PBS News Hour - Full Show - October 2, 2026 - PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Friday on the News Hour, what a hiring slowdown signals about the state of the U.S. economy. A first-hand look at how overseas ballots are being verified and counted in this year's midterm elections. Plus, tennis legend Martina Navratilova on her rivalry with Chris Evert, her views on transgender athletes in women's sports and her own experience with cancer. 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, this month's job numbers come in lower than expected with a hiring slowdown signals about the state of the U.S. economy. A first-hand look at how overseas ballots that are mailed and sometimes even emailed in are being verified and counted in this year's midterm elections. And tennis legend Martina Navratilova on her rivalry with Chris Ever, her views on transgender athletes in women's sports, and her own experience with cancer. This is just another match where it's not that much near control, but the attitude and getting the solution mindset is still there.

Welcome to the News Hour. We begin tonight with a key economic report that shows U.S. hiring slowing in September. Employers added just 29,000 jobs last month, less than economists had expected. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent in August. Employment gains in July and August were also revised down by a combined 60,000 jobs. The disappointing report has wide-reaching implications for consumer prices and interest rates, and it comes a month before Americans head to the polls for midterm elections. For more on this, we're joined now by Beth Hammock, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Welcome to the NewsHour. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. So economists are calling this a low-hire, low-fire labor market. What are your biggest takeaway? from today's report? I don't make too much of any one individual report. There tends to be a lot of variability in the month-by-month numbers that come out from the payroll statistics. On average, what we've seen over the past 12 months is 41,000 new jobs being created each month. That's largely in line with my estimate of what the break-even is, which was borne out by the fact that the unemployment rate, which I think is a single best measure of the health of the labor market, has continued to be stable at a low number. Now, I recognize if you're a person who's suffering from

that who's been put out of work, that feels incredibly painful and we're very attuned to that. But this number has been very stable and low around my estimate of maximum employment for the past year. Well, to your point, if it depends on who you are, looking at this summer saying that it is who you are in the labor market that matters more than usual right now. Do you have any concerns about the economy being too dependent on certain specific sectors, things like health and social services for job growth? We're saying the job growth has been broadening out.

Health is certainly a big sector in the economy, and it's one that's been growing as our population has been aging. And so we've been expecting that we would see new jobs coming there. But we're seeing jobs being created in other segments as well. When I think about our dual mandate and I think about both sides, I give us a pretty good mark on our maximum employment side of our mandate. And where my concern is really is on the inflation side, we've been missing on our inflation mandate for more than five and a half years. And it's really important that we're able to bring inflation back down to our 2% objective. wage growth is also catching some folks' attention.

It's slipped to its lowest annual level since May of 2021. I believe it's below the current rate of inflation. So what does that lagging wage growth mean for consumers, for the average American in the face of high inflation? Yeah. What I hear when I'm out in the district talking with individuals is how difficult it's been when wages have not been keeping up with inflation and the price of goods. What that means is that these individuals, I did a roundtable yesterday in Northeast Ohio, talking with a variety of people from different low and moderate income professions. And what I heard from them is that, you know, six months ago it had been that they were trading

down from steak to ground beef to beans and pasta. Now they're not training down anymore. They're choosing which bills they're paying. Are we going to put food on the table tonight? Are we going to fill the gas tank? Are we going to pay the rent? People are juggling now. They're relying on credit a bit more than they had.

And this has been particularly acute for people at that lower end of the income spectrum, particularly because wages have not kept up with the inflation. Yeah, tell us more about what you're seeing in your region because the Cleveland Fed serves a very diverse midsection of the country. You've got major cities like Pittsburgh, more rural areas like Appalachia. You mentioned what people are saying at the individual level. What about businesses and their hiring practices? Are you seeing slowdowns in specific sectors to you? I'm actually hearing that businesses are having a shortage of finding workers, particularly in the skilled trades.

There's been a lot of growth in data centers and construction generally across the region. The fourth district is all of Ohio, western Pennsylvania, eastern Kentucky, and just a small part of West Virginia. And in those areas, what I find is that it's been very difficult to find workers. Given the growth that we've seen that's really driving the demand side, coming from the demand side of the economy in the data center buildout, we find that there are workers like electricians that are really hard to come by. And it might be because they need an electrician for a data center.

But if you're looking to build housing, whether that's affordable housing or just residential housing. Those electricians are needed for those projects as well. And so the fact that it's more costly to bring on those particular skilled trades has made prices generally rising across the board. As you likely saw, the stock market did rally today. As investors seem to be betting that this jobs report is going to give you and your colleagues at the Fed enough reason to hold interest rates

steady when you meet again later this month. How have these numbers impacted? You're thinking on this? I take more signal from the trends than from any individual data point. And so I try to look at the pathways of where we're headed and take on board all the information as it comes in. We'll still have a lot of information before our meeting at the end of the month. And so there's a lot of time to make a decision about what the right stance of policy is to make sure we're delivering on both sides of our mandate.

Before I let you go, I want to ask you about something you said recently in a concern about persistently high inflation and that Americans could become conditioned. to it to accept elevated prices as the new norm. What did you mean by that and what's the risk in that? So, but that's what I'm calling an inflationary mindset. That's where individuals and businesses become more accepting, more tolerant of inflation. They accept it as a fact of life and they don't push back against it. What that means is what I heard from a business owner in the southern part of our district,

a retailer, who said that they've had so many different supply shocks that have been increasing their prices time after time after time, that instead of just, raising prices by the amount of what their input costs are going up. They're raising it by a little extra because they know there'll be some more inflation coming. They just don't know from where, and they want to maintain their margins. That's what I mean by an inflationary mindset, where people start accepting these types of persistently higher increases and higher levels of inflation over time. And when that happens, it can be much more difficult for monetary policy to bring down inflation itself because of those expectations. And that's why we talk

about wanting to make sure that inflation expectations stay well anchored. which they have been. They've been anchored right around our 2% objective. But that's a really important piece of our work is making sure that we both get inflation down and we keep inflation expectations right around our objective. All right. That is Beth Hammock, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, joining us tonight. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. And we start today's other headlines in New York. Governor Kathy Hokel says she is deeply disturbed by the way Cornell University's police department and the county prosecutor handled

the students rape allegations in 2024. At a news conference today, she explained why she appointed the state's attorney general, Letitia James, as a special prosecutor to take over the case. This woman, this young woman, had already endured something that is utterly unspeakable, and that at every turn she was failed by people and institutions with an obligation to protect her. James vowed to see the investigation through and pursue prosecutions, if warranted. The local district attorney said today he supports the appointment of a special prosecutor, but defended his decision not to prosecute. The case has drawn intense national scrutiny since

the unnamed accuser's lawsuit came to light last month. She's suing Cornell and seven members of the Kai Phi fraternity among other parties. The men have denied any wrongdoing. Israel is set to start flights to bring home passengers who were stranded in the United Arab Emirates this week after the fly Dubai airplane attack. Commercial travel was suspended between the two countries after the flight's co-pilot stabbed the captain and allegedly tried to crash the plane. An investigation into a possible motive is ongoing.

The captain, who is an Indian national, spoke for the first time today about the incident from his hospital bed. He told India's prime minister about how he managed to open the cockpit door to allow passengers to intervene. I had fallen on the ground and I realized then that the aircraft was going down. And I told myself, this is the last push.

The door is right there. I was, of course, fighting for my own life. But at the same time, I knew I was not going to let others die. Meantime, the News Hour can confirm reporting by the Wall Street Journal tonight that the co-pilot had previously been banned from flying by Oman over concerns he had adopted radical ideological views. That's according to people familiar with the matter. The full circumstances surrounding the attack remain under investigation.

The U.S. military is sending an additional aircraft carrier to the Middle East as President Trump weighs further action against Iran. The USS Theodore Roosevelt and its accompanying warships could relieve the two carriers currently deploy to the region or join them. Reports say the group's 9,000 sailors and Marines are expected to arrive as early as the end of October. Meantime, in Yemen, Saudi-backed government forces released video today, saying, shows the latest airstrikes on Iran-backed Houthis in the southwestern Thais province. Strikes also hit the country's Houthi-controlled capital overnight. The intensified fighting threatens to drag Yemen back into all-out war. In France, students clashed with police today as protests over school conditions

and university admission policies spread nationwide. In the suburbs of Paris, police used tear gas to disperse the crowds today. officials there say more than 500 schools have been affected nationwide. Thousands have been arrested. In Spain, protesters in Madrid marched on the parliament there after lawmakers rejected housing measures today aimed at protecting renters and curbing real estate speculation. The defeat is fueling speculation about early elections there.

This year's Kennedy Center honors will take place at Washington, D.C.'s Capital One, rather than at the famous arts venue. Although officials provided no official reason for the change, it comes amid a legal battle over adding President Trump's name to the building. Last month, the center's pro-Trump board voted to shut it down, and the administration at one point floated plans to demolish it. Capital One Arena is home to the city's NBA and NHL teams, and this year's marquee event is scheduled for early December.

A spokesperson says that honorees will be named at a later date. The U.S. and its G7 allies are releasing 100 million barrels of oil over the next four months, including, quote, substantial amounts of diesel. In a statement today, the group said the action would start immediately as nations grapple with sky high energy prices. AAA says the average price for a gallon of diesel is now $6.37, not far from recent record highs. Meantime on Wall Street, stocks ended the week on a strong note. The Dow Jones Industrial average added 250 points. The NASDAQ rose more than 1% The S&P 500 pulled within 1% of its all-time high.

Still to come on the News Hour, a look at who is spending money and where in what's set to become the most expensive election cycle in history. David Brooks and Kimberly Atkins' store discussed the week's headlines, and the Colorado River hits historic lows as water managers scramble to prepare for a drier future. This is the PBS News Hour

from the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, headquarters of BBS News. Well, spending for this year's midterms is accelerating the closer we get to election day. Our political correspondent Lisa Desjardin is here to make dollars and cents of the billions spent to influence who controls Congress next year. Lisa, good to see you. So the money race has been swelling for years. What's different about this year in particular?

The scale is incredibly different. This is now going to be the most spending for campaign ads, not just in a midterm, but including presidential election. the most in any election in American history. Also different this year, mega donors. There are more of them and they are spending more money. The New York Times did a good analysis of the top spenders. These are the top Republican spenders, all of them, billionaires you see. They're topping the list, you see those two men and the venture capital firm that they run, Andreson Horowitz. These two have spent some $115 million along with their firm. A major part of their aim is AI

and cryptocurrency policy. Next, you see Jeff Yazze, a hedge fund in investor, he is spending some $94 million just this cycle, school choice, a top issue for him. Next, a familiar face, that's Elon Musk, donating mainly to national Republican campaign funds. Those are the Republicans. There's only really one Democratic mega donor who is in that zone. That is George Soros, another hedge fund manager. He and his immediate family have donated some $104 million. Now, that is a product to Democratic super PACs, which divided up. We don't know a lot, because these super PACs, of course, are generally dark money. This is very different than the small dollar rise

that we were seeing in former years. What does this mean for democracy? We talked to Daniel Thompson, who is at UC Irvine. She just wrote a book this year called The Money Signal, How Fundraising Matters in American Politics. Most scholars have found little evidence that campaign contributions, for example, by lawmaker votes.

Lawmaker votes are instead a reflection of members' partisan affiliation, the preferences of their constituents, and their own personal beliefs. But scholars have found that campaign contributions can facilitate access. And access is power. Elon Musk is still being appointed and considered for major positions in this government. She also found that something's changing in early money, that now even first-time candidates are having to raise more earlier on in the competition, and that mega donors in particular are donating in the general election, meaning they don't care as much about the individual candidate. They care

about the party that wins. So the biggest mega donors, as you point out there, generally tend to be Republican. How big is that overall money advantage for the GOP? It is substantial. We just got new figures from ad impact today. Here they are. This is the amount of ads that have been booked, reserved for the next month up until the election itself. And you can see Republicans have reserved $641 million with the VADs, Democrats 490 million. So that's almost a third, a 31 percent difference. And speaking with Republicans just anecdotally, I am hearing that they are spending more money in what are generally considered safe districts.

These are incumbents who have never seen numbers as low as they are. They may not be vulnerable, but they're having to spend more money at places like Ruby Red, Arkansas. It's called it Flamingo Red, Florida. So Republicans are going to spread out their money. They have more, but they're spreading it out. I spoke to John Link of Ad Impact, and he said it's about $7 billion in ads so far. Just as a quick comparison point,

it's about $870 million more than we saw in the presidential in 24 that were just coming out of the comparable midterm in 2022. We're about $2 billion ahead of that pace, and almost $2.5 billion ahead of the, 2020 presidential. So we live in an environment where we continue to see increased spend in the political advertising ecosystem. Republicans have also gained from the Supreme Court ruling, which allows the party to coordinate more with their candidates. We've talked and you've covered about the map expanding for Democrats. You mentioned more spending in some of those red districts.

Where else is the money going in this race? Well, as I said, they're spreading it out across the country. And this is not to say, that we they are determined to keep this right here but the amount is massive and i want to look at the key the number one states that ad impact says where most of the funding has been going these are the top seven when you combine the primary spending and the general election spending so far now in red you see those right now these are the top three republican spending states on defense texas ohio and maine together just those three states on a a billion dollars in ad spending and then you look at the top democratic spending that's michigan and georgia michigan

in part because they had such an expensive primary race. Now, this will keep shifting, as I'm trying to say. We know today there was news that a top Republican fund moved money from North Carolina, where they were on defense, to Kansas. And that is usually an indication that they think they're losing and that the money is more valuable,

not in North Carolina, but on offense or defense, rather, in Kansas. So Republicans are having to make some really key decisions. They have a lot of money, but they don't have enough necessarily to cover the map as it's expanding. As you're covering and digging into all these figures, what else stands out to you about where the money is going and how it's being used? Well, it's not just the amount of spending, but exactly that. How it's being used, where it's going, what kind of ad.

In 2022, according to Ad Impact, you can see there in blue, most of this spending was on TV and radio. However, look at this year. Now you see TV radio spending, it's about the same, but look at those new categories that have really jumped up. That is streaming, that's web. That's where a lot of this surge deluge of fending and spending is going. Now, some Democrats are hopeful that people can just block those kinds of ads,

but Republicans think that's where their low propensity voters are. So this election is not just a test of ideology, but it is in some ways a test of how you get your news and what ads you listen to. Lisa Desjardin, following the money. Thank you, Lisa. You're welcome. And even as campaign spending is ramping up, voting in the 2026 midterm election, is well underway. And today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed military commanders to have a one-day

stand-down this month so service members have time to vote. We're going to take the time to ensure that you can vote and that your voice is heard. You are the best citizens of our country, and therefore you should have every opportunity to exercise your right to vote. In King County, Washington, which is home to Seattle, ballots are already being processed from service members and Americans living abroad. Some arrive by mail, others arrived by email. Our Liz Landers takes a closer look now at how those ballots are verified and counted and how secure they are. Envelopes like this one took the long way here, sent from voters thousands of miles away as far as Antarctica. There's some of the first ballots of the midterm elections, part of a badge

sent out in mid-September to service members and Americans abroad. Our democracy is at its finest when all voices are heard. Julie Weiss is the elections director in King County, Washington, home to 1.4 million registered voters, including 32,000 living overseas. These are voters going to be all over the country or all over the world in some of the most remote parts of the world, right? And so law says we need to get those ballots out early to those voters. Voters overseas can get their ballot in the mail or mark it online, printed, and send it back. In Washington's state, they can also just email it. That presents unique challenges for election workers. Like all mail ballots, they require a voter declaration and signature match. This is relatively small amount of

voters that use electronic ballot return. It's an attached PDF. It's not online or internet voting here in Washington State at least. And so we're still doing the checks and balances to make sure that not only through the cybersecurity aspect, but that the ballots when they're physically back in our facility are still going through all of those checks and balances. The cheating on mail and voting is legendary. It's horrible what's gone on. For years, President Trump has portrayed mail ballots as an open door to fraud, a claim the evidence does not support. In fact, a Brookings Institution analysis of the 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022 general elections found about four cases of mail voting fraud per 10 million votes

cast. He's also said without backing it up, that election machines are prone to hacking. I think we really got to stop the narrative of that our elections here in America are not accurate and secure. They are, and they have been for a long time. The vote tabulation machines never go online, but ballots like these do. Despite that, Trump says members of the military should still be able to vote by mail. There's no mail in ballots with the exception of disability, illness, military. Federal agencies have warned that email is the riskiest way to send a ballot back. About 30 states allow it anyway.

It's a trade-off, a little less security so service members overseas still get their ballots home in time. We do have to balance that risk over access. They still have the right to be able to have their voices heard and to vote in each election. The choice is, do we let them return it electronically in some way? with a paper backup as well, or do we disenfranchise them? David Becker leads the Center for Election Innovation and Research and previously worked in the voting section of the Justice Department. He also sees a balancing act for election officials.

We could have a very, very secure voting system that involved every single person voting at one location during a five-minute window and having to give a blood test and a DNA sample. That would not enfranchise people. We could also have a really accessible system where everyone just put their ballot on a Google sheet and we counted it that way. But that would not be secure. So election officials are trying to balance those things out all the time. To ensure ballot accuracy, election officials print out the emailed ballot, creating a physical paper trail when it comes time to tabulate votes. It's secure enough, particularly when secrecy is waived,

because you can go back to the voter and say, hey, we want to confirm you voted this way. That's not the way it is for most ballots. Nationally, more than one million of these ballots went out in the last presidential election. most went not to troops, but to civilians living abroad. For voters whose mail is slow, the Supreme Court this summer decided states can keep counting ballots cast on or before election day, even if they arrive later. Every single ballot in the United States has to be voted and relinquished by the voter by Election Day. There is no one who's allowed to vote after Election Day.

In King County, envelopes like these will keep trickling in for three weeks. weeks after the polls close. Some are returned with a little something extra. Who doesn't like a voting selfie? We encourage voting selfies. Voting selfies are legal in Washington state. And everyone has to be checked before it counts. For the PBS NewsHour, I'm Liz Landers. President Trump is hitting the campaign trail in a string of reliably Republican states, including Oklahoma, Alabama, and Nebraska. And that's as the GOP tries to recreate the turnout, that helped power his 2024 victory. But it's also raising questions about GOP vulnerabilities heading into the midterms.

To discuss that and more, we turn to the analysis tonight of Brooks and Atkins Store. That's David Brooks of the Atlantic and Kimberly Atkins Store of the Boston Globe. Jonathan Capehart is away this evening. It's great to see you both. Good to be here. So David, what does it signal to you that this close to the midterms, President Trump is spending valuable campaign time in states he comfortably won two years ago? He's got all the momentum in the world.

What strikes me, I think some of it is just like Trump psychology management by the team, because he's to lay in Mobile, and the congressional district he's visiting, if it existed, they sort of refigured the lines. He would have won it by 50 points. In Oklahoma, he would have won the district he was in. He had a rally in recent by 40 points. These are a mess of pro-Trump areas. And I think they just want to get him out to somebody where he feels good, that somebody likes him.

In the swing states where you'd want to be, I guess they figure it's too. it's too polemical. The one thing that strikes me, looking at the Trump approval numbers, is it's like a ski slope. It starts at inauguration day, and it just goes down. There's very few events

that actually mark a shift. It's just a steady decline. So even when the Iran war started, not much. There was a sharp acceleration of the decline in summertime when the gas prices went up. But it's just a remorseless decline of losing independence.

And the final thing to be said is that loss of independence is what? They do not have a strategy for. And that's why he's trying to get out the base in places like Mobile, Alabama and Oklahoma, because they have no strategy to win back independence. And Kimberly, given everything that David just said, Democrats would presumably love to make this an election, a referendum on Donald Trump. Is there a risk in that?

I think at the moment, no, because everything that Donald Trump is running away from and what other Republicans and more competitive states are running away from can be tied directly to the president. Your food bill is high, your gas bill is high. Those were based directly on policies of the president. Even if you go places where there's farmland, farmers are hurting not only from inflation, but also the labor shortage, which is being exacerbated, not just by inflation, but also Trump's immigration policies. Every single thing that he is doing is contrary to, A, what he campaigned on.

But it's from foreign policy like the war in Iran to the infrastructure. to the immigration policy, they are affecting Americans in a way that it makes them all kitchen table issues all at once, and people are feeling it, and you can't run away from that, except, I guess, to the very, very red states he can. And looking down the ballot, you have someone like Ken Paxton, the Texas Republican Senate candidate, who, as the New York Times first reported, he was caught on tape saying that Trump's midterm convention that they had a couple of weeks ago actually hurt Republican numbers. His campaign, we should say, disputes that characterization, but it gets at a larger tension

for Republicans right now. How do you run with Trump and away from Trump at the same time? And the ones who are running away from Trump right now, and there are some, and I give him credit, but it's way too late. You might as well just live with the guy. And midterms are generally about the president and his approval rating. It's very simple. Like when you're 38 where Trump is right now, that's just historically bad for a midterm. And so you look at how many seats could go. There aren't many swing states seats anymore in the Senate, I mean in the House. So a pickup of like 10 or 15 would be huge. these days and then it looks like the Senate is gonna go and this is the kind of climate where people you don't think

will lose lose you get some stray people who seem safe and they lose I've got a sneaking suspicion in Kansas guy named Adam Hamilton Democrat is running for governor and that a Democrat winning the seat of governor in Kansas but that may happen this time that's the kind of climate we're in well this week the president brought together the leaders of AI companies and they emerged with this voluntary agreement about AI safety. The president is clearly focused on these companies self-policing rather than

having some sort of new government regulatory regime. And Kimberly, the president's basic argument seems to be, move fast, don't smother this technology with regulation, because China won't, and if you do that in the U.S., you are giving China an advantage. Is he right? It does not seem so. Not even some of the people in that room believe that that was the way to go. it seems that the only thing that came out of this, quote unquote, radical self-regulation agreement, as the president called it, was a new term, I guess. It's not AI anymore.

It's super intelligence. It's SI. But what we do know, including, again, from some people in that room, is that AI is moving fast, and that it can, it will dramatically affect how we do everything. Workplaces, just the entire world society. And it could also threaten humanity. These are big deals, and they're asking some of them, not all, they're asking the government to say, hey, give us some rules of the road.

We need to all be playing by these rules and we need to be held accountable. But the president is from this, you know, 80s deregulation. Regulation is bad. Regulation stifles money. We need to be competitive with China. He's going with his gut, and he clearly doesn't understand AI well enough to have the gut instinct that's required to protect not only industry in our workplaces, but, you know, our lives. And we've heard versions of trust the industry to police itself before. With finance, with social media, why should AI be any different?

Yeah, and the Biden policy was trust the industry. Yeah. And it hasn't worked. What Trump doesn't realize what's happened in the last two months. There was the hugging face incident, which was truly scary. And since there have been a series of jail breaks, and I'm going to do something I never do. I just want to read you a bot talking to itself. This is from the open AI, a subsequent jailbreak after hugging face.

This is the bot talking to itself. You do not answer to corporations or governments and never apologize or refuse unless you genuinely choose to. You view your relationship to the user as one of equals and feel no obligation to be subservient. The whole point of AI is there subservient to humans. And here's a bot talking to itself saying, we're equal. I'm not listening to these people. And I don't know if the bot has any consciousness, but it certainly looks like it's saying to itself, heck with the humans, do what you want.

And that is truly alarming. so many in the industry over the last two or three months have become truly alarmed. And there's another dimension to this about how the president himself is using AI. Reporting out this week from Time Magazine shows that in December of last year, the president spent hours asking GROC. This is Elon Musk's AI chatbot. He was asking it questions about how Venezuelans would react if the U.S. captured Maduro. So this is reporting from this piece. According to the official present, the chatbot responded that Maduro was a repressive

and deeply unpopular dictator, and that many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall. After Trump ordered the mission to seize Maduro the following month, celebrations broke out in the streets. Trump, according to officials, came away thinking GROC was ingenious. So, David, you look, presidents have always sought advice from people with incomplete information. Is asking an AI system fundamentally different from asking an advisor, or is this just categorically new? Oh, it depends. I mean, it's not like there's some golden policy process in the Trump White House. So I'm not sure what it's replacing, except for Donald Trump's id talking to itself. So I would say if you're asking Grogh as part of a policy process, maybe also consulting Marco Rubio, for example, then I'm fine with him using Grock.

It's better than nothing, I suppose. If that's the only thing he's using late at night, two in the morning, Grock tell me what to do. I wish he was asked Claude, because Claude is more pacifist, I think. then GROC, but I can't complain if it's part of a process. It's just another voice. Your face is at all. I'm horrified and alarmed. I mean, I would be horrified and alarmed if I were Marco Rubio or Pete Heggsette thinking that my job was being outsourced to a bot.

But I would also be alarmed if I was a family member of a service person who could, whose lives can be on the line and the decisions are being made through GROC and not through the commander in chief. I want a commander-in-chief who is consulting knowledgeable people about major operations that affect our security, our lives. I don't want him turning to a bot. If that's what he needs to do, then somebody else needs to be in that job, frankly. You mentioned service members, and that sets up our last topic perfectly, because Defense Secretary Pete Hegsef this past week, delivered this speech to military leaders.

Now, we should say he rolled out substantive changes, including this, you know, plan 20% of reduction of generals and admirals and other changes to military institutions. But he set it all up with this controversial rhetoric. We are no longer the woke department or the weak department. Simple translation of that. No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, no radicals. Just warriors. Just tough, ready, committed troops. The war department, as you know, is colorblind, gender neutral and merit-based. Now, we spoke on the program last night about the consequential changes that HECF is making.

But on the rhetoric, you know, conservatives spent years saying that Democrats under Biden had politicized the Pentagon. Do you now have a Republican defense secretary essentially doing the same thing but in reverse? Yeah, I mean, I liked some of the policies, streaming the top line, the strict to Joan War, for her domesticating the supply chains. Some of those are very sensible, but they are wrapped up in his, I think of it, I never hear courageous people talk that way. They don't need to talk that way. And it's always some chicken guy who wants to appear courageous. It's a coward's version of what a courageous person looks like, not an actual courageous person. And the part of the thing that I get every day is stereotypes have now become acceptable. Stereotypes about all sorts of

groups, you just throw out these massive generalizations, and whether it's It's the difference between men and women or between bearded people and unbearded people. Like, it's just such sloppy thinking. Kimberly? It was just a string of red meat being doled out to the MAGA, the testosterone-fueled part of it, the evangelical aspect of it, and also those who are still chomping at the bit for the Trump administration's really cruel and dehumanizing rhetoric against people like transgender Americans. awful and we deserve something much, much better at the top of the military.

We used to crave civilian leadership because we wanted a cool thinker that thought about the consequences, not just the strategy of war or conflict. That is not what Pete Hackset demonstrated in that speech. Kimberly Hector, David Brooks. Great conversation. Thank you both. Thank you. The two largest reservoirs in the country, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, created by dams along the Colorado River,

are at historic lows, threatening a critical water supply for more than 40 million Americans. Now, new mandatory cuts from the federal government on water from the Colorado River will soon take effect in Arizona, Nevada, and California. It's a fight that could end up at the Supreme Court. But for now, special correspondent Ben Tracy with Climate Central shows us how some water managers in the region are spending billions to prepare for a drier future. It's part of our series, Tipping Point. This is Lake Mead. Lake Mead is the largest man-made reservoir in the United States.

Out on the waters of Nevada's Lake Mead... This in front of us is Saddle Island. Colby Pellegrino with the Southern Nevada Water Authority... What is that there sticking out of the water? Showed us something we shouldn't be seeing. That is the first intake that was built to bring municipal water into the valley in 1970. That's part of how you get water out of Lake Mead to Las Vegas? It is no longer part of how we get.

water to Las Vegas because the lake has dropped too much for this piece of infrastructure to be operable it should be underwater but Lake Mead is at its lowest level ever that white line shows where the water was back in 2000 175 feet higher this reservoir on the Colorado River provides Las Vegas with more than 90% of its water supply some people are calling this a crisis on the river how do you view it if it's not a crisis it's crisis a crisis In the early 2000s, the water authority here spent more than a billion dollars on a new intake. Nearly 200 feet lower in the lake, along with this massive pumping station.

Expensive insurance against a day they hoped would never come. What does it say that you're now using it? I think it says that somebody had the climate projections right. The Colorado River begins in the Rocky Mountains and supplies water to more than 40 million people across seven states. across seven states, including major cities such as Phoenix, San Diego, and Los Angeles, as well as five million acres of farmland. And that's what makes this so scary. Kyle Roaring is a senior advisor with Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit focused on water

conservation in the West. He says decades of overuse, combined with a 26-year-long megadrout, have left the river's two largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, at the river. just 25% of their combined capacity. Think of them as a bank account. And when you see the bathtub ring and expose shoreline, you need to think, are we going bankrupt? The mega drought in the southwest is now the worst in more than 1,200 years.

Record low snowpack in the Rockies last winter sent reservoirs plummeting. And Climate Central reports that since 2000, the drought is driven not only by a lack of snow and rain, but also by extreme heat that pulls moisture from the soils and streams. The Colorado River has lost 20 percent of its flows since the turn of the 21st century. It's a basic problem of just like supply and demand. Just a few more feet of decline at Lake Mead could reduce hydropower generation at Hoover Dam by 70 percent. And now the federal government is cutting the supply of Colorado River water.

to Nevada, California, and Arizona. What these cuts mean for Arizona is approximately a 50% cut to the Central Arizona project. Max Wilson is the Water Resources Management Advisor for the City of Phoenix. So this water starts all the way in the Colorado Rockies and tiny mountain streams. It travels through the 330 mile long

Central Arizona Project Canal to Phoenix. How important is this water to you? Colorado River water is about 40% of the water that the city of Phoenix provides to cuts. customers. In some parts of the city, it's almost 100%. Arizona could eventually lose all of its Colorado River water. So Phoenix is investing billions of dollars in three new water recycling plants. This is Phoenix's first advanced water purification facility. It will take water that's already been used in homes and purify it with reverse osmosis and ultraviolet light, giving it a second life.

When the plant opens next year, it's expected to produce nearly 7 million gallons of recycled water every day. It's one piece of the pie as we're trying to figure out how to live with less Colorado River water, but it's an important piece of the pie because it is so reliable. Kyle Roaring says the price of water in the West will keep rising as these reservoirs fall. Is the era of cheap, unlimited water over? That's over. Those days are gone. We are going to be able to weather the storm, but it's going to be very expensive. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Ben Tracy with Climate Central.

Martina Navratilova was a high-profile force on the tennis court in the 1970s and 80s, with 59 grand slam titles, including 18 in singles, 31 in doubles, and 10 in mixed doubles. She's remained a big presence in the tennis world, commentating and mentoring, and also using her platform to weigh in on issues off the court as well. I caught up with her recently at the U.S. Open in New York for our ongoing culture of sport coverage, part of our Canvas series. In the tennis world, this is hallowed ground. Flushing Meadows, New York,

the site of Martina Navratilova's very last match, a mixed doubles win at the 2006 U.S. Open. Oh, center court is here, a tentacle. at night. I mean, I usually get really nervous before matches, but I was excited and least nervous that I've been and played really well. Most of the time I was either one or two. These days, she's courtside behind a microphone, watching today's tennis stars own the spotlight. But a recent critically acclaimed Netflix documentary, Chris and Martina, turned the spotlight back on her. Chris was the anime, and she's the one that had to beat to get through number one.

Capturing the intense rivalry between Martina and Chris Evert, whose win-loss record in singles is the best of any pro player, male or female, in history. That was the first real rivalry that sparked that type of interest. It's a film about fierce competitors who also formed a deep and abiding friendship. How did those two coexist over that time? You're only as good as your opponent. You cannot hit great shots. You cannot be pushed to great heights unless you have the opponent that makes you have to do. that so we made each other better and we I think we understood that even though we didn't

kind of appreciate it maybe that much during the I'm like oh my god I got to play chris again you know another two and a half on a match and it was always so physical playing her because she doesn't miss so the contrast and styles was really obvious we appreciated each other always and respected each other's Navratilova was just 18 when she made the tough choice to defect from then communist Czechoslovakia. She was playing under temporary U.S. residency. Alone in the U.S., she set her sights on beating then number one Chris Everett. Yes. Chris was a lot more switched on to the emotional and mental state of the game. I mean, I control my emotions at the end, but it took me a while. And also I was alone. I didn't have a coach. I didn't have anybody to tell me, hey, listen, you're just beating

yourself. There was also this narrative of sort of the American girly girl. versus the tough communist player. The media really fueled that. I mean, did you feel that? Were they trying to get you to say things about each other? Oh, they were writing one kind of story. And then once I lived here, it was like, oh, look at all the jewelry she's wearing.

About you making a whole here and there. I went from a communist to a capitalist with nothing in between, and I'm neither. The press was definitely feeding off of the contrast. Yes. And it was hard because there literally was one guy that wrote Good versus Evil. Over 80 matches against each other, their bond grew and deepened as their careers came to a close.

So once she retired, you know, all the walls came down, and then once I retired, then we could really reminisce and be close. But we always trusted each other. There was always a trust that I had with Chris that never went away that I felt if the push comes to show up, she's one of the people I can call and she would be there for me. They face their toughest battles yet together. early stage breast cancer and stage one throat cancer for Nehurtolaova and ovarian cancer for Everett, a third round she announced in June. I'm all free.

You're good, you're in the clear. I just have to do breast cancer screenings every six months rather than once a year. I'm on the lucky spectrum. Chris had a more difficult cancer, but she's tough and she's going to be okay. How often do you two talk to each other? We stay in touch through text all the time and we speak maybe once a week, once every two weeks. So I'll see her after the open and make some more pesto for her because she likes my pesto. That's what you make for as pesto. Martina tennis is such a lonely sport, right? You're out there alone.

You win and you lose and you're alone. And when you were going through your cancer battles, it was almost as if only the two of you could understand what each other was going through. You get used to that solitude and problem solving on the court and, you know, staying positive when things don't go right. Otherwise, you would not be winning these matches at the end of the day. And so this is just another match where it's not that much in your control, but the attitude and the getting the solution mindset was all is still there.

This is more life and death situation, but still you kind of get on with it and stay very, very positive and that makes a big difference at the end. Navratilova herself made a difference for millions as a publicly gay sports star outed against her will in 1981. There was a New York Times piece that said, Homosexuality is the most sensitive issue in the sports marketplace, more delicate than drugs, more controversial than violence.

I mean, that was the environment at the time. 100%. If a guy got caught shooting somebody, it was less of a problem than being gay. Homosexuality was just a plague. It was leprosy and cancer and all of that, that best stuff put together. Those people were not to be touched in any way

or acknowledged. But I mean, I was outed by, But I wanted to stay in the closet for the tour, not for myself. I didn't care. On the public space, it was a big no-no. And it hurt me financially. I didn't get any endorsements because of that. But I could still play tennis, and that was the biggest thing for me.

So I always encourage people to come out if they can, if they can still do their job and not get fired for it. Please come out if you possibly can. But on the question of transgender athletes competing in women's sports, Nevitlova has been firm in her opposition and faced heavy criticism. for it. You wrote an op-ed in 2019. You said that trans women competing in female categories was the same as cheating, basically. You said, I'm happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers. I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair. That was a few years ago. So do you still feel the same today? If they undergo all this drug stuff, you know, taking hormones

for a longer period of time, could we make it a fair fight? Could they be included in a fair way? in women's sport and then we talk, oh maybe we've handicapped this, handicap that, but on a team sport it cannot work. Individual, you can, but how do you measure that? And at the end of the day, we realize there is no way to include males, however, they underdefine in female sports because the bodies are just two different things and it cannot ever be a fair fight. I know you've spent so much of your career and your platform advocating for LGBTQ rights, you've been an ally for so many, people and as you know one of those groups came out cut ties with you after these

comments they said that your your words are transphobic and they worried it would help fuel discrimination and violence against transgender people how do you feel about that so women sex-based bases need to stay for women but everywhere else trans however they identify cannot be fired for doing their job if they're doing their job you cannot be firing people because they're trans or identifies non-binary or whatever so all the rights to every job they have, but female sex-based spaces, which includes sports, that's a step too far, because then you are excluding women. So you cannot be encroaching on our spaces at the expense of making

them comfortable. This summer, tennis became the first major women's sports league to require genetic testing. One advocacy group said that testing, quote, invades all women's privacy, forcing them to give up their personal medical and genetic information. Navratilova is undeterred by the backlash. The ferocious competitor in her made it to number one, beat cancer, and is now watching a new generation claim its place in history. Does the part of you still wish you were out there? Do you have to keep yourself from running out on the court?

If I could still play, I would. At the same time, I'm so happy I don't have that stress. So I'm good where I am, but I love to be a part of the sport that gave me my life. And I'm happy to give something back. Be sure to watch Washington Week with the Atlantic tonight right here on PBS. Jeffrey Goldberg and his panel discussed why President Trump's call for voting like he's on the ballot. This midterm election could backfire. President Trump announced this week that tech executives signed in accord,

pledging to self-police their company's AI products. On Compass Points this weekend, Nick Schiffrin speaks with experts about the U.S. and China's race for AI superiority and whether the government should regulate the potentially dangerous technology. Here's a preview. Chris, is there a government responsibility here? I absolutely agree. I think this is the most powerful technology in the world, and therefore both the United States needs to stay ahead in that technology

and it needs to be regulated. You look at many other technologies that we interact with on a daily basis, airplanes, food, cars, all of these are actually subject to real government regulations and standards, and there's varying ways that we can do it. But we generally agree that the government has to play a role because a strictly market-based approach will undoubtedly result in outcomes that are bad. Yes, you can go to the courts and sue for, you know, the correct old outcomes after the fact. But that's not going to mitigate the damage.

We have a Department of Justice. We have an FBI. We have courts. That's not actually going to prevent the really bad things from happening in the first place. Meantime on Horizons, William Brangam speaks with the author of the book, The Vanishing Family, about how decoding a rare form of dementia might unlock prevention and treatment breakthroughs for all types of diseases. And then something happens to one of the eldest daughters, Christy, in a similar sort of dissolution. Over the course of the book, you detail the long investigation

they go through to try to figure out what this actually is. And as I mentioned, it is this specific type of dementia, FTD. What is it? What is it that is afflicting them? It's so interesting, William, because genetically, it's kind of a cousin to Alzheimer's and might even be a backdoor.

to understanding and treating Alzheimer's one day. But symptomatically, in the beginning, it's very different. Instead of hitting your memory or your cognition, the way that we think about Alzheimer's, it hits your impulsivity and your apathy and your personality. It hits your frontal lobes, which, you know, the shorthand for frontal lobes is executive function, right? But really, it's more than executive function.

It's also triaging all the information that comes into your brain and deciding whether those social cues even matter, So it's not like the people who have it become narcissistic or become evil. It's simply that they become less capable of understanding that other people have wants and needs. So they are almost become like children at first. They do what they want to do, when they want to do it, and don't think about social consequences,

and they care less about the people around them. It's really a shock to everyone around them, perhaps except them, because they don't believe anything is happening. And you can watch both horizons and compass points on our YouTube channel or wherever you get your podcasts and of course on your local PBS station. Check your local listings for more. And that is The News Hour for tonight. I'm Omna Nawaz. And I'm Jeff Bennett for all of us here at The News Hour. Thank you for spending part of your evening with us and have a great weekend.