PBS News Hour - Full Show - October 5, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: October 5, 2025

Sunday on PBS News Weekend, Israeli strikes pound Gaza overnight as indirect talks get underway in Egypt to swap hostages and Palestinian prisoners. A new documentary tells the story of school librarians on the front lines in the battle over book bans. Plus, how superstar Bad Bunny is making history while celebrating his Puerto Rican culture on the world stage. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Tonight on PBS News Weekend, Israeli strikes Pound Gaza overnight as indirect talks are set to get underway in Egypt to swap hostages and Palestinian prisoners. Then a new documentary tells the story of school librarians on the front lines in the battle over book banning. And creating music on his own terms. How superstar Bad Bunny is making history while celebrating his quaterials. and culture on the world stage. Caribbean music has shaped global musical tastes since the 19th century, English and Spanish.

So it's important also to put bad bunny in that larger, broader, longer context. Good evening. Good evening. I'm John Yang. Israel continued bombarding parts of Gaza today, even as its negotiators prepare for mediated talks with Hamas in Egypt,

aimed at a deal to exchange the remaining hostages for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. And that could be the first step toward ending the war in Gaza. Leaving the White House this morning, President Trump was optimistic. You could have peace, if you think about it. Peace in the Middle East for the first time in, they say, really, 3,000 years. So I'm very honored to be a big part of that. Appearing on ABC's this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio balanced optimism with the remaining hurdles. This is the closest we've come to getting all of the hostages released, every single one, all 48, including the 28 who were deceased.

Of course, the 20 that are still alive. But, you know, there's a lot of pitfalls along the way. There's some work to be done here. In Jerusalem, near Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's residence, relatives of hostages kept up their pressure for a deal. Now, when it's almost here, we feel it. We must not let this opportunity be damaged. This historic agreement must not be sacrificed again on the political altar, on the sovereignty of the prime minister,

or on the chair of his political partners, like the ministers in his government. The war began two years ago this week after Hamas's bloody assault on Israel. Daniel Estrin is NPR's correspondent covering the Israel-Hamas war. Daniel, what should we expect from these talks, especially from the Hamas side? This is a pivotal moment,

but there's not a lot of optimism that this is going to be done and dusted in just a few days, as Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested over the weekend. First of all, it's going to take a few days just for the top Israeli negotiator, Ron Dermer, to arrive in Egypt for the talks. That's according to a person briefed on the matter.

But there is a lot to discuss here, and Netanyahu spoke about this being a matter of a couple days to discuss the technical details of a hostage release. But Hamas is saying, that it's going to take a lot longer than just a few days to find the bodies of the deceased hostages in Gaza.

Hamas's strategy here is really to use its one and only card, which is the hostages, and to use that for its advantage. It's going to be asking for a lot more than just the details of the hostage release, and it's going to try to obtain some concessions. For instance, Hamas might be expected to say, we cannot collect the hostages alive and dead as long as Israeli bombardment is going on and they will seek guarantees for Israel to hold its fire.

It may also seek a further troop withdrawal than Israel has said it's willing to do. So there's a lot here at stake, Hamas saying yes, but to Trump's plan, yes to releasing hostages, but to the rest. And it's enough to bring them and everyone to the table to negotiate the details. Is this going to get to the issues beyond the release of the hostages

to sort of what happens next to Gaza, what happens next to Hamas? The short answer is we don't know. This 20-point plan that Trump put out includes all kinds of provisions, including what happens in a post-war Gaza. There's a lot of, I think, wiggle room in the fairly vague and open-ended wording of Trump's plan that allows Hamas and Israel and all the sides to, come to the table and say, okay, there's enough here that we need to negotiate. There is so much to discuss about post-war Gaza, about post-war governance, a multinational Arab and

Muslim force inside Gaza. We don't know whether Hamas and the Egyptian mediators will demand that during these talks coming up in Egypt this week, that those issues get hammered out. But we should expect one thing. Hamas will want guarantees that releasing the hostages up front, which it's willing to do now, will not allow Israel afterwards to return to war. What's the mood of the people? What's the mood of people both in Gaza and in Israel? I think there is cautious optimism I'm hearing on both sides, in Gaza and in Israel. In Israel, there's a lot of war fatigue after two years of war. Polls show the majority of the public wants this deal for the war to end and for the hostages

to return. But there is the issue of the far right flank in Netanyahu's. government, which has been asking and pleading with Netanyahu to carry on with the war and to ensure that Hamas is destroyed. And we've heard from Netanyahu's far-right allies that if Hamas is not done with at the end of this prisoner hostage exchange, hostages being given up for Palestinian prisoners, that key parts of Netanyahu's coalition will quit. And so Netanyahu is facing a serious domestic political dilemma. He could lose his government over this deal.

And in Gaza, many people we've been speaking to say that they finally feel a little cautious optimism. There were large crowds that gathered hearing that Israeli troops withdrew from some parts of Gaza city. Some of those people were reported killed, according to Gaza health officials. And even though President Trump publicly thanked Israel for stopping the bombing in order for this process to go forward, Israel has continued in its bombardment of Gaza. It says that it's only doing defensive action and not offensive action. We don't know the definition of how Israel defines offensive versus defensive action. We do know that Gaza health officials are reporting scores of Palestinians killed just in the past day. NPR's Daniel Estrin in Tel Aviv tonight.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. In tonight's other headlines, members of the California National Guard are in Oregon over the objections of California Governor Gavin Newsom. This comes after a federal judge temporary block President Trump's deployment of the Oregon National Guard to Portland. In a social media post, Newsom said the president deployed his state's National Guard and that he would go to court to try to stop it. Mr. Trump said that using the National Guard in big cities will eliminate crime. Washington, D.C., went from a hellhole to a safe place. It took 12 days to solve the problem, 12 days.

And we're going to do that in Chicago. We're going to do that in Portland. In the case of Chicago, Mr. Trump said he was acting because local officials aren't doing anything. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, said he was presented with an ultimatum and called the plan to federalize 300 National Guard members a manufactured performance. Tensions in Chicago escalated Saturday when a federal agent shot and wounded a woman on the city's southwest side. DHS officials say the woman was armed and rammed a law enforcement vehicle. Russia launched drones, missiles, and bombs across Ukraine overnight, killing five people, including a 15-year-old.

Parts of Leviv in the West, which was once considered a haven from fighting, were settled. ablaze. The attack left some areas without power. Ukrainian President Volodemir Zelensky said nine regions were targeted and civilian infrastructure was deliberately hit. In a video release today, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that if the United States supplies Ukraine with long-range missiles, it would signal a new stage of escalation and damage bilateral ties. In Syria today, a milestone. The first election since the fall of long-time, leader Bashar al-Assad. It was nearly a year ago that he was toppled by a swift, rebel-led offensive. Syrians didn't vote directly in today's elections. Instead,

electoral committees select representatives for two-thirds of the parliament, and the interim president will appoint the rest. Speaker Mike Johnson says the House won't be back in session until the Senate passes the spending bill to end the government shutdown, which heads into a sixth day tomorrow. Senate Democrats say they won't support the bill unless we're Republicans reverse Medicaid cuts and extend subsidies to help low and middle-income earners pay health care premiums under the Affordable Care Act. Today, the president said that the entire Obamacare program is a disaster and needs to be fixed. White House officials still threaten to fire federal workers if the shutdown is prolonged.

If the president decides that the negotiations are absolutely going nowhere, then there will start to be layoffs. But I think that everybody's still hopeful that when we get a fresh start at the beginning of the week, that we can get the Democrats to see, that it's just common sense to avoid layoffs like that. Before the shutdown, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that furloughed federal workers could lose

a total of $400 million a day in pay. Still to come on PBS News Weekend, a new documentary on the school librarians fighting against escalating book bands. And for Hispanic Heritage Month, we highlight one of the biggest musical performance in pop culture. Dad Bunny. This is PBS News Weekend from the David M. Rubenstein Studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour. Weeknights on PBS. Public school libraries across America have become battlegrounds in the culture wars.

In a coordinated nationwide effort, groups are pushing bans on books they consider to be inappropriate for school-age children. A new report from Penn America, the Literature and Human Rights Group, says that in the 2024-25 school year, there were more than 6,800 book bans in U.S. public schools. 80% of them were in just three states, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. A new documentary called The Librarians, examines the experiences of school librarians who found them, themselves on the front lines in this battle against censorship, often at the cost of their well-being and their jobs. Part of the ethics of our profession to support the First Amendment and fight censorship. I've had former students reach out to me that have told me books that saved them.

I'm going to speak out about it. This is not a communist nation. You do not get to pick our reading material. The film will be shown in more than 50 cities across the country beginning today, which is the start of Band Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association and the Band Books Week Coalition. Kim Snyder is the director of the librarians, and Audrey Wilson Youngblood is one of the librarians featured in the film. Kim, what drew you to tell this story and also tell it through librarians? Well, back in the fall of 21, I had seen news about something that was called

the Krause List when a state senator in Texas issued a list of 850 books to be removed from school shelves. And they were mainly targeting books that had LGBTQ characters, race, and sexuality. And I then learned about a small group of librarians in Texas calling themselves the freedom fighters who were speaking out and connecting with librarians, including Audrey, who I soon after became connected to, and really hearing from librarians all across the country that were facing attacks. And, you know, we've been hearing about the book bans, but this siege on librarians was something I felt that was really important to document.

And so for the past four years, that's what we've done. We should say that in the film, you show a number of the threats that are being made against librarians who are opposing these book bans. Let's take a look. I'm doing criminal investigation into some of your staff. I cannot imagine my face on the wanted poster and my friend being taken away in handcuffs. You're coming for teachers and librarians, and they know it.

Audrey, we heard you in a little bit of you in that clip. We don't see you because you were shot in silhouette. But then later in the film, you do show your face. What made you decide that, that you wanted to stand up and be seen and be known? The urgency behind the message and the call to action in the film, required me to be brave, like the other collaborators in the film. And my hope is that just that one act of resilience and courage might inspire other librarians to speak up and to tell their stories

and tell the stories of their students whose reading materials are being pulled from the shelves. And it really wasn't a choice from there. Audrey, why is it important for people who live in states and communities where there aren't these book ban campaigns to be aware of this and to be aware of what's going on in other places? I don't think there's many places

that are really immune to what is happening and the more that it spreads, the more it's likely to come to your community and to impact where you are as well. We hope that no matter where people are in their communities, whether it's impacting them directly, that they will turn around and tell someone's story and bring the films to their communities

so that when and if this does begin to happen, they'll know how to respond and they'll form a network and they'll form their own movement so that they can counter it. Kim, how did the communities were you filmed react to you and I don't know if they've seen the film or not

and react to the film? It's been really heartening to see the nerve this is striking. There's certainly a really alarming, I think, reaction to the film but also really hopeful because you see people like Audrey and some of these other,

not just librarians, but people in places where they really have a lot to lose. There's a lot of risk, and they're doing it to really uphold some of the most fundamentally American values. Audrey, what do students, the students you work with, tell you about the effect these bands are having on them?

In their own words, they would tell me that they felt like when people wanted to remove books that featured characters, with similar experiences to them that they felt like it meant that those same people wanted them removed from schools. One student said they don't want books like this in the library. They must believe that I don't belong here either. So they absolutely see a connection between the censoring of these stories and intolerance,

violence against their own lived and personal experiences. Kim, as Penn America says, this has become normalized, these book bands. What is it do you want audiences to walk away with? I think what we want audiences to walk away with is that we see in the film, the hope in the film, is not only the courage, but the agency, that there is a certain agency in standing up for what's right, what you believe in, in these values, in protecting kids' rights, and to really get involved. school board races really matter elections, not in such a, in the sense of a partisan fight, but just in the sense of knowing how policies in your town in the library board, how they affect your librarians, your libraries. And we want people to, you know, take cues from our courageous characters in standing up for what's right.

Director Kim Snyder, school librarian Audrey Wilson Youngblood. Thank you both very much. Thank you. Lately, the Global Superstar and Grammy Award-winning singer known as Bad Bunny has been getting hotter and hotter. Last night, he hosted the season premiere of Saturday Night Live, and next year, he'll headline. the Super Bowl halftime show. His celebrity reaches beyond the music industry, spanning generations and encompassing politics,

Caribbean culture, and Puerto Rican and Latin pride. Bad Bunny makes music on his own terms. His latest album, DB Terramas Photos, or in English, I should have taken more photos, has propelled him to new heights. He followed it up with a three-month residency in San Juan that drew hundreds of thousands of fans and hundreds of millions of dollars to his native Puerto Rico. Fans appreciate how he celebrates his roots. He is very original.

He hasn't lost his essence. He keeps on leaving an impression on us with each new record. What he has done on this occasion was truly spectacular for us. For us and also tourism overall, the economy. He is bringing our culture to the world. He is putting Puerto Rico in the spotlight in front of the world. And that fills us with pride. His latest album blends familiar styles with hip-hop influences,

providing an entryway for listeners less familiar with salsa and Afro-Caribbean beats. It appeals to the broader Latino community. Bad Bunny is one of the most streamed artist in the world. He's streamed artist in the world and has 77 million monthly listeners on the streaming service, Spotify. He ended his residency with a live stream on Amazon music that was the most watched single artist performance in the streaming services history. Now he's getting ready for next month's kickoff of his world tour. For that tour, 2.6 million tickets have already been sold.

been sold. Albert Sergio Laguna is a professor of ethnicity, race and migration, and American Studies at Yale, where he teaches a course called Bad Bunny, Musical Aesthetics and politics. Mr. Laguna, what is it about Bad Bunny that makes him such a phenomenon, crossing over generational lines? Is it the music? Is it his persona? Is it a mix of the two? I'd say it's a mix of the two, but I can speak directly to this last album. You know, If you look at my inbox, John, I'm receiving emails from students in high school who are writing reports on Bad Bunny. And I'm also receiving emails from folks in their 70s and 80s who want to audit in my class as well. And I think what he's been able to do is combine Puerto Rican rhythms from throughout the history of Puerto Rican popular music.

So you have like reggaeton that speaks to 21st century interests and that generation. But you also have salsa from the 70s, 80s and 90s. You also have him pulling from traditional Puerto Rican rhythms like the African percussion of bomba music, blena music, music, Musica Hibara, earlier Puerto Rican musical forms, and he's combining them on this album to imagine new rhythms and new possibilities. He's pulling on all these traditions, but he's also tapping into what's going on now. He's worried about ice raids. How else is he sort of tapping into the popular culture to the current culture? That particular decision was prescient on his part in the sense to the Supreme Court ruling that's basically making racial profiling legal ICE agents, stopping people on the basis

of race, perceived race, ethnicity, language. And he speaks to that directly in his lyrics, talking about the issues related to migration, people feeling like they need to leave Puerto Rico in order to have success. He's speaking into relation to gentrification in Puerto Rico and the question of tourism and what's ethical and non-ethical tourism. So he very much has his finger on the pulse of issues that are affecting the lives of Puerto Ricans on the island, but also people in Latin America specifically can listen to these lyrics and say these kinds of things are also relevant to our experiences in our own backyards. To that point about the difficulties

Puerto Rico has been facing, what does it mean to the island? What does it mean to the residents that he chose to do this three-month residency in Puerto Rico, not anywhere else? It's a powerful political statement. The title of the residency is No Me Chiro Eid Necki. I don't want to leave here. In the history of Puerto Rico in a lot of places in the Caribbean and Latin America,

the narrative has long been. If you want to have success, you have to leave. So for him to say, I'm going to start up this tour for this massively popular album in Puerto Rico, I don't want to leave. It's part of the broader message of the album and the marketing around the album,

which is, how can we imagine a Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans, a place where people don't have to leave, to live, and to thrive. In a lot of his music, Bad Bunny talks about some of the problems facing Puerto Rico. He talks about over-tourism and the effect on the environment. He talks about the bad economy there. Is it somehow ironic that he would be critiquing over tourism while drawing hundreds of thousands of people to Puerto Rico for his concerts?

A song on the album called Tourista, is specifically speaking to the danger. of tourism in the sense of people not respecting where they're visiting, but also materially on the economics of the island. Tourism isn't going anywhere. It's an important part of the Puerto Rican economy. I think he's walking that line of offering a critique, but also understanding that this is part of the livelihood of many Puerto Ricans.

Ideally, this is a model for maybe thinking through a more ethical kind of tourism. A lot of Spanish-speaking singers who want to build an audience in the United States singing English. But Bad Bunny will not do that. He insists on singing in Spanish. How significant is that? I think what's interesting here is so many artists, many

from Latin America, will become extremely popular in their local context. And as they get bigger internationally, you know, sometimes the music gets a little watered down, right, to kind of appeal to a broader global audience. He's done the exact opposite. The album is the most Puerto Rican

album he's ever put out in terms like rhythms and musical influences. Caribbean music has shaped global musical tastes since the 19th century, English and Spanish. So it's important also to put Bad Bunny in that larger, broader, longer context. Albert Sergio Laguna of Yale University. Thank you very much.

A pleasure. Thank you. Now online, there's a lot more, including a look at how the application for federal student aid has changed in an effort to streamline the process. All that and more is on our website, pbs.s.org slash news hour. And that is PBS News Weekend for this Sunday. I'm John Yang for all of my colleagues. Thanks for joining us. Have a good week.