PBS News Hour - Full Show - November 23, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: November 23, 2025

Sunday on PBS News Weekend, Ukraine comes under pressure as officials meet in Geneva to discuss plans to end the war with Russia. Federal agents escalate their tactics as the Trump administration pushes for more migrant arrests. A new film tells the story of women who survived a catastrophic fire at an Iranian prison. Plus, scientists build a ‘time capsule’ to predict the future of climate change. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Tonight on PBS News weekend, Ukraine comes under pressure as U.S. and Ukrainian officials meet in Switzerland to discuss plans to end the war with Russia. Then as the Trump administration pushes for more arrests of migrants, we explore how federal agents are escalating their tactics. And deep in Brazil's Amazon rainforest, scientists have built a time capsule to predict the future of climate change. From these towers, we will release CO2 into the treetops and try to create the atmosphere of the future there.

Then we can study all the ecological processes that will be altered with more carbon in the system. Good evening. I'm Ali Rogan. John Yang is away. A full court press in Geneva tonight, as U.S. officials put the heat on Ukraine to accept a peace deal. Who authored the plan became a point of contention,

while President Trump said Ukrainian leadership had expressed zero gratitude for American efforts. Nick Schifrin has more on the diplomatic efforts spanning oceans. Today in Geneva, a meeting that could help determine Ukraine's fate and what Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio described as substantial progress. It is probably the most productive day we have had on this issue, maybe in the entirety of our engagement, but certainly in a very long time.

The Ukrainian delegation, led by presidential chief of staff, Andrei Ermach, used the same language. We have very good progress, and we are moving forward to the just and lasting peace. The U.S.'s 28-point plan presented last week would cap the size of Ukraine's military and block NATO from sending any troops to Ukraine. Ukraine would also have to give up the portion of the Donetsk region it still controls, handing Russia control over the entire Donbass, which the U.S. would then recognize with occupied Crimea and the occupied portions of Zaporizia and Herzan as de facto Russian.

And a separate U.S. document gives Ukraine a security guarantee that a, quote, significant, deliberate and sustained armed attack by the Russian Federation may lead to an armed response. But today Ukraine presented its own text, coordinated with the United Kingdom, Germany and and France known as the E3. And in the E3 draft, provided to Ukraine and obtained by PBS News, Ukraine would not have to give up land, but would start negotiations based on the front lines. The U.S. would not give Russia de facto recognition of occupied Ukrainian territory. The E3 draft eliminates a clause that would have given Russia amnesty for war crimes.

And NATO would not block Ukraine's future membership, but would acknowledge their membership is not fully supported. Today, Rubio said the disagreements that remained could be solved. I can tell you that the items that remain open are not insurmountable. We just need more time than what we have today. And Rubio suggested more time might also mean Ukraine does not face a Thursday deadline. By which time a European official told PBS news, the U.S. initially threatened to cut off weapons and intelligence sharing. Whether it's Thursday, whether it's Friday, whether it's Wednesday, whether it's Monday of the following week,

we want it to be soon because people are going to, between today and the time we deal with. this, more people are going to die. More destruction is going to happen. And so it was today. In southern Ukraine, Russian drones injured more than 12 and damaged this apartment block. The price that Ukrainians pay every day is measured in what will be fixed, but also the irreplaceable. A father in Western Ukraine holds the body of his one-and-a-half-year-old son and says goodbye one last time after his wife and two children were killed in a Russian strike.

Nick Schifrin joins me now. Nick, do we know anything about the substance of these exchanges in Geneva today? So, Ali, the UK, Germany, France, the E3 did give those proposals to Ukraine for the things that they wanted to see at it. We highlighted some of those in the story. There are other proposed changes, including capping, including raising the cap on Ukraine's military and watering down the restrictions on Ukraine's NATO ambitions and NATO troops in Ukraine. We don't know exactly the items that your mock emphasized in the meeting with Rubio and the U.S. officials. But Zelensky said tonight, there are, quote, signals that President Trump's team is hearing us. And yesterday, Trump did say that the 28-point plan was, quote, not his final proposal,

suggesting the U.S. is open to edits. But as you said at the top, the President of the United States also criticized Ukraine today for not showing or showing zero gratitude. And he put Ukraine's leadership, in quotation marks. And a U.S. and European official tell me this, that Dan Driscoll, after he met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev, you see them there, he told European diplomats that, quote, the honest U.S. military assessment is that Ukraine is in a very bad position and now is the best time for peace. Allie, for Driscoll to say that in Kiev really reveals how skeptical the U.S. is of any argument that giving Ukraine more weapons would produce any results.

about last night, you were at the Halifax Security, International Security Forum with a congressional delegation. And those members changed the narrative pretty dramatically last night, at least for a few hours. Yeah, for a few hours. So this was a bipartisan group of senators led by New Hampshire Democrat, Gene Shaheen, but alongside North Dakota Republican, sorry, South Dakota Republican, Mike Rounds, and Maine Independent Angus King. And they announced to the press that Rubio told them that the 28-point plan was not a U.S. document. It was actually a Russian document. Let's listen to rounds and then King.

What I can share with you is what we've received today from the Secretary. And what he told us was that this was not the American proposal. This was a proposal which was received by someone who has identified and they believe to be representing Russia. The leaked 28-point plan, which was a... which, according to Secretary Rubio, is not the administration's position. It is essentially the wish list of the Russians. Browns even said that Rubio gave him permission to make that announcement.

But after I posted Rounds's statement on X, Rubio's spokesperson, replied to me in a message saying, quote, that this is an outright lie. After that, Rounds posted a new statement on X saying, I appreciate Secretary Rubio briefing us earlier today on their efforts to bring about peace by relying on input from both Russian Ukraine to arrive at a final deal. So he didn't repeat what he said the other day, nor did he disavow it. And King said the same releasing this statement. It is troubling the plan appears to have been developed after extensive consultation with the Russians

and little, if any, input from Ukraine or European allies does not repeat that in Rubio's name, Ali, nor does he disavow the statement. the bottom line is that Rubio says the 28-point plan is a U.S. plan, not a Russian plan. And the question of who's telling the truth here, frankly, I don't know. And we may not know because the bottom line is these are senators, former governors. They say they heard what they said. Did they hear what they wanted to hear? We just don't know.

Nick Schifrin, excellent reporting. Thank you so much. Thank you. In tonight's other headlines, Israel carried out an airstrike in Lebanon's capital city today. nearly one year to the day the country agreed to a ceasefire with Hezbollah. The strike killed at least five people and wounded dozens of others. Israel said the target of the strike was a key Hezbollah military leader considered the terror group's chief of staff.

An Israeli government spokesperson declined to say whether officials informed the U.S. ahead of the strike. The U.S. helped broker that ceasefire deal last November. Since that time, Israel has alleged Hezbollah is trying to rebuild and rearm. In northern Nigeria, 50 of the 303 children kidnapped from a Catholic school on Friday have escaped and reunited with their families. They were taken by armed gunmen from a remote community in one of the worst mass abductions the country has seen. The search is ongoing for the students and teachers who remain captive. No group has claimed responsibility.

President Trump has accused Nigeria of failing to curb Christian persecution. Attacks in the country have both affected Christians and Muslims. This year's G20 summit ended with little fanfare after the U.S. decided to boycott the Global Summit. We shall see each other again next year. The summit is therefore close. Traditionally, there is a handoff of the gavel to next year's host nation, which is the United States. However, President Trump refused to attend the summit, accusing South Africa's black majority government of persecuting its white minority citizens. While the lack of U.S. participation overshadowed the event, leaders who attended formally pledged to help poorer nations recover after climate-related disasters and agreed to aid in their transition to green energy.

Two East Coast rivals turned out strong defense in the battle for the National Women's Soccer League Championship. Gotham Football Club of New York took on the Washington Spirit late Saturday in a nail-biter. The match was scoreless until the 80th minute. That's when defender Bruninia crossed the ball to veterans. and midfielder, Rose Lavelle, who put it away past the outstretched arms of the goalkeeper. It was a sweet victory for Gotham, who secured its second title in three years. Still to come on PBS News Weekend, a new film tells the story of women who survived a catastrophic fire at an infamous Iranian prison.

And we traveled deep into the Amazon rainforest to see how scientists hope to get a glimpse of the future. This is PBS News Weekend from the Davis. at M. Rubenstein's studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour. Weeknights on PBS. From Los Angeles to Chicago and now Charlotte, North Carolina, federal law enforcement agents are arresting immigrants, both legal residents and undocumented,

in raids unfolding in the public eye. Video circulating online show agents pinning protesters to the ground, smashing the windows of cars, and dragging suspected undocumented. immigrants away from their families. For more on these escalating tactics, we're joined by Michelle Hackman, immigration reporter for the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much for joining us.

So what are these tactics that law enforcement are using now in these immigration operations, and how do they differ from what they've done in the past? Yeah, so I would say there are two really big differences. One is that at the start of the Trump administration, the decision they made, you know, in the past, when ICE would do an arrest, they were interested in doing They were interested in doing numbers, and the easiest way to make an arrest is to catch someone, basically, as they're coming out of jail.

Well, this administration made a calculated decision that they believe that a lot of immigrants are out there in the country. They call them fugitives, and so they're doing a lot more street arrests, which means they're tracking people down where they live, where they're dropping their kids off at school, and that's leading to a lot of confrontations that we just used to not see before. And those confrontations are happening not just with the people they're targeting, but certainly the surrounding crowds passers by who become onlookers. How is that working out? Yeah, so we've seen these huge deployments of border patrol agents, you know, typically at the border and not used to dealing with crowds and protesters. And suddenly they're deployed in these big cities like Chicago, I'm sure viewers have seen, you know, and crowds of protesters don't love this huge law enforcement presence in their communities. And so they've been coming out protesting, you know, peacefully protesting. And there have been a lot of instances where you've seen law enforcement, like, you know, basically throw pepper balls at people's heads, use tear gas.

And it's gotten to the point where a judge even ruled at one point, like you cannot tear gas or throw pepper balls at someone's head unprovoked. And what sort of training are these officers getting if they've previously only really done service at the border? What sort of training are they getting before they're deploying to these more densely populated areas? I don't believe that there's any special training. You know, one thing that's interesting is that we think of the people doing these arrests as ICE, but actually what this administration has done is they've taken people from all over the government,

primarily the Border Patrol, but also FBI agents, DEA agents, who are getting at most a two-week crash course in immigration. and are not being sort of given the really detailed training that ICE officers get that involves dealing with, you know, resistance and protesters and, you know, you make an arrest, people will try to run away. They don't get all that. And you've also covered the disagreements that are happening between ICE, immigration and customs enforcement, and border patrol officers who are really following the lead of Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Knoem, who's really advocating for these strong. more aggressive measures what is that internal debate how is that playing out yeah so it's really interesting it's over tactics I would say if I were to boil it down so ice officers are I mean almost like trained police and when they when

they go to make an arrest they typically will do some advance work you know is this person actually in the country illegally where do they live what's the best time of day to go get them and it's not that those don't ever lead to confrontations they often do but What we've seen these border patrol agents in these big cities in Los Angeles, Chicago, you know, just this past couple of weeks, they've been in Charlotte, North Carolina. What they do is they actually use profiling tactics. I mean, they talk about this.

Is the person speaking Spanish? Do they look scared? You know, do they work in a job that is typically held by an immigrant in the country illegally? And then they'll go and they'll basically check, is this person here illegally, and then do the arrest? How effective are these new tactics that are being used at achieving the administration's goal of deporting the maximum amount of people they can? Yeah, it's a really good question. And I think people at ICE feel frustrated because when you're using almost like a profiling tactic to make arrests, it's sloppy. It's scattershot.

You end up taking in a lot of people who maybe are immigrants but have some kind of legal status that's preventing them from being deported. Maybe they're a U.S. citizen. You know, that's why we've heard a lot more cases of U.S. citizens being detained for a few hours before they get released. And so they are making, you know, a lot of arrests, but a lot of those people tend to get released, don't ultimately get deported. I think on the flip side, though, the thing that this administration really loves about these tactics is that they're really public and they're very scary. And it's driving a lot of people to say, you know what, it's not worth it. I'm too scared. I don't want to wait for ICE to come arrest me in front of my child.

I think I'm going to make arrangements to leave the country myself. And so what is the effect on immigrants both documented and undocumented as well as the communities that they live in? There is, I would say, pretty widespread terror and not just, you know, not just the immigrants themselves. I would say people who are watching these arrests happen. We've heard from a lot of bystanders in places like Chicago and Charlotte, you know, be like, you know, this arrest was made in my front yard. This is really scary. You know, I don't know what's happening. I don't know why someone's attacking my rights like this.

And we've also seen sort of resistance pop up where, like, you know, people will walk around neighborhoods and hand out whistles to make sure, you know, if you see Border Patrol, start whistling so the immigrants nearby know that it's not safe. They need to go hide. Michelle Hackman with the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much. Thank you. Woman, life, freedom. It's been the rally and cry of Iranians protesting the Islamic Republic since the death of Masa Zina Amini in 2022,

following her arrest for improperly wearing her hijab. Thousands of protesters, including women and children, were arrested in the months following Amini's death. Many spent time at the notorious Evin prison in Tehran. One night a fire broke out, threatening the lives of the detained people inside. Three years later, details of the fire and of the prisoners remained scarce, but now one survivor has given her account, and it's the subject of a new short film called That Night.

I recently spoke with the director, Hoda Sobani. Hoda, thank you so much for being here. This film tells the story of, the night of the massive fire at the Evin prison in Tehran through the eyes of your friend, who's a survivor of that fire, Neda, Naji. Why did you feel strongly about telling Neda's story? Since I was 19, I had many friends who ended up in prison because of the political activities back in Green Movement 2009,

and then after that, many other friends. And Neda was one of my best friends in Iran who ended up in prison, and I wanted to have the conversation with her. So she doesn't carry this pain by herself. And also, the fire night had very huge impact on her life and my life and many others and was a big news headline all over the war. So I was like, this is a very literal story of why Evan Prison is a place that the government and regime is using it to oppress more its opponent.

And it's very clear that they don't. want information about the prison to get out. In fact, we see in the film Neda being told by guards don't talk about this once she's released. She's not supposed to say anything. And now she's the star of this film. How did she feel? Was she scared about speaking out about her experience?

I would say no because she's very brave and she, like, I would say, yeah, it was like a few days after she got released. We had the first interview, because it was very important to remember the details of what happened that night in their cell, in their war. But when she was inside of Iran, we didn't tell anyone that we are making the film.

And then after a few months, she left Iran to Germany, and then we started talking publicly about this field. This film is mostly an animated film. Why did you make that choice? It's a very good question because I think animation is one of the artistic forms that we grew up with and it's the first way we learn to receive stories and learn stories. And I felt like all of these new authoritarian countries like Iran and many others around

the world, we consume news about violence on a daily basis. It almost becomes the background routine and I felt like the animation can help us to lift us out of these constant news headlines, and these headlines are trying to turn us into numbers and statistics, but animation brings back the focus into human story and human experience. This event, the fire, remains shrouded in so much mystery. We still don't really know how it started, who was involved.

Why is there still so much that we don't know about the circumstances of the fire. And do people in Iran talk about this publicly? It was different for those who were inside of the prison and those who were outside. We were seeing videos and footage of fire. And those who were inside were hearing mostly gunfires and tear gas going into their cells.

We are trying to find out how we can get more information about that night and find out the time Find out the truth about that. But because it's prison and these walls between people, so no one can talk to each other and say what exactly happened. And there is not a united POV between everyone. What do you want people watching the film to take away about the woman life freedom movement?

And also, it's... strength right now. First of all, many women in not all of Iran, but many cities, they don't wear mandatory hijab anymore. But I feel the government is very angry, the hierarchy, and, like, you know, the patriarchal government of Iran is very angry and mad at women, Iranian women, and they are trying to put back the pressure on, like, a legal system on them, like marriage law or, like, civil rights on them.

But I know that my friends and everyone that I know in Iran, they are trying and they are doing that, they are finding ways to fight against this system and to ask for their very basic rights. The film is that night. Hoda Sobhani, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me. Finally tonight, hundreds of miles from the UN Conference on Climate Change that wrapped up this weekend in Bel-M, Brazil, there's a first of its kind experiment that could help future policymakers address the issue. Here's John Yang. In the Amazon jungle, steel towers peek over the tops of mature trees.

Scientists call it a time machine, giving them a glimpse into the future. Carlos Alberto Cassada is coordinator at Brazil's National Institute of Amazonian Research. From these towers, we were released CO2 into the treetops and try to create the atmosphere of the future there, in that environment. Then we can study all the ecological processes that will be altered with more carbon in the system. It's part of a groundbreaking program called Amazon Face. free air CO2 enrichment. The idea is to pump CO2 into the tree canopies to replicate rising greenhouse gas emissions. Researchers use cranes to collect data about water use, leaf resistance and other indications

of the tree's health. They hope these readings will provide an insight into the Amazon's ability to adapt to climate change. With these sensors, we can get the forest response every 10 minutes. For example, if it rains, if it's sunny, if there's a storm, we know how the forest works. Amazon's rainforest is sometimes called the lungs of the Earth, absorbing billions of tons of carbon dioxide every year and releasing oxygen. Its health is directly tied to the planets.

It affects rainfall worldwide and the overall balance of the Earth's water system. Researchers hope the data this experiment yields will help global policymakers better navigate climate change. How much CO2 can we still admit within a two-degree temperature increase? We will be able to understand what trajectories that Amazon will take and prepare decades in advance. Now on the news hour Instagram account, a new poll highlights what America. think the Trump administration should make its priority. We would love to see your comments in the section on the NewsHour Instagram account.

And that's our program for tonight. I'm Allie Rogan for all of my colleagues. Thanks for joining us. Have a good week.