters public and private investment between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including a rare earths deal to counter China. Plus, state bans on abortion pills give rise to underground networks. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett on the news hour tonight. The Justice Department and the U.S. attorney leading the case against former FBI director James Comey faced heightened scrutiny for their handling of the indictment. President Trump fosters public and private investment between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, including a rare earth's deal to counter China. And state bans on abortion pills give rise to underground networks. because I have daughters, because I have friends, because I have loved ones that I want to see safe,

and I know I cannot wait on a system that does not and has not care for us. Welcome to the News Hour. President Trump is expected to sign a bill requiring the Justice. Department to release its files on the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The Senate forwarded the measure to the White House today, only days after Mr. Trump withdrew his opposition. Attorney General Pam Bondi today sidestepped questions about releasing the document saying only that she would follow the law.

We will continue to follow the law with maximum transparency while protecting victims. In more fallout related to the Epstein case, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers resigned from the board of directors at OpenA.I. Days after Congress released documents that showed Summers shared a close relationship with Epstein. The DOJ meantime is facing more scrutiny over the handling of its case against former FBI director James Comey. I spoke earlier about both developments with Josh Gerstein, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico. Josh Gerstein, welcome back to the News Hour. Good to be with you. So to refresh memories, James Comey is accused of lying during a 2020 congressional hearing about whether he authorized leaks to the press.

He is pleaded not guilty. But today, Lindsay Halligan, President Trump's handpicked U.S. attorney, admitted the full grand jury didn't see the final indictment handed up against James Comey. Tell us more about that. Right. Well, this was something of a surprise turn during the hearing. We expected it to focus primarily on whether this was a vindictive selective prosecution case against Comey brought at President Trump's insistence, but at a certain point, it turned sharply

and the judge became very focused on this issue of whether the final indictment of Comey, which was a two-count indictment instead of the three counts that Halligan originally proposed, ever went before the full grand jury. It sounds like it was sort of modified after the grand jury voted on the first indictment and then prepared in Halligan's office and taken directly to the judge by the foreperson of the grand jury without that paper ever traveling into the grand jury room. Has something like that ever happened before? There have sometimes been cases where prosecutors modify an indictment or retype an indictment after it is handed up. It's not a common thing. Sometimes the judge will request a permission to make sort of clerical or technical

adjustments to the indictment, but there's no indication that that happened here. And the signal seem to be that this might be the result of inexperience on Halligan's part since he's never prosecuted a case before. And frankly, because the prospect of a federal grand jury turning down even part of an indictment is a very, very rare event. Is this enough to get the Comey case dismissed? So the judge didn't really say that, although he did ask three or four times about this saying it was important to him to be sort of crystal clear on whether that final indictment paper had gone before the full grand jury. So he seemed to be heading in that direction. He told both sides he wanted them to file legal briefs on this issue or addressing this question

over the course of this week. And it sounds like he may well consider throwing the case out on that basis, even though this is not a motion that the defense has formally put in front of him, at least not yet. Let's shift our focus now to the Epstein files. The measure that Congress passed, as you know, requires the Justice Department to release the additional files, all the files within 30 days. Are we expecting the DOJ to comply with that? If all means each and every one of the files, Jeff, I don't think DOJ is going to comply with that. Certainly, the law does allow for victim information to be withheld. But I think the key question here is the law also has a provision that says materials that could impact an ongoing investigation don't need to be

released. And we already heard from Attorney General Pam Bondi that she considers the investigation that President Trump ordered up just a few days ago saying he wanted high-profile Democrats like Bill Clinton investigated for their contacts with Epstein. She's assigned that to the federal prosecutor in Manhattan. And she described that today as an ongoing probe that limits the information the Justice Department can release. And so I wouldn't be at all surprised if that is used as a mechanism to hold back some of the files at that 30-day deadline. What's curious about that, of course, is that that doesn't talk about holding back any materials that pertain to Trump because Trump naturally did not encourage an investigation

of himself. And so it would be a strange result here if any Trump-related information in the files becomes public and those about his perceived democratic enemies stays under wraps. And we should say there's no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by Clinton or Trump in connection to their previous ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Stepping back, though, what do the Comey case and the fight over these Epstein files tell us about how the Justice Department is operating under this administration? Well, it tells us just how heavily the president's role here in the Justice Department

is being felt and being carried out. I mean, in both cases, we see the president's instructions being treated as essentially marching orders for prosecutors in court. today the prosecutor is defending the Comey case tried to suggest that it was not brought at the president's instruction, but it was quite clear in the message that the president sent just a couple of days before the actual indictment that he wanted to see Comey charged. And so it's sort of a cloud that's hanging over almost everything the Justice Department does in high-profile cases now, whether this is something that they've just decided on their own to pursue or whether they're

carrying out the president's orders. And if the latter is the case, certainly judges and magistrates across the country are going to take a much stricter view of these cases and I think probably have jaundiced eye as to whether they should go forward. Josh Gerstein, senior legal affairs reporter for Politico, Josh, our thanks to you as always. Thank you. President Trump and Muhammad bin Salman concluded the Saudi Crown Prince's visit to the U.S. today by speaking to more than 400 business leaders. Beyond a defense agreement and talk of the kingdom's human rights record, the visit focused on joint U.S. Saudi ventures,

including extracting Saudi minerals critical to everything from fighter jets to cell phones and helping Saudi Arabia build a civilian nuclear program. Nick Schifrin is here to discuss that now. So Nick, let's begin with that deal over rare earth. Earth minerals? Why is that so important? You just said it, Omna, these rare earth minerals and magnets that are produced by them go into everything from electric vehicles to the world's most advanced fighter jet, the F-35, and Saudi Arabia says that it has the fourth most valuable deposit of rare earths in the world.

But right now, China has a near monopoly on what are known as heavy rare earths. They do 90% of the processing, and China produces 93% of all those earth magnets that are required for high-end manufacturing. So the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have agreed that an American company, MP Materials, whose biggest shareholder right now is the U.S. government, in fact, will own just about half of a rare earth refinery in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Saudi will mine and process the rare earths, and then that will go to the U.S. Saudi and its allies in order to produce those magnets. In the long run, the idea here is to reduce U.S., reduce Western reliance on China, because we saw China withhold some of those rare earth magnets in the conversations

with President Trump this year. It also taps into something that Saudi officials say, that they are looking for the next big oil giant, like Aramco, and then it might be there in rare earth. So take a listen to Graceland Boscar and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Saudi Arabia is absolutely emerging as one of the biggest mineral superpowers. What we see here is actually one of the biggest heavy rare earth deposits in the world. And given that Saudi did have a ramco, it has a lot of the infrastructure needed to become a minerals production and processing superpower. And again, remember that the U.S.-S.-Saudi relationship was built on natural resources.

It was the oil for security agreement. So what we see of that is just the next era of that going from oil to mineral. Of course, the Trump administration has focused on rare earth minerals well beyond Saudi Arabia. made deals with Japan and Australia. There's a huge push to compete with China. But Omna, one study says that even though the West is trying to make these strides on rare earth minerals, the West will still rely on China for 90% of heavy rare earths past 2030. 90%.

Meanwhile, there's another agreement on nuclear power technology. What has the U.S. agreed to there? So the Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, announced this today. He had a signing ceremony with his counterpart and said that two countries have completed negotiations on civil nuclear cooperation. And on Fox News, Wright described this deal exclusively as helping Saudi Arabia diversify its energy products, its energy sources by building a nuclear power plant.

This is just for civil nuclear construction of a power plant, American technology, American companies, to build a very large nuclear power plant in Saudi Arabia. It's not about enrichment. It's not about anything related to weapons. It's just about generating electricity, secure, reliable, affordable electricity. So you hear Wright say that it's not about enrichment. It's not about weapons.

But the negotiations that have led to this have very much been about enrichment, about Saudi Arabia's desire to make nuclear fuel, perhaps inside Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials say that they have 7% of the world's uranium. And in fact, it's co-located with all those rare earths that we were just talking about. And that asking the kingdom to mine uranium, in addition to those rare earth, would kind of, without enriching, without creating the nuclear fuel, would be kind of like asking Saudi Arabia to get all of the oil out of the sand many years ago without refining the oil. That's the kind of deal that they're trying to get. But the community that's been focused on nonproliferation has had their concerns about Saudi Arabia. They've been concerned that Saudi Arabia has resisted some of the monitoring and inspections that would be. go along with this kind of agreement and frankly they have been concerned about Saudi intentions

all along. So take a listen to Henry Sikorski with the non-proliferation policy education center. They want a bomb option. I think they've been very clear privately to various contractors that I've been in contact over the years that that's the bottom line. I think that's the reason they've been insistent about getting enrichment when it doesn't make economic or practical sense. Saudi officials insist they are not after a bomb and actually trust a U.S. nuclear umbrella. They don't want their own nuclear weapon. Nonetheless, Energy Secretary Wright said that today's deal has what he called, quote, bilateral safeguard agreements. He hasn't spelled that out. One solution here, Omna, that I'm told is that American companies could do

the enrichment inside the United States, and Saudi Arabia thinks that might be more economically viable than doing the enrichment in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, interestingly, we heard President Trump say that the Crown Prince had actually pushed him on the issue of Sudan during this visit. What do we know about what was behind that, Crown Prince's message? Sudan has been ridden by horrific violence for many years, but there's been an explosion of violence, especially just in the last few weeks. Here is some of it. We're blurring it. It's so horrific. The paramilitary rapid support forces, or RSF, has been committing what the U.S. has labeled as genocide against non-Arabs in El Fasher, in North Darfur. Thousands, perhaps tens of

thousands are feared dead. Beyond the humanitarian issues, the Saudi Arabia has been very concerned that Sudan could spread, that instability in Sudan could invite terrorism into the region. And MBS pushed President Trump to confront this crisis, as Trump himself said today. His Majesty would like me to do something very powerful having to do with Sudan. It was not on my my charts to be involved in that. I thought it was just something that was crazy and out of control. But I just see how important that is to you

and to a lot of your friends in the room. Sudan, and we're going to start working in Sudan. Saudi Arabia wants to see President Trump imposed secondary sanctions on the United Arab Emirates, one of the RSF's most important external factors, and the RSF itself be labeled a foreign terrorist organization. All right. Thank you. Thank you.

We start the day's other headlines in Ukraine, where a massive Russian drone and missile barrage killed at least 25 people overnight, including three children. Two apartment blocks collapsed in the attack on the western city of Chernobyl. At least two dozen people are still unaccounted for. Meantime, in Turkey. Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky met with Turkey's president today, with both leaders expressing their commitment to a peaceful settlement to the war. Turkey has strong ties to Russia, and Zelensky is hoping that President Erdogan can help convince Russia to end the fighting.

We talked substantively about the situation in diplomacy. There is no alternative to peace. Russia must understand that there can be no reward for waging war and committing killings. Also today, the Trump administration has dispatched Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to Kiev. A defense official tells the news hour that it's a diplomatic mission, not a military trip, and that he'll also speak with Russian officials. It comes amid reports that the U.S. and Russia are hammering out a proposal for ending the war without the involvement of Ukraine.

Israel's military stepped up its strikes on southern Lebanon today as it targets what it says are Hezbollah weapons storage facilities. Israel says Hezbollah fighters are regrouping in the area but did not provide evidence. The group says it has abided by the terms of a ceasefire that require Hezbollah to end its military presence along their shared border. The attacks come a day after an Israeli airstrike killed 13, people at a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon. It was the deadliest incident since the ceasefire started a year ago. In North Carolina, federal immigration agents have expanded their operations

to include the state's capital, Raleigh. They just keep going into this job site, this building site, downtown carry, and just keep pulling people out and putting them in that car. Cell phone footage captured federal agents arresting multiple people at a construction site Tuesday in a Raleigh suburb. Meantime, in Charlotte, Homeland Security officials said today that more than 250 people have been arrested since an operation started there last weekend. That's about double the figure from earlier this week. Onlookers at a shopping mall yesterday described one such arrest.

When we got here, he was on the ground, and they had their rifles pointed at him, and he was just screaming for help. North Carolina has become the latest focus of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration following similar enforcement efforts in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago. Federal officials have provided few details on those arrested. The U.S. trade deficit dropped sharply in August as President Trump's global tariffs took effect. The Commerce Department reported a 24 percent fall in what the U.S. bought from other countries compared to what it sold.

It's one of the first concrete examples of the economic impact of the Trump global tariffs, which took effect on August 7th. Today's report was delayed by more than seven weeks because of the government shutdown. AI giant Nvidia posted quarterly results this afternoon that surged past expectations. The company generated $57 billion in quarterly revenue and provided stronger than expected sales guidance. The results came after the closing bell on Wall Street and are expected to ease concerns about an AI bubble. Ahead of those results, stocks posted modest gains. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added nearly 50 points.

The NASDAQ rose around 130 points. The S&P 500 ended the day with a gain of about 25 points. And Roger Federer is heading to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. The body's honorary president, Kim Kleisters, told the tennis legend via video link in his first year of eligibility. It is my great honor to officially let you know that you are going to be inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2026. Fetterer was the first man to win 20 Grand Slam championships,

racking up eight Wimbledon titles and five consecutive U.S. Open wins. He called it a tremendous honor. Kirasau is now the smallest country by population to ever qualify for a World Cup. The island nation's team held Jamaica to a draw yesterday to advance to the tournament. Kirasau is an autonomous Dutch territory of just 156,000 people. So that meant the team relied heavily on players born and raised in the Netherlands. They take the record from Iceland and it's 350,000 people, which made the World Cup back in 2018. Fans celebrated the achievement in Kurosau's capital last night, saying their time had come.

I think we deserve this, and then we are now going directly to the World Cup with all players. It's time to celebrate for us right now. And Haiti's soccer fans also have reason to celebrate. Their team is heading to the World Cup after beating Nicaragua yesterday. It'll be the first time Haiti will play in the tournament since it was held in West Germany back in 1974. Still to come on the news hour, a new PBS news poll shows Democrats with an edge ahead of next year's midterm elections. The benefits and risks of more artificial intelligence being used in K-12 education. And a new exhibition showcases the pioneering work of fashion designer Andrew Ginn.

This is the PBS News Hour from the David M. Rubenstein studio at WETA in Washington, and in the west from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. With the midterm elections now less than a year away, a new PBS News NPR Marist poll has signs of hope. for Democrats and a few red flags for Republicans. So what is resonating with voters? NPR senior political editor and correspondent, Domenico Montanaro is here to break down the numbers.

Good to see you. Hey, good to see you. Let's jump in. So Democrats came off some big election wins in New Jersey, in New York City, and Virginia a couple of weeks ago. Seems like they have an advantage. Midterms are still a long way off.

But what is the poll show? And in a lot of places across the country, up and down the ballot, really. And I think that what this poll shows is that Democrats have a huge advantage right now. real issue is because of affordability. But what the poll shows is by 55 to 41 margin, Democrats, people say that they would pick a Democrat in their district if the midterm elections were held today. Now, why is that important? It's a plus 14 advantage on what's

known as the congressional ballot. When you have that large of a lead, it is really indicative of a potential wave. I mean, if you look back to 2022, for example, Democrats had only between an average of zero to four points, they lost nine seats. In 2018, Democrats had an advantage between six and 12 points in our poll, and they obviously won big 40-seat advantage. Now, most people don't expect that we're going to see a wave of that kind next year, but right now starts out with Democrats with a big advantage. And a big piece of that is because of independence and how they've slid away.

I mean, a 61 to 28 percent margin. Independence say that they would pick a Democrat. These are major red flags and warning signs. for the Republican Party right now. And we know a lot can happen in the next year, but that also includes whatever happens on this redistricting front. We've seen efforts by President Trump

and the Republicans, counter efforts by the Democrats in California. This is all tied up in the courts right now. But does any of this make the Democratic polling advantage moot? You know, it depends on how this winds up shaking out. But frankly, we're seeing some evidence in the past week or so that this could boomerang on Republicans potentially.

You know, Trump wanted to get five seats out of Texas, A court this week said that Texas's maps got to go back to the drawing board. Now, eventually they might get what they want, but they're also banking a lot on Latinos in South Texas having moved toward Donald Trump. And what we're seeing in our polling, in the elections, is that Latinos have really slid away from Donald Trump and Republicans. They moved over because of affordability. And what we're hearing from a lot of those voters is that they don't feel that Trump has done enough to address lowering costs and that they are upset with how he's approached deportations in this country, feeling like, you know, they were okay with supporting criminals, but not okay with deporting people in their communities in the same way that they see it being conducted. And like we've talked about, prices are the real issue, right? I mean, when you look at the issues inside our poll, 57% say that lowering prices, it should be.

should be the administration's top priority. Nothing else comes close. You can see there, immigration 16% in second, and even a plurality of Republicans there say that lowering prices should be Trump's top priority. Meanwhile, if you look at the Republican Party, we have seen some rifts. We've been covering Marjorie Taylor Greens,

break with the president, him calling her a traitor. But how are Americans looking at the president's performance right now? Yeah, I think that this is a huge reason why. Maybe there's an opening for other Republicans to show some independence. I think they're going to be watching what happens with Marjorie Taylor Green to see if she suffers any political consequences, as Trump says that she will. If she doesn't, I wonder what that's going to mean as Trump continues to look further and further like a lame duck and is on the wrong side of these issues. In the polling here, only 39 percent say that they approve of the job that Trump is doing.

And when you look inside the numbers, only 24 percent of independence approve of the job he's doing. Now, the other number, as you see, nine and ten Republicans still. sticking with the president. So it continues to put Republican candidates in a vice because we're seeing that when Trump is not on the ballot, Republican MAGA-based voters don't necessarily show up. We heard from a lot of Republican voters in this poll who said that they are pro-Trump, but they're not necessarily voting for Republican candidates. That is a real problem for them because they need to be able to show some independence from Trump to be able to say to appeal to those crossover voters and to independents.

But they can't alienate the base. Can I ask you quickly about one more thing we saw in here? Some bigger frustrations among American voters with political institutions and beyond. What do you take away from that? People don't like anything. If you look at what they think about, the confidence in institutions, really bad numbers here for almost everybody, including us in the media, by the way, only 25% approve of what we're doing.

Full results, of course, always available online. Domenico Montanaro, open PR. Always good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Today, medication abortions account for more than 60% of all abortions in the U.S., up from a quarter a decade ago. But in the aftermath of the reversal of Roe v. Wade, abortion pills are now banned in at least 14 states. Special correspondent Sarah Varney reports on the resulting rise of underground networks operating outside the legal system to help people access abortion. medication. And a note, some of the people featured in this story agreed to speak with the

news hour under the condition that we conceal their identities to minimize the legal and personal risks they face. It's graduation day on the west side of Chicago. Gathered with family and friends, these women are celebrating their new lives as doulas. Soon, they'll spread out across the country to support people through pregnancy and childbirth. Welcome home, doulas. But many of these doulas will also go on to help women end their pregnancies. They stand firm in the right of a person to give birth to not give birth.

Their teacher, who goes by Ashaba to protect her identity, is part of an underground network. She helps people in states where abortion is illegal get access to abortion medication. I would just be like, hey, do you want to? to learn about abortion care. To women in the South. Yeah. My neighbors, my friends, and they were like, yep, they're crazy enough just like me. Ashaba says this word of mouth network stretches south from Illinois to Tennessee, Mississippi,

and Louisiana. I will put any of the information that they need or medicines that they need in here. Equipped with pills and herbal remedies, Ashaba drives once a month through the South, delivering abortion supplies to fellow doulas who give them to women in need. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, demand has skyrocketed. And just get up early in the morning, and I drive straight through. Ashaba says the network is helping women control their own bodies in a country that is not always allowed for that. Abortion is the decision between a woman and herself, right?

When we go into the doctors, especially as black women, indigenous women, we're not often heard. But anti-abortion activists argue that women can't safely manage an abortion at home without a doctor. We couldn't have anticipated kind of the volume of orders, over 19,000 orders of abortion pills coming from Texas. This year, Texas lawmakers took new steps to shut down the flow of abortion pills into and around the state. This is a little bit more than just going to another state to buy the substance that is illegal here in Texas, right? Texas has a state interest in protecting its citizens from the violence of abortion, both the mother and the child. President of Texas Right to Life, John Sego helped push for the law that will soon allow private citizens to sue anyone who distributes abortion pills to Texas residents. I mean, this is, you know, getting pills in two little bags without medical instructions, without,

any oversight from a medical professional, without any accountability for follow-up care, or making sure that the drugs didn't have any adverse reactions to the patient. It is too dangerous for women and their children for us to just kind of accept as the new norm. I think it's been misguided that we are doing it with coat hangers or some other mechanism that is harmful to people. By all the mechanisms that we use, it has been safe. We haven't lost anybody yet. abortion pills are used widely across the globe.

In the U.S., six out of ten women end to pregnancy using the medication. And decades of research show the risk of major complications from taking abortion pills is 0.4%, safer than commonly used drugs like penicillin, Tylenol, or Viagra. Still, in the states where these underground networks operate, what they are doing is against the law. What's your understanding of the risk you're taking? I understand that I can go to jail. I understand that everything that I've worked for can be taken away. And why? Why are you willing to make that, that?

Because I have daughters, because I have friends, because I have loved ones that I want to see safe. And I know I cannot wait on a system that does not and has not care for us. Senator Presley. Last year, lawmakers in Louisiana reclassified Mithopristone in Mizaprostol as controlled substances, Having these drugs without a valid prescription now carries a prison sentence up to 10 years in the state. But the way the networks are set up has made it difficult for law enforcement to disrupt them, says Elisa Wells. They are operating outside of, you know, the formal regulatory system, and so while they may be targeted, it's harder, we think, to shut them down. Wells is the co-founder of PlanCpills.org.

provides information and education for accessing abortion pills at home. The community networks are a really unique form of access to abortion right now in the U.S., and it's a model that has been taken from other countries. She says the underground networks were inspired by similar efforts in Mexico and Poland and are carrying on the legacy of groups like the Jain Collective, which helped women end their pregnancies when abortion was illegal in most parts of the U.S. I think it goes way back, even before the Janes, to the whole history of midwifery and how women have taken care of each other and how women who were enslaved helped each other, using the cotton root itself, ironically, to help each other not be pregnant, often with the offspring of their oppressors. In another corner of the South, a group of health care workers has launched their own network.

Even before the federal right to abortion was struck down, people around here had to drive two to three hours to reach an abortion clinic. Being able to get an abortion by mail that you can do in your home is a real moment for poor folks. It kind of puts the power in their hands. M and E, who use initials to remain anonymous, started this network together. They mail pills within their home state, and to avoid detection, they send the medication. without packaging in a plain envelope. I think people are concerned that what they're receiving is more often concerned whether it's real than whether it's dangerous.

That's how much risk these people are already in with a pregnancy that they don't want. M&E say they know the risk they and the people they're helping are taking, but so far there have been no known arrests in their state. They're confident in how they've built the network. They use encrypted messaging apps, get abortion pills from trusted sources, from trusted sources.

And we sort of have this motto that we're going to move at the speed of trust. How are you kind of staying ahead of the shifting legal framework at the national level? We, I think, just make it a practice to be ready to pivot. If you're trying to stand up straight with your knees locked on a surfboard,

you're going to fall off. But if you're loose and you're ready for the wave, then you have a better chance of staying on the board. There are about five members in the group, but they can serve up to 100 people a month. We asked M to read some of the messages women wrote to her. I am needing help with an unplanned pregnancy because I'm financially and emotionally unable to give them what they deserve. Please consider this. It's the first time I've ever asked for help with a situation of this caliber.

This one says, Hello, I was given this email from a friend because I was needing some help with abortion pills. and I can't afford literally anything right now. Thank you in advance, even if it's just for your time. He says they've built the network to make sure they can help women for years to come. You know, there's been times when there's been weather events and someone else in the network couldn't mail and other people pick it up. And I think a lot of us are focused on building resiliency into our work

so that when something happens we have the ability to take a beat and figure it out. We want to be like a coyote. Coyote can just survive in a work site that is building on top of its former habitat. You know, growing out here will be the herbs for abortion care. After making the long drive from Chicago, Ashaba shows us around her Louisiana home that will soon become a safe place where women can self-manage an abortion. We have been planted in so many other places that if one of us falls, the whole network doesn't fall.

other people that are still capable and able to provide services. And she says her network will keep on adapting. For PBS NewsHour, I'm Sarah Varney in Louisiana. So if I can't... Artificial intelligence is rapidly being integrated into many facets of life, including in America's classrooms. As more school districts integrate, great AI into learning, Stephanie

Sai looks at its growing impact in K-12 education and the warning signs around its use. Omna, parents and teachers are still trying to get a handle on students' use of social media, and now they're being forced to grapple with AI, too. A recent survey

from the RAND Corporation found more than half of U.S. students are using AI for school, an increase of 15 percentage points this year compared to just two years ago. At the same time, six 61% of parents believe AI will harm students' critical thinking compared to just 22% of school district leaders. All of this as AI juggernaut, Open AI, gets even more embedded into the business of American education.

Today, it announced a new partnership with school districts across the country. The company says it is giving roughly 400,000 K-12 educators free access to a version of chat GPT through the next academic. year. Let's start by hearing from some parents and teachers grappling with the onset of AI in schools. Hi, my name is Elsie Carter. My daughter is in the ninth grade and she's 14 years old. I use AI every single day. Of course, I know that they're using AI as well. But she has expressed that she uses it to mostly just kind of help guide her in her writing assignments to make sure that her argument is present, that it's cogent. I'm Crystal Jean and I'm a teacher. Being in this profession for as long as I have, change is always there. And AI is just

another change. It's not going anywhere. I'm Sarah and I have a child in 12th grade. The superintendent of Houston Independent School District, where my child goes, is a big fan of AI. And it's taking the place of teacher's ability to write curriculum and, you know, expert's ability to right curriculum. I'm Matt Walton. I am a technology and engineering education teacher in Henrico County, which is located just outside of Richmond, Virginia. To be honest, I think we're, as a society in America, we're kind of behind the eight ball a little bit when it comes to artificial intelligence and teaching it to our high school students. My name is Chris Hamatake. I have three kids in K through 12 schools. I've got a fourth grader, a ninth grader, and an 11th grade.

If my kids are going to use AI, I want them to know, you know, kind of questions to ask to figure out, is this an accurate response from AI? Can I trust this? And how do I prove that it's accurate or not? There have been times when students have tried to pass off an AI generation as their work. And when it's been flagged and I've tried to have a conversation with the student, rarely have they been able to put thought into their, you know, into their verbalization. I'm an AP computer science teachers and there's a unit on artificial intelligence in there. We do talk about the language models out there, such as chat GPT and Gemini and Microsoft co-pilot. But I also asked my students to investigate artificial intelligence that goes beyond

the classroom walls. For example, how is the AI going to be used in health care? It is going to change our ability to critically think about things. But it's also the future. Like, it's here. It's here to stay. It's being integrated into every electronic device and software that you can imagine. So I think that we have to embrace it. And we just got to be careful because I do think that critical thinking part of it, it is altering our ability to think for ourselves. Whose reading is a reading log platform that I've been dabbling with and having the students use. And the writing prompts are like AI generated where you can keep track of the minutes that you read. And so it's very personalized. And then you can lower the reading level.

You know, you can put the grade level of the student if they're seventh grade, but their reading is say third grade. I've heard a lot of people say, oh, you know, it's an aid to students that helps them. But, you know, if you're using AI to help you organize your paper or to help you come up with ideas or to help you strategize for your paper, you're not learning how to do that yourself. I don't necessarily have a problem with that being introduced into the classroom setting as long as teachers are able to take the role of the supervisor or the fact checker with it. And that can be hard because we ask a lot of our teachers anyway. And I don't know if they have the bandwidth for that.

I'm joined now by Justin Reich, the director of the Teaching Systems Lab at MIT. He's also the author of Failure to Disrupt Why Technology Alone Can't Transform Education. Justin, thanks so much for joining us. You heard the anxiety, the opportunities, the uncertainty associated with this technology. Your research has really been focusing on this, in particular with K-12 education. How prevalent is this technology right now in schools? And what are the disruptions we're seeing from it for better or worse at this point? Well, as you said at the top of your piece, I was co-author on that RAND paper, which showed that about half of teachers and about half of students most recently reported using AI, and that number continues to grow.

It's much higher in secondary school, middle and high school, than it is in elementary school. The enormous concern that educators have is that when students are using AI to do their work, they're not thinking, they're not struggling, and they're not learning. Some of that looks like cheating. Some of that is a very sort of classic case of a student taking work from somewhere else and representing it as their own. But in other cases, it's more subtle problems where students are using machines to produce work and they're not doing the thinking and struggle that they need to do as many of your guests articulated in order to be able to learn. Teachers and students are also excited about the fact that these tools are for sure going to empower human beings to do all kinds of new things.

And so we want to find ways of navigating the opportunities they present also with some real immediate concerns that teachers, in particular, I think, feel quite earnestly. Now, and you have OpenAI now freely giving it to thousands of teachers saying Chad GPT will enable teachers to be better at their jobs. We spoke to the superintendent, Justin, of a large, diverse school district in Virginia, who is part of this new initiative. Here's what she said. It's a very diverse system with diverse needs.

What that means is is heavier demand placed on our teachers. because our educators are the ones that have to differentiate lessons, look at data across multiple content areas for multiple students, and that can be a heavy tax on time. So when I think about what's possible with OpenAI with chat GPT for teachers, it really can go a long way in helping supplement what our teachers are doing in the classroom every day, removing some of the barriers of time and the burden of time for teachers to do some of the manual, more administrative things that actually chat GPT for teachers could do for

them. Justin, that all sounds pretty great. I mean, you're a former high school teacher yourself. How do you see that balance between the promise that AI will supplement what teachers do increase their bandwidth versus replace what they do and maybe even suck up more of their bandwidth? There were technologists in the middle of the 20th century that made a very similar argument when they invented a machine called the Scantron machine, which was the first machine that was able to automatically score multiple choice items. And they made a very similar kind of argument that this is going to save teachers tons of time, that there's going to be all kinds of new assessment possibilities. Teachers are going to be able to focus on the most important

things. And I think most teachers looking back on the Scantron machine would not say, wow, multiple choice items have saved us so much time. So sometimes when we aim for efficiency, we don't necessarily get efficiency. We actually get a system that is targeted at something different. So I think we should be very cautious about that risk. They're more contemporary examples too. Probably the most important thing is if we are saving teachers' time, that only matters if the learning afterwards is actually better.

So if teachers are using Chad GPT to make new materials, but those new materials don't help students learn as well as the materials that teachers we're creating, then if we're saving time at the cost of learning, that's not an advantage. I want to follow up. Prince William County, where that superintendent we interviewed is from, is one of those schools districts that has a high number of disadvantaged students and English as a second language learners. That brings up one of the chronic problems that AI presumably might solve, which is how to make sure students aren't left behind. How do you see generative AI's potential for helping or harming equity in American education?

So again, the argument that new technologies will disproportionately benefit students furthest from opportunity is now over a century old. When radio was first introduced, it was argued that with radio, that with radio, the underprivileged school would become the privileged one, that elite lectures could be broadcast into the homes of lower-income students. And radio did not bring equality. Personal computers did not bring equality. the web didn't bring in quality.

New technologies typically disproportionately benefit the affluent. They benefit people with the financial, social, and technical capital to take advantage of new innovations. So it is certainly admirable to try to use these new technologies to close equity gaps. But over and over again, what we see with many generations of new technologies and education systems is that they really more accelerate opportunities for the affluent than they create opportunities for low-income students. What makes more equitable educational environments are social movements that provide more resources to families, to students, to teachers, to

schools so that they can do a better job and have more resources to educate young people furthest from opportunity. Finally, Justin, how much are educators handing over to tech companies when they adopt these technologies and what kind of policies should be put in place? As ed tech gains such wide purchase in the American education landscape? Well, I think school district leaders should constantly remember that for organizations like OpenAI, giving away chat GPT is a customer acquisition strategy. These companies are trying to build brand affinity and make students customers for life. And our public school systems should be very careful about how we invite any kind of

company into what we take as a public good and is a good that students can't refuse. I think there are some districts that are exploring questions like should students and families be able to refuse? They will say, actually, I don't want my students introduced to those tools and how would they logistically work with that and how would that work. Probably the other thing that school districts really need to keep in mind is that this free technology they're getting is venture capital subsidized technology. This is like the Uber rides used to get for $8 across town. One day the investors will want their money back. And when that day comes, we may find that the consumer experience of these tools gets much, much worse, that either they become more expensive or they have more

advertisements, more sponsored content, all kinds of things that maybe we really don't want happening inside of our schools. So school district leaders making these big purchases or these big acceptances of free resources from schools, really need to think carefully not only about the decisions they're making now, but what they may be locking themselves into for the future. Just so much to talk about when it comes to this topic, and we'll continue to explore a lot of these AI issues down the line. For now, we'll have to leave it there. Justin Reich, director of the teaching systems lab at MIT. Thank you for joining us. It's been a great pleasure. And we'll continue our look at AI's role in education next week,

with a report on its use and regulation at the college level. That's part of our special series, Rethinking College next Tuesday. Andrew Ginn, the pioneering Singaporean fashion designer known for his exacting eye and uncompromising craftsmanship, is the subject of a sweeping new retrospective at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, Jared Bowen of GBH Boston takes us there for our arts and culture series Canvas. To enter the house of Andrew Ginn is to find a feast of flourishes, capes ornamented with sumptuous embroidery,

gowns sculpted into singular forms that radiate a splendor of color rivaling any springtime garden. Beauty has long been the fashion designer's inspiration, but he can even find it in ruins. It was a collection inspired by Venetian Palazzo, but not just a normal Venetian Palazzo, but a decaying Venetian Palazzo, which was sinking. This is the designer taking stock of his decades in design before he closed shop in 2023. Over nearly 30 years in his Paris Atalier, Ginn produced 80 collections and some 10,000 ensembles. The most glam now fill galleries at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem,

Massachusetts, where a retrospective of his career is now on view. Beauty is really the motto of my life, in my personal life, in my professional life, I really love for beauty. Over his lengthy career, Gin became renowned for his demi-couture, implying the rigors of rarefied oat-couture design to clothing customized for a ready-to-wear audience. And with material and craftsmanship, he says, that has always been uncompromising. I would like to stress the fact that we design every single elements on our garments. We design the textiles, so be it printed, woven, embroidered, the buttons, the buckles.

Why is that important to you? That is important because I'm a perfectionist. Because his focus is so much on the tradition, it almost makes the clothes all that much more modern. Patra Slinkard curated the show, the first to examine Ginn's legacy, which itself is built on firsts. In 1997, he was the first Singaporean designer admitted to Paris Fashion Week, the industry's prestigious first look at what top designers are presenting. He stands apart as one who has been able, I think, to introduce elements of Southeast Asia into high fashion and into global fashion. Art and antiques fill Ginn's Paris apartment. Just as they do that,

did his childhood home, which brimmed with pieces collected by his parents on world travels. It fueled the way he would ultimately define fashion, as did everything from the paintings of Monet to the vibe of turn-of-the-century Vienna. He's very, very visual, and throughout the exhibition we have included collages that are his own, and so you could sort of see him mapping out these visual cues that he's sort of mashing together. Ginn's designs have become red carpet staples for a parade of celebrities and even royalty. Most notably, when Princess Catherine wore one of his designs to her first trooping the color ceremony as the Princess of Wales. It was a stunning moment for the designer, especially given that another royal has always been a queen of inspiration.

I understand that Queen Elizabeth was a muse of sorts to you. She's actually quite eccentric because no one does that sort of things anymore. You know, a bright mustard yellow suit with matching hats. And I see that as something appropriate, but yet there's something really edgy about it. Not to mention a valuable lesson. To what degree have you created drama? All the time and every day.

And I think that it brings a sensation to you. You're shocked. You are, it's exaggerated. It brings your attention to what you've created. But that has all wound down now. Ginn closed his fashion house two years ago, leaving behind the churn of the Parisian fashion scene

where he says the pressures of launching a new collection every three months was grueling. It's like launching an album or a new movie. That took its toll. I had an open-heart surgery in 2015 and I had a stroke in 2021. And I think I was saying to myself, you know, 30 years enough is enough of that fashion system and that schedule.

But his intention, he says, even as the House of Ginn has gone dark, was to always have his pieces live on, to be the antithesis of fast fashion, so readily consumed and discarded. My goal has always been creating really beautiful and well-crafted clothing that a woman could keep in a wardrobe for years, eventually she could pass it down to the next generation, and we call them heritage pieces that are ready to wear and of distinctly personal vintage. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Jared Bowen in Salem, Massachusetts. And that is the NewsHour 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.